FJ Holden is a time capsule of a typical western suburbs working class teenager's life in the 70's albeit that the producers have used an element of poetic license to tell the story. The movie reminds me of American Graffiti, that iconic movie set in the early 60's which spun off onto TV as the very successful Happy Days series. We have always tended to watch this movie from the inside out because my wife and I were a part of some of the major scenes at the infamous "Brickies" or "The Brickyard" where illegal drag races took place late on Friday and Saturday nights. We first met the producers at the old Castlereagh Dragway just outside of Penrith NSW. They approached us after our car, a 1968 Camaro SS had just won several heats and mentioned that they would like both us and our car in the movie. Our car is in the opening scene at Brickies on the right of screen racing toward the camera. It also appears after the race driving past, and as the sun is rising driving away from the police. We were also in several scenes around the fire and when the "stolen" white Pontiac Parisienne (with no motor, I may add....lol) was pushed into Homebush Bay and drifted away refusing to sink. The majority of that scene wound up on the cutting room floor because the roars of laughter from us all as the car unexpectedly drifted into the dark were not to the producers liking. As the car slowly drifted away all went quiet in anticipation and one guy yelled out "Shit, my lumber jacket is in that car, and it has my wallet in it" which made us all break into laughter with the odd inappropriate and unsympathetic comment being made. I also recall that they quickly switched to a long telescopic lens and a large spot light to capture the car finally sinking into the middle of the bay. Probably still there too as no attempts were made to recover it. Then, over the 5 days of shooting these scenes the fire that was used to keep warm and add to the atmosphere of the movie eventually overheated the concrete it was on and the concrete literally blew up with fire going everywhere. Many, many more funny things happened over these 5 days and if the director had kept the outtakes they would have enough material for a movie that would make a more typical 1970's scene than the actual movie could ever have achieved. You just can't write the stuff that happened there, along with the constant wise cracks and sledging from the smart arse westies. All in all, being part of that 5 days of filming made it hard to watch the final movie without a smile on our faces knowing what really went on behind the scenes.