The country music legend Patsy Cline never made the trip abroad to Australia to perform as she was killed in a plane crash in 1963. So, for many who were far from the Nashville scene, they had to make their way over by any means. That is the basis of the Australian produced Patsy Cline, as a young man leaves his rural farm with a ticket across the Pacific to Nashville along with his guitar. There, the movie goes dark and splits in two like an episode of Black Mirror: one leads to hell, the other leads to glory.
Australia’s ode to American country music surrounds itself with the naive teenager Ralph who is heading to Sydney to board his plane for fame. Instead, he befriends a man and his girlfriend, also named Patsy, and it’s a pairing that leads to its parallel lives style. You can argue that it tries to be Easy Rider with the magical realism of seeing Patsy perform like the singer and a partial subplot right from A Star Is Born. It jumps time and setting, establishing the Australian Outback very much like the American south, which may throw off viewers on what they are seeing.
In the 21st-century, websites including Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu have a proven to be a haven for all movies and television shows to be seen. For many, it was cheaper to pay a monthly free to see everything possible than wait it out on TV or the theatre. This also includes original programming exclusively seen on these sites like House of Cards, The Handmaids Tale, and The Marvelous Ms. Maisel. As cable TV has surpassed traditional channels in content, they now have a challenger in original streaming content, so they now have to offer their shows/movies on their own websites.
The history of streaming is as old as the Internet. Video-on-Demand and audio tracks have been around since the early 90s. Microsoft developed the Windows Media Player and Apple launched Quicktime, while Adobe Flash improved all streaming options, including the launch of YouTube. Streaming and having enough broadband grew as it become the preferred method by consumers to watch and listen to anything. Overall, research suggests that the Millennial generation streams over 60 percent of what they watch.
This is the new normal and it will continue to expand. The movie theater is on the decline as more anymore movies go straight to instant streaming by many sites. Older movies are being digitized as well for streaming. Most countries with such access are adapting to this change and it will be a completely global phenomenon very soon.
With good reviews and multiple awards from Australia’s major film awards, Doing Time For Patsy Cline is an example of the country’s independent industry from the American style. It is a film that is fast and loose, maybe too loose for traditional storytelling, but is meant to express youth in a rebellious mode following their dreams, far from a lonely spot.