ScreenTalk

Comedian and writer Jon Gadsby is an integral part of the television comedy landscape in New Zealand. With his long time friend and colleague David McPhail, Gadsby headlined some of the most iconic comedy shows this country has produced. They first teamed up in the 1970s in the hit sketch show A Week of It. The show took pot-shots at politicians, the news, and everyday life. The pair then moved on to the long-running self-titled comedy show McPhail and Gadsby, which ran for seven seasons. Gadsby penned and starred in two rural based situation comedies – Rabbiter’s Rest and Letter to Blanchy. In his varied career, Gadsby has also appeared in feature films, and hosted episodes of Great NZ River Journeys and Intrepid Journeys.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Gadsby discusses:

• Being the newbie on the ground-breaking comedy show A Week of It
• How mocking religion led to death threats on McPhail and Gadsby
• Why politicians wanted to be on the show and how it captured the public mood
• The origins of the infamous ‘Jeez Wayne’
• How Letter to Blanchy reflected heartland New Zealand and his own upbringing
• Tormenting his cameraman Jacob Bryant on an Intrepid Journeys trip to Myanmar

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

Paolo Rotondo spent his first years in Italy. Born in Naples, he left in 1982 at the age of 11 to arrive in NZ with an elementary grasp of English. Rotondo later returned to Italy to study arts before returning to NZ to complete a Bachelor of Arts at Auckland University and launch his career in film and television.

In 1997 Rotondo starred in local feature The Ugly winning praise from Variety and The Times, and awards at Rome’s Fantastic Film Festival. Following TV appearances in Street Legal and Jackson’s Wharf, he went on to star in urban underbelly feature Stickmen, before writing and directing short film The Freezer.

Rotondo returned to the small screen as Dr Andrew Solomon in Kiwi soap Shortland Street, and also appeared as Tim in The Insiders Guide to Happiness. His work as director and writer of Dead Letters won him Best Short Screenplay at the 2006 NZ Screen Awards.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Rotondo reveals:

• Why his family came to NZ in 1982
• What he put himself through to get into character for The Ugly
• How he landed his leading role in Stickmen, after not initially being considered for the film
• The sensitivities around storing a dead Kuia in a chest freezer
• Insights into the anal retention of Shortland Street’s Andrew Solomon
• The thinking behind “big little” film Dead Letters
• His plans for a NZ Italian film

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

Comedy legend David McPhail began making New Zealanders laugh in pioneering 1970s sketch show A Week of It, and then moved on to McPhail & Gadsby with his comedic mate Jon Gadsby. The two comedians also produced and starred in the sitcom Letter to Blanchy. In later years, McPhail starred in the mock documentary The Waimate Conspiracy, and played the appallingly politically incorrect teacher Gormsby in Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby. In 2007 McPhail donned a spandex super hero costume to fight crime in Amazing Extraordinary Friends, directed by his son Matt McPhail. As well as acting, McPhail has written many of the shows he has been involved in. His other writing credits include A Haunting We Will Go, and he has also worked as a comedy director on such shows as The Life and Times of Te Tutu.

In this ScreenTalk interview, McPhail discusses:

• The excitement of filming A Week of It an hour before it aired each week
• Using satire to prick the ego of former Prime Minister Rob Muldoon
• Why the concept behind the first season of McPhail & Gadsby was a mistake
• The real life stories behind Letter to Blanchy
• How Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby shocked the TV network but delighted fans
• Getting caught in public in a very revealing spandex costume while shooting The Amazing Extraordinary Friends

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

Credits:  Interview, Camera & Editing – Andrew Whiteside

Scriptwriter, playwright and columnist James Griffin has been writing for most of his life. Since becoming a scriptwriter in the 1980s Griffin has written many of New Zealand’s most well known and best loved TV shows as well as the feature film Sione’s Wedding.

In this interview, he discusses

• His love of writing from an early age but his desire to be a TV director
• Getting “side-tracked” in to script editing and learning the mechanics of how a script works
• The popularity of Gloss and blending comedy and drama
• His surprise that the TV drama City Life flopped
• The rollercoaster ride that is Outrageous Fortune and when its run should end
• Criticism of NZ comedy
• What it takes to make a “hit” TV show

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

Credits:  Interview, Camera & Editing – Andrew Whiteside

Chris Knox is a musician, film critic and cartoonist. His music career began with legendary Dunedin punk band The Enemy, followed by post-punk heroes Toy Love, then the Tall Dwarfs and his own solo work.

Knox has appeared as a film reviewer on arts TV shows The Edge and Backch@t, and hosted the series The New Artland. He is also the man behind the long-running Max Media cartoon strip in the NZ Herald. Knox has also hosted an Intrepid Journey to India.

As a singer-songwriter and music video director, Knox is known as a pioneer of lo-tech, DIY classics.

For this special two-part ScreenTalk interview, Flying Nun founder Roger Shepherd chats with Knox about his life and career. (See the first part here.) In part two of the interview, they discuss:

• Knox moving from appearing in music videos to directing his own with the Tall Dwarfs‘ Nothing’s Gonna Happen
• Making the video for the Tall Dwarfs‘ Turning Brown and Torn in Two
• Making the video for his solo classic Not Given Lightly
• Becoming a film reviewer on TV arts shows The Edge and Backch@t
• Moving into television presenting, with an episode of Intrepid Journeys, and the series The New Artland
• Knox’s long-running cartoon strip Max Media

This video is available on YouTube for distribution via a Creative Commons licence.

Credits: Interview by Roger Shepherd, directed by Clare O’Leary. Camera and editing by Leo Guerchmann.

Veteran television script-writer Michael Noonan’s screenography reads a little like a list of New Zealand’s significant early TV dramas, including the historical epic The Governor.

Noonan talks to NZ On Screen about working as the first script editor in TVNZ’s fledgling drama department in the 1970s.

He tells the story of the letter-writing campaign that boosted 1973 drama series Pukemanu.

Noonan talks about the importance of having good producer/director partnerships. He discusses his strong working relationship with Murray Reece and the late Tony Isaac, and their work on early 70s dramas Richard John Seddon, The Longest Winter and The Games Affair.

Noonan was also the interviewer for the classic 1975 Janet Frame interview in the Three New Zealanders documentary series, again directed by his close colleague Tony Isaac. He says Frame was quite different from the image of her in popular myth.

Although Noonan was involved in the production of the other Three New Zealanders documentaries, he chose not to interview Sylvia Ashton-Warner, and he explains why this was.

Noonan also speaks about his and Tony Isaac’s work on the landmark series The Governor in 1977.  The series was controversial in its day, and Noonan suggests that some of this controversy was fanned by film industry people who were annoyed about so much money going to a TV project.

Referring to the 70s as the “developmental decade,” and a great time for NZ TV drama, Noonan says the 1980s were a tougher time, but he enjoyed his work on the Legacy series, and the drama Homeward Bound, which was started as a rival to Shortland Street.  It got the good reviews at the time, but Shortland Street got the viewers.

Noonan also talks about setting up the NZ Writers’ Guild.

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute.

Credits: Interview conducted by Clare O’Leary with camera and editing by Leo Guerchmann.