Not enough Mutch

Still tidying up a bit around Lindsay’s desk at the DomPost, and yesterday I found an envelope with three of the stories that won Lindsay a Qantas award when he was writing for the Timaru Herald.  This is the first of them.

Published in the Timaru Herald,  9/10/1999 under the heading:

Scintillating Scarfies – Director spot on with home-town movie

Scarfies is one of New Zealand’s most successful films. Its 15 prints have pulled more than $1 million from the country’s box offices in just two months. Timaru Herald reporter Lindsay Mutch spoke to director Robert Sarkies about the country’s film industry, learning the trade, and the importance of failure.

Robert Sarkies’ first movie cost $40. He has comparatively been doing more with less ever since.

But that will probably change with the success of his first feature, Scarfies, a comedy-thriller about the lives of some Otago University students.

Its images flickered across Timaru screens for the first time yesterday  - the print’s arrival delayed by its popularity elsewhere.

At the age of 10, Sarkies destroyed the model of a Dunedin building. Filming the event was the first addictive step on a long road of celluloid. At school he saved his lunch money to finance film projects and later won the Spot On film competition.

But a steep learning curve lay ahead. It was called Peter’s Story.

“It’s a forgotten film . . . and I’m doing my best to keep it that way, ” Sarkies laughed.

The 24-minute work examines a courier driver’s relationship with his son.

“It was really through the experience of making Peter’s Story that I realised you can’t make films that mean something solely for you. You have to make them for an audience, otherwise no-one will see them.”

But, he said, you learn more from failures than successes. A fact, fortunately, that Dunedin’s infant film industry could grasp. Forgiveness abounded.

Peter’s Story was a big project for the time. The city had not really seen anything like it and the young director received a reasonable amount of funding. Money entrusted to second-year varsity students.

“The great thing about making films in a place like Dunedin is that you have the room to fail. It’s a nurturing place. It has nurtured a lot of young musicians and was very nurturing to me as well.”

Sarkies and friends grew with each other in the film business, while nurturing their own business, Nightmare Productions (so named for various reasons). They stayed together for Scarfies, though more experience was called in where needed.

The mandate was to make the feature “our way”. It worked with the short films. There was no reason to change.

Scarfies was actually technically easier to make than 1996′s acclaimed short Signing Off –  a comedy about a 1950s DJ’s last day at work. It won a Silver Spike award at Spain’s Valladolid festival in 1997.

Scarfies, at 97 minutes, was shot in a real house and on a specially-built rooftop. Signing Off, at 15 minutes, had 18 locations around the city. The short took a month to shoot. Scarfies took six weeks.

Now with an all-important feature film under his belt, Sarkies is eyeing up his second. Something of similar length to the first, but with those Signing Off complexities.

Details of the new project are firmly under wraps, though it will probably be filmed in Dunedin too. There is immense support for the home-town lad, he can move cast and crew around easily, there is a diversity of scenery and the extras are not difficult to find or expensive.

“I know Dunedin because I’m from Dunedin. Audiences can spot a fraud a mile off. As a Dunedin film-maker who makes films in Dunedin, I am definitely not a fraud. But if I was making an Auckland nightclub epic I’m sure I would be spotted.”

Asked to describe the depth of the South Island’s movie infrastructure, Sarkies said simply: “There isn’t any.”

Film is a location medium and modern equipment is designed to be portable. So South Canterbury, for example, has the potential to attract film-makers. It needs just one thing.

“Stories.”

“I don’t think people make films in particular places because of anything but good stories.

“Certainly South Canterbury has all the scenery you could want for shooting commercials. But if you want to see a South Canterbury feature film someone needs to come up with a really strong, intrinsically South Canterbury story.

“It will happen. I’m sure of it. Hopefully Scarfies will make the idea of making films down south cool.”

If film-makers were coming to live in South Canterbury there would be more local films.

New Zealand has had a raft of city-based films recently. Most, including Scarfies, being low budget.

“We just decided to spend our low budget somewhere other than Auckland or Wellington.”

Now, at 32, the director struggles to explain his motivation for making films.

“Certainly the process of making films is painful . . . and horrible, and incredibly stressful. So the glamour of it doesn’t motivate me.”

But pleasing an audience does.

“That is what gives me most satisfaction  – sitting in a cinema and hearing an unbiased audience laugh is enough motivation for me to go on to the next one. It’s the biggest factor.”

He has joined Scarfies audiences more than 10 times. He has seen the film itself “a few too many times. I’m hoping not to see it anymore”.

There was satisfaction in having cynical buyers laughing in the right places at Cannes. But the real thrill was showing it to people who appreciated the subtleties and Kiwi-isms infused in the script.

“You can’t get any more satisfaction than screening the film in front of 1800 home-town supporters who are crying `Ota-a-a-go!’ before it starts.”

A similar cry signalled the Wellington premier.

“It’s great. People are really getting into the spirit of where the film comes from.”

If Scarfies achieves international success, Sarkies will take Peter Jackson’s initiative and remain in New Zealand. Bring Hollywood here rather than moving over there in the steps of such ex-pats as Roger Donaldson and Geoff Murphy.

“I don’t see any possibility in going to Hollywood as long as I can keep making films here and hopefully attract American money to New Zealand in the same way Peter has.”

Such a scheme is a long way off. But the dream is there.

“If Matrix can be made in Sydney and Lord of the Rings in Wellington. Then why can’t Lethal Weapon 8 be made in Dunedin?”

He hastens to add: “I’m not saying I want to make Lethal Weapon 8.”

For now he will push Scarfies. A film which, if not the cream of the Cannes crop, was certainly not lurking in the bottom three-quarters of the bottle. For Cannes had 600 movies shown and 300 premiered. The competition was enormous.

“In order to stick out you need either a marketing army or to adopt guerrilla tactics. We did the latter; generally by painting our faces and racing through the streets making idiots of ourselves. We did that to get the film noticed both in Cannes and back home.”

It worked. The bonus being that attention came not just from the marketing. Scarfies received excellent reviews.

The film has already sold to Germany and Spain, with smaller sales to Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium and various territories throughout Europe. It will be dubbed into the appropriate languages.

“Europe tends to buy films first. They’re prepared to take more risks and I guess are more interested in buying films from this part of the world.

“America buys films last. North America is a very difficult nut to crack. They want to see that your film can be successful everywhere else before they think of picking it up.”

Because of Scarfies’ success in New Zealand it will probably secure releases in the United Kingdom and Australia.

“It’s not Once Were Warriors or What Becomes of the Broken Hearted, but it surpassed what most New Zealand films do in their entire season in its first two days, so that’s a really good sign.”

One criticism doing the rounds was that former Otago University students do not feel Scarfies accurately portrays what life as a scarfie is actually like.

“That’s probably true, ” Sarkies conceded. “But it’s not a documentary.”

“Its audience goes well beyond ex-scarfies. Some of the reviews say it reflects the transition people go through from innocence to adult while they’re a scarfie.”

It has elements of scarfie life, “but it goes well beyond that. I think if we made a film that accurately reflected what it was like to be a scarfie then scarfies would have loved it and everyone else would have said `oh yeah, tell us something we don’t know’.”