Chance to say hi to 'Pork Pie'

PETER CALDER celebrates the return of a Kiwi classic.

As it bears down fast on its 21st birthday, the first bona fide local hit movie might be expected to have grown up. Fat chance.

Goodbye Pork Pie - the first New Zealand picture to recoup its costs in domestic receipts alone - remains as fresh-faced, juvenile, blokish and entertaining as the day it was made.

The 1980 road/buddy movie, about a madcap drive from Kaitaia to Invercargill in a stolen rental Mini, which was systematically dismantled en route and sold for parts, is the party piece of Celebrating New Zealand Movies, a 10-film retrospective of Kiwi flicks playing at the Lido Cinema in Auckland for a week from tomorrow.

It marks the day that New Zealand movies came of age. While Sleeping Dogs, Roger Donaldson's 1977 adaptation of C.K. Stead's novel Smith's Dream, is generally regarded as having kick-started the renaissance of local cinema, Pork Pie was the first picture Kiwis took to their hearts.

Tony Barry, who played John, one of the renegade travellers, is in no doubt that the film marked the rebirth of the New Zealand industry.

"It was the first film that enabled New Zealanders to see themselves on screen and not cringe at the accent," he says.

"And it was alive. A couple of guys stealing a Mini would be seen as tame these days, but at the time it was pretty wild."

The cast and crew list is a roll-call of local pioneers, some of whom went on to great things.

Lee Tamahori, who directed Once Were Warriors (not to mention the Anchor Family commercials) and is now in Hollywood, was a sound boom operator who joined the crew on an employment scheme.

Stuart Dryburgh, the cinematographer for The Piano and Bridget Jones's Diary, among many other titles, is credited as a gaffer.

The film, which incidentally was a stunning international showcase of our landscape, was uniquely New Zealand, as much for the way it was made as for what it was.

Its crew of 24 travelled the length of the country, mostly in the starring cars - three identical yellow Minis and three Holdens in police decal, two of them towing caravans.

The Minis were supplied by the New Zealand Motor Corporation which - along with New Zealand Railways, whose rolling stock, lines, yards and stations feature largely in the on-screen hi-jinks - got an in-association-with credit for their inspired cooperation.

Director Geoff Murphy recalls that one of the starring cars was donated to the project and two others sold to the filmmakers for $4000 each, with a buy-back guarantee if they were returned undamaged.

Towards the end of the film, by which time the lead Mini had a hole cut in the roof and had been stripped of doors, boot, bumpers and all the bodywork forward of the windscreen, it was to feature in a scene involving some hair-raising wheelies. But the stuntmen rolled it during rehearsals.

"It was a total mess," wrote Murphy in Jonathan Dennis' and Jan Bieringa's Film in Aotearoa New Zealand. "The windshield was broken and the roof had collapsed. I ordered them to start cutting up another Mini to match."

Others objected that the budget couldn't bear the $4000 loss. They raced to fix it, but were running out of daylight and had to get one shot involving the car before the running repairs had been completed.

"We took the doors and the boot-lid off a good Mini and did the shot," wrote Murphy. "It didn't match perfectly as it had no hole in the roof and the front was still on it, but no one ever noticed."

Tony Barry laughs at the memory. "Fortunately we had some pretty good people there who got things back on track in a big hurry. It was Kiwi ingenuity par excellence."

Kelly Johnson, who played the lunatic driver Gerry and listed his interests as "sex and sailing" in the press kit, is now a law-abiding barrister in Whangarei.

"I had my doubts that anyone would like it," he says, "but when I went and saw it at the St James on the first Friday night, the house was packed and people were laughing out loud. It was a real thrill."

Goodbye Pork Pie was a thrill to make, too.

"In one scene I had to run along the top of some carriages on a train, and I remember thinking, 'This is just like in the movies."'

* An extended interview with Kelly Johnson features on Saturday.

NZ Movies Festival also showcases other favourites

Goodbye Pork Pie, which screens this weekend at the Lido in the Celebrating New Zealand Movies festival, is accompanied on a five-city tour by nine other local favourites:

* Smash Palace (1981): Roger Donaldson's second feature starred Bruno Lawrence as a man driven to kidnap his own daughter after the breakup of his marriage.

* Footrot Flats: A Dog's Tale (1986): The big-screen version of the comic strip generated a Dave Dobbyn classic, Slice of Heaven.

* The Navigator (1988): Vincent Ward's eerie and expressionistic mystery thriller set in medieval Cumbria and 20th-century Auckland.

* Once Were Warriors (1994): The grim urban ghetto drama was the biggest local moneymaker.

* An Angel at My Table (1990): The adaptation of Janet Frame's autobiography put director Jane Campion on the map.

* Ngati (1987): Barry Barclay's study of a visitor arriving at an East Coast Maori community is both gentle and pointed.

* The Scarecrow (1982): Sam Pillsbury's adaptation of Ronald Hugh Morrieson's classic novel of small-town life.

* Utu (1983): Geoff Murphy's Land War drama in a director's cut.

* Mr Wrong (1985): Gaylene Preston's witty and fanciful thriller about a haunted Mark II Jag.