The ‘Real’ World

Part two

My head hurts. Not as bad as it did right after the op to cut out some nasty bumps from my scalp.

Not as bad as when the nurse at my first post op dressing clinic removed the staples holding the dressings covering my skin grafts. No anaesthetic. Ouch! But the nurse, Edwina, was very skilled and considerate and minimised the pain as best she could. That procedure took about an hour or so. It felt longer. Other excisions to remove lesser lesions had been stitched and the stitches are now dissolving.

Today after my third dressing clinic, (Edwina again) I am contemplating a nicely cleaned up scalp and two areas of grafted skin. One on my crown which looks like a lunar crater about the size of an old twenty cent piece and quite deep. The other is behind the top of my left ear and much bigger. Both grafts have no hair follicles, so will remain bald. For an old bugger like me that’s not a big concern. It’s a small price to pay for losing sinister carcinomas on my bonce. In any case there already was a shortage of hair on my crown. As for the donor area on my left thigh, from whence the skin was removed to supply the skin for grafting, it is now healing nicely and no longer looking like a slice of fried bacon. My new dressing for that area will be the last I think and should be removed next week. Lovely. No more Arabesque, Pas de Chat or Chassé as I struggle to keep my left leg dry in the shower.

And what is all of the above in light of the horrors being perpetrated in Gaza?

Well nothing obviously. But sometimes you have to fall back on the personal in order to escape, if only momentarily, from the Dantean hellishness of the world we live in, “with it’s betrayals, it’s concentration camps, it’s revolting cruelties and indignities.”

And I will not be joining the ranks of those calling for the destruction of the Jewish State and the genocide of it’s people. The last lot to make that call were Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler et al. Who would want to be numbered among that band of criminals and sociopaths? It is the Israeli Government who must be held to account; Not the Jewish people many of whom have marched in the streets of Jerusalem protesting Netanyahu’s anti democratic policies. Demonising whole populations for the sins of their Governments leads to cries for genocidal revenge.

The killing must stop. The killing must stop.

And now let us retreat to the past, where hair was plentiful and skin smooth.

It is somewhere in 1990 and I have just been hired to direct some episodes on series two of Shark In The Park. Oh, joy unlimited. Oh, love divine.

But now we are not clasped in the warm sheltering arms of our mother TVNZ. She has cast us into the wilderness of contracts and deals, strutty producers and bottom lines. I love my leather jacket, as Martin Phillips famously warbled.

Shark number two was being produced out of Gibson Productions who had become an established and ‘successful’ company with several productions under their belt.

The company was jointly run by Dave Gibson and his wife/partner? Yvonne McKay. I knew Yvonne well. She had arrived at Waring Taylor Studios in the early 70’s having come from Radio Drama where she had been a producer who was now working as an assistant floor manager in TV. If you want to be the top banana you have to start at the bottom of the bunch. So goes the old vaudeville song.

Dave Gibson I knew only by reputation and a vague memory of him working at Avalon as a set shifter. Prior to that he had produced and directed ‘educational’ films at Teacher’s Training College, in Karori I think. My recollection of those facts about Dave may be less than accurate, so apologies if I am wrong. Lee Tamahori also worked as a setting shifter at Avalon about that time.

Gibson’s was a ‘relaxed’ place to work. It was open planned offices, lots of good coffee and sometimes food, occasionally wine after work and a general air of bon vibants abounding. The anti TVNZ if you like.

But other agendas lurked and occasionally intruded into the playground atmosphere.Videlicet; You always knew you were a hired gun only and would be out on the street with the actors and other expendables when the lights went out. If you expected any other recognition(even for the work you created)…….Get real sucker. It’s all about the money don’t you know.

I vastly preferred Public Service Film and Television when it was such. Any thinking person would. After all it had produced The BBC, ABC and SBS in Oz. PBS in The United States and many other examples around The Globe.

Our own organisations NZBC and initially TVNZ and RNZ were noble enterprises where the pursuit of excellence for it’s own sake was pursued and if not attained then constantly sought for. Producers had no direct access to funds and no power to arbitrarily decide the fate of others and their families. I recall the pride I felt when I worked at The NZBC. An organisation which contained within it’s ranks The Listener magazine and the Symphony Orchestra. Glorious times indeed.

Compare that with the entities who took over with their hucksterism and deals spread over the planet. Those organisations obviously have a right to exist in a free society (and good luck to them) but not at the expense of public organisations who are denied funds from taxpayer dollars which have been diverted to outfits such as NZ On Air etc. Public money going into private pockets to put it crudely.

I’m all for a public fund to which creatives can apply for money to make real their dreams. But in my opinion the entities which have been created for that purpose are not fit for the job. Most people in the industry hold them in contempt. Staff them with writers, directors and producers (and production managers) with extensive track records. Not with people who constantly moved between revolving doors from backgrounds of dubious relevance to the demands of the job. At least that’s what I thought then. Perhaps it has changed since.

O, for a draft of vintage! That hath been cool’d a long age in the deep-delvéd earth.

However the upside to all that was the opportunity to work once more with the lovely cast of Shark.

We had last seen each other in 1988. I was first up on the director roster and it was the best possible way to get reacquainted. Same cast with one notable addition….Grant Tilly. Grant was an actor I did not know well but I had worked on several productions he was involved in. The first time I had ‘met’ him was in the old Waring Taylor days on a production of The Dumb Waiter which also featured Peter Adamson who was imported from Coronation Street for the role. Murray Reece was the director. Murray was one of my heroes (not that he was aware of it at the time.) He represented for me a class of person whom I held in awe. A Drama Director! My goodness. How classy was that? I still hold Murray in the very highest regard. He was I think, one of the best directors NZ ever produced. He was an excellent person to work with, never nasty or bad tempered (unlike myself on occasions). Years later we worked together on Shark and I found him to be supportive and decent in all that he did. I was still in awe of him though.

But back to Grant. Most people on the Dumb Waiter crew thought he stole the show and left Peter someway behind. I don’t know. No one asked the actors. They always appeared to get on well those two and that goes for something. It is always a mistake to make assumptions about how actors feel. That is strictly for the actors.

In those days I regarded Grant as a rather peevish person who seemed to treat crew in an offhand way. But when he joined the Shark cast I found that he was an excellent person to work with. Very professional and at ease on the set. We never had an awkward moment between us and he was always so well prepared. He without fail brought his best work to the camera. I have fond memories of working with him during that period.

R.I.P Grant.

For me that period is recalled in a golden glow. I went on location in a state of euphoria sometimes. (No additives involved). Cannot really analyse it. But from somewhere I was getting ideas and notions which sprang off the page. Angles on the stories and characters rushed into my head. It was as if my whole directing experience up to that time had coalesced to a singularity and something was paying off big time. I was exhilerated. Not that anyone else would have noticed. Those feelings are personal and not for sharing. I think that the cast were picking up on something. Relationships with the actors were on a natural high. Actors work very much on intuition and feeling and most have an innate ability to pick up on atmosphere. There was great humour and enjoyment on the set and in the studio. That is what I mean by a golden glow. It was almost palpable, to me that is. It was very inspiring. My confidence in myself was at it’s peak. I was on top of my game. That is how I feel looking back. But at the time I was too busy enjoying the moment to think about it in so many words; it just was what it was.

When I started reading the script for my final episode (at that juncture I did not know how final it was going to be), my heart sank a little. It was quite sparsely written but that is usually a good thing. I could not get a handle on it. However, My old friend serendipity intervened.

For some reason, I can’t recall what, it was decided that I would have to shoot the studio scenes and then go on location to do the exteriors. Usually it was the reverse. So we did that. When I sat down to view the studio stuff, my spirits sagged. It all seemed dull and heavy and more than a bit gothic. That night I stayed at Avalon.

I read the script again several times over. This time with the advantage of having the studio scenes as visuals on tape. Then I poured over the exterior scenes again and again. Ideas flowed. I could see them slotting in to the gaps and how they would enter and leave making transitions appear seamless.

But the really great thing was it all woke me up to how good the script was. I could see the central theme that held it together. Of course that was down to the writer and her skills and talent. I was too dumb to work it out by myself. Serendipity.

The writer was Norelle Scott and she was delighted by how it looked on screen.

I had a meeting with the actors and put them in the know about what had transpired. They delivered the goods on location knowing what they had already done in the studio.

It was the best episode of drama I had ever done.

The night it went to air Teresa and myself were in Wanganui in a motel watching it on the room TV. It was a bit of a shock to find out that two key scenes had been edited on orders from the Director-General Julian Mounter. A court case was pending on the matter of Peter Plumley-Walker the pommie cricket umpire who was thrown over the Huka Falls by a dominatrix and her pimp after the umpire died of a heart attack during a session. There was some material in one of the episode story lines which closely resembled the events about to go before the court. Panic ensued and out came the scissors. In the other edited scene a shot that owed a lot to the horses head in the bed from the Godfather was cut in such a way that it almost killed the most powerful part of the episode. The worst was they cut it without telling me. I was fucking incandescent with rage. But powerless to do anything. That sort of behaviour from Producers is way, way beneath contempt. Running under all the bonhomie and free wine at Gibson’s lay a seam of dishonesty and lack of respect for ‘creatives’. Jeez was I pissed!

But the episode still held up.

Twenty years or so of experience had finally paid off. I was ready to enter into a new phase of my ‘career’.

The lights had switched on and I could see better.

We mortals are indeed fools.

But in time I learned to let go of it. A few years ago I went to Ruth’s funeral service at Whenua Tapu out near Pukerua Bay and made my peace with her. Dave Gibson was there. He still had that slight sneer on his face. He can’t help himself.

Later in the year I was on the 2.30 am ferry coming back from the South Island. A very rough crossing indeed. Some people were scared by the rough seas. Some had eaten those pottles of chips which they served late at night with the usual results brought on by a heaving ship. It was very messy so we found a quiet corner and settled down.

I heard a voice saying my name and I looked up to see Rex Poitier a sound operator from Gibson’s. Rex had mixed my episodes and we had become good work mates. He started to tell me how much he had enjoyed the episode I just described above. And then he said that TVNZ had commisioned a third series of Shark (19 episodes) from Gibson’s and the money was in the bank. I offered the thought that it would be great to get a bit of that action and he said something like “you would be top of the list after the work you did on series two.” I was delighted of course. A nice little earner was looking likely.

Ha ha ha ….,ha ha ha ha…etc.

Was there no end to my naïveté?

Tell you about it next time.