In January 1986 Teresa and I returned from a trip to Australia where we had been visiting our sons who had all fled to Oz to escape the oppressive Muldoon Government. Well, that’s what they maintained but they were really fleeing from the watchful eye of their parents. Muldoon was just a sideshow to them. More of that in a future post, hopefully.
Back at Avalon studios I was engaged in post production tidy ups and working out of the ‘Marching Girls’ office where I had been given a desk in a corner. Suited me just fine. (“Suits you sir.”) The office had been the Mark II base but the space was now allocated to the new production which was headed up by Steve La Hood.
Oh! The bliss, to be in the production office but without the producer stone around my neck.
Gaylene Preston had been contracted to direct episodes of M Girls and she also had a desk for her prep work.
Gaylene disappeared after a while and did not return. I never found out why she left. Several stories floated around, but gossip about this and that was always floating around in the drama area and I was not all that interested in tittle tattle. In the short time that she was there we had the odd conversation and she showed an interest in Mark II, in a very supportive way.
Pity she didn’t stay. She had a lot to offer.
Anyway I carried on enjoying my summer Idyll, (I swear the weather was much better in those times) whilst waiting for a call up on my next directing job. I was quite convinced that Mark II had been a one off and soon I would be back doing what a loved best. But, as you will have already guessed, the Head of Drama had other ideas for my new task.
The new major studio production for 1986 was titled Open House and it had been in pre production for some months under Producer Wayne Tourelle assisted by Alison Langdon as Production Manager. It was meant to run for 16 episodes and finish sometime in the middle of the year and then move over to make way for ‘GLOSS’ a Janice Finn production which many people still remember.
But wait! Wayne Tourelle had to return to Auckland for other duties and would be unavailable after the first few episodes.
Another producer had to be found and look, here’s one fresh(?) from his film adventure.
I had no choice or say in the matter. Regardless of my protests it was going to be me. (Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in).
A small consolation; it was only for about six months and then I would be free again. Or so I thought.
I joined the Open House team in late January and the first thing I had to do was read the the sixteen scripts which were in different stages of developement.
From memory I recall that about seven scripts were in final draft and the others were in different developement stages ranging from first draft to bare bones story outlines.
Liddy Holloway was the originating writer/creator of Open House and Graeme Tetley was the series story editor. Two highly talented writers who were among the best in the business. Philippa Campbell was the senior script editor, so what’s not to like? One might have said.
To be bluntly honest I was not ready at that time to head up a major drama series. But then, when are you ever ready for challenges? You just do things I guess and count on your long experience working in drama to see you through. Up to that point in my career I was still giving myself permission to do the work. Insecurity was my stumbling block. And we all know that insecurity manifests itself in many strange and disturbing ways. But in those times I was not fully aware of the conflicts that seethed within. A self analyst I was not.
My chosen method was to summon up my will power, clench my teeth, thrust out my jaw and rush headlong into the fray. Oh dear. oh dear. We know where that’s going do we not?
Yes, you may laugh and so may I but back then it was all so deadly serious. Bugger and bugger and bugger.
And so back to the script reading.
I must say that the writing was good and professionally well executed. But as I progressed through the drafts and storylines I was faced with an almost relentless depiction of gloom, misery and angst. Did I hear someone say panic? Yes I did a bit but mostly I got depressed. I agreed fully with the general thrust of the stories. Oppression of the poor, disenfranchising of Māori, sidelining of feminism and all the other crap prevalent at that time. I was a socialist, so why would I not agree?
I actually seriously thought of calling John McRae The Head of Drama and telling him that the show looked like a turkey but that would have caused massive upheavals and I was not prepared for any more trauma so I ground my teeth a bit harder and carried on in “Quiet Desperation”.
Some time later in the year when the series was under attack from various groups AND our own senior management, I told him about my original misgivings he virtually clutched his breast (Or was it his pearls?) and said something like, “Oh, Dan, if only you had told me, I would have cancelled it on the spot.”
Yeah, right!
Well on we went making the best of a difficult situation whilst I wisely kept shtum about my misgivings.
Eventually the first few episodes went to air and the opening episode was quite well received. Not ecstatically but it was not challenging or disturbing the peace. Rather it was a bit vanilla and isn’t that what people want after all? Or so TV executives seemed to think. But soon the storm clouds moved in as a conga line of worthy subjects made their appearances……Oppressed solo mothers, rent racking landlords, women on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and horror of horrors Māori telling the truth about their status in NZ and much about the theft of land and atrocities perpetrated in the past. Essentially I had no trouble with any of the material we were broadcasting but we were doing a rather glum job of portraying it.
The criticisms came thick and fast. Scathing reviews were everywhere. Even McPhail and Gadsby took the piss, (rather well I thought).
Management of course were greatly upset by the rotten publicity and voiced their displeasure.
But there was no going back. We had to get on with it and we did.
Some time in that early period we had a Drama Dept seminar run by the HOD. During that event we were told that ‘Gloss’ the Janice Finn production, would not be shooting in Wellington but was shifting to Auckland where it’s storylines were located. Made perfect sense. I had felt the same when I was expected to make Lower Hutt and Wellington look like Auckland for the opening scenes of MarkII. It just doesn’t wash. I had wondered why Janice had agreed to the arrangement but I guess she had no choice really.
However their was for me a sting in the tail.
If Gloss went to Auckland that would mean a whole crew and facilities would be lying idle for the second half of the year. Solution? Extend Open House to run until years end and of course extend my role also until years end. A cynical person might say that was the intention all along. Please tell me it was not so.
So, instead of supervising the production of sixteen episodes I now had to produce a further thirty or so. It was going to be a long grind until December.
Wayne Tourelle my co-producer returned to Auckland about this time and I found myself feeling somewhat isolated with a whole bunch of headaches to be dealt with.
Our first problem was deciding which direction the further episodes would take. Same old or different?
I had a meeting with the script department and story editor to let them know where we should head for the rest of the year. For me it was an easy choice; put the Māori family at the centre of the drama instead of having them hang out on the periphery like a bad case of tokenism. After all the ‘Māori Renaissance’ was gathering steam and we had an opportunity to present Māori concerns in prime time on national TV one night each week until the end of the year. Not to be missed I thought.
And so it came to be.
It was a rugged year for all of us, cast and crew.
As the Māori characters started to tell their story from their angle the outrage in the public grew. Racism and paternalism showed their ugly mugs. I began to receive abusive telephone calls at home and nasty letters in the mail. “How dare you have ‘OUR’ Māori say such things” one person brayed down my phone “you are not even a New Zealander”. It was almost non stop. From the media and even from people I had known for years as colleagues. From management who had become quite hysterical about the bad reports. I was told by a friend in management that a very senior executive had decreed that I was not to receive any salary increases or promotion for at least two years as a punishment for not delivering the programme that had been promised and agreed to. The rotten cowards could not tell me to my face. How contemptible is that? Little did they know that I had little regard for the whole business of pay increases and ‘promotion’. It was not on my radar.
One of the few certainties in life, for me anyway, was the belief that the status quo is always wrong and when you upset the establishment you are on the right track and history will bear you out.
But, I also had great support from many people around the motu. Many people wrote encouraging words. Mostly people who took a progressive view and seemed to be educated and well informed. And the programme was attracting a good audience. We regularily had between 500,000 and 600,00 every transmission. Of course it was in the time of only two channels. TVNZ was the only game in town. It was relayed to me that on the East Coast Open House was appointment viewing for most Māori people. Even those who were having a beer in the local would be home by 7.30 to catch the show. Tangata Whenua were on the screen every week talking about themselves and their many concerns. We had one script where local activists occupied the town hall in protest at their rights being trampled on. About a week after it was screened a group up north did just that for real and of course we were blamed for stirring up Māori. Māori were well stirred long before Open House or any other TV show existed. Had they not heard of Eva Rickard, Syd Jackson and Nga Tamatoa?
But the pressure was beginning to affect me, especially because Teresa was overseas visiting family in Canada and the US.
I had one further hurdle to clear before years end.
We had asked well known academic Pat Hohepa to write a script and he agreed to do so. Dr Hohepa was married to Atareta Poananga a fiery activist well known through the media.
We of course don’t know how much, if any, input came from Atareta but it was a full on pull no punches job. I was concerned enough to ask John McRae to arrange for a visit from the script unit to Dr Hohepa to see if we could pull back a bit on some of the racist language used in the script. It could not have gone to air as written. We would have been pulled up by The Race Relations Commissioner if it had gone ahead.
A compromise was reached and the episode was produced. When I saw the completed tape I was really worried. It was very controversial. I had to let the HOD see it before air time. He panicked really. We can’t show it he said, my reply was it’s worse not to show it. A suggestion was half heartedly made that perhaps we could say the tape was accidentally wiped. Shit! I wasn’t having a bar of that. I was thinking Watergate/Richard Nixon.
It went to air and all hell broke loose.
Much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair probably took place in the upper spaces of management and the Board of TVNZ.
And it was round about that time when I was receiving the nasty communications from assorted bigots around NZ. Also, news of my ‘punishment’ had been passed on to me.
The balloon was up and we were away racing.
(I will pause here for a mo to say that I have just read David Slack’s newsletter for Sunday 6 August and it is a beautiful carve up of the Nats. But here we are 37 years later and things have gotten worse on the right of politics.
What has changed dramatically is the position of Māori in the power structure. No longer on the back foot but instead leaning into the injustices they still experience and dealing to them. The Treaty settlements have led to an explosion of talent into the Arts, literature, Filmmaking, science, Commerce and Politics.
Many inequalities remain, particularily in health stats and housing.)
Meanwhile, back in the dark ages, things were not looking too rosy for yours truly.
We were approaching years end. December had arrived and soon I would be putting a line through the last weekly schedule for the show. They were all pinned up on the office wall and every Friday evening I would draw that line. Sometimes I would look ahead to December and imagine the relief which would flow through me when I drew that LAST line.
No more having to deal with the queue of people at my office door waiting to speak to me about production problems which demanded a quick solution. No more reading a seemingly endless parade of scripts in various stages of developement.
No more casting woes and dreadful auditions. (I always hated auditions. They were, and remain I guess, an attack on human dignity. Uncomfortable, uncomfortable, uncomfortable, for both actor and director. God bless the actors.
No more gritting my teeth and refusing to buckle under the pressure from all sources.
No more attending post production editing and sound mixing for episodes already in the can. In any one day you could be and mostly were involved in all of the above and it ran from January until December, with a two week hiatus mid year on shooting, to allow for Commonwealth Games coverage, which required virtually all technical facilities for the duration of the games.
We still had about ten episodes to play when TV broke up for it’s annual hibernation and I expected that those episodes would be kept until the start up in the New Year. But no, they were played over the holiday period and effectively buried from sight. Swept under the carpet. Problem solved for management?
No, their troubles were just beginning.
The Māori Language Act of 1987, declared Māori to be an official language of New Zealand and it was game on for all state entities. Soon the management of TVNZ were obliged to take cognizance of Te Reo and promote it’s use. Suddenly it was Kia ora and Tēnā koe emanating from former virulent opposers of Open House. The Board of TVNZ commended the Drama Dept for it’s foresight in producing Open House and putting the organisation in the forefront of necessary change.
All done with the straightest of straight faces.
Did I almost piss myself laughing. You bet.
Later in 1987 I received a letter from The Qantas Foundation (I think that was their title) to inform me that Open House had been nominated for the Qantas Peace Prize.
Oh! Joy unlimited!! Sweet as bro.
We did not win but the nomination was enough to silence the naysayers.
Or as my friend Hamlet so elegantly put it……”O ‘tis most sweet
When in one line
Two crafts directly meet.”
I saw the last episode of Open House go to air when I was in a private hospital in Wellington recovering from an eye operation. It was around 5.30 on a beautiful summers evening and I had wandered down to the patient’s lounge to watch a bit of TV. There it was just coming on air and probably being viewed by a miniscule audience around the country. Who watches TV in February on a cracker summer day.
I watched the whole episode of course and yielded the odd sigh and a wee tear (my eye was also sore from the Op). At one point an elderly gentleman (a patient) appeared and sat down near me. “What’s this” he grumped indicating the TV. “A local drama called Open House” I replied. He watched for a bit and then said, “Oh yes, I’ve seen it before…..load of bloody rubbish…. lot of Maoris complaining”. And off he went.
Here’s the great cast and various guest stars (past and present) who graced our screens during Open House.
Frank Whitten (The wonderfully bent granddad in Outrageous Fortune), Tungia Baker, Emily Perkins, Rongo do Kahu, John Smythe, Bruce Philips, Turei Reedy, Christina Asher, Lorae Parry, Peter McCauley, David Copeland, Denise O’Connell, Deidre O’Connor, Ken Blackburn, Grant Kereama, Apirana Taylor, Rangimoana Taylor, Roger Page, Tom Poata, Wi kaa, Peter Kaa, Gary Stalker, Marise Grant, Mervyn Glue, Don Langridge, Peta Carey, Stephen Judd, Theresa Healey, Lucy Sheehan, Jay Laga’aia, Dulcie Smart and many more whose names now escape me.
At that time we did not have the luxury of having a co-producer or assistant producer or even a line producer to deal with much of the post production. Those duties often fell to the Production Manager and in our case that was the wonderful Pam Hislop a staunch and loyal friend throughout all the difficult times we experienced. Pam was backed up in the production office by Glenice Strudwick on the whizzo word processor and Shirley Langdon as production secretary handling all the processing of air travel and accomodation and contracts for all actors from outside Wellington and dealing with heaps of other admin tasks. Thanks guys.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
See you next time when I talk about Peppermint Twist, my next sdventure.
We gotta new dance and it goes like this,
Hey, hey hey the Peppermint Twist.
Hi Dan, I had no idea of all the high level drama you were going through.