Peter Jackson: A Film-maker’s Journey

by Sibley, Brian

  Braindead was a proving ground not just for the director but also for Richard Taylor, who was responsible for the ‘creature and gore effects’. ‘The ambition of it was huge,’ says Richard. ‘When Braindead had originally gone into pre-production before its collapse, Peter had hired in an effects company from Australia who had designed and built various props and effects that never got used. When we came to work on the picture, following on from Meet the Feebles, Peter gave us complete control of the effects. It was a challenge: we didn’t use a single thing that had been made the first time around, but instead started anew and created everything completely from scratch.’

  There were pustulating wounds and errant body parts to be created and Selwyn the psychopathic baby in a candy-striped romper suit as well as miniature sets of period streets with model cars and trams. ‘We made phenomenal amounts of stuff,’ recalls Richard, ‘while at the same time learning a lot, which was great.’

  One challenge, as Richard explains, was the stop-frame animation required to bring the vicious rat-monkey to life: ‘Peter had experimented with animation in the films he made as a child but I’d never

  Another dream realised–to have a stop-motion creature appear in one of my films. Richard and I took turns animating a couple of shots each. The year after Braindead came out, the first computer-generated dinosaurs stomped into film history in Jurassic Park, and everything changed.

  stop-frame animated anything. Pete’s solution was to create live-action reference footage on which we could base the animation. So, using his Bolex camera, I filmed Pete acting out the role of the rat-monkey in the back garden of the house where he used to edit the films. We then got it transferred to video and had a video player next to the animation table so we could play it while we were animating: study the performance, analyse the movements frame-by-frame, and attempt to replicate them with the puppet. It was a few years before motion-capturing Gollum, but it worked really well.’

  For Peter and Richard, Braindead was the beginning of a professional partnership that would, eventually, help make The Lord of the Rings a consummate achievement in special effects and cinematic design. Jed Brophy has witnessed the relationship between Peter and Richard from Braindead onwards: ‘If Peter wants something, Richard will deliver the goods–even if he and his colleagues have to stay up twenty-four hours, day and night. What Richard has is the satisfaction of knowing that Peter will use what he has produced in a way that is the most exciting and dramatic.’

  ‘It is true,’ says Richard. ‘I’ve gone along with Peter’s every wish and Tania and I have had our company taken to the brink but we’ve always tried not to panic about the risks, because we trust Peter and the fact that he knows where he’s heading for and what he’s going to do. Somehow or other, he will always pull it off and it will be beautiful and successful. It is a testament to Peter’s ability to capture people’s imaginations and grab them up into his dreams. It’s something he’s incredibly good at. It is Pete’s train-set, but you’ve been asked along to help build some bushes or a station building or a level crossing; you have been invited to join in and play and, of course, you will because actually there’s nothing in the world you’d rather do…’

  The filming of Braindead was, as Peter describes it, ‘smooth sailing’ and ‘fairly uneventful’, although he acknowledges that the hardest aspect of the picture was the mounting carnage in the final reel and the bloodbath that attended it. When, in a desperate attempt to purge his home of an ever-increasing number of zombies, Lionel resorts to attacking them with a motor lawn mower, the flesh (offal and pork fat) and blood (maple syrup dyed with food colouring) really flew.

  The set for the hall and staircase where the zombie slaughter takes place was constructed with a floor raised three or four feet in order to allow for the operation of the puppet Baby Selwyn, as well as various zombiefied heads, limbs and organs. This feature proved useful in controlling the excessive flow of blood from the pumps that were used to create the eruptions of gore at five gallons a second. A hole was cut in the middle of the floor and, after each ‘take’, the blood was mopped down the hole into waiting buckets ready to be recycled.

  It got to the point where at the end of each day’s filming the blood and the stuff had flown around the set to such a degree that it was pointless even trying to clean it off, and anyway, we’d have to put it back there on the following day for continuity. So we just left it there and, day after day, we’d add more to the already existing layers of blood which got thicker and thicker. Eventually, the entire set was covered in congealed maple syrup to the extent that if you stood still for more than two or three seconds the soles of your shoes glued themselves to the floor!

  One of those who had to keep moving or get stuck was stills photographer Pierre Vinet, who recalls having to wash the blood-spattered filters of his camera after every single take.

  Pierre’s involvement had begun with a telephone call, as he remembers in his strong French-Canadian accent: ‘They asked me: “Have you heard that there is a man in New Zealand doing this blood thing who needs a photographer?” So I came and met Peter. And my first impression? Visual! This is a totally visual guy!’

  For Pierre–like his future wife, make-up supervisor Marjory Hamlin–Braindead was to be the beginning of a long association with Peter Jackson. On his first day on set, Peter’s instructions were very simple: ‘Shoot everything!’ Pierre did just that. ‘By the end of the first day, I went to Peter and said, “Guess how many rolls of film I shot? Ten rolls!” Someone with Peter said, “Ten rolls! You shouldn’t shoot more than two rolls a day. Ten is far too much!” But Peter said, “No, no, no! Ten rolls is good…It’s just about enough…”’

  By the end of Braindead, Pierre had shot more than 20,000 photographs, a figure that pales into insignificance when compared with the 150,000 he shot during the making of The Lord of the Rings– many of which have become iconic images of the trilogy, recognised throughout the world: ‘Every day I am working with Peter as a photographer brings some reward; all day long I am spoiled for visuals, but always, before the day is over, Peter gives me a surprise: The Grand Visual…The Shot…’

  One of Pierre’s fondest memories is of Peter’s mother arriving, as she had done on Meet the Feebles, with a batch of fresh-baked scones and then sitting down to watch the filming and knitting woollen hats for the crew with the word ‘Braindead’ incorporated into the pattern. Many of those who worked on Braindead still have those hats. ‘It was,’ says Pierre, ‘the best gift I have ever been given: it was given me by the director, but it was made by family.’

  Pierre’s other abiding memory of being on the bloodstained set of Braindead is the smell–something that Peter has also never forgotten.

  This is how we used to do things back then: if we needed a bunch of model cars I’d take the parts home at night and build them myself on my kitchen table. We had such tiny budgets, any savings would help. I also made the trams from scratch.

  Worse was the fact that, under the heat of the lights, the syrup gave off a sugary-sweet odour that would get in your hair and your clothes so that you’d go home stinking of it. In fact my overriding memory of Braindead is that maple syrup smell.

  The smell–not just of the fake blood, but also that of the fibreglassing process used to make zombie-parts–was one of the things that other users of Avalon Studios objected to about having Peter Jackson and his crew around the place. But there were also other disruptive and displeasing activities: Jed Brophy recalls the disquiet expressed by some of those using the canteen over having to share their meal breaks with a bunch of decomposing zombies; while Richard and Tania remember testing exploding heads by dropping them down one of the stairwells in the building. ‘The old timers,’ says Richard, ‘just couldn’t believe what we were doing to their building!’

  What they did to the building, albeit accidentally, was–as befits the nature of zombies–not pleasant…

  The people at Avalon Studios had no experien
ce of anyone making a horror film there! Unfortunately, we rather disgraced ourselves…During the lawn-mower massacre scene, the blood was being pumped furiously around and it sent great sprays of blood splattering up, beyond our set, onto the walls of the sound stage–and way too high for anyone to clean! People tell me that, to this day, the bloodstains are still there on the studio walls!

  The other mishap, which was also a bit unfortunate, concerned the carpets in the corridors at the studio. The make-up and wardrobe rooms and the green room for the zombie extras were located at the opposite end of the building from the sound stage. Between takes the zombies would be walking back and forth down nicely carpeted corridors dripping blood and gore as they went. By the time we were finished the carpet was completely trashed.

  Avalon demanded the carpeting be replaced; Jim Booth maintained that it was an insurance issue for the studio. As a result, there was for a while a residue of, literally, bad blood…

  Tim Balme and Jed Brophy between takes–I hope that Tim didn’t need to use the loo! Jed went on to portray a series of orcs in The Lord of the Rings movies.

  In the manner of the alien scenes in Bad Taste, the zombie extras included as many friends and relations as could be persuaded to get bloodied-up, among them was Bad Taste crew-member, Ken Hammon, and former Post colleague, Ray Battersby, who took Peter a magazine about The Beatles (at the time, the two men were talking about the possibility of making a TV documentary about The Beatles’ 1964 visit to New Zealand): ‘I remember watching him sit on set, in the middle of all the mayhem of preparing for a shot, reading the magazine with complete concentration as if he were in a personal cone of silence, locked off from the distractions of the activity around him.’

  It is an interesting observation and an indication of something that would later impress many who worked with Peter on The Lord of the Rings: his ability, amidst preparation for a complex scene, to focus his entire attention on some totally unrelated issue such as a line of script under review, a design detail requiring authorisation or a video of second-unit photography needing approval.

  Though no longer a key actor in his films, Peter managed a Hitchcockian appearance as the deranged assistant to Peter Vere-Jones’ undertaker. Others who gave cameo performances included Jim Booth in photographs, as Lionel’s late, lamented father; Fran Walsh as a horrified ‘Mother at Park’ witnessing Lionel trying to dispose of the fiendish baby Selwyn; Jamie Selkirk (with his son in a push-chair) as visitors to the zoo; Joan Jackson giving a squeal of disgust as Vera Cosgrove despatches the rat-monkey; and Tony Hiles in a scenestealing moment as a creepy zoo-keeper with a sensational tale of how rat-monkeys were used in witchcraft ceremonies in Sumatra and how they were descended from tree-monkeys that had been raped by rats from the slave ships!

  Peter had unsuccessfully tried to persuade David Schow to visit New Zealand and make a guest appearance, although he did achieve a notable coup in securing a cameo from one of his adolescent idols: the legendary Forrest J. Ackerman.

  ‘Forry’ (as Forrest was known to friends and fans alike) is a sci-fi and horror writer, editor, publisher and collector. One of Forry’s most renowned publications, Famous Monsters of Filmland had, for Peter, long been a source of information–and inspiration.

  Over the years, Forry had made numerous cameo appearances in the movies of film-makers who admired his contributions to chronicling and celebrating a popular, but critically neglected, art form.

  Forry’s cameo appearances became quite renowned particularly since he would always go on at length about them in his magazine!

  Apart from looking in on dozens of dubious B-pictures–Evil Spawn, Curse of the Queerwolf, Nudist Colony of the Dead–Forry popped up in a number of films directed by Joe Dante, among them The Howling, and several by John Landis, including an appearance as a zombie in the final frame of Michael Jackson’s music-video, Thriller.

  In June 1991, three months before shooting was due to begin on Braindead, the thirteenth New Zealand Science Fiction Convention was held in Wellington and was designated ‘Forrycon’ as a mark of respect to its guest of honour.

  One of my favourite people visited me in my tiny cottage during 1990: Forrest Ackerman, editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, which I’d avidly read since I was about 12 years old. One of Forry’s passions was collecting film props and he brought with him the original Pteranodon model from the 1933 King Kong. Here I’m holding the Pteranodon, with Forry holding my copy of the Famous Monsters cover that featured the exact same scene. I get goose bumps doing things like that. Years later, when Forry decided it was time to part with some of his collection, he kindly offered me his original Kong models. I’m now the custodian of them and hope to get them into a museum.

  I finally got a chance to meet and be photographed with Forry and with Willis O’Brien’s original model of the Pteranodon from King Kong, which he’d brought with him in his suitcase.

  He was only in Wellington for three or four days, but I invited him to my house and got to know him a little. I was thinking, ‘God, what a shame the timing didn’t work out so he could have had a cameo in Braindead…’ Then I thought that perhaps there was something we could shoot in advance and drop it into the film later, and what about the scene at the zoo…?

  When Lionel takes Paquita on a date to the zoo, his overbearing mother pursues and spies on the lovers until she is bitten by the rat-monkey

  Forry’s trip was sponsored by a local sci-fi convention, but I took the chance to fill another childhood ambition and have Forry do a cameo in one of my films. He had appeared in nearly 100 sci-fi or horror films over the years and would always feature his cameos in Famous Monsters. We were still a few months away from shooting Braindead, but I grabbed my Bad Taste Bolex camera and a roll of film and took Forry to the zoo to shoot some reaction shots I knew I could edit into the sequence we’d shoot there months later. This is him holding a copy of Famous Monsters of Filmland No. 1, which would have been out in 1957, the year Braindead was set. It was Forry’s own copy–I couldn’t afford to buy the expensive collector’s item.

  and begins her descent into zombiedom. Grabbing his Bolex camera and a reel of film, Peter kitted Forry out in an overcoat and trilby borrowed from his father, and drove to the zoo, where he bought two tickets so they could go in as ordinary members of the public. Once inside the gates, however, out came the camera…

  Forry had a copy of Famous Monsters of Filmland, No.1–the very first issue and very collectable!–so Peter posed him against a rail outside the lions’ cage, reading his magazine, and began filming: directing him to react as if hearing the mother scream when the ratmonkey bites her and snapping off a photo as the mother clubs the rat-monkey to death.

  In the middle of all this, a zoo official came striding up and demanded to know what I was doing filming in the zoo without permission. I told him it was for a home-movie, but he got really irate and was convinced that it was for some sort of professional movie–which actually, of course, it was!

  I remember being really embarrassed because there was Forry–this really famous guy–and there I was, involved in this big argument with an angry zoo manager. I can’t remember whether we got thrown out or we just upped and left, but it didn’t matter, because I’d already got the shots in the can and, eventually, used them in the movie.

  Peter has remained an admirer of Forrest Ackerman and on several of his later visits to Los Angeles he and David Schow would visit Forry at his house, with its famous street sign outside reading: ‘Horrorwood, Karloffornia’. Forry (of whom it was once said, ‘if he had not existed it would have been necessary to invent him’) has continued making cameo appearances despite, at the time of writing, approaching his ninetieth year. It is entirely fitting that one of them should have been in a Peter Jackson movie.

  Between the collapse and resurrection of Braindead, the American B-movie horror-meister, Roger Corman (who apparently never does title-searches because they cost too much!), had turned out a
low-low-budget film of the same name. There was, for a while, talk of renaming the Jackson film and someone came up with the engaging, alternative title Unstoppable Rot. Eventually, since Corman’s film had only received a limited theatrical release, Braindead opened in 1992 under its original title. Ironically, however, when it was released in the United States it would be blandly rechristened–without Peter’s knowledge or approval–Dead Alive.

  Over the next few years, the film amassed awards at film festivals in Rome, Montreal, Avoriaz and Sitges. In the New Zealand Film and Television Awards it scooped Best Film, Best Director, Best Male Performance (for Tim Balme), Best Screenplay and Best Contribution to Design for the special effects.

  Trailing some extraordinary reviews (a ‘necrophiliac’s wet dream’) and accompanied by a fluttering of flyers (‘a Love Story with Guts’ and ‘Laughter, Slaughter and Gore Galore’) Braindead went to Cannes and wowed the glitterati along the Croisette, while advertising ribbons

  Jim with two of our Braindead team, Michelle Turner and Nicola Olsen (above), at Cannes in 1992. These seemed like happy days at the time, but none of us knew what fate was about to dish up. Diana and I (below) celebrating Braindead’s first public screenings at Cannes.

  for the film, with which the New Zealand contingent decorated the palm trees, were quickly purloined by French youngsters to tie onto their scooters!

  Braindead was screened at The Olympia, where–nine years later –the Cannes crowd would get their first sneak peak at footage from The Fellowship of the Ring.