It's been 30 years since Looking For Alibrandi was released. Here's 10 things you didn't know about it.

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Looking For Alibrandi – one of Australia's most iconic books – was released 30 years ago in 1992 this week.

It started as a classic novel, written by Melina Marchetta, and turned into a cult film when it arrived on screens in 2000, starring the likes of Pia Miranda, Kick Gurry, and Greta Scacchi. The book and film are still watched, read and taught in schools around the world today. 

If you're a millennial, or perhaps a well-versed Gen Z'er, then Looking For Alibrandi – and Josephine 'Josie' Alibrandi's tumultuous family life – would be familiar to you. 

Watch the trailer for Looking For Alibrandi. Post continues after video. 

While it's been 30 years since we first met Josie, there's still so much we just don't know about her, where her character ended up or how she even came to be.

So, we decided to do some snooping, to find out 10 things you didn't know about Looking For Alibrandi.

1. Looking For Alibrandi was not actually based on the author's life.

In conversation with Buzzfeed, author Melina Marchetta, admitted she was "disappointed" by not seeing her reality in the books she was reading.

"I wrote because I loved reading so much, but I was disappointed that I didn’t see myself in those words. There was nothing about my or my family's experiences out there, including on film," she explained.

While the author did desire to write a story that was representative of her life, she felt it would have been "boring" if she did. So instead, she incorporated different aspects.

"[But] I think that what happens if you write too much about your personal experience is it does become a limited experience... I always say if we had to write about our own lives – well mine anyway – it would be so so boring. Especially as a writer, a lot of the excitement is happening in your head. But writing about your world is a lot bigger."

2. Writing Looking For Alibrandi encouraged Marchetta to go to university.

After leaving school at the age of 15, the author of Looking For Alibrandi said that she lacked the confidence to give university a go... until she released her best-selling debut novel, that is.

"When this novel was being contemplated, especially by Penguin, who ended up publishing it, I think I was about 23 when they started expressing interest in it," Marchetta explained to Buzzfeed. "I remember thinking if I’m smart enough to write a novel, I’m smart enough to go to university. So I went to university. It just gave me that confidence."

3. The movie almost didn't have John Barton in it at all.

Marchetta told Mamamia her major struggle when bringing Looking For Alibrandi to the big screen was the character John Barton, as the movie's producers wanted to cut him out. 

Anyone who has watched Looking For Alibrandi knows how impactful John Barton was, but Marchetta says she had to "fight" for him. 

"There was a real question mark over whether or not he'd make it," she explained to Mamamia. 

While Barton was handsome, charismatic, popular and ambitious – he was also deeply depressed. His character examined wealth, privilege and mental illness with a lens that made Looking For Alibrandi film producers worried his death wouldn't go down well with viewers.

John Barton in Looking For Alibrandi. Image: Beyond Distribution. 

"In the early drafts of the script [his death] would happen at the end, and the producers were worried people would walk out of the cinema depressed," Marchetta said.

"So there was a question as to if he should be in the film at all."

His character was eventually brought to life by Matthew Newton, and we're all thankful for that. However, Marchetta had to "get the novel and smash it on the ground" and move John Barton's death to the middle of the film in order to keep him.

"There, [his death] acts as the catalyst for Josie. It propels her forward to get through her exams and get through to that next stage."

4. Marchetta almost didn't want Looking For Alibrandi to be made into a film.

While Looking For Alibrandi was a bestselling novel, there was a moment Marchetta had where she considered not bringing it to the big screen at all. 

"By the time they asked me to write it I had seen failed attempts of the script and I started thinking 'I actually don’t want this made'," she told Junkee. "There were terrible stereotypes. I was asked to come on board and I thought, 'Of course, I can do this!' and didn’t realise how difficult film scripts actually are to write."

Listen to The Spill, Mamamia's daily entertainment podcast. Post continues after audio.

5. Josie and Jacob end up together... We think.

While it's no secret Marchetta – along with the rest of us – believes Josie and Jacob Coote ended up together, she's yet to give us a sequel to confirm our suspicions. 

While speaking to Junkee, Marchetta said it was "up to the reader to decide what happened with Josie and Jacob. So there’s that. There’s what you think happens to Josie and Jacob and what I think happens to Josie and Jacob, which is irrelevant."

She later added: "But of course, Josie and Jacob end up together. In my head, of course they do!"

6. The original manuscript for Looking For Alibrandi would have followed her throughout university.

Believe it or not, the original manuscript for Looking For Alibrandi was actually double the size of the book we can read nowadays – and that's because Marchetta had originally planned to follow Josie all the way into uni life.

"[It continued] two or three years later. Just ridiculous. Ridiculous happily ever afters," she told Buzzfeed. "She spends a year at university going out with this guy who is just a creep and he kind of puts her down, so it makes her understand what she maybe did to Jacob Coote."

Josie Alibrandi and Jacob Coote in Looking For Alibrandi. Image: Roadshow Pictures. 

Sadly for us, she was told to cut out the extra years in Josie's story – which she didn't find all that difficult. 

"I didn't lose what had to be said in those couple of years, but I certainly lost characters," Marchetta explained. 

7. The original Looking For Alibrandi also would have had a more romantic ending. 

According to Marchetta, Josie would have run into Jacob again, but in a peculiar, "romantic" way.

"One day she's driving down a road in Redfern and her car breaks down and guess who fixes it? You know, it's just all that romantic loveliness that you’d like to happen in the real world but obviously doesn’t," she told Buzzfeed. 

"So [the publishers] basically said to me, 'pick one year in her life, pick one voice and tell the story of what happened over that year'."

8. Marchetta's grandmother's stories were actually supposed to be her grandfather's.

Nonna Katia was an integral part of Josie's story – but originally, Marchetta had planned to incorporate the tales of her grandfather. 

Unfortunately, he developed Alzheimer's and was told she couldn't. 

"I remember saying to my mum I just really need to speak to him because I want to write something and I want it to be about us. Unfortunately, he got Alzheimer's and [Mum] came back from a trip to Queensland and said, 'you can't, he doesn’t remember who I am'," she told Buzzfeed. "It was just this tragedy of not only losing that part of your grandfather but also losing every single story he had told."

Instead, Marchetta chose to focus solely on her grandmother.

"For that reason, it’s a story about three women, and not a story about two women and a father. And I just think it’s interesting how a circumstance could dictate the way you end up writing a book, but that’s what happened," she said. 

"As much as I think it’s sad, and the stories from my grandfather would have been so rich, I just love that I was able to, in a way, tell my grandmother's story of coming all the way overseas in the 1930s and being in this strange land."

9. The book was rejected several times before it was finally published by Penguin.

Marchetta went through "seven or eight" rejections from book publishers before she finally landed with Penguin. 

"Physically I’ve still got about six rejections, so I would say it probably got rejected about seven or eight times in some way," she explained. "[But] I remember someone scribbling on one saying, 'by the way you have a really strong, fresh voice, don’t give up on this'. So I felt like I got encouragement with every rejection."

The 30th anniversary edition book cover for Looking For Alibrandi. Image: Booktopia.  

10. Marchetta will never give us a sequel to Looking For Alibrandi.

Unfortunately for fans, we will never get a sequel for Looking For Alibrandi – no matter how much we might beg. 

"My grandparents are all dead, and I don’t think I could kill off Katia," she explained. 

Not only that, but Marchetta admitted she felt there sort of was a sequel in the character of 'Mia Spinelli' in Saving Francesca. 

"I’m not saying that Josie would grow up to be Francesca’s mum, because Francesca’s mum is a university lecturer and Josie would definitely have become a barrister. But they're both driven, Mia and Josie, and I would always wonder what it would be like for a character like Josie to have a complacent child-like Francesca... So I felt that I put some of Josie into Mia as a character," she told Buzzfeed.

If she ever was to write a sequel – although it is extremely unlikely – Marchetta said it would revisit Josie in her 40s rather than a few years off from where Looking For Alibrandi ended.

"It’d have to be something pretty powerful to make me write her story, and if I was ever going to write it, it would be her today rather than a couple for years after Alibrandi. It’d be interesting to see what she’s like as a 40-something-year-old woman, but it’d have to be a pretty good story for me to want to go down there," she explained.

"And I just want to write other stories. You know I’m writing Jimmy Hailler from Francesca’s story at the moment, and they’re adults now, they’re in their twenties, and it becomes something different. But they’re the characters that come back to me – the ones that get older, and you wonder what happens as a result of them getting older and life happening to them."

Feature Image: Beyond Distribution. 

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