ScreenTalk

Danny Mulheron on his acting and directing life

Posted on 24 June 2009

 

Actor/director Danny Mulheron has acted alongside drug-addicted frogs, haunted automobiles, and “force of nature” David Fane. After appearing in early Kiwi soap Close to Home, Mulheron went on to act on television, stage and film – including in the cult Peter Jackson puppet movie Meet the Feebles. In the late 80s he found himself working on both sides of the camera on a run of television sketch shows. Mulheron’s lengthy directorial CV now includes drama, comedy, and documentary.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Danny Mulheron talks about:

• working with a stuntman, while acting in Gaylene Preston’s haunted car movie Mr Wrong
• helping write the “outrageous script” for Peter Jackson puppet movie Meet the Feebles, then filming it in a freezing railways shed (Mulheron plays a homicidal hippo)
• working as a writer and actor on a run of sketch comedy shows for producer Dave Gibson, and beginning the move into directing
• directing “force of nature” David Fane on shortlived comedy show The Semisis, about a dysfunctional Samoan family
• moving into drama directing with The Strip, and The Hothouse
• co-creating un-PC TV series Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, and finding an actor who could play Mr Gormsby, a racist, sexist schoolteacher at a low decile school
• showing films in a different way with personal documentary The Third Richard, made with wife Sara Stretton

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.

Credits: Direction and Interview by Ian Pryor, Camera and Editing by Leo Guerchmann.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• del.icio.us
• Digg it
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon
• Tumblr