Mike Smith has directed and produced hundreds, possibly thousands of hours of television. His list of credits goes back to the 1970s when he started at the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation as a teenager.
He’s done programmes that were Kiwi TV landmarks and some that he probably has trouble remembering, too. In the 80s, he created pop band drama Heroes – Russell Crowe auditioned but didn’t work out – in between directing episodes of Mortimer’s Patch and Country GP. In the 90s it was the likes of Marlin Bay, Duggan, and sitcom Willy Nilly. Since 2000, he’s been producer on Outrageous Fortune, and directed episodes of The Brokenwood Mysteries, 800 Words, The Almighty Johnsons, My Life is Murder, as well as feature-length true crime dramas such as Mistress, Mercy: The Renee Chignell Story and Siege. That’s just the highlights reel.
Now Smith has written and directed his own movie called The People We Love.
It’s a relationship drama about a family centred on young aspiring writer Maddie (Manon Blackman), who arrives home on the Kāpiti Coast from Wellington after a bad day of professional and personal rejections.
There, she finds that her parents (Neill Rea and Alison Bruce) have a relationship crisis looming, and the ex-boyfriend (Tāne Rolfe) she parted on bad terms with at high school is now working for her dad. She uses the turmoil as the basis of her next story, which, while impressing her publisher, leaves her family disconcerted.
“It’s an attempt to treat Kiwi romantic relationships with some level of intelligence and complexity,” says Smith via Zoom from his home in Waikanae. “It’s not a lighthearted movie, but it’s not a deep, depressing dive into those things.
“We just don’t do films about romantic love and that lack, in a weird way, was an inspiration for me. I couldn’t quite understand why, but I’ve had a couple of marriages so I’m really interested in that stuff.”
With its release in cinemas, it’s the first thing Smith has made that requires people to leave the house to see. He’s hoping they will, since it’s also the first thing he’s made that he’s largely had to pay for himself, helped by investments from friends and Boosted crowd funding.
It seems his CV didn’t count for much when he first went to the New Zealand Film Commission 12 or so years ago with the script, and a cast and distribution deal in place. Or it counted against him.
“I think they fund the film-maker as much as the film. A really experienced person from television, they would argue, doesn’t need [the support]. He’s had a career. So, let’s give it to someone younger and more deserving,” says Smith without a hint of bitterness.
He went back to the NZFC some years later with a different, darker script, and it was still no. He returned to the original script and had a thought: “I could do this really cheap.”
He did, shooting it not far from his home in 16 days. With wife Sharon acting as sales agent, they have taken on distribution duties with the film opening in about 30 cinemas. But why take the risk?
“It’s something I’d wanted to do for ages. It’s mainly because, as a TV director, which is primarily what I’ve been, your job is to fulfil someone else’s vision. That’s what they pay you for and I’ve actually always enjoyed doing that … but there was always that thought if I had the freedom, what would I like to do? What was my vision?
“The problem when you’re doing something of your own after having done James Griffin scripts and Tim Balme scripts and John Banas scripts, you go, ‘How do I have the temerity to do this?’ “But one of the things I started to do, finally, was to trust that if the actors liked it and if the crew liked it, which is the main reason they did it because they weren’t doing it for the money, then maybe there was something in it.”
Much of the cast comprises experienced actors he’s worked with before. He’d directed Rea on Brokenwood and Duggan. Playing a married couple in the film is a rare experience for partners in life Rea and Bruce. “I think they were able to bring stuff that maybe people who didn’t know each other so well could.”
And he’d worked with Blackman in The Renee Chignell Story, Nothing Trivial and 800 Words. She also got a say in her young character, which Smith had originally loosely based on his own daughters.
“As a middle aged – or slightly older – man writing, I gave the script to Manon and said, ‘What would you say? What wouldn’t you do?’ And she’d say to me, ‘I’d never do that.’ We have that kind of working relationship.
“The great thing about when you write a film about characters like this, the actors come on board, and suddenly the character is not only slightly different than you imagined, but better and more interesting.”
Smith cites the many modestly made dramas the French movie industry churns out as an influence on the film, as well as having a soft spot for the 2010 Emma Stone romcom Easy A. And while The People We Love may be decidedly non-arthouse, Jane Campion also had an impact.
“On the first or second day of the shoot in the house, the art department had put a biography of Jane Campion on a table, and all I could see was Jane looking at me. I had to ask for it to be covered up because I couldn’t concentrate with Jane looking. Two hours later, I was standing in the middle of the room wondering what the hell to do next and our gaffer came up behind me and said, ‘Mike, just think, what would Jane do?’ That became a phrase during the shoot.”
The People We Love is in cinemas now.
