Films showcasing the life of Billy T hit screens

Tainui Tukiwaho as Billy T James. Photo / Supplied

The life of Billy T James is being celebrated with two films showing different sides of the star. Russell Baillie reports

Twenty years ago this month, the country lost that giggle. Billy T James died at the age of 42 after becoming our most beloved entertainer throughout the 80s.

The anniversary of his passing is being marked with two major screen productions about his short, but often complicated, life.

One is a documentary for the big screen, the other a film for television.

Both are produced by veterans who worked with James in his 80s heyday - Tom Parkinson and Tony Holden respectively - and each provides its own take on the man whose public persona didn't always align with his private reality.

It could be said that the doco Billy T: Te Movie is about James the comedian we thought we knew.

On the other hand, the TVNZ biopic Billy is actually about a shy but talented bloke called William James Te Wehi Taitoko - the man who became Billy T James.

Holden thinks two films, both with large amounts of public money spent on them, isn't too much.

"I think it's great, the synergy between having a film that is a documentary and having a drama that is a bit more personal and edgy and takes some risks."

Both are love stories of a kind - the doco about how the country loved him even if we didn't really know him, while much of the drama pivots on his marriage to Lynn Matthews, whom he wed in 1973 while still a jobbing musician on his way to joining showband the Maori Volcanics.

Matthews has long avoided any media contact about her late husband but gave Billy, which is based on Matt Elliott's painstaking 2009 biography of the same, her blessing, say its makers.

Both films also remind us that James was a contradictory figure.

He was at ease on stage and in front of the camera but shy away from the limelight.

He was Maori but had an uneasy relationship with the culture and with those who saw him as using stereotypes to get laughs from racist Pakeha.

His television shows and live work paid him handsomely but he died, after being one of this country's first heart transplant patients, heavily in debt.

Now, with the arrival of both films, there's another contradiction - he's been gone for 20 years but remains a local comedy institution.

His sketches continue to click up thousands of views on YouTube.

The DVDs with his name on - even those of the unloved sitcom that was his last television series - still sell in the thousands.

And now, having had a couple of scene-stealing supporting parts - most notably as the crazy "Tainuia Kid" in Ian Mune's Came a Hot Friday - he's finally scored the lead role in two movies.

Here's how those films play out ...

Billy T: Te Movie

What it is: A documentary about the life and career of Billy including a mix of remastered footage, re-enactments of his childhood years, animation based on his own cartoons, and interviews with his collaborators and friends, though not many of his family. His brother, Michael Mikaere, who was a pallbearer at his controversial tangi, talks about how he discovered they were related, Billy having been adopted out as a baby.

The Makers: It's directed by Ian Mune who directed him in Came a Hot Friday and produced by Robert Boyd-Bell and Tom Parkinson, the man who first put Billy on TV with a plummy, pommy accent in the vaudeville-meets-music hall Radio Times. Parkinson produced many of James' subsequent television shows right up until the end.

It's financed by the New Zealand Film Commission, New Zealand On Air and Sony Pictures NZ, which initiated the project after Sony BMG's success with the Parkinson-compiled DVD releases of James's television exploits.

What it's designed to do: Says Parkinson: "A lot of young kids who have watched Billy on YouTube and liked him and the guys who wrote to me to say we loved your DVDs, what they missed was sitting in an audience and enjoying [Billy]
with an audience. There is a terrific joy in that.

"The main thing that we have done is that it is an entertainment. That people will go there and just have a great night out in the same way as you went to [cabaret] Trillos and you had a great night out with Billy.

"Now obviously because it's a film we are telling a story, and it was quite an emotional story. So we want to laugh we hope there is a little bit of a tear and we hope they leave the cinema saying 'I never knew that'."

How accurate is it: As reliable as the memories of the many who were interviewed - an amusing opening sequence has various interviewees claiming various different sources of inspiration for Billy's trademark giggle.

More seriously, the film briefly touches on the contentious taking of James' body by Tainui for a tangi on a Waikato marae and for burial on Taupiri mountain, against his and his family's wishes

Parkinson: "We haven't bothered turning over stones. Billy did have a strange life. He did have certainly three, four separate lives and often people didn't know the other life."Curious momentIn footage from his triumphant 1990 post-heart transplant comeback show at the Aotea Centre, his famous monologue (see bottom of article) about his tumultuous previous decade has the middle edited out.

When and where: Opens at cinemas on Thursday.

Billy

What it is: A feature-length made-for-television dramatisation about the life and career of Billy T James from his 1950s childhood, through his early showbiz years to his television-powered rise to being the biggest star in the country throughout the 80s. Funded, to the tune of $2.46 million, by the New Zealand On Air "Platinum Fund" for high-end one-off dramas, it stars Tainui Tukiwaho - who has the daunting role of impersonating a man who was a master mimic - as Billy, and Morgana O'Reilly as Billy's wife, Lynn Matthews.

The Makers: It's produced by New Zealand television veteran Tony Holden, who toughened up the sketch comedy in The Billy T James Show with the satirical edge he had honed on the likes of A Week of It and Gliding On. He found himself on set for the re-creations of scenes he had directed more almost 30 years before ("Just occasionally, man, I had a bit of a shiver up my spine").

It's directed by Peter Burger whose extensive television credits include episodes of The Cult, Go Girls, Burying Brian, Rude Awakenings, Outrageous Fortune as well as horror film The Tattooist. The film came about after biographer Elliott suggested the idea to Holden.

What it's designed to do: Says Holden: "I wanted to try to tell the love story [so] if you didn't know who Billy was, you could understand a lot more about the man. How is it a guy who can be at the peak of his fame - top-rating TV show, gigs five six nights a week earning millions probably - and then four years later die broke? Four years - he was only at his peak for four years. And you go 'what happened?' That is what I hope to answer.

"I would like to see Lynn recognised for her role as the wife. She gave him the confidence. I would like to see Billy recognised for his role at a time when things changed so dramatically in New Zealand history.

"I wanted to give an insight into the man. Everybody knows the comedy. I wanted to show what made him tick or what made him make bad decisions and how important the love story was, so I hope you come away with an insight."

How accurate is it: Holden says the film employed some dramatic licence but largely kept to the biography - especially as its author had persuaded Billy's widow to give her side of the story.

"Lynn has seen the script and seen the film which was pretty emotional," says Holden.

"It was tough for her and she thought we got most of everything right. It was pretty hard for her to watch the man she loved so much and herself portrayed. But she was very complimentary about the two lead actors.

"Tainui has nailed that quality that Billy had. He's captured that natural shyness but also the comedy stuff, which was very hard for him because he's not a comedian he's an actor and he worked extraordinarily hard."

Billy largely starts out with the comedian's death and conflict over his tangi before flashing back to his earlier years. It ends on a happier note that where it started.

"We haven't really dug too deep into the health thing. It's complicated and it's pretty sad stuff really. We wanted to have some sort of uplift towards the end."

Curious moment: There is a scene showing Billy in his early solo pre-television period in 1978 at what was the Avondale League Club, where Parkinson first "discovered" him after a tip-off from James' agent and protector Elaine Hegan.

The script has him cracking his joke about the difference between Pakeha kids and Maori kids asking him for autographs - even though he's still a couple of years away from being a household name.

When and where: Screening on TV One on Sunday, August 21 at 8.30pm

Last words: Billy T's famous monologue

Billy T James, on stage during his post heart transplant comeback show in 1990:

"I've been spat at, shot at, hassled, abused, threatened, throttled, cut open, sewn up again, cut open again, had something pulled out, had something put in in, been sewn up again, chased by the Inland Revenue Department, caught by the Inland Revenue Department. The Government's revoked my fish quota licence, my lawyer's living in Honolulu, my accountant's gone inside for misappropriation, kids are sniffing aviation fuel, the missus took off with an Asian smack dealer, I've got a Roller with a slashed soft-top, a Merc with a cracked head, bloody swimming pool overflowed and flooded the tennis court ... I tell you, it's bloody hard being a Maori today."

- TimeOut