From the Listener archives
John Barnett, arguably the greatest and certainly the most prolific producer of New Zealand movies and television in our screen history has died at the age of 80.
Barnett’s career stretched from the pioneering era of local screen production in the early 1970s, up to the mid-2010s. In that time he went from being the manager of an up-and-coming character comedian named John Clarke, to a film producer who helped kick-start the NZ film industry. Along the way became head and owner of the production company South Pacific Pictures, the makers of Shortland Street, Outrageous Fortune and many more Kiwi television staples.
Of the 18 features Barnett produced, four are among the country’s top 10 grossing films – Footrot Flats, Whale Rider, Sione’s Wedding, and the Once Were Warriors sequel What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?
In this 2020 Listener interview with Claire de Lore he looked back at this life, growing up as a Jewish, bookish kid and attending Auckland Grammar School before his time at Victoria University led him into the screen business.
When John Barnett was a child growing up in Auckland, there was no television. There were cinemas, the radio and, importantly, there were books. His parents, Anne and Eddie Barnett, passed on to their children their own love of literature.
So, how bookish were those early years?
Books were very important. So much so that, in the early 60s, my parents opened a bookshop because they felt it would be a good thing to have a business where people could buy quality books. They had Deans bookshop at the bottom of Wakefield Street.
Why was it called Deans?
D E was from Eddie and A N from Anne. It was a lovely place - light and bright and it had really good books. I was about 14 when they opened it and spent a lot of time there. But it was a struggle and the shop eventually closed. But our home was always one where learning and books were very prized and prominent. And, without kind of belittling our neighbours, you would go to other people’s places and there wouldn’t be many books.
What sort of values did they promote or model to you and your sisters?
They instilled in us a sense of the importance of standing up for things that you believe in and standing up for people who weren’t so well-off or didn’t have a fair go.
Do you have the sense that they did better here than they would have if they’d stayed in England?
Well, yes and no. My father came from Hartlepool, a very poor town, and he was one of six children. My mother was from London. She had three brothers and six sisters, and one of them became a multi-millionaire, owned a huge supermarket chain, and the others did well. When I was 2 or 3 years old, I went to England, not that I remember it, with my mother. Her parents, by then, lived in Oxford and they had a chauffeur and maids and the like. They had done well.
Was being Jewish a major part of family life?
Yes, very much. Both my parents were very involved in the Jewish community all their lives and it was a very important part of our upbringing.
Does it remain very important in your life?
It does. I’m Jewish. That is me, and it is my sisters too. There was definitely a feeling, when I was growing up, that everybody knew I was Jewish. At Auckland Grammar, for example, there were about 35 Jewish boys and we didn’t go to prayers. We, and the boys who were Brethren, would go into a room at the back of the hall on the second floor, wait until prayers were over, and then rejoin assembly.
Did you experience any anti-Semitism?
Sometimes something would be said but it was rare. Henry Cooper, our headmaster, had a very good relationship with a number of prominent Jewish families and ensured that there wasn’t any institutionalised prejudice. But for a number of people, it [Barnett being Jewish] was the first thing they thought of. For example, I got on a plane maybe 10 or 15 years ago and found myself sitting next to someone I went to school with who I hadn’t seen for 25 years. When the meal came he looked at it, saw there was pork in it, and said “well you won’t eat that.” It was interesting that it was something he immediately remembered about me.
Does that bother you?
You are who you are. And for me, in my film and television career, actually it’s been really interesting because you tend to look at things beyond a monocultural perspective. If you look at something like Sione’s Wedding or Whale Rider or My Wedding and Other Secrets, I can get that. When I read Whale Rider, I saw it as a story for a whole lot of people but it took me a lot of time, 17 years, to get that to screen.
People would say to me, “no one wants to go and see a Maori film” and I’d say “you’re wrong, this is a great story and it’s actually an international story.” I believe that the more specific you are in the telling of the story, the more universal you are because every culture, every religion has got these stories.
In the last decade Netflix has become a game changer in terms of how people view movies and TV - what’s your take on it?
Well, Netflix have shown that you could have seen The Irishman in the cinema for a week or two, or you could watch it at home on Netflix. And Netflix doesn’t want these movies to be in the cinema for too long because they want their subscribers to be able to see them as soon as possible. But if you want an Academy Award nomination, your movie has to run for two weeks in a cinema in Los Angeles or New York so you’re going to have to put your movie in a cinema. But the Cannes Film Festival won’t run anything that’s going on Netflix because they believe in the magic of the cinema.
Do you?
I do but there are many people who aren’t getting to the cinema. Some are older people, who don’t want to go out at night, and some are younger people with kids who can’t get out. So I don’t think that you take away from the cinema experience; you enhance the number of people that see your movie.
What are you working on at present?
I’m a big believer in content that’s had a previous life because if, for example, it’s been a book, you’re talking to a whole lot of people who have already read it and understand it. So I’ve been developing Cleo, Helen Brown’s book about the loss of her child, a story of loss of love and redemption. Also, Paul Cleave’s books*, which I think would make great streaming material, and a nice little romantic one called Not Bad People by a New Zealand writer, Brandy Scott.
Which movies have you recently enjoyed?
I recently saw an amazing documentary called For Sama, made by a young woman in Aleppo, Syria. She shot it on a little camera over a period of about five years. In that time, she marries a doctor and has a child and that child is Sama. The Russians are bombing all the hospitals and you just see this city fall apart and her recording life there. It is really powerful.
Will it do a lot of business?
No, but it’s a story about dealing with adversity and how you try and live a life and how innocent people get caught up in something that they can’t influence. Another I really liked is Uncut Gems, with Adam Sandler, an amazing performance, it’s got enormous pace. I thought Marriage Story was terrific and 1917 was really great. Two political pictures, based on real events and people are Dark Waters with Mark Ruffalo and Official Secrets in which Keira Knightley plays Katherine Gunn, the British woman who leaked secrets relating to the invasion of Iraq. It’s based on the book The Spy Who Tried to Stop A War.
And what about books? What are you reading?
I am reading and recommending Danubia by Simon Winder. It’s the history of the Hapsburgs over a thousand years. He talks about society in all of the countries that the Hapsburgs controlled - all the way eventually from Spain into Russia. Another is Pūrākau: Māori Myths Retold by Māori Writers. A very funny book is Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. And a terrific Le Carre-like thriller is A Long Night in Paris by Dov Alfon - really good. But I keep coming back to Danubia because it is just so interesting.
This is an edited version of Clare de Lore’s interview with John Barnett that appeared in the NZ Listener’s February 15, 2020.
*Paul Cleave’s The Cleaner was made into the series Dark City: The Cleaner with Barnett as producer in 2024.
