by Brian Sibley
When I first knew Richard and Tania they were making puppets in a one-bedroom basement flat full of toxic fumes! Then, when he started working on my films, Richard became an itinerant: constantly having to work out of different premises and, every time we would go on to a new film, having to shift all his stuff to some other workshop or rented space.
Eventually, a group of us who’d been working together–Richard Taylor, Tania Rodger, Jamie Selkirk, George Port, Jim Booth and myself –decided it was time to join forces, consolidate our talents and form a special effects company that could work on my movies as well as other people’s. After Heavenly Creatures, it felt like a good time to do it.
Jim Booth bought a shelf-company called Firefly, although it was soon to be re-named after a rather different bug–the weta. Known
We were lucky to get one of the rare native New Zealand unicorns for a brief, dream-like sequence in Heavenly Creatures.
by the Maori as ‘wetapunga’, or ‘God of ugly things’ (or as Richard Taylor prefers, ‘New Zealand’s coolest little monster!’), the weta is a highly resilient insect.
Wetas are capable of considerable growth (the giant weta has been known to grow to be three times heavier than a mouse) and possess a matchless survival record, having been around, virtually unchanged, for some 100 million years. Worthy attributes for any aspiring company!
Various accounts of the naming process exist ranging from the likely ‘because we couldn’t think of anything else’ to the probable post-rationalisation that it was an acronym of ‘WingNut Effects and Technical Allusions’.
A company, a mission and (however it was arrived at) a name– what Weta didn’t have were premises out of which to operate. ‘We spent several months,’ recalls Richard, ‘looking at different, potential sites. It was fun looking but it is actually frightening to think of some of the places we looked at. There was an old police barracks, a disused food warehouse and a former bacon factory! Most of them were completely inadequate.’
Exactly who finally found the premises on Weka Street, Miramar, is open to debate. Richard and Tania remember noticing that the building was up for sale while cycling past it on their way to the nearby garden centre, while Peter’s recollection is that he was driving past in his car and spotted the ‘For Sale’ board outside. Whoever saw it first, it was to become the home of the now world-famous Weta Workshop…
No. 1 Weka Street had, as Richard explains, a fascinating, if chequered history: ‘Originally, it was an aquatic fun-park with a huge swimming pool and water-slides; then, at the turn of the century, it was filled in and turned into a mental institution: an ugly, spartan place with tarmac floors and open beams. During World War II, it became a hospital for the families of American GIs; after which it became, first of all, an industrial unit turning out Exide batteries, then a pharmaceutical factory making Vaseline and talcum powder. And then, finally, we bought it and turned it back into an asylum!’
After these myriad uses and years of abandonment, the building was in an appalling condition, but it had plenty of space and great potential. ‘We expected it to be completely out of our price range,’ remembers Tania, ‘but, because it had been neglected for such a long time, it turned out to be a feasible option and that was when the real sense of excitement started! Richard adds, ‘We loved it, and from the moment we walked in we knew that we could do great things there!’
The one sadness was that Jim Booth was, by now, too ill to visit the building. Instead, Peter videotaped a tour and took it to Jim and Sue’s home and showed it to the man whose help and encouragement had done so much to bring Peter, and his associates, to that point in time.
While Heavenly Creatures was in post-production, Peter and Fran, as was by now their habit, had started work on another project; although, on this occasion, the initiative had come from elsewhere. Sometime in 1992, Peter’s agent, Ken Kamins, heard on the Hollywood grapevine that Robert Zemeckis was looking for a movie script. Zemeckis, who had directed Romancing the Stone, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the three Back to the Future movies, was also an executive producer, and occasional director, of the TV series, Tales from the Crypt, based on the famous–infamous–Fifties comic book.
Bill Gaines had launched EC Comics’ legendary Tales from the Crypt in 1950 to the joy and delight of all right-minded horror and fantasy fans and to the disgust and loathing of all wrong-minded guardians of public morality! The puritans’ hatred of the magazine’s resident storyteller, the Crypt Keeper, and his chilling (and often ludicrously gory) tales of morgues and mausoleums, zombies, vampires, ghosts and ghouls contributed to the establishing of the Comics Code Authority, which banned titles using words such as ‘horror’, ‘terror’ and ‘weird’. Bill Gaines, defeated by city hall, folded Tales from the Crypt and concentrated his efforts on the less shocking (but still irreverent) Mad magazine.
After languishing for years only in the memories of devoted fanatics, the original Tales from the Crypt comics were rediscovered and reprinted as collector’s editions, winning a new generation of fans, including Peter Jackson, who was even known to occasionally sport a Tales from the Crypt t-shirt. In 1989, the Crypt Keeper’s tales were brought to television by an extraordinary raft of talent including directors Zemeckis, Richard Donner, John Frankenheimer and Tobe Hooper and a cast-list that included Christopher Reeve, Brooke Shields, Tom Hanks, Dan Ackroyd, Tim Roth, John Astin, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael J. Fox, Yvonne de Carlo, Bob Hoskins, John Rhys-Davis and Brad Dourif.
Following the Tales from the Crypt TV series, there was talk of a possible motion-picture spin-off with Zemeckis and others each directing a low-budget, genre movie with Crypt-style stories. Ken Kamins told Peter that Zemeckis needed a script and asked whether he happened to have any likely story ideas. Of course he did!
It was an idea that I’d had some time before and which Fran and I had been kicking about and it concerned a guy who advertises himself as being a psychic investigator, a ghost-buster who, for a fee, rids haunted houses of their spooks. It is obvious that he’s a charlatan. But then the twist is that while he is a charlatan, he is also a genuine psychic who is sending ghosts into people’s homes to scare the hell out of them and then earning his money by getting rid of them again!
Ken Kamins passed a three-page outline to Zemeckis, who asked to meet with Peter. As Braindead was to have a midnight screening at the Sundance Festival in January 1993, it was agreed that Peter and Fran would fly on afterwards to Los Angeles. Over lunch in Santa Monica, they pitched the idea to Zemeckis, who liked both them and their story and asked them to write a script. Peter explained that they couldn’t start writing immediately since he was then only weeks away from beginning the shoot on Heavenly Creatures.
Until that point, according to Ken Kamins, Zemeckis was unaware that Peter was also a director, but was anyway happy to wait for the script since he was also about to direct a movie: a picture with Tom Hanks called Forrest Gump. ‘When you’re done,’ he told Peter, ‘give me the script and we’ll hook up.’
So, while Heavenly Creatures was being cut, Peter and Fran began work on the script, which was to be called The Frighteners.
Fired by Peter’s inexhaustible energy and enthusiasm, encouraged by Fran and steered by Jim Booth, WingNut Films were also planning for the future. Towards the end of 1993, earnings on Braindead were heading for NZ$3,000,000 and Peter was able to say with complete confidence, ‘I have reached the point that my films can attain good prices based on my name.’ Those films may not have been ‘mainstream movies’ but they had undeniably made a name for themselves –and for their director.
It was now becoming increasingly obvious to the world what Jim had seen in the raw footage of Bad Taste: that Peter had an exceptional future ahead of him. Having a Hollywood lawyer and agent helped and, even before Heavenly Creatures was finally edited, word was out and a Hollywood studio was interested in getting involved in its distribution.
Miramax Films, the company founded in 1979 by brothers
Robert (Bob) and Harvey Weinstein–and named for their parents Miriam (‘Mira’) and Max–became rapidly successful at distributing independent, foreign and art-house films that were not rated as commercially viable by the major studios, such as Merchant Ivory’s Mr and Mrs Bridge, Tim Robbins’ Bob Roberts and the Whoopi Goldberg picture Sarafina!, as well as re-releases of a diverse backlist of titles, among them Belle de Jour, Apocalypse Now and A Hard Day’s Night.
In 1993, the Walt Disney Company bought Miramax, on a price tag of around US$75 million, in a deal which left the Weinstein brothers running the show but with Disney having the power of veto over their releases. Despite issues between the companies over controversial titles such as Priest, Miramax notched up an impressive hit list that included such diverse pictures as My Left Foot, Sex, Lies and Videotape, Muriel’s Wedding, Bullets Over Broadway, The Crying Game and Pulp Fiction.
The quest to find new talent to be corralled in the Miramax stable was unceasing and global. As former executive Tony Safford told the New York Times: ‘We went to work with passports in our bags. We didn’t know where we’d be going that day. That’s not hyperbole, that’s how it was.’
For David Linde, then Miramax’s senior Vice President of Acquisitions, the trip one day was to Wellington, New Zealand to view an early cut of Heavenly Creatures. Liking what he saw, Linde bought the distribution rights for the United States and later negotiated a deal with Hanno Huth of Senator Films, who had co-financed the movie with the Film Commission, to acquire various European rights in the film for Miramax; subsequently he also bought the New Zealand and Australian rights from the Commission.
Jim Booth must have relished the rich irony of seeing a director whose movies the New Zealand Film Commission had frequently been embarrassed about having to distribute, suddenly being courted by a major Hollywood player. Indeed, Linde’s colleague, Tony Safford assured WingNut that they had ‘a home at Miramax’.
Apart from the interest being shown by Miramax, Hanno Huth was so encouraged by the success of Braindead in Germany and by the way in which the edit of Heavenly Creatures was coming together an offer that he made to co-finance a package of WingNut films.
‘It was time to use the ‘Peter Jackson’ name and his growing reputation to do two things: advance and consolidate Peter’s personal career and, by association, assist the careers of other New Zealand film-makers. As Jim Booth explained in writing to the New Zealand Film Commission, it was time for vision.
‘WingNut Films has now established itself as a regular producer of quality New Zealand films. We have achieved that very hard thing: making proudly Kiwi films that work well in both the national and international marketplace.
‘We have always felt a strong commercial responsibility and have done as much as we could to ensure our film return the NZFC’s investment. In the very near future, every cent of the approx $5.5 million the NZFC has invested in four WingNut feature films will have been returned with what we hope will be a decent profit. It is a record we are proud of.
‘The question is: Where to from here? WingNut Films has achieved all this based on the movies directed by Peter and produced by Jim. However, to continue using WingNut Films just to make Peter’s films seems to be limiting our potential and is not taking full advantage of all our international contacts.
‘We have amassed a lot of experience in film production and, more importantly, in script writing. Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson are now establishing themselves as a writing team with good credentials. It is WingNut’s intention to start to use this production and script writing experience to help other New Zealand directors. We do not intend to invite an open cattle call of projects or scripts.
‘WingNut’s plan is that the scripts will be co-written by Fran and Peter. Sometimes they will work with the director, sometimes the director will not become involved until after the first draft. The director will be handpicked by WingNut to suit the script–or the script will be handwritten to suit the director!’
Although the scheme, as outlined by Jim, would never materialise, WingNut had already taken one or two of tentative steps towards the vision of a Jackson-led consortium of talent.
In 1992, Jim and Peter had produced a fifteen-minute short, Valley of the Stereos, directed by George Port and co-written with Costa Botes. Made with minimal use of dialogue (which, one critic felt was, its ‘universal power’) the story concerns River, played by Feebles collaborator Danny Mulheron, who runs Tranquillity Records, a one-man outfit creating music from animal sounds recorded near his home–until, that is, the only other house in the vicinity is bought by a very noisy neighbour.
The following year, 1993, WingNut backed Jack Brown Genius, a first feature by Tony Hiles, the former TV director who had played an important role in helping Bad Taste realise its full tasteless potential! With Jim on board, and the Jackson–Bad Taste associations, it was almost a formality for the project to get the support of the Film Commission and Senator Films in Germany.
Jack Brown Genius was conceived as a whimsical romantic comedy with a wacky premise: Brother Elmer, a tenth-century monk who died whilst trying to prove the feasibility of man-powered flight, finds himself condemned to an eternity in hell as a suicide. Elmer has one hope of salvation: if, before 1,000 years have elapsed, he can persuade another mortal to convincingly prove his theory before God, his soul will be liberated and sent to heaven. Enter the story’s hero– nerdy inventor with a ruthless corporation–Jack Brown, genius.
Jim Booth had been a friend of Tony’s for many years, liked the story and offered to produce the film, suggesting using WingNut. He also suggested involving Peter and Fran to help with reviewing the script, a process that led to what Jim described as, ‘a total page-one rewrite’. So began what, for everyone involved, would ultimately become a chapter of life that they would rather forget…
But, in 1993, that was in the future. Other possible films under discussion included a thriller to be directed by Costa Botes as well as projects to be directed by Grant Campbell (of the Campbell brothers) and Harry Sinclair, later to become a successful director as well as appearing as Isildur in The Lord of the Rings.
Jim Booth’s proposition to the Film Commission concerning the future of WingNut accompanied a major application for financial investment in a Jackson project going under the enigmatic code-name Jamboree. It was the first use by Peter as a moniker borrowed from Merian C. Cooper who, in 1933, had used it to camouflage the fact that he was filming his King Kong sequel, Son of Kong.
Jamboree would later become famous as the shooting title for The Lord of the Rings, but in 1993 it was intended to conceal a sophisticated variation on the project formerly known as Bad Taste 2. It was, however, a considerably more ambitious and elaborate proposition than the one that had been floated the year before. In fact, Peter was asking for NZ$3.5million to match a similar investment by Hanno Huth.
The reason for the inflated budget and the imposition of secrecy was because the project was now not simply for a Bad Taste 2, but for a Bad Taste 2 and 3–the two films to be shot back-to-back, but with the second sequel only to be announced when the first one was released.
‘Why two sequels?’ asked Peter, before answering his own rhetorical question: ‘Because it’s harder…It gives me great freedom to develop an epic saga…It would be a lot of fun to have a second sequel following hard on the heels of the first…It makes economic sense to make Bad Taste 3 at the same time as Bad Taste 2…’ It was, after all, the way in which Robert Zemeckis had filmed Back to the Future II and III.
Peter next asked ‘Why do I want to make it at all?’ and his answers provide a fascinating pen-portrait of how he then viewed his talents and his future:
‘I want to make a couple of absolutely entertaining, fast-paced, funny action films that will delight and surprise audiences, break special effects boundaries and send fans of the first film into spasms of joy.
‘That’s the simple, most obvious answer; however, it does go deeper than t
hat. Why could I not make an entertaining, fast-paced, funny action film with completely new characters and story? Why return to something I left behind me over six years ago? There are several reasons…
‘I think of myself as a writer as well as director. I feel very comfortable with storytelling and story structure. I know that in the six years since Bad Taste was finished, my script-writing skills have vastly improved.
‘However, in that time I don’t feel I have made the same significant strides as director. Sure, my subsequent films have looked a lot flashier, had much more production value and tighter scripts and better performances, but I really feel that some of my favourite directing is still in Bad Taste. I see Jamboree as an opportunity to build on and improve my directing skills.
‘I am trying to create a rare opportunity for myself–one which in practice does not usually happen. Feature directors usually get locked into a pattern of bigger films, bigger budgets–a pattern which I myself have followed: Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, Braindead and Heavenly Creatures–all bigger than the last.
‘At this point in time, I want to break out of that pattern, return to a much simpler form of film-making. Bad Taste was my film school. In a very short space of time I taught myself everything I needed to know to enable me to make my subsequent films, but I still think I have a long way to go. I’m always learning, but with the pressures of a tight schedule and forty crewmembers standing around, there is little opportunity to try new things. I always punt for the same and sure.
‘Now, six years after Bad Taste, I want to return to my film school. I want to give myself the freedom I need to push myself and make significant advances as a director that will pay off in the years ahead.’