Peter Jackson: A Film-maker’s Journey

by Sibley, Brian

  When, years later, the recasting of the role of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings resulted in a lot of last-minute rescheduling, there were those who expressed surprise at Peter’s apparent calmness in the face of what was a major crisis. What they didn’t know was that he had been there before, but could at least console himself with the thought that, unlike Giles’ Big Day, he hadn’t already sixteen months of filmed footage in the can.

  By the time he was writing to the Film Commission, Peter had cut ten minutes of footage to make sense of Craig’s scenes that couldn’t now be completed and had worked quite a few new ‘goodies’ into the scenario:

  ‘The very first scene has one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in a film and a little later there are some appalling things done with a sledgehammer, however, I won’t go into details here. You’ll just have to wait with mouth-watering anticipation until I’ve got it edited! Despite the gore, I think people will accept it for the black comedy it is. I think both of the scenes that I mentioned above are very funny, but then I might be a trifle warped!’

  I figured out a lot of my Bad Taste script problems during long lonely walks over these cliffs. I loved the wild landscape. We used to carry this crane and other equipment up the hills each weekend. Eventually we got sick of that and ended up hiding all the equipment in the bushes, hoping it would still be there whenever we returned in the next few weeks.

  Despite the sorry saga he was reporting, Peter was clearly in good spirits: with Mike, Terry and Pete O’Herne, he had taken a week’s leave, during which time they hired a sound camera from the National Film Unit and – having ‘figured out how it worked’ – had, as Peter delightfully put it, embarked on their ‘first ever experience of shooting talking bits’!

  The results of these experiments with sync-sound were, the director reported, ‘surprisingly…not TOO bad’! ‘Remember,’ he wrote, ‘that these guys had done all their previous acting wearing balaclavas and shooting people. In these early scenes they are unmasked, in civvies and have to act and talk at the same time!’

  It also gave Peter a further opportunity to appear on screen: in addition to playing ‘Robert’, the bearded, bayonet-wielding cannibal-zombie-alien who first attacks Craig in Kaihoro, Peter (sans beard) was now also playing ‘Derek’, a nerdy, buck-toothed ‘alien-buster’, wearing spectacles and a school scarf and out to save the world from an invasion of ‘extraterrestrial psychopaths’. Peter’s comments (in the role of Derek) about himself (in the persona of the alien Robert) are an amusingly apposite piece of character description: ‘There’s something strange about him – like he’s got a screw loose or something…’

  Whilst Craig’s sudden departure from Bad Taste is widely known to fans, Terry also asked to be written out. He was emigrating to Australia and couldn’t carry on, so I devised and shot an Ozzy death scene, which involved a basic impalement through the body with a metal spike. Several months later, Terry arrived back from an unhappy time in Oz and offered to rejoin the group. Fortunately things had not advanced that far in his absence, and I wrote him back in as if he’d never left!

  Doubtless there were times when people, witnessing the filming of Bad Taste, must have thought that they all had a screw or two loose!

  Playing two roles eventually

  led to Peter engaging in a cliff-top fight with himself, perilously filmed above Pukerua Bay. As Peter would later tell the fan-site, The Bastards Have Landed (named from Bad Taste’s defining quote), whilst the scene was most certainly dangerous, the results were less spectacular than he had envisaged: ‘I was always disappointed with the footage, because it felt way more scary being there, than it looked on film!’

  The fight – in which Peter was seen both bearded and clean-shaven – was shot in two sessions with the best part of a year between, rather as Elijah Wood and Sean Astin would eventually film their scene on the Cirith Ungol stairs in The Return of the King, while the fact that Ken Hammon was required to stand in for back-of-the-head-shots of Robert (or Derek as the case may be) meant that the sequence was filmed in a similar way to some of the scenes in The Lord of the Rings involving scale doubles. Unlike many moviemakers, whatever Peter Jackson asks or expects of an actor, the chances are he has sometime done something similar himself!

  Nevertheless, the overall situation with Giles’ Big Day was scarcely any less serious than when Peter had first approached the Film Commission: several more months work, an investment of a further $3,000 and still only an hour of completed film. It was, he said, ‘a bit like running on a treadmill.’ That said, he was convinced that it had all worked out for the best.

  ‘Peter has always had confidence,’ says Ken Hammon, ‘he’s always been optimistic. He has an unwavering sense that things will always work out.’ Or as Craig Smith puts it: ‘Peter was always going to be a film-maker. Failure was simply not an option.’

  Moreover, as Peter told Jim Booth, he considered the new version of the film as nothing short of an improvement:

  ‘The revamping of the film was a situation that was forced on me. I would like to say that I did it of my own choosing, but I can’t. It was the best thing that ever happened to the film. It made me look at the project from a different vantage point and it was only then that I saw it for what it was and was able to chop out the dead wood and inject new life into it. A valuable lesson has been learned.’

  It had indeed and it was one not easily forgotten…

  As for Craig Smith, he takes a similar line, albeit from a self-mocking perspective: ‘By taking my moral stand, it turned it into a damn sight better film. So, really, if it hadn’t been for me…!’

  Only one issue remained – apart from the need for money – and that was the title: Giles’ Big Day was clearly no longer appropriate. ‘After much banging of our heads,’ wrote Peter, ‘we finally came up with the moniker Bad Taste. This seems to sum it all up rather well. It has a double meaning. Not only does it describe the aesthetic qualities of the film, but [also] works in with the main plot device of a bunch of aliens with a taste for human meat…The other name that we considered for a while was Dirty Creatures, but Bad Taste it will be.’

  Bad Taste it was; and, when eventually completed, it would prove to be the film that launched the professional movie-making career of Peter Jackson.

  3

  A MATTER OF TASTE

  ‘All of a sudden, out of the gloom, leaped this damn great gorilla!’ Bob Lewis, manager of the processing department of Wellington Newspapers, was minding his own business, passing the camera darkrooms, when he found himself unexpectedly confronted by an enormous ape. Convincing though it looked – and it was scarily authentic – the simian attacker was, in fact, only a man in a costume. At the time, he was just Peter Jackson, one of the paper’s photoengravers; later, however, he would become Peter Jackson, film director, whose movie projects would include a remake of that classic monster-movie, King Kong.

  Peter had begun making the gorilla costume whilst recuperating from the operation on the pilonidal cyst that had developed following his accident amongst the rock-pools, whilst playing Sinbad. Made of rubber and covered in hair, the ape suit was a highly impressive piece of work. One day, ‘for fun’ he decided to wear it into work. His first ‘victim’ was his manager, Bob (‘Mr’) Lewis: ‘I guess Peter thought,

  TOP RIGHT: My finished gorilla suit. It was never used in a movie but it started a series of life-changing events. bottom right: Building my gorilla suit in my bedroom. It was made from carved foam and glued together with carpet glue and latex. I was sleeping in a cloud of fumes every night. I think every Famous Monsters-inspired kid who has experimented with building monsters has similar stories to tell. I’m sure it alarmed my parents, who must have been copping the fumes as well since our house was so small.

  “Let’s see if we can give the boss a fright,” and he certainly succeeded because I must have jumped a foot in the air!’

  News of Peter’s escapade percolated up to the journalists on t
he Evening Post, who decided it would make a fun story. Staff photographer, Ian Mackley, snapped Peter in costume, emerging from the bushes onto the roadside near his home in Pukerua Bay. The photograph, which included a passing car (with presumably a seriously baffled driver!) eventually ended up on the front page of the Post under the headline ‘PETER THE APE MAKES THEM GAPE’!

  This startling image happened to catch the eye of Paul Dulieu, a props buyer on a television series entitled Worzel Gummidge Down Under. Based on the characters in Barbara Euphan Todd’s popular books about ‘The Scarecrow of Scatterbrook Farm’, the series had originated on British television in 1979. Written by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall (of Billy Liar fame) Worzel Gummidge starred former ‘Dr Who’, Jon Pertwee, as the scarecrow and Una Stubbs as Aunt Sally, his temperamental inamorata.

  In 1986, Worzel was given a new lease of life ‘down under’ with Pertwee and Stubbs reprising their roles in two twelve-episode series. A two-part story in the first series (‘Two Heads Are Better Than One’ and ‘Worzel to the Rescue’), involved a sinister character called The Traveller, some spooky voodoo-rituals and a couple of zombie-scarecrows – an appropriate storyline to have involved Peter Jackson!

  As a result of the photograph in the Post, this guy Paul Dulieu called me up and asked if I would be interested in making a couple of rubber voodoo dolls that were required for the scenes in which the Traveller enslaves Worzel. Later, they were required to burst into flame when Worzel’s guardian, The Crowman, rescues the scarecrow and releases him from the enchantment.

  I couldn’t believe it! This was my first contact with real film people and it was the most exciting moment for me. I remember Paul Dulieu coming to our house and meeting my mum and dad. He asked me: ‘How much do you want for these things?’ I was rather nervous: I’d never talked about money with anyone like that – in fact, I’d never done anything where anyone was prepared to pay me! – so I really didn’t

  A key moment in my life. My first encounter with ‘professional’ film-making was these little latex voodoo dolls I made for Worzel Gummidge Down Under. They came directly from my gorilla suit being featured in the newspaper, and in turn led to me meeting a whole series of people who would change my life, both professionally and personally.

  know what to ask. In the end I said something like: ‘Oh, about $25…’ And he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a big wad of notes and peeled off a hundred bucks and said: ‘Now, look, here’s a hundred dollars – I’ve got this money so you might as well take it!’

  That was the first professional income I ever earned from films…

  Paul Dulieu invited Peter to visit the set of Worzel Gummidge Down Under, which was on location in the Hutt Valley, and so he drove down to take a look at what was going on. That visit would result in several significant encounters, the first of which was with Costa Botes, a name that Peter immediately recognised from having read his regular film reviews in The Dominion.

  I was a little starstruck when I met the unit’s Third AD. This lowly position is the guy who stops traffic between takes, but I knew his name from his Dominion reviews. When Costa asked what I was doing and I said: ‘Oh, I’ve been making a movie…’ I told him how I’d shot seventyfive

  One of the first results of my gorilla building was my parents offering to build a workshop for me under the house. Dad and I built it together – that’s the workshop on the lower right – and my parents got a nice patio out of it too

  minutes of footage and had asked the Film Commission for financial help but had been turned down, that it was all rather depressing but that I was still boxing on, trying to finish the film. He seemed genuinely interested and actually asked if he could see the footage. I was a little nervous, since I’d been reading his film columns for a few years. It was one of those memorable moments – my first visit to a real movie set, and somebody wants to see my film.

  I also noticed a pretty young woman sitting in the corner of a greenhouse talking about the script with Bruce Phillips, the actor who played The Crowman. I didn’t know who she was or what her job was, and I didn’t even get to meet her on that day, but I’ll always remember the fact that she made a striking impression on me, with her long black hair.

  She was Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall’s New Zealand Script Consultant on the first Worzel Gummidge series and her name was Frances F. Walsh.

  Costa recalls: ‘My first impression of Peter was of a rather bedraggled, shaggy-looking guy, wearing an awful cardigan (like Starsky used to wear in Starsky and Hutch) and a backpack. I hadn’t heard Peter’s name, but I had read something in the local film journal, Onfilm, about a bunch of loonies shooting a movie out at Pukerua Bay.’

  The coverage in Onfilm had been a piece of publicity that Peter had managed to get for Bad Taste at a time when the group were feeling somewhat less than buoyant:

  It was tough going on Bad Taste: we’d been shooting for years and had failed to get any official support. I thought it would provide a morale-booster for everybody if we were mentioned in what was a film industry journal. So, I wrote to Onfilm, told them what we were doing and sent them some photos and they printed a cool little story. It was the first ever bit of press about the making of Bad Taste – suddenly the fact that this movie was in production was ‘official’!

  It also represented the first official announcement of the ‘film company’ making Bad Taste. Once Peter had started filming on 16mm, the exposed footage had to be sent off to the laboratory to be developed, accompanied by a form that had a space for the name of the production company. Filling in the form to go with the first reel of film, Peter had to make a decision: did he leave that part of the form blank or did he pick a name for himself?

  I didn’t want anything that sounded too pretentious or self-important, like ‘Imperial Pictures’, so I decided to come up with something that sounded really dumb! I settled on the stupid name, ‘WingNut’.

  The inspiration came from…a rabbit! Mike Minett had a pet rabbit which he had named ‘Wingnut’, because its big floppy ears had reminded him of the flared sides – or ‘wings’ – with which you loosen or tighten a wingnut. Apart from its literal meaning, ‘a wingnut’ has also long been a slang expression for a person with sticking-out ears or someone whose behaviour is a bit crazy or off-the-wall. In any event, Mike took Wingnut the rabbit into work to give it to his boss to take home and keep. Sadly, a few weeks later, the rabbit had an encounter with a ferret from which it didn’t survive. But, happily, its name is now memorialised as one of the most successful film production companies in the world!

  This is Wingnut. For a few days he was kept as a pet in our photoengraving department at the newspaper. We made his pen from my favourite cardboard boxes. He disappeared as quickly as he arrived and I know little about him, but I stole his name for my film company.

  The workshop coincided with work picking up on Bad Taste after Craig’s departure. Probably four or five months had gone by without any filming going on. For a while it felt like another project started but destined never to finish. The fact that I had never really finished a movie really concerned me and certainly fuelled my determination to complete Bad Taste, even though it had now changed from ten-minute short to feature film. Here I’m making a head cast in my new workspace, having decided I didn’t like the alien designs done a couple of years earlier.

  Wingnut made his appearance at the Post around the time that I was trying to think of a name to fill in on the laboratory forms and ‘WingNut Films’ seemed nice and dumb! My only edict was to make WingNut one word with a capital ‘N’ in the middle.

  The news item in the ‘Short Ends’ column of the August 1985 edition of Onfilm carried a photograph of a scene from Bad Taste being filmed on the cliffs at Pukerua Bay, with Pete O’Herne in front of the camera, Peter Jackson behind it and Dean Lawrie managing the soundrecording equipment. ‘WingNut Films,’ ran the text, ‘at work on Bad Taste, a sci-fi/horror 90-minute 16mm feature for the video market,
described as “A mindless movie for the discerning armchair mercenary”

  I met Costa Botes on the Worzel set, which led to a Bad Taste cameo for him and a lot of advice, assistance and introductions for me.

  This is the photo I sent to OnFilm magazine, our local trade paper. At the time, I wanted to give the guys a morale boost, and seeing our project in print for the first time certainly made it seem real. By now, I had figured out and written a new storyline to use as much existing footage as possible.

  …begun in October 1983 and worked on every Sunday since.’

  The item gave details of those involved – billing Peter as producer, writer and director – and went on: ‘Although the team are all newcomers and part-timers working without pay, Jackson stresses it is not “some sort of Mickey Mouse home movie”, as it has already cost $10,000 (of their own money), and he estimates final budget at $30,000.’ This was the piece that had caught Costa Botes’ eye: ‘I remember laughing and thinking, “What is all that about?”’ Anyway, I got chatting with this guy who showed up on the Worzel Gummidge set – because when you talk to someone who is really into movies you almost always hit it off – and when he mentioned the fact that he was making a film at the weekends, I put two and two together and figured out that he was one of those loonies I’d been reading about!’