Part 2 of 3
You have produced something like a dozen films that you produced with first-time
directors. Is this a deliberate strategy?
No, not at all.
[But] I am enthused - I don’t want to say just by young people, because if a
first-time director of any age came to me and had a great idea ...
I have recently done a picture with Carl Schultz [Love and Ambush 1997]. He’s a
highly-experienced director whom I have known for a long time but we had never worked
together before. It was an absolute joy. But, obviously, when one is working with people
whose ideas are fresh and new that also gives one at this time of life another energy. It
is almost like being a vampire, you know, sucking up their energy to keep alive!
After this long in the business with a couple of successes, but nothing that made you a
world name, is there something that you wish for?
If I hadn’t done anything other than Stone and Mapantsula, I would have felt
I’d done two things of extraordinary value and importance. Both are classics. Stone
is more than a classic, it was also a commercially successful film, and, despite the
vilification that it suffered when it came out, it is now being re-reviewed. Adrian Martin
and Peter Castaldi have called it "an important film". From my point of view it
has never been anything other than important, but what continues to keep me going is I
want the bell to ring again.
Do you ever wonder if the bell will, indeed, toll for you again?
I suffer from extraordinary depression and always have done, and there are times when I
just look at a wall for a day, when I haven’t been able to get out of bed. What gets
me out of those depressions is rage. It gives me energy. I get up and work from the adrenalin rush.
In my early teens, in 1953, I was in analysis. That is fairly unusual for people of my
time and place. My father was worried about me, he had good reason to be, so he sent me
off to a psychiatrist whom I fell in love with. I’m always eager to fall in love and
I do. I get very very emotionally attached to people, which can be overwhelming for both
them and for me. And this was a woman who, if she were alive today, would be well over
100. She actually knew Freud. She was a very wise, beautiful old woman. I still think
about her.
My father sent me to her because I was incredibly sexually aggressive, which was
disturbing to my parent’s friends because of their children, apart from anything
else. And I was subject to these terrifying depressions. I also had a hair-trigger temper.
I was always looking for a fight.
What form did your sexual aggression take?
I was always putting it on people to, you know, "Wouldn’t this be an interesting
thing to do"! [Laughs.]
Did anyone say yes?
Yes, which deeply disturbed the parents even more.
Were they all girls?
No, no, no, no. Anybody; boys, girls. I went to boarding school. I first had sex when I
was 9 years old. I think homosexuality and heterosexuality are lifestyle choices; they are
not sexual choices. Sex is sex, and you make a choice. The choice I made was heterosexual,
but I don’t see anything disturbing about sex with a man.
The depressions didn’t have anything to do with that, although that was one of the
reasons I went to the psychiatrist. The depressions were just part of my make-up, the dark
Scottish psyche, my New Zealand psyche. When I see characters in New Zealand films or
literature that affect me greatly, like the Jake character [Temuera Morrison] in Once
Were Warriors, I see myself. It is part of the darkness of where I come from, which is
why I like the light and openness of Australia which is entirely different.
What have been the most negative and frustrating experiences as a filmmaker?
The most negative experience I have had as a filmmaker is not being able to get another
picture up for Sandy. Why have I failed? What is wrong with me? I have failed this person
who is such an important part of my life, this person with enormous talent, this
extraordinary human being, and I have failed him totally and absolutely. It really is the
major low point in my life; if I really dwell on it, I get very angry.
Why do you blame yourself?
Because I should have made a difference. Because I should have been able to make it
happen. He is far more talented than 999 of the 1000 other people I know.
But has this ever been put to the test with him taking the project to another producer?
You understand, of course, that he is his own producer. It is not a question of whether he
would go to another producer. If he felt so inclined, he would. But, apart from anything
else, Sandy needs somebody who is prepared to fold themselves into what he wants to do and
be committed to that. That is something you would have to talk to him about.
Concludes in Part 3, June 15, 2000.
Email this article
