Peter Jackson: A Film-Maker's Journey

by Brian Sibley

  ‘So thanks again for the faith you have shown in me. I won’t let you down.’

  After signing off – ‘Kind regards, Pete Jackson’ – he added an engaging, and suitably tantalising, postscript: ‘If you liked the movie so far, then don’t go away. The best is still to come!’

  For a while, Bad Taste had a very different climax, featuring a chase scene on alien hover vehicles (this was 1985, so I was no doubt inspired by Return of the Jedi). I built this model of Craig and hover car at about half scale. Eventually the idea was scrapped and a new ending devised when the NZ Film Commission came onboard.

  Following Tony Hiles’ recommendation, Jim Booth began dripfeeding the continuing production of Bad Taste with a payment of $5,000 made from the director’s discretionary fund and therefore not requiring the approval of the full board of the Film Commission. Jim acquainted David Gascoigne with what he had done and, a little while later, mentioned that he was intending to advance another $5,000. This, as Jim was well aware, was bending the rules, which allowed the director to spend only a maximum of $5,000 per picture, as opposed to making repeated payments on the same project, which would normally have required approval by the board.

  ‘I was knowingly complicit,’ admits David, ‘because it was a case of Jim having a good idea – he was a great believer in (with capital letters) Having Good Ideas! – and I not only didn’t intervene, I gave him tacit encouragement. Today it would be different, but then we were inventing a system of film support as we went along.’

  As for Peter, he now reached an important decision about his future career:

  I decided that if Jim was going to be able to give me these payments, then the moment had finally come to start working on the film full-time. So, I went into the Film Commission and picked up the cheque – made out to WingNut Films – for $5,000. It was the most money I had seen in my life; the following day I handed in my notice at the Evening Post.

  I kept filming for the next six or seven months: I could only shoot at weekends because all my actors still had full-time jobs, but at least I was now able to build props, masks and two different scale-models of the Gear Homestead, which we had now decided was in fact the aliens’ spaceship and would have to take off at the end of the movie. Being able to devote all my time to the project meant that I was not only able to accelerate the schedule but also to step up the production values.

  Peter had been introduced to Cameron Chittock, a Christchurch model-maker and puppet-builder who was attempting to break into the film industry. Cameron flew up to Wellington, visited Peter at his home in Pukerua Bay and showed him examples of his work.

  Cameron was given a tour of the Peter Jackson workshop – a basement room that Peter and his father had dug out under the house and built by hand, and which Richard Taylor would later describe as ‘a Batman’s lair’! Cameron was staggered at the professionalism, and the sheer quantity, of the creations packed into the room, from Peter’s stop-motion puppets for The Valley through to the weapons, props and masks, which he had been building for Bad Taste. He also got his first glimpse of the film itself:

  ‘I loved it! It made me laugh: I’m not especially interested in horror movies or films with a lot of blood-and-guts, but I found Peter’s angle on the genre irresistible. The thing that really attracted me to him was his sense of humour and what you might call his outrageous behaviour on film – he had a rebellious streak in him and he attracted other rebels and provided the focus for a bunch of people in the film industry who were wanting to stir things up a bit!’

  Recognising Cameron as someone who was not only skilled but who shared his own passion for special effects, Peter offered him the job of being his special make-up effects assistant. ‘I moved to Wellington, ’ remembers Cameron, ‘and, within a few days, was working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week trying to keep up with Peter!’

  Cameron’s early recollections of Peter accord with those of many who knew him at this early stage of his career: ‘If you didn’t know him, you might have thought him quite shy with people, even withdrawn, but as soon as you put a camera in his hands or gave him a paintbrush or bottle of latex to work with, he became incredibly confident and self-assured.’

  Until he found accommodation of his own, Cameron lived with the Jackson family and has strong memories of Peter’s parents at this time when their son was embarking on his career as a professional film-maker: ‘The Jacksons were really delightful people. The moment you met them you realised that Peter had grown up with a very loving and hugely supportive home life. Mr Jackson was calm, warm and generous, a good-natured, jovial man whose company I really enjoyed. Mrs Jackson was very motherly, doing everything possible to make me feel at home and part of the family and clearly dedicated to supporting Peter, even though she couldn’t really relate to the weird movie he was busily making! Both parents were obviously happy that Peter had found what he wanted to do in life and were going to do everything they possibly could to help him achieve it.’

  As the story began to circulate about the little amateur film that had been three years in the making and was still being filmed, various people began lending their help: Costa Botes met an unpleasant death as an alien; Tony Hiles appeared as the shadowy controller of the antialien unit ‘Coldfinger’ (a reuse of the punning name from Peter’s early, uncompleted James Bond spoof); while Stephen Sinclair and Fran Walsh wielded hammers and paintbrushes on the construction of a scale replica of Gear Homestead.

  Two more friends of Stephen and Fran’s joined the increasingly expanding group that was now pushing Bad Taste towards completion. Bryce and Grant Campbell were brothers who worked with special effects gear. They were dragged off to watch the footage already shot which, says Bryce, ‘felt about two and half hours long’ but which had

  Around this time, Cameron Chittock had joined me and was very helpful in painting and building the alien bodies. I sculpted a new head, and baked the foam latex in Mum’s oven. I had to grind an inch off the mould so that it would fit.

  the most extraordinary moments: ‘There was an interminable gun battle that must have run for almost forty-five minutes, but then an amazing shot of somebody having the top of his head blown off that was so unbelievably convincing that it made you wonder whether the guy who’d filmed it was some sort of homicidal maniac!’

  In fact, Bryce and his brother took an immediate liking to Peter: ‘He was totally driven and somewhat reserved but, when you got to know him, you realised that he was this big, enthusiastic, superobsessed kid!’

  The Campbell brothers were soon involved giving practical assistance to the project: Grant blew up a car (and a sheep) while Bryce helped with rain and wind effects and had a near-death experience with the model of the Gear Homestead/alien spaceship. At the point when the house ‘blasted off,’ the model was lifted up on a crane and smoke had to pour out from beneath like a rocket taking off: ‘I had a smoke machine and Peter built a contraption using a rubbish bin that was intended to collect the smoke and feed it to various outlets within the model. Unfortunately, the pressure built up and the container exploded and a big piece of wood came swishing down on Peter and me like a helicopter blade. Fortunately it missed!’

  Reflecting on the support which people in the industry had shown towards Bad Taste, Tony Hiles wrote, ‘The response was extraordinarily gratifying and at either minimal or (usually) no charge we mustered labour, equipment and building sites…I think my colleagues supported the project because they saw it as…adventurous, risky, crazy, oddball, inventive, humorous and above all – fresh.

  ‘Certainly part of its freshness comes from its raw quality – the often amateurish camera-work is just the start – but I have always felt it is a film with great heart and great integrity. Whether you actually get off on spoof splatter and non sequitur ironic humour is irrelevant because there are a hell of a lot of people who do. It’s a risky film but that is one of its great strengths – it will, when complete, be appalling to some and brilliant to oth
ers but it will never be average or ordinary…’

  While new footage was being filmed to strengthen the story and deliver a dénouement, Peter was working with Jamie Selkirk on editing Bad Taste into shape. ‘It was a fun project to be involved with,’

  Cameron and I built a couple of smaller models of Gear Homestead for different shots. Here I am with the smaller models in front of the half-scale house. The filming of Bad Taste was entering its final days.

  My last day filming Bad Taste – it was actually a night shoot and we finished about 3am. We shot in some old farm buildings and there were no showers. I actually drove myself home – about two hours away – looking exactly like this. The whole way home I was praying that I wouldn’t get stopped by the police!

  says Jamie, ‘but who knew what would happen afterwards? Peter Jackson might go on to other things or he might just drop away. At the time, the impetus was simply to get the movie finished! Peter had a great deal of self-belief, but Bad Taste, as it then existed, was pretty rough round the edges so I took over the editing: tidying it up and tightening it up; showing Peter where it didn’t work, where things jarred or flagged and where continuity didn’t match.’

  After his first viewing of the film, Jamie had identified one or two places where the pacing would be improved if a shot could be extended for a few seconds. ‘I really needed to see what Peter had edited from the film, so I asked him if I could see his other material: the trims and out-takes, anything he had shot that wasn’t in the cut. He kept saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, they’re at home somewhere…I’ll bring them in.’ The following day, Peter arrived with a huge paper rubbishbag which he dumped on the floor. It was filled with a great mass of bits and pieces of twisted, tangled film, all stuck together with tape.’

  Jamie had the off-cuts and out-takes spliced together and assembled into a rough order, and rescued a number of useful bits and pieces from the jumble: ‘I felt that, being a splatter movie, we needed to push it along and that anything at all extraneous had to go. Peter often clung to shots that he wanted to use but which were holding up the film and, in a good-spirited way, I’d have to try and coax him into letting go of stuff that he really didn’t need.’

  Jamie Selkirk, who still edits Peter’s films, admits that not a lot has changed over the years: ‘Every movie I’ve ever cut for Peter has been too long – it’s just got trickier as the budgets have got bigger! Very often, Peter will write a scene in one line, such as “Minas Tirith – the battle begins…” One line on paper; fifteen minutes on film! And, no matter how much he shoots, he always cuts together all the scenes he’s shot before making any decisions about what finally stays and what goes. We’ve spent a lot of time cutting a lot of footage that I knew wouldn’t end up in the picture, but Peter’s feeling is that it must be put in first; it’s how he works, how he crafts a film.’

  Back in 1987, by the time it had been edited, Bad Taste had cost $17–18,000 of Peter’s money

  My cat Timmy poses with four years’ worth of Bad Taste film. This was the original negative, which I had stored under my bed. By the time we made our final prints of the movie, some reels were damaged by mould, which proved very difficult to remove. A couple of shots in the finished movie even have mould stains on them. Sometime soon I’ll do a digital clean-up of the movie and finally repair the damage from my sloppy storage!

  and $15,000 of Film Commission money, which Jim Booth contributed to the project in instalments. To complete post-production with a vocal soundtrack, effects and music and a blow-up of the 16mm film to a 35mm print was expected to cost in the region of a further $200,000. This was far too large a sum to be slipped to the film-maker out of some discretionary fund. ‘For that money,’ Jim told Peter, ‘you will have to screen the movie for the board of the Film Commission.’ It was another nerve-wracking experience, worse even than screening his raw footage for Jim Booth, because, if the board refused to approve the funding, then Bad Taste was unlikely to ever be completed.

  All the members of the Film Commission board were sitting there, seeing Bad Taste for the first time. This, of course, was Jim’s plan: show them the film in its most polished state; don’t let them see it in the state that he saw it in, but let them view it as a finished cut so that it feels more like a proper movie…

  David Gascoigne’s memory of meeting Peter the first time is of someone who was ‘pleasant, fun and imaginative but who also had a level of magical persuasiveness! I liked him but “liking” isn’t enough, I thought there was evidence of real ability.’

  Lindsay Shelton agrees: ‘Over the years, the question has often been asked, “How could the Film Commission have ever invested in a splatter movie?” Actually, it’s easily answered: they were backing talent; they took a look at what was on offer and decided that this was a talent that they wanted to assist. And they were right.’

  ‘They were a bit shocked by the footage,’ says Peter, ‘but I think they saw that there was a film there…’ As David Gascoigne recalls: ‘Seeing the footage was a cathartic experience! Of course some members were concerned or had reservations – being dependent on public money, the board had to consider how the film would be viewed on the political landscape, because if you offend too many politicians then you won’t get any more money and that hurts the industry. Happily, despite some nervousness, the board approved the post-production funding without significant dissension.’

  A major issue in post-production was the vocal performances of the cast. It was the view of some that ‘The Boys’ needed to be dubbed by professional actors and it was an issue that Peter had tackled in his original nineteen-page approach to the Film Commission:

  ‘If needs be, me and the others will go out and tape all the sound effects, use our voices and compose and record our own music (a couple of the guys are in bands) BUT I don’t really want to do that. The sound plays such an important part in this film (many times I’ve said to the others, “Don’t worry if it doesn’t look too great, the sound will carry it through,”) so I want to make sure that it is as best a job as can be done under the circumstances. I would like to hire two or three professional sound recordists and editors and I’d like to get professional actors to provide the voice characterisations…’

  In the event, Tony Hiles convinced everyone that The Boys should dub their own voices and, though initially a little apprehensive, they quickly mastered the technique and provided strong vocal performances that now seem an essential ingredient of the film’s ‘home made’ appeal. Only Lord Crumb, the head alien, who had been played by Doug Wren, one of Peter’s older colleagues at the Post and an amateur actor, was dubbed by a real actor, Peter Vere-Jones, a man with the fully rounded tones of an old-school thespian. Vere-Jones also served as voice-coach to The Boys, who treated the whole experience with characteristic level-headedness, especially any attempt to get them to open the vowels and enunciate correctly! Mercifully, The Boys (who refused to join the actors’ union) stayed completely themselves and the contrast that they provided to Vere-Jones’ plummy old alien is one of the joys of Bad Taste.

  Everyone was in agreement about the importance of finding the right film score for Bad Taste. At first, Peter had thought he might be able to incorporate numbers by his favourite group, The Beatles, and former work colleague and fellow fan, Ray Battersby, remembers Peter talking about using the group’s 1964 number, ‘I’ll Get You’ (‘So I’m telling you, my friend,/That I’ll get you, I’ll get you in the end,/Yes I will, I’ll get you in the end’) over the closing credits. Rights and permissions made this proposal impossible, although The Beatles did manage a ‘guest’ appearance in the film. When the ‘brain-dead’ Derek

  LEFT: As Jamie laboured away on the final edit, the cast had to rerecord all our dialogue. Here, Pete O’Herne and I try to match our lip movements from a few years earlier. Brent Burge did our final sound mix for Bad Taste. Recently, Brent did a brilliant job designing the gorilla vocal sounds for our King Kong movie.

  pursues the aliens in a b
izarre-looking saloon car with an ‘upper deck’ (having been adapted for a disabled driver), the passengers in the front seats are life-size cardboard cutouts, painted by Peter, of The Beatles in their ‘Sgt Pepper’ outfits.

  In Peter’s first letter to the Film Commission, he had written of his musical ambitions for the film: ‘Above all I want a good musical soundtrack. That is the most important thing of all. A soundtrack that carries the film along, smoothing over the rough bits, providing a mirror to what the people are seeing, amplifying the different moods the film contains. Mike and Terry (our two band members) may well be able to come up with something good: they play rock music, and one of my pet hates is a rock soundtrack. Mike had a go at some mood music with his electric guitar and various gizmos a couple of months ago, and it wasn’t bad, but I’d love a more orchestral-sounding score if I could get it. A good example of what I like are Brian May’s two Mad Max soundtracks – overly loud, overly dramatic.’

  The first that Wellington composer, Michelle Scullion, heard of the project was an intriguing telephone call: ‘Tony Hiles said that he was working on a project with a young guy who was making his first

  feature. All he said about it was that it was “unusual,” that it might be my kind of thing and suggested that I have a look. So, I had a look…’

  Tony and Peter screened half an hour of edited footage for Michelle on a Steenbeck machine in Jamie Selkirk’s editing suite. ‘That first ever meeting,’ says Michelle, ‘I remember lock, stock and barrel, clean as a whistle, clear as a bell! Peter had messy hair, quite a stammer and a certain coyness about him. The film was incredibly wacky and even though the acting wasn’t brilliant, it was honest and had an innocent “boys own adventure” charm.’