JULIEN TEMPLE - TEMPLE TO TURN GRAFFITI ARTIST'S LIFE INTO MOVIE OPERA

Maverick moviemaker JULIEN TEMPLE is planning an operatic film tribute all about Australia's most famous graffiti artist. The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle director plans to turn the infamous story of Sydney's Eternity Man into a musical masterpiece. He explains, "He's a Sydney urban myth, really, and he also happens to be Australia's most prolific writer - he only wrote one word, 'eternity' so many times on the pavement in chalk. "He was a victim of the First World War (1914-1918), shell shocked, and he had no education; he couldn't actually read or write. "He came back from the war and hallucinated on metholated spirits and he was basically dying on the streets and went to some tabernacle for tea and cake because he was starving. "Flying high on the meth he heard the preacher going on about eternity, and it completely flipped him. He was rummaging through his pockets, looking for meth but found this chalk instead and started writing this word on the pavement. "For the next 40 years, he wrote this word all over Sydney and no one would see him do it. They finally found out it was him in 1969."