Getting sick of the sound of my voice? I know I am. On reading through my last couple of posts I can see that it would be easy to label me as a contrarian. Someone who always takes the opposite view from the other party. It is not a completely mistaken assumption but neither is it an accurate assessment. True, I am not comfortable with people who attempt to talk ‘down’ to me. But I also understand the art of compromise and am prepared to give way when the issue at hand is not, in my opinion, worth arguing over. But I am a believer in the motto “The Status Quo is always wrong.” Years of experience and observation have reinforced the truth of that motto, for me at least. However, it is also true that we are all part of the status quo to one degree or another and we have to live with that. That wont stop me however from calling out people who assume a presumed authority to treat people in any old way they like. Just not on I’m afraid, not for me anyway. My particular beef in the past was the way in which production companies who are largely dependent on public money, i.e. your money and mine, used these funds to aggrandize themselves and to decide who works and who doesn’t. It was my understanding in those days that the creation of funding entities had the twin purposes of assuring the continuation of local content and the continuing employment of ex public broadcasting staff if they were the best experienced and best able to carry out the work now funded by,….NZOA, for example.
Of course I realise that today everything is probably done differently and more equitably. I just want to put on record my opinion of those times.
I do however hear those lines from Leonard Cohen……” Everybody knows that the game is rotten,”
“Ol’ black Joe’s still pickin’ cotton, for your buttons and your bows…everybody knows”.
Meanwhile, back in January 1991 I was contemplating my chance meeting with Rex Poitier on the heaving, churning interisland ferry from Picton to Welly. Rex had volunteered the opinion that I would be top of the list for getting work on the upcoming series ‘Shark’ 3.
I needed that reinforcement of my self worth (don’t we all?). You see, I had never rated myself highly in the creative stakes. Sure, I experienced the euphoria of doing something which I knew was good, but the gloss had worn thin in the intervening period and I was wondering…? wondering? Ask any actor or writer, they will confirm the truth of those feelings of self doubt following success.
When your hot, your hot.
When your not, your not.
(And you never know when your not).
I called Gibsons and asked to speak with Shark Producer Ruth Franks. After a while the phone person came back and asked who was calling. Another wee while passed and she came back to say that Ruth was not in her office and could not be located. I tried again later that day… same result….you can see where this was leading….over the next week I tried several times….no luck.
By this time I was feeling sick to my stomach.
Here was a person I had known and worked with for a number of years, yet they did not afford me the courtesy of a call back. Pretty sick stuff.
A producer who has not the courage to stand behind their decisions, is really no sort of producer at all. It is a basic requirement of that job that you must be able to front up to people and speak directly and truthfully even if the message is unpalatable.That applies to any management job in any work environment.
Well, I was truly screwed and I knew it. It was a feeling of real desolation. The only drama game in town and I wasn’t on the team.
I had to find out what was happening so I rang Jill Wilson the Production Manager on Shark. Jill was a friend of long standing and we had worked closely together on several drama productions. Eventually I got her on the other end of a line and asked the question. I was taken back by the cold manner she adopted. It felt very hostile. She said that it had been decided to not include me on the director roster because my work had not been satisfactory and not in line with something or other (unspecified). I can’t remember the exact words but the nessage was clear. We don’t want you. You are not good enough. A non-person in fact. Straight out of the Soviet Union playbook.
I told Jill that several messages of praise had been left on my answering service regarding my final episode. The messages were from a couple of producers at Avalon and two were from the cast telling me that it had been the best episode ever. “What producers.” What actors” she demanded in a tone of contemptuous disbelief. So I was a liar also it seemed. I think that I hung up on her, can’t remember really. End of friendship though. Just like that.
🎵You’ve got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend…..🎵 as Bob succintly put it.
The next several weeks went by in a turmoil of emotions and feelings of wretchedness. I confess to have been in despair at times. It was the betrayal of others which hit hardest. There’s no business like show business for fucking with your head. Think I may even have shed a small tear or three.
But at some stage I yelled out @ fuck this and determined to pull myself together.
And then my phone rang…..
It was Ginette McDonald. “Dan,” she drawled in her inimitable way etc. Seems that Nettie had been offered work at Marmalade Video directing a corporate video for the Health Department but she could not take it on due to prior engagements. We chatted briefly. Nettie expressed her distaste for the way Gibsons had behaved toward me. She thought it was despicable of Ruth to not answer my calls. I felt some comfort from her words and thanked her for her kindness. It had occurred to me over the intervening years that Nettie may have been even kinder than I had thought. But of course Ginette would never admit to any such thing. A well brought up young lady, methinks. And a damn fine actor.
Soon I was on my way to Marmalade for a chat with the producer in charge of the video. Her name was Annette I think. Honestly, I just cannot remember. Anyway I got the job. Hooray! Commercials and Corporate work was not my cup of. I had worked on enough commercials as a cameraman and floor manager to know that it was not an environment I that suited me.
But it was a gig and I needed something at that moment.
I can’t remember who did the casting and what my involvement, if any, had been. No worries. It was a very good cast. Mostly people I knew well and had worked with a lot. Bruce Phillips, Jenny Ludlam, Gerald Bryan, Keith Hambleton, Lara Mathieson(new to me and newly graduated from Drama School) Tim Gordon whom I knew of but had never met; and some others I cannot remember.
Cameraman was Murray Milne who had worked with Peter Jackson in his early years. Sound op was Brian Shennan a vastly experienced sound guy. (Now deceased). R.I.P. Brian.
Can’t remember the storyline but it may have had something to do with the ‘Glass Ceiling’. The money was good, a very decent daily rate, I asked for more as you do but no deal. Ok I said.
We had good fun making it and it turned out well. It was mostly dramatised sketches. Suits you sir.
Just before we had finished editing, David Compton owner and Managing director of Marmalade and an old friend from NZBC/Avalon came to see me and asked if I would like to do another couple of jobs. Sure I would. And wouldn’t you know, a third was offered. Wow. My finances were looking up.
When I had finally finished all the jobs I went to see Annette the producer. She was happy with my work and quite impressed with the speed I could work at. It was business as usual for me and other directors/crew. After all, when you do something day in and out for many years you get good at the nuts and bolts aspect of the job. It’s definetely not brain surgery but rather a prosaic set of skills which you pick up by rote. Anyway I thanked her and wondered if there would be more work down the line. I think there probably will be she replied. But then I told her that shortly I would be of to Australia on fairly urgent family business but would be back in a couple of weeks. She sniffed a bit and said something like “well, nice for some”…”wish I could go to Australia.” Oops! Another stragetic error from me. It wasn’t my first misstep. A couple of weeks previously I had been called by the Marmalade accountant to remind me that I had not yet picked up a cheque for a few thousand dollars which was payment for my first two jobs. I told her that It was ok and could I come and collect it in a couple of days. She seemed a bit taken aback by my apparent lack of urgency about a largish sum of money.
When I told Brian Shennan about it he warned me to not give the impression that I had plenty of dough. “ And drive an old car” he said, “You have to make them think that you are needy and dependent on their grace and favour”…!!!! I didn’t think that I could develop that sort of guile but I thanked Brian anyway, his intentions were good.
It turned out that Brian was correct. When I went to see Marmalade after my return from OZ, I experienced a reception which wasn’t exactly frosty but a bit cool nevertheless. No work was offered but vague noises of the maybe later and we will let you know variety.
Mmmmmmm….WTF.
My chronology of what I did and when I did it gets a bit hazy at this point but I think it was shortly after the above events took place that my phone rang (again!).
This time it was one Tamalene Painting ex Avalon floor manager and now production manager at Isambard Productions in Auckland. Tom Parkinsons sub Hollywood empire.
Tammy got swiftly to the point.
Isambard needed a director for a pilot programme, a drama, which they hoped to develop into a series with support from NEW ZEALAND ON AIR (NZOA). It was a legal/investigate crime whodunnit set in Edwardian times. Their first choice director had flown the coop to OZ for work on a televised version of Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. Would I be interested? Is the Pope a Catholic?
Very soon I was in Auckland and ensconced in a very nicely restored 1920’s block of flats in Newton Road right at the top of Queen Street. All on the budget of course and very good diem. So biddable.
Once again it was a very good core cast and I cannot remember if I was involved in the auditions.
But we had Catherine Wilkin, Peter Elliot, Ken Blackburn, Jim McFarlane, Augusta McDonald and a few others whose names now escape me.
It was a very difficult gig. No one at Isambard knew anything about TV drama. Apart from Tom Parkinson himself and his knowledge was quite sparse.
The person appointed as Producer had limited knowledge also even though he was working as Producer of a Billy T James series being shot at Isambard at that time. I was beginning to realise why the first director may have shot through.
Ilona Rogers was playing Billy T’s wife in the sit com. I hadn’t seen Ilona since Close To Home days and we had a few laughs about those times. When I mentioned my surprise at the almost complete lack of professional knowledge at Isambard she lifted her eyes to heaven and that was all I needed to know.
So I became a one man band.
I had expected a production team to be available but no such luck.
There was only one typed up copy of the script and it was just laid out like a grocery list. No front pages with instructions for the various specialists to work from. No scene numbers etc. Nothing, it was a fucking nightmare.
What had I got myself into?
A large part of my director’s preparation time was taken up just getting a script typed up and instructing the typist on layout etc. Getting copies out to everyone involved in the production blah blah blah. In other words I was acting as producer, production manager and several other roles as well. Not that I am denigrating Tammy by suggesting she should have been involved. Far from it. Tammy was a good worker but she had her hands full looking after the Billy T thing, plus doing prep work on the pilot. She was running a production office by herself and that is a big ask.
Eventually it was all sorted. We found our locations had our read through and rehearsals and it was time to shoot it.
It was bloody awful. Poor script, crappy locations, cramped studio. The actors were good, the studio camera guys were ex Avalon and very good. Chris Stanbury and Tony Wilson….plus one other who was, less than adequate as they say, wont name him but he spent many years working on Shortland Street and that seems fitting given the banal nature of that productions visual style.
Editing the material was another chore. The guy who was Isambard’ s sole editor knew the equipment well but was almost completely inexperienced in drama. His only previous was compiling the scenes of the Billy T sitcom. But he was an excellent person to work with and super keen to learn. We got on and did it and it was really enjoyable.
There were other good people on the crew, Felicity Brown ex Avalon was our vision mixer (one of the best in the business) and an old mate from NZBC days. Gerry McGuire was our lighting director… a great bloke.
When I looked at the finished product all my worst fears were realised. It was a pilot and you can’t expect too much because of the constrained nature of the production and it’s non smelling oily rag budget. I had given it my best shot but it really was a heap of shit.
I bought a couple of bottles of decent malt from my diems and got a bit Brahms on my final night with Jim McFarlane, Gerry McGuire, Peter Elliot and a few others. I think Peter was getting married on the morrow.
Next day I legged it back to Wellington.
For me the best thing that came out of it was the fee. It was enough to re-do some of the floors in our wee house in Northland. We did the bathroom, part of the hallway, the dining room and sunroom out the back in Indian slate and it still looks good today. So, not a total loss then. 🇳🇿😎🏴
Suddenly it was 1992 and I was out of work with no prospects. I did a bit of phoning around…..no luck….you need a strong stomach for cold calling….actors have been doing it since long time ago….unemployment was between 10 and eleven percent….I felt powerless as I contemplated my nearly 200,000 fellow unemployed. I even bought some good writing paper and envelopes. My writing style was not too bad and I wrote with great care.
Replies…? I had a few. All but one were perfunctory and careless….former colleagues with no manners and poor upbringing. The one exception was Janice Finn who wrote me a warm and kind reply. Janice always had a good heart. Bless.
I can’t remember much about the next 7 or 8 months. For a while I was delivering the Evening Post around Northland/Thorndon for the large sum of $60 per week. At this time I still thought of myself as a producer/director temporarily out of work. I was not contemplating a job outside of the biz….perish the thought….what me!??
And then came Shortland Street!
A new fast turn around soap. This had to be good for job prospects. Made to measure surely for old soapies like myself.
Will you ever learn?
Caterina (formerly Kathryn) de Nave was the first producer of Shorty St. We were well acquainted having worked closely together in the Avalon Drama Dept.
She was full of enthusiasm, not unusual for Caterina, she was the original Energiser Bunny of enthusiasm, “of course, of course,” “too right” “ absolutely” etc she gushed. “If you can come up to Auckland and find a place to stay”…….I could do that, an old mate Andy Coleman had a flat up on the North Shore and he had a spare room that I could rent.
After a couple of weeks I rang back…. Caterina not available….and so it went on and on.
I took myself off to Auckland and booked into a motel in Devonport for a couple of days. More precious funds going down a black hole. From there I rang Caterina and she was available….she said she would ring me back……no ring back….you know the rest…….. I wont tell you any more…..except that it was even worse than the Gibson’s debacle….hugely insulting and degrading.
Someone seemed to be pulling strings in the B/G. Who was that I wondered?
By about August my money supply was running out and I had spent most of what was left on my first grandchild Alanna who had come over from Australia to spend some time with us. She had just recently turned seven.
She must have brought me luck.
A wee while after Alanna returned home to Oz, my phone rang!!!
It was the Production Manager for an overseas production company who were shooting ‘The New Adventures of The Black Stallion’ in NZ. It’s ‘star’ was Mickey Rooney and there had been quite a bit of publicity in the local media about his involvement.
I can’t remember the name of the production manager (I am embarrassed to admit) but I do remember she was Andy Anderson’s partner at that time and I had worked with her before….God, my memory.
Anyway, they were looking for a director to shoot a couple of episodes and wanted to know what my experience of shooting drama on film amounted to. After a bit of toing and froing about my film work they agreed to look at an episode of Shark 2 which I had shot film style single camera on video. It was an off air recording with dodgy sound which had been lying about the house for some time.
I sent it by fast courier and they got it that day. Some time later in the day I got a call to say come up to Auckland and join us on the shoot.
Funny that……total strangers, Producers from overseas whom I had never met, looked at my work and could see that I was the goods and knew my kit.
Local people thought differently it would seem.
Anyway, Bingo! I was in. I had about two hundred bucks left in my account. Close call. I filled the tank with gas and was in Auckland tout de suite.
Thank god for diems and paid accomodation.
It was an interesting shoot.
I was a bit nervous about my ability to deliver not least because of the expectations I assumed the producers had seeing as we were being paid at a top international rate. When I first was told how much I immediately thought “oh shit, am I worth that sort of dough.” It’s a New Zealand thing I think. We vastly underrate ourselves and conversely are guilty of giving overseas people exaggerated respect for their expertise. I had only scored two episodes but that would be enough to keep me afloat for some time.
And a good crew to boot. Andy Coleman was the Camera Operator. He and I had worked together many times around the Motu.
Matt Bowkett was the D.O.P. (A paragon of a man with wide experience in film)
Sound recordist was Mike Eastgate who had worked all around the world with all sorts of worthies.
The key grip had appeared out of the bush many years ago during the filming of ‘Hunter’s Gold’ when it was being shot down south. His name was Vic Yarker and he was a genuine legend. Could do anything, build anything, fix anything, that involved the camera on and off rails. He and I struck up a friendship immediately. Mutual respect between professionals.
It takes one to know one as the old saw goes.
Elizabeth Whiting and Suzanne Sturrock were the wardrobe and costume supremos.
Lucy Conway who is a reader of this post was a member of the Art Department. Lucy also subscribes to MTAF. Hello Lucy!!
The main cast were Mickey Rooney, Richard Cox and Marian Filali (A right pain I an sorry to say).
Mickey was excellent to work with. Not everyone would agree with that but I had no problems with him.
In fact I was the only director up to that time whom he would rehearse with. He used to send his manager and stunt double out from the caravan to go through the staging for the scene then the double (whose name was Kevin by the way, Kevin from Kansas.) would report back and Mickey would come on set and film the scene.
That info was given to me by crew members.
I got on with Mickey because I wasn’t a wanker and held him in huge respect because of his history in the biz. He had made more than 500 films over a period of 73 years. That is some CV.
When I was a child he was a superstar even bigger than his co - prodigy at MGM, Judy Garland.
Having been a projectionist in my youth meant that I had feasted on films for many years and had quite an encyclopedic knowledge of films made in his era. We talked a lot about film and he became quite excited on one occasion when I mention a series of films made in the 1940’s and starring his Parents Joe and Nellie Yule who appeared as the characters in a famous American comic strip called Jiggs and Maggie.
Mickey’s father Joe Yule was born in Glasgow in the latter part of the 19th century and emigrated to the US when he was a young boy
Mickey’s real name was Joe Yule jr.
So we found a lot in common which helped our working telationship.
We were not friends. I don’t recall him ever referring to me by my first name. He always said “my friend the director” when he was talking about me.
But that’s pure Hollywood. His years at the top had left their imprint. ‘Friends’ are something other.
I managed to finish my two episodes without frightening the horses(oops). But they were not great the scripts. Too much about horses and excruciatingly banal about human relationships.
The production company were based in Canada/USA and their money came from some American evangelist outfit who had bankrolled everything. Money was no object. But when we shot at the racetrack all hoardings and anything else bearing ads for ciggies, alcohol, or gambling had to be removed or covered.
Suits you sir.
The Black Stallion was my swansong in the film and TV biz. I never worked again.
To be more exact, some years later I did some work for a director friend whilst he was away on family business. It was a weekend shoot and I was so out of practice that I felt like an alien even though I was among colleagues from the past. I stumbled through but only just.,
If I ever had a mojo I sure didn’t get it back that weekend.
I started off this post by saying I was sick and tired of my own voice and we have reached that point again.
So farewell for now.
Next time I will talk about my new adventures but not of the Black Stallion variety.
Thank you for sharing your experiences, I have really enjoyed reading them. My partner works in the industry and it has always seemed such a curious world to the one I work in.
Hi Dan, the ‘real world’ was a bit of a let down I agree. Black Stallion was also my swan song. It didn’t matter if the crews and cast liked you, they weren’t the ones who did the hiring. Luckily I got a job in Cinetape at TV3, thanks again to Avalon alumni Paul West. It’s been a great read and walk down memory lane.