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