ScreenTalk

Producer Pat Cox instigated Kiwiana classic Footrot Flats: The Dog’s (Tail) Tale and has produced some of New Zealand’s most iconic commercials (including the long-running Speights “onya mate”, Mainland Cheese “these things take time”, and the 100% Pure NZ tourism campaigns).

Cox chats to NZ On Screen about his 40-year+ career in film and television:

• Growing up in Ireland and getting into the business via drumming in bands. He began shooting bands and crewing for docos. Cox recalls “great times” crewing at Ardmore Studios where legendary directors (John Houston, David Lean, John Boorman) were making movies.
• Shooting concerts for bands in the late sixties in the US, then emigrating in the early seventies to New Zealand with his American wife and their one-year-old boy.
• Forging a freelance career in a country where there was virtually no film industry, and setting up Film Editing Services, an independent post-production services company that imported the first Steenbeck editing desk into NZ.
• Teaching film and TV to graphic design students at Wellington Polytech where “we developed a little mini film school”, and where he mentored Annie Collins and Euan Frizzell.
• The growth of the commercials sector in the seventies and working with Geoff Dixon (Silverscreen), John Blick and Tony Williams.
• Production-managing for Williams’ pioneering feature, Solo. Williams reflects on the DIY early days of the industry: where crew were being trained “on the job” and they secured finance from used car salesmen and “by knocking on doors.”
• Getting to grips with New Zealand culture as an Irish-American fresh off the boat by reading Janet Frame and … Footrot Flats. “I saw it as this terrific microcosm of life in New Zealand.”
• On opening the phone book, ringing Murray Ball and proposing a movie of the strip (and being flatly refused). Cox talks of the challenges of producing the project (with John Barnett): “everything was hand-painted and then filmed … it was this big endeavour and I’m amazed we actually achieved it. To this day no one has made another animated feature in New Zealand.”

Check out the ‘making of’ Footrot Flats documentary on NZ On Screen.

This interview is also available on YouTube.

Images courtesy of Pat Cox. Selected images are from Wikipedia Commons, or courtesy NZFC, or The Dominion Post.

Credits: Direction and Interview – Clare O’Leary, Camera and Editing – Leo Guerchmann

It is hard to imagine a credit roll for the New Zealand film and television industry without the name John Barnett being high on the titles.

Since the 1970’s John Barnett has been key in bringing a host of uniquely Kiwi stories to local and international screens, from Fred Dagg to Footrot Flats, from Whale Rider to Sione’s Wedding and What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted?, from iconic soap Shortland Street to the wildly successful Westie family drama, Outrageous Fortune.

Barnett talks to NZ On Screen’s Clare O’Leary about his 30+ years as a driving force in New Zealand television and film:

• his beginnings in the television and film industry in the seventies, from working on children’s series The Games Affair, and the Endeavour Productions’ documentary series on Janet Frame, Ngaio Marsh and Sylvia Aston-Warner, to managing John Clarke (aka Fred Dagg)
• branching out into feature film production with Dagg Day Afternoon, Middle Aged Spread and Beyond Reasonable Doubt
• on his motivation: making films that “people understand immediately” and telling universal stories (Whale Rider, Sione’s Wedding)
• being involved in lobbying for the formation of the New Zealand Film Commission.
• heading South Pacific Pictures, New Zealand’s largest film and television production company and developing programmes (Shortland Street, Outrageous Fortune) that “reflect the way we [New Zealanders] see ourselves.”
• on his favourite production: “They’re all my children … I love everything we’ve made … we have a kind of mantra here [at SPP] : we’re not going to get involved unless we love it … I like stories in which people challenge the system and win: beating the odds is something that everybody understands.”

For more clips and background information, and profiles of cast and crew from the film and television titles produced by Barnett and South Pacific Pictures, see NZ On Screen.

This interview is available for download and distribution on YouTube as Part 1 and Part 2.

Credits: Direction and Interview – Clare O’Leary, Camera and Editing – Leo Guerchmann