Legendary Kiwi film director Geoff Murphy is set to release his new film, Spooked. MIKE MATHER spoke to him about conspiracy theories, movie-making in New Zealand and why audiences here are so much smarter than in the US.
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you ... right?
Spooked, the new film by veteran Kiwi director Geoff Murphy and based on material from Ian Wishart's book The Paradise Conspiracy, will no doubt fuel the fears of conspiracy theorists throughout the country.
Murphy was in Rotorua recently as part of a North Island publicity tour for his new film.
Well, he says, that was the initial plan.
"I'm heading down from Auckland to Wellington because I had a lot of stuff to do down there and I had decided that this would be a nice way to kill a few birds with one stone, so to speak.
"The trouble is, I may be stuck in Rotorua for a little longer than I had anticipated. My fan belt's just ripped itself to shreds."
Or has it? Given that his new film should attract the attention, if not incite the anger of certain Big Brother-ish organisations, surely CIA sabotage cannot be ruled out in the cause of the belt's bereavement?
Probably not, but at least one spooky incident during the production of the film hints at sinister goings-on.
"[Assistant director] Dave Norris had his powerbook with the script and production notes on it left on one night. When he went to quit it, he got a message telling him there was another user logged on to his computer," Murphy confides. "And we did have enormous problems getting it funded, which was unusual."
Yikes. The fan belt incident aside, Spooked has some strong Rotorua connections, namely the lead actor being none other than local boy-done-good Cliff Curtis, the star of a growing CV of Hollywood films including Training Day and Runaway Jury as well as Whale Rider.
Curtis plays Mort Whitman, an investigative journalist who embarks on a story about Kevin Jones (Christopher Hobbs), a second-hand computer dealer who is found dead after a car crash on the Auckland Harbour Bridge. As Mort digs deeper, he uncovers strong links to a global political conspiracy and New Zealand's possible connection to high-level multinational corruption.
The story may be all the more alarming for the fact that a large part of it is based on very real events that led to the exposure of what became known as The Winebox Affair, an investigation into the decidedly dodgy operations of several New Zealand financial institutions and businesses in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Murphy has taken the mysterious death of Auckland computer dealer Paul White - who opened some discs belonging to a merchant bank - in 1992 as his starting point and, making a daring imaginative jump, spins it to where all good 21st century conspiracies lead: arms deals, Osama bin Laden and the CIA.
This all sounds like pretty heavy stuff for an entertainment movie. But Murphy says he wanted to keep it light, lacing the plot with the trademark laconic humour and astute characterisations, language and references that are distinctly Kiwi.
Emphasising that the film was indeed a work of fiction, Murphy said the facts that inspired the film were all on public record.
Paul White did buy 90 floppy discs which had international banking information on them. He went through two months of intense harassment, his place was broken into and he was beaten up.
Then, on the same night he received a $15,000 cash settlement, he died in a car crash and the money was never seen again.
"You know, it's amazing how many people who have said 'Hey, I remember that!' A lot of people at the time thought there was something fishy going on and this film is reinforcing that, in a way."
Spooked also stars another Rotorua identity, Miriama Smith.
Her credits include Harry Sinclair's Toy Love and the independent US production The Other Side of Heaven.
Spooked also features the long-awaited return to movies of Kelly Johnson, the star of Murphy's smash hit breakthrough film Goodbye Pork Pie in 1980.
Since his early local works (including the cult Bruno Lawrence film The Quiet Earth) Murphy has spent 15 years working in Los Angeles as a director for hire. His films include Young Guns II, Freejack and Under Siege II.
Although he has already started pre-production work on his next project, The Last Unicorn ("although I'm not sure if it's still 100 percent definite at this stage"), it is conspiracy theories, not fairy tales that have him enthused right at the moment.
"Just 10 years ago conspiracy theories were not readily accepted by anyone. If someone was going around saying the CIA was watching him, you would say he was crazy. Now, you can almost believe anything is possible.
"In New Zealand we have always been pretty naive about it. When I was doing my research for the film I came across the story about two guys who worked in this bank in a town in Australia, who both disappeared on the same day. One of the guys turned up shot and the other one was never found. It turned out, after the police investigation, the bank was a front for the CIA. It makes it quite feasible something like this could show up on a New Zealand bank's manifest."
So what has it been like making a film in New Zealand again, after being based for so long in the United States?
"New Zealanders as a people are a lot more film aware, although it is not quite as easy to make films here. You have to deal with a lot of what you can almost call small town politics before you can do anything. On the other hand there is the United States experience. Even though it's a lot easier to make a film in Hollywood, there is a commercial element that overides everything.
"[In America] a film is judged a success if it makes money. It can be the most dreadful piece of garbage, but that does not really matter.
"When I was making the XXX sequel, there was a scene we were shooting that did not make sense. I said at the time, hey, this doesn't make sense, but if we make a few small changes, then it will. I was told not to bother, because, hey, the audience will never know.
"I thought at the time they might be a bit nuts. But ever since the election over there and George Bush got back in I don't know. They may be right."
Despite the difficulties, Geoff says he prefers making films for local audiences.
"The New Zealand public demands New Zealand films be free of bullshit.
"New Zealand audiences would prefer to be seduced by a movie, rather than having the movie whore itself to them.
"The strange thing is, we will happily accept bullshit in a US film. Just not in one of our own."
Given that Goodbye Pork Pie is one of the greatest road movies of all time, I put it to Geoff that perhaps New Zealand is due for another - my rationale being that New Zealand's rather elongated geography lends itself perfectly to road movies.
"I think we are due for a comedy. One of the things we produce very well is all of these gloom and doom pictures. Of course, Spooked is not a comedy, so maybe I'm not helping in that respect.
"What would be relevant right now would be a film about the P epidemic, although that's the kind of thing that would probably need a young person to make it."
Murphy's Law
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