As 1980 puffed to a close I felt reasonably happy with my work and of course gloriously happy to be doing it.
One little hiccup remained but it turned out to be another little bit of serendipity. My failed nemesis had talked the boss into sending me on a Producer training course in Christchurch for reasons that were equally fatuous and irrelevant. I had demurred but no dice.
The course included a Director training section which I had already completed at Avalon with some success. So I quite reasonably, I thought, announced that I would repeat my Kafka short bio, but with some adjustments which would hopefully demonstrate what I had learned during my efforts of the preceding year.(1980). As you can probably guess that appealed to various tiny minds and I kept calm.
The course was to run for about ten weeks and set down to start in mid January 1981. What a glorious prospect. Ten weeks in Christchurch, all expenses and accomodation paid, and a smashing CHCH summer to boot. As an added bonus I had arranged to stay at my sister’s place. I had done my share of staying in motels and the ‘novelty’ had worn thin a long time ago. Home cooking!-excellent. Also I could share the accomodation supplement with my sister and live on the diems which were quite generous I thought. Being away from home for ten weeks is a drag. But, there you go. Not my idea so I felt no guilt, only mild amusement at the silliness of my bosses.
And so here we are in Sunny CHCH all assembled and set to go.
The course leader was once more Tony Hiles who was to be partnered again with Michael Stedman from The Natural History Unit at TVNZ Dunedin. Michael had to drop out and was replaced by John Reid, who would be looking after the film elements. John was an old acquaintance from way back. Perfect.
Let the games begin!
Among the course members were a few people I had worked with in various capacities viz. Simon Morris, Ginette McDonald, also Ian Taylor ( before he became a “brilliant entrepreneurial mind”) {he was brilliant no doubt about it but much younger of course and good fun to be with}. Another person I remember was Bill De Friez who was an american guy who had come from political studies into TV. An excellent bloke. I think there were about 12 people. Can’t remember exactly how many.
The main difference was in the directing side. There was a film element which involved making excercises shot, edited and sound mixed. A bit farcical for me but I enjoyed it and just got stuck in. Most of what I did was mostly for fun and there were no rules.
Fun was certainly had by all. It was a beautiful summer in CHCH and shooting outside was a dream. We worked hard on the course. There was lots to get through- lectures, visiting experts passing on their skills, film editing and sound mixing, outside broadcasting excercises, studio work etc etc
After work we ate well drank lots of wine and generally enjoyed ourselves. As you do in those circumstances. After all we were young. Although… I was quite a bit older than most of the others but never looked my age and the subject just never came up. On some evenings I would stay in town a bit later and just chill out with the others. But mostly I was glad to get away from the intensity of it all and avoid the motel ‘cabin fever’.
My mother was staying in ChCh at that time with my sister and her family. She was visiting from Scotland via Australia and it was just terrific to be able to spend time with her. Although I did have to ask her to please NOT iron my underwear and socks.
And so we carried on blissfully, consuming the lotus and all that.
Some weeks after the course had been going I received a phone call from Avalon. The caller was Shaun Brown a journalist I had known from Waring Taylor Street. He was now a Producer in the department where I worked and had just taken over as Producer of Fair Go. Brian Edwards had been producing and presenting the show for some time but was now going to concentrate on the presenting and writing side. (Good luck with that Shaun). Anyway he was offering me the job of Director of Fair Go for 1981. Was I interested? Oh yes I was!
Live TV going out every Wednesday in Prime Time with a studio audience and high ratings…..and lots of filmed stories. I was stoked. It also solved any lingering problems that remained with my detractors. How foolish they now looked. So much for them.
From that point on the course took on a new aspect for me. I now had all the freedom in the world to enjoy making little programmes just for the sheer fun of it.
And fun it was. The atmosphere was perfect. A sort of camaraderie had developed and mutual support was the order of the day. The very reverse of ‘Creative Conflict’ which is a corrosive and malign idea. How sick is it to set people against each other to achieve some bullshit outcome?
And now we have arrived at the last week of the course and all of us went into our private little worlds to prepare for our ‘graduating excercises’ in the studio.
I did a bit of polishing on my Kafka script using some ideas that arose from my directing duties during 1980. The script was much the same story wise and I had kept the photos and captions from the first time. The sound tapes with voice overs and narrations and music had gone astray but I had re-recorded everything at Avalon before we left for CHCH so that was sorted. I couldn’t have Ian Fraser as presenter and narrator. He wasn’t available. But I did get John Blumsky who was semi retired and running a bookshop in Rangiora. John had a great broadcasting voice and was a very good person to work with.
Well, my final excercise in the studio went very well. At the end just after the fade to black there was a short silence in the control room and then the whole crew broke into applause. All I can tell you is that such an event is very rare in TV or Film.
Some visitors arrived from Avalon management during the final week. Prominent among them was the Director General Alan Morris (father of Simon). Alan was an outstanding bloke, tremendously experienced in production. He had worked overseas as a Producer and Director and head of production for the BBC and commercial channels since the 1950’s. A very pleasant guy who carried his position lightly. Easy to get on with and a great sense of humour to boot. One of the few executives I admired and respected. We never saw his like again. It was a downward slide to mediocrity after his departure. He was gone by about 1982. Muldoon and his gang had made sure that their full on attacks on broadcasting would make the job untenable for people such as Alan whom they saw as sympathetic to their political opponents. The story of how they destroyed the spirit of broadcasting and laid the ground for the unholy mess we see today is a sad tale indeed. But both major parties are equally culpable, some would say that Prebble and Douglas wielded the axe even more savagely than did Muldoon.
And so…..as the sun sets on Christchurch we bid farewell to the beautiful islands of the south.
Next stop—-AVALON.
I started work in the Fair Go office sometime near the end of March.
Brian Edwards was the undisputed leader of the pack which must have made life a bit uncomfortable for the new Producer Shaun Brown but their was no huge drama involved. It was all handled with intelligence and humour. Others on the ‘team’ (that fucking word again) were Hugo Manson ( a bit posh) but ok to work with. Judith Fyfe (really posh) but a sweetie. Warwick Burke ( a great voice) and not at all posh. Frances Renouf (rich posh) but also very sweet and likeable. The late Lesley Gray a smashing lady and my friend was the Producer’s assistant. Lesley had the measure of everyone in the office but she kept her own counsel. I was regarded as the resident sceptic not given to kow towing.
Brian was amusing and entertaining and of course tremendously vain as a result of his by now legendary status as a broadcaster, a raconteur, and a sarcastic prick at times.
I had known Brian in my former jobs but this was the first time we found ourselves in a close personal working relationship. We had come from similar backgrounds and social status so there was no bullshit between us. We both knew the score. We were born in the same year and we had both employed Franz Kafka as a stepping stone to better things, although Brian’s connection with Franz (pronounced as ‘Frants’ by the way) was at a considerably higher intellectual level than my own. I think a Ph.D trumps a director’s course. Herr Doktor wins.
Here is a little story featuring Brian and myself.
We were out in Eastbourne (in the mortgage belt) filming a story. It was our first filming together and quite early in the production year. I was the director and Brian was presenting the item to be shot. You must remember that he had filmed literally hundreds of items and directed also.
Brian began talking to the cameraman about shots and so on until it became blazingly obvious that he was attempting to sideline me. I let this continue for a while and observed that the crew were starting to feel uncomfortable and a bit embarrassed as to what was going on. So I quietly said to Brian something like “can we just move away a bit as there is something I want to discuss with you.”
The upshot was, I told him that in spite of his own wide knowledge of filming etc it was my job to direct but if he wanted to take over then I would take a cab back to Avalon and leave him to it. Well, he immediately became profusely apologetic, was somewhat embarrassed by my straightforward approach and promised to do the right thing.
I wasn’t bluffing by the way. I meant it and he knew that I did.
Glasgow boy V Belfast boy. Sorted Jimmy, nae bother.
Well as in all stories of that type we became fast friends from that time on.
Credit to Brian for taking it like an adult. He possibly could have made life difficult for me but he didn’t. A sign of real intelligence.
Sometime after that event Brian said to me “People pay me thousands if dollars to learn how to do what you do naturally”.
I was suitably modest in my reply.
Fair Go went to air each Wednesday at 7.30pm. I loved every moment of it. When that red light goes on the rest of the world disappears and one enters a zone of intense concentration which is a sort of mindfullness, I guess. Everything happened at a spanking pace and when the commercial break arrived you could hear the vision mixer sitting on your right let out a sigh of relief. Pure magic.
On the morning after the show we gathered in the viewing room to see a recording and then moved to the office to have a post mortem on the happenings of the night before. Truth was spoken and any problems were sorted for next time.
Like all true broadcasters we were committed to the notion that there was always something to learn in the pursuit of excellence. After all we were Public Servants and that was a title I was proud to take on.
But mostly we had lots of laughs. Quite often out loud. It was the happiest office in the department. It was an environment where you had to sharpen your wit or merely be a spectator. Brian and Judith were very quick witted. Razor sharp in fact. But always good humoured. I learned much about myself in that space something for which I remain grateful.
I travelled around the country with various crews and journalist shooting items for the programme. We met some excellent people and some not so nice people who were the rip off artists taking advantage of usually vulnerable citizens. I found the nasties to be more interesting simply because you never knew what they would do when you rolled up to them. Fortunately mostly verbal abuse which made me laugh inwardly.
Most complaints were settled on the telephone by the journalists. Only the real shagnasties merited a story going to air. I always enjoyed seeing big corporates and the like backing down due to the fear of reputation damage.
Power to the people!
Whatever happened to that excellent idea?
Well the sun rose and fell a couple of hundred times and soon we were nearly in the last quarter of the year.
And then it was biff, bang, bonk.
The Springbok tour was coming to Wellington.
Management lead by Ian Cross threw a security blanket over the possible leaking as to whether we were going to televise the first game in Auckland. They feared that protesters would disturb the arrangements. Fancy that!
We had a discussion in the office as to how we might find out what was going on. I had been a technician in my early days and I volunteered the info that the techs running the Main Control Room (MCR) in their section would have to know when the link was coming down the line to Wellington so a booking on the line could be set.
Hooray! Everyone cried. You must ring Auckland and pose as a tech double checking on the arrangements for the link. So I was rushed into our private telephone booth which had an unlisted untraceable number so as to protect the privacy of Fair Go complainants. I knew all the tech lingo so I got on to this guy in Auckland and pretty much bluffed my way into getting him to cough. He became a bit suspicious near the end of the call and asked me “what was your name again?” I mumbled “Kevin” or something like that and after a few “mates” and “ see you mates”. I was home and hosed.
Celebrations all round! The news was on radio that night and all over the papers next morning.
The Chairman of The Broadcasting Board Ian Cross was apoplectic with rage we heard. An investigation was started but no dice. That number really was untraceable.
I had always nursed a desire to kick Mr Cross in the balls but this was even better. He was such a miserable snobby, patronising, aloof prick (in my opinion) and always seemed like Muldoon’s man. Justice indeed.
On the 29 August, the day of the Wellington test we had all arranged to meet at the site of the protest march starting point which was outside the Embassy Cinema on Kent Terrace. I remember seeing Keith Aberdein, Frances Wevers and Michael Noonan all wearing arm bands signifying that they were Parade Marshalls. My son Christopher had asked me if he could borrow my car so he and some of his mates could go out to Red Rocks for a spot of diving. I said ok, if you drop me off at the bottom of Vivian Street so I could shoot over to the Embassy. On the way downtown I tried to persuade them to join the march and show some solidarity with a great cause. But they didn’t want to get involved, they were too wrapped up in their plans for a good time. Had I failed as a parent I wondered? I had brought my kids up to be aware of the big issues facing the world but to no avail it seemed. Generational breakdown is real.
So off I trotted to meet the Fair Goers who were somewhere in the crowd 20,00 or so. I eventually caught up with them near the Basin Reserve where a sit down was taking place at the Tramways Hotel intersection. An announcement was made by a very reasonable police inspector that everyone who remained sitting after the warning he was giving could expect to be arrested. I was quite excited by this idea of arrest and immediately sat down with the very large crowd already on the ground. After more exhortations from the nice policeman nobody had moved and he lifted his megaphone above his head and shrugged in surrender. He just did not have enough men to arrest such a large crowd. I remember he was smiling at the time. Probably relieved that things had not turned nasty and dangerous. He and his men took off up Adelaide Road to catch up with the marchers who were heading for Athletic Park. The next meaningful event was the Blue Squad charge down Rintoul Street which turned very nasty with batons being deployed quite viciously. We were only about four rows back from the front of the march by this time all linking arms and pushing forward and of course the crowd behind us was pushing forward and the only option was to go with the flow. Scary stuff. I saw one elderly looking woman falling to the footpath and being set upon by the hyped up cops. She looked very much like a Khandallah matron of that time and it seemed incongruous that the police were treating her like a violent criminal.
Eventually the squad were called back up the hill by their commander and the march continued it’s way to the Park where everyone assembled in the park opposite the rugby ground and listened to various speeches and reports of successful blocking of motorways etc by separate groups of protesters. At some stage the game finished and suddenly the tension was gone. Everyone started to walk back towards town chatting and laughing as if nothing had happened. Eventually the football crowd and the protest crowd found themselves mingling on the long walk back but this time there was no obvious police presence and no abuse being hurled at the protesters. A very New Zealand thing I think. Perhaps we were not as factionalised as a nation as we are today. I don’t know really. Anyway I found it quite relaxing not to have to anymore shout slogans like ‘Amandla’ and so on. Time to go home and have some tea with Teresa and block it all out. And that’s what I did. How calming it was to be in her peaceful presence in our wee house. (Or wee hoose as they say in Scotland).
Some weeks after that eventful day Fair Go broke up for the year and I was free to pursue some negotiations which I had started with Ross Jennings the recently appointed new head of the Drama Dept. Ross had liked my work on Fair Go and thought I would fit in nicely on Close To Home as a trainee director. After I had directed a couple or four episodes I went to Bill Earle who was technically still my boss and told him that a job was available in drama if I wanted it. He wanted to know if the proper admin procedures had been put in place (he was very big on admin was Bill). I said that it was all a bit ad hoc at present at which point he threw his hands in the air and said “ this bloody ad hocery will be the undoing of us all” or words to that effect. However he relented and let me have my way. He could see that I wanted to go. I had nothing further to offer the department after all. An endless round of Country Calendars, Motoring Shows, and Gardening Programmes, not to mention Religious broadcasts, held no appeal.
Free Lord, free at last!
By October I was in drama which I stayed in for the remainder of my broadcasting career.
I had returned home to my first love.
“See you in the movies Sam”.
I *loved* Fair Go in that era, can't always bring faces to the names you mentioned, but the idea of somebody going to bat for the little guy was a revelation for me at the time.