The Years Before My Death

by David McPhail

  Chapter 21

  THE SHOW THAT STARTED WITH A LETTER

  The success of McPhail and Gadsby brought many benefits. Anne and I could travel and our family was secure. I had an income and Jon’s and my notoriety produced many performances outside television. They were heady days. The contracts were fair, if not generous, and easy to sign. So, Jon, Alan and I moved from one series to another with eagerness and growing confidence. The money was not huge: Television New Zealand had not moved to that epic moment when they paid individuals the gross national product of Tonga to simply open their mouths and read what other people had written. Certainly, there was enough to reroof my house, but the sky-rocketing salaries came much later. Meanwhile, Television New Zealand said very little. In fact, the executives said nothing. I cannot recall one meeting, discussion or directive during all the years of McPhail and Gadsby. I suppose I should be grateful.

  There are few things more puzzling, provoking or exciting than making a new television show. There are few things more deadening, dull or duplicitous than the people who asked you to make it. We had got past them, although Jon and I were sailing through increasingly heavy seas. We had an innocent approach to what we were doing. Our minds were so focused on the weekly script meetings with Alan that we rarely looked up. But the programme was reaching the end of its life and some executives were clapping.

  Then, completely by accident, a new idea emerged. Anne and I had bought a fishing hut, or bach, at the mouth of the Rangitata River. There we met John and Jan Blanchfield. John was a rollicking former bailiff with a wide, ruddy face and the biggest collection of veteran jokes I had ever heard. I met him on the shingle-bank beside the river mouth. Our new bach contained lots of fishing gear and when I saw men walking from the mouth carrying salmon, I put some hooks and sinkers on a line and walked down to the beach.

  The fishermen were standing on the edge of the surf throwing their lines into the sea. In fishing terms this is called ‘the picket fence’. I spotted a gap, strode down to the tide and hurled my line across the three fishermen standing beside me. This was a gross breach of unspoken etiquette and would normally have me kicked off the beach. A voice behind me asked, ‘What are you fishing for?’ I replied with all the assurance of a rank amateur that I was after salmon. The voice continued, ‘And you’re doing this on trout gear? I’ve never heard of that before.’

  So I met Blanchy and started one of the most important friendships of my life.

  In the mid-winter of 1986, Jon, Alan and I went to the fishing hut to work on new programmes. We hoped the silence and the regular flow of the river would trigger new ideas. They didn’t. We spent most of the days eyeing a gin bottle and counting down to 5 pm. Jon was becoming restless and suggested we should catch some flounder. I said I didn’t have a flounder net. Then, Jon said, ‘But Blanchy does.’

  I was reluctant to use Blanchy’s without his permission. The Rangitata can be an unpredictable river. But there was no way of contacting him and Jon was becoming increasingly excited about the idea. He convinced me that with regular inspections and heavy weights, Blanchy’s net wouldn’t end up drifting past Caroline Bay. So, we set the net and caught some flounder. That night we laughed and joked about what might have happened had Blanchy’s net been swept out to sea, and then constructed a fictional letter.

  It described how an eel got into the net and started to make it move. We added some ploughshares but they didn’t help. So, we tied the net to his trail bike and that began sliding into the water as well. Desperately, we tied the net to his jetboat, his four-wheel drive and finally his bach. Much to our horror the bach came off its piles and was hauled into the lagoon. The letter ended, ‘Last Thursday, a Japanese squid boat picked up your net. Sadly there was no sign of the eel, the ploughshares, the trail bike, the jetboat or the four-wheel drive. Not to mention your once well-appointed holiday home. But they did find a small flounder. We think it’s only right, Blanchy, that you should have it.’

  Jon and I had caught a small flounder and when we returned to Christchurch we put the letter and the fish in an envelope and shoved it into Blanchy’s letter box.

  A year later I told the producer of McPhail and Gadsby, John Lye, about this story. He smiled and said, ‘You know that wouldn’t make a bad idea for a television series.’ That was the start of Letter to Blanchy, a series that had a roller-coaster ride. It was accepted and rejected more times than I can remember. It was flattened by the critics and loved by the audience whose lives it reflected.

  Letter to Blanchy was unashamedly small town. Barry, Derek and Ray lived in place modelled on Ashburton. They drove clapped-out cars, caught fish, blew up shingle-banks, got hopelessly lost on shooting trips and constantly made fools of themselves in the company of more sensible people. Most people could instantly identify an uncle or distant cousin in their family with similar faults. Their stories had an authenticity because they were true. Many of the scripts were based on the real experiences of Blanchy himself. Others came from Jon’s life. We never had to make up an episode. The stories were so true they told themselves.

  Before the programme was commissioned we were required to make a pilot. We based this on the original letter. John Lye decided to shoot the episode at the Rangitata huts. So, for a week a crew of 20 lived in the baches surrounding ours. Anne and Jan Blanchfield agreed to cater and our bach became the canteen as well as a location for several interior scenes. With John directing, and Ron Madden as the director of photography and camera operator, we set about reconstructing the destruction of Blanchy’s property. My friend Johnny Wilkie supplied the eel and an old four-wheel drive. We used Blanchy’s trail bike and jetboat and the set department built a remarkably authentic fishing hut that could be pulled by a tractor.

  The production had a rough, pioneering feeling about it that I liked. The actors and the crew lived and worked together and my friends at Rangitata were closely involved in the shooting. What was equally important was the growing feeling that the idea was working because it was funny. The moment I saw the bach being hauled off its piles and plunging into the lagoon, Letter to Blanchy was the only show I wanted to make. My one disappointment was we never screened the pilot show.

  It was a complicated programme to produce. The show was shot almost entirely on location over the course of five days. At the same time, most of the episodes required elaborate props such as three-wheel farm bikes, concrete trucks and in one case a bulldozer that had to end up in a river. In the opening hour-long special, a jetboat, allegedly being driven by Jon’s character Barry, was to race down a river, make a wrong turn, skid at speed out of the water and then slide 30 metres along a shingle-bank. The only way the design crew could make this happen was to dig a long trench, line it with plywood and then cover the wood with buckets of soap flakes. The result looked spectacular, but what was even more astonishing was that Jon, Peter and I were actually in the boat as it made the perilous manoeuvre.

  Today, the scene could not be filmed unless three stuntmen performed the risky act. But, during the years of Letter to Blanchy we did all our own tricks. So, when a tree stump had to be blown up, we blew it up. If two characters were required to speed erratically along a shingle-bar on three-wheel bikes, then Jon and Peter jumped on and roared away. I spent four hours up to my neck in freezing water for one scene and in another episode was hit by a deluge of fake concrete as I sat innocently in a long drop.

  In over 30 programmes Barry, Ray and Derek hit water mains with pick axes, chased crazed heifers through crashing glass houses and left a trail of holes across the landscape through the ill-advised use of gelignite. Letter to Blanchy went on to become a book and, 18 months ago, a play. I still consider some scenes from the show contain the best work Jon, Peter and I have done in our differing careers.

  Chapter 22

  ALLEGATIONS, INNUENDOS AND VIDEOTAPE

  Here are two names: WR Jackson and MR Good. They are not inspirational names. You wouldn’t hack your way through a sweatin
g jungle, slashing at vile pythons, simply because MR Good said, ‘Follow me.’ Yet, for five months these two men ruled and might have destroyed my life.

  In 1982, I was juggling things. I was a television producer, working with my friend John Lye on a show called That’s Country. This meant I had to endure the one form of music, apart from Barbra Streisand songs, I most despised in life — country and western. The sound of a steel guitar, to me, is like long fingernails scratching a blackboard for eternity. At the same time I was the producer, writer and performer in McPhail and Gadsby.

  This unusual mixture of jobs was a hangover from the days of A Week of It. There was no formal relationship with what had become Television New Zealand (TVNZ), simply a tacit recognition that while I was described and employed as a producer, I also wrote and acted in one of my productions. I was scrupulous in handling the affairs of McPhail and Gadsby because, in the early days, I was technically employing myself. I was paid a producer’s salary and received the same amount as Jon and Alan for writing the show. I was not paid for appearing in the programme.

  TVNZ executives were fully aware of this, but hardly anyone else knew about my unique relationship with my employers. It might have been better, for me, if a lot more people had known.

  There was a growing demand for Jon and me to make live appearances both here and in Australia, so we entered into a commercial and ultimately ill-fated association with Trevor Spitz. We had both known Trevor for several years and liked his bluff personality. He’d learnt his entrepreneurial skills from the great showman Phil Warren and his knowledge and experience in the entertainment industry were impressive. Trevor became our manager. He was responsible for any work we undertook outside television. He was never involved in our contracts with TVNZ.

  To formalise our new relationship we formed a company and called it Comico. Again, this was all known to TVNZ executives. I was determined that my activities outside the corporation would be transparent.

  That’s Country started in 1980. Trevor had a long association with the show and its predecessor, Touch of Country. He worked under a variety of titles: at first he was the talent co-ordinator dealing with musicians who’d been selected by the producers. Later he became the production co-ordinator. Then, he was given the curious title of co-producer. No such position existed in television and there was some resentment among other producers about Trevor’s sudden rise to authority. The pique was finally quietened by re-titling Trevor an associate producer.

  But the petty displays of annoyance over what Trevor should be called masked a disquiet that was potentially more damaging than juggling titles. Trevor was also Suzanne Prentice’s manager and she was a regular performer on That’s Country. This association was widely known within the entertainment industry and while it might have raised doubts about Trevor’s impartiality, the producer and the head of entertainment were the final arbiters of what the show should do and who would appear on it.

  I never doubted Trevor’s ability nor his open-handed dealings with musicians and there was no evidence that Suzanne was being favoured. However, given my business association with Trevor, their relationship convinced me that my decision to make a clear distinction between the live performances and my television work was not only prudent but very sensible.

  John Lye was producing the sixth series of That’s Country at the beginning of 1983 and I would occasionally direct episodes for him. I became aware there were growing tensions between Trevor and a member of the band.

  At first, I put this down to their different personalities. Trevor had a reputation for being abrupt and sometimes pugnacious and I knew there was ill-disguised dislike for him among some members of the production crew. But bickering and sniping were so much a part of the television industry that I took little notice. We were there to make television programmes not close friends.

  Then I was shown a document that was circulating among performers on the show. In later circumstances this would be called a ‘note’ but a simple note does not include such menacing words as ‘in our opinion Mr Spitz should no longer be the producer of That’s Country and unless he is removed from the series we have no option but to withdraw our support for the show, and will not regrettably work on the next series.’ Nor does a note require the reader to sign at the bottom. It was a petition demanding that Trevor leave the show. Three people had signed it.

  I was the senior entertainment producer in Christchurch so I immediately contacted the head of entertainment, Tom Parkinson. We agreed this dispute could be damaging and while the petition had little support, the demands and threats could endanger the spirit of the That’s Country production. I asked one of the signatories to meet me. I told him it was not the job of a performer to choose the production staff and that TVNZ management had full confidence in Trevor.

  I undertook to monitor the programme to assure myself his allegations of favouritism were false and then offered two alternatives. He could publicly withdraw the petition and that would end the unpleasantness. However, if he planned to pursue the petition’s demands, he should resign from the series.

  The petition was not thrown in the rubbish bin and he did not resign. I wrote to him the following day saying TVNZ would not be employing him for the sixth series of That’s Country and advised him his contract would be paid out in full.

  One of the other signatories was harder to contact but I knew clearly he wasn’t happy. An article in The Christchurch Star repeated his extravagant allegations and hinted at dark secrets in the entertainment department. I tried without success to arrange a meeting. Two days had passed. The dismissal of one person and the publicity drive of another were now attracting national attention. Finally, I spoke to the other unhappy person on the telephone. I asked him to meet me. He started making conditions. I replied he wasn’t really in a position to set down regulations for meetings and then the conversation became hostile. I repeated the alternatives I’d given to the first signatory and these were rejected emphatically.

  In that case I told the second signatory I would end his contract. He warned me that such an action would cause ‘a heap of trouble’. I thanked him for the advice and informed him a letter confirming the termination would be posted the next day.

  The following morning as I was drafting the letter, the subject of the letter was also communicating his feelings about That’s Country. He telephoned the programme’s Nashville agent. He identified himself and left this message. ‘I am a member of Actors Equity and also the CMA of America. I am calling you at 11.50 am on Saturday 5 March. I am the second artist to be dismissed and the co-founder of this particular series of That’s Country. The show has now been declared “Black” by Actors Equity of New Zealand and no US artists are welcome at this stage.’

  The only things that were correct in the message were his name, the fact that he’d been sacked and the time. If, as later claimed, he had no intention of disrupting That’s Country he chose a most peculiar way of showing it.

  The whole rather tawdry affair might have ended at that moment, but there were many people who harboured resentment, nursed envy and encouraged dislike. This was the perfect opportunity for them to retaliate. The first to do so was Jonathan Hunt, Labour’s shadow minister of broadcasting. I was advised by friends that I should listen to Parliament. I heard my name and almost in the following breath Hunt went on to denounce the ‘rotten apples in the barrel’.

  I don’t remember much more of Hunt’s speech but I do remember the moment. It was the day after my mother died. Hunt claimed he had a file alleging improper, outrageous behaviour and he demanded the culprits be brought to account. From the dismissal of two petulant performers the whole affair had escalated into a scandal of towering proportions. There were breathless suggestions of financial skullduggery in the entertainment department and veiled allegations of unspecified dishonesty. Right in the middle was David McPhail.

  TVNZ was not slow to react. The chairman of the corporation, Ian Cross, ordered an investigation in
to the entertainment department. Three senior executives were appointed to run the investigation and television staff invited, under terms of strict anonymity, to tell what they knew. I was well aware there were people posing as my colleagues who would relish the chance to release their built-up spite.

  The report of the inquiry was presented to the corporation in July 1983. Its contents were secret. There was a strenuous effort to protect the names of those who’d made allegations and an equally vigorous campaign to deny those who’d been accused the chance to discover what had been alleged. It was a kangaroo court the Australians might have envied. It was also a ham-fisted attempt to push the whole business into an unmarked filing cabinet. As subsequent events revealed, the administrative shortcomings had very little to do with That’s Country.

  Again, the affair might have finished then. The bombastic pronouncements of Jonathan Hunt were nonsense. They were later described as being ‘of little or no use’.

  The revelations of another member of Parliament, the subsequently disgraced John Kirk, were dismissed as valueless. But one person would not allow the dust to settle. For years he’d adopted a pugilist’s approach to television.

  He loathed certain interviewers and regarded Television New Zealand as simply occupying another seat on the Opposition back-benches. He was Robert Muldoon. This was a good moment for him to exert his authority and slap a few faces. He ordered a Commission of Inquiry.