Lights! Camera! Rotorua story to become movie

By JILL NICHOLAS

A story loosely based on Cushla Dillon's life growing up in bi-cultural Rotorua will be "workshopped" at a prestigious international movie development centre.
The former student of McKillop College (now merged with Edmund Rice College to form John Paul College) began work on her script A Guide To Magical Thinking in collaboration with leading film director and screenwriter Brad McGann (In My Father's Den) who died of cancer in May, aged 43.
Before McGann's death the pair submitted a 15-page "treatment" (synopsis) of the story to the Binger Filmlab in Amsterdam.
Binger Filmlab is an international feature-film development centre.
Talented writers, directors, producers and script editors from around the world are coached and supported by internationally acclaimed mentors and advisers.
Ms Dillon, 43, learned of her story's acceptance shortly after Mr McGann died.
She leaves for Amsterdam next week where she will spend five months working on her script alongside internationally acclaimed mentors and advisers.
New Zealand will also be represented at the lab by leading author Witi Ihimaera.
The story centres on the friendship of two 15-year-old girls, one Maori, the other Pakeha, that ends in crisis with the murder of one of the girl's sisters.
"You can say the friendship is challenged and it is loosely based on my growing up in Rotorua in the 1970s, a lovely place to grow up in."
Ms Dillon was one of eight daughters of the late Doug Dillon, a solicitor who practised in Rotorua for much of his working life. Her mother, Marie, remains in the city.
After leaving McKillop College she joined Radio New Zealand in Tauranga as a studio operator before moving to Auckland as stage manager for Theatre Corporate.
That was followed by a period at Sydney's University of Technology where she began her career in the film industry, becoming a film editor for four years.
Her credits include Topless Women Talk About Their Lives, When Love Comes, The Price of Milk and Snakeskin.
A Guide To Magical Thinking was, she says, originally begun with the intention of McGann directing it.
When she returns from Amsterdam, the search will be on for an "appropriate" replacement director.
The movie is at the draft stage.
"You have to remember Whale Rider took 10 years to write. I am really excited that it has been accepted by Binger. It is a very moving story highlighting the fragility of human emotions."
Her view of herself is that of a very shy, private writer.
"I only came out of my shell in the UK where I joined a night class and began writing short stories."
Ms Dillon hopes A Guide To Magical Thinking will be set and shot in Rotorua.
"Although it is a very different place today than the one I knew 30 years ago. It was pre the Maori renaissance - then neither Maori nor Pakeha knew that Maoritanga would exist. I am really interested in exploring the Rotorua of that era."