Insatiable Moon Interview   17 Oct 2010

On Monday 11 October 2010, New Zealand film The Insatiable Moon held its first London screening followed by a very lively Q&A session. NZNewsUK was invited two days later to interview Director Rosemary Riddell, novelist and scriptwriter Mike Riddell and leading actor Rawiri Paratene.

Joseph Hoye

Over a cup of dubious quality London coffee, we sat down in London’s Covent Garden and discussed The Insatiable Moon, its London screening, the eight year process of getting this film made and the loss of some major funding along the way.

Joseph Hoye: Pretty Woman and Sleepless in Seattle come to mind when discussing love stories. This is a film about love but it’s nothing like that style of film. Was there the intention to make this a film about love? Mike Riddell: It’s more about the nature of communal love rather than romantic love. The boarding house is a place of belonging for the men who live there. Bob, the boarding house manager has a rough as guts love for his charges.

 

And on the other side, it’s an exploration on the lack of communal love. I lived in Ponsonby when it went through the policy of so-called community care but it was releasing people into a society where there was no natural community. A lot of people got left to their own devices, except a few who headed to these houses and established their own kind of community.

Rawiri Paratene: In order for there to be community care there has to be a community.

Mike: Right. The language was there but in reality it was a cost-saving exercise to get people out of the institutions. There were some good motives as well and I wouldn’t want to go back to the old total institutionalization.

And the romance between Arthur and Margaret is part of Arthur’s journey and I guess it’s an exploration into what is madness. Margaret is going through her own period of fragility where normal choices are being transgressed. The romance fits in with Arthur and Margaret’s journey.

Rawiri: It’s certainly not a romance in terms of Sleepless in Seattle and Pretty Woman.

Rose Riddell: I think it’s certainly a difficult film to pigeon-hole and I like that, but I think some reviewers have struggled with which category they can put this into. It was never intended to be fit into any particular genre other than be a lovely, feel-good story. There’s the love story, the mental health aspect, there’s redemption, and all of those stories can touch people on different levels.

You pushed very hard to get this movie made. The New Zealand Film Commission refused to come to the party with funding, it took eight years to complete and it’s obviously very important to you. Why did you have the passion for it?

Mike: Probably for all three of us, we thought there was a story there to be made. It would have been a lot easier for it to have been made with a bit more support but when it came to the crisis point of losing the project altogether it was just sheer bloody mindedness, that we’d come so far and the understanding that there was a story there. We thought that if we could get this story to an audience, then they would share in that, but not everyone shared that belief.

Rawiri: It was a real… shame… that this film did not get the support from the New Zealand Film Commission and I say that reservedly. I think it’s a shame that the Film Commission doesn’t support a lot of movies, but I just couldn’t understand the reason why this one had such a strenuous time with the New Zealand Film Commission. I don’t know as much as Mike knows because I wasn’t a part of that journey but as a former Film Commission Deputy Chair, I don’t understand why this one didn’t get the support.

Rose: You could say that it came down to the fact that the Film Commission didn’t get it but there were points along the way of that eight year journey where some did get it and it seemed like it was on the road and that was what kept us going. Then it went through some rewrites and some international production and cast came on board and it was accused of being not New Zealand enough. So we pulled it back to just New Zealanders and it was quite inexplicable when the Film Commission fell through. But I think it did us a favour because it allowed us to make the film on our terms. We made it with the cast we wanted. We didn’t have anyone hovering over our shoulder during filming saying do it this way or don’t do it that way and I think that turned into a strength.

Rawiri: I sit on another board that gets its funds through the Film Commission so I’ve been pretty reserved about my comments about the Commission but I am incredibly disappointed with some of the processes and this came out in the Film Commission report but I think now that the Film Commission have an opportunity because it is a New Zealand film. It’s been made. It’s been released and it’s undertaking a journey and I think that the Film Commission has the opportunity to come in now and support it. I don’t think it’s too late.

There really is a responsibility for the Film Commission to support New Zealand made films… and this is a New Zealand made film. This is the first time I’ve spoken publicly on it, because I’ve been trying to work it all out, but the Film Commission still has the opportunity to come in and support it.

Mike: It’s a NZ story, it’s grown out of New Zealand, it’s a New Zealand cast, it’s a New Zealand production and it displays something of New Zealand to the world. The Deputy High Commissioner was there on Monday night and she was really keen to have it in a New Zealand Film festival next year here in London.

Rose: And she was very excited about the film. There was a fairly eclectic mix of people at Monday night’s screening, drawn from different walks of life, areas of the business community, New Zealanders, non-New Zealanders obviously, and to get the kind of feedback we got suggested that people here can get what is a quintessential New Zealand film. The accents haven’t put them off, the mental health story hasn’t put them off or any of the other sub-plots. They got it. That’s what we think the film has got – an international audience.

What would the $6 million you lost have meant to the film?Mike: Well, obviously the cast could have been paid full rates, the director and producers could have been paid, we could have offered accommodation to people who needed it. We might have had a little more equipment but then again we made a virtue out of necessity and took a very light approach in terms of equipment used. We did ask Tom Bersten (Director of Photography) about that and he has this philosophy of freebie film-making.

 

Rose: There was a shot in the church with lovely lighting and I asked him if we’d had the $6million, how much better would that shot have been? And he said “Oh, about 2 per cent”, because if you’ve got someone who knows their craft behind the camera then if you don’t have the dollys, cranes and all the accoutrements of film making you can still capture it without the need for all those extra things… sometimes. I think that the skill that Tom has, he did that.

Rawiri: I had a group of friends attend who I worked with at the Globe Theatre last year and one of the things that they loved about the film was all the idioms. One of the key things for them was the absolute New Zealand-ness of it, particularly Bob, who just strings them out. Plus the woman in the church with the cigarette and Digby the busker.

This might be a little controversial with Mike sitting here but Rawiri, you wanted to write the script. What would you have done differently?Rawiri: I didn’t want to write the script. I wanted to buy the rights to it with the thought of writing the script but I’m a lazy writer. I’m more an actor these days. I was quite happy not to write the script.

 

Mike: One of the things we should say was that after Ra expressed an interest in the role, we went up to Auckland and we spent a couple of days together and Ra gave me some of the best notes I’ve ever had of the script, which I’ve kept referring back to over the years through development because he has an innate sense of story. And in the shoot, Rosemary was happy for people to contribute.

Mike, looking back on the book, what was the process for writing? Was it organic or planned?

Mike: With any of my books, I have an idea of how they start and maybe how they end but in between that I just get into it and see how it all unfolds. And there’s that cliché that characters tend to take over, they unfold the story for you. This one was a little different because I’d known the person who it was based on, Arthur, but then it is all fictionalised. The problem for me is that I got half way through this story and reached a sticking point. So there’s about a year when I didn’t do any writing at all. I thought I’d lost the story but I guess something needed to happen in that time and when I came back to it I finished it off quite quickly after that.

Tell me about the directing, Rose. This was your first time as a feature director.

Rose: Well, I’ve worked in theatre as an actor and I’ve directed theatre and a short film before but never a feature. It really came out of necessity. I got the job after losing the international director and the money.

I guess there were two things that I brought to the film. One was an intimate knowledge of the story. I knew how I wanted it to look. Secondly, I think I know what works from an actor’s point of view. On the technical side, I was an absolute novice. That’s where Tom was a great help. But having cast people believing they really fitted the role, it was a matter of letting those actors bring out all that they could and enabling them to do that. It’s about hustling the actors. So yes, hugely inexperienced but necessity was the driver.

When you look at the film, can you see parts of your personality in it?Rose: Certainly in the humour I do. I put my stamp on some things but I wouldn’t like to say ‘A Rosemary Riddell Production’. I’d find that a bit arrogant. This is a story that so many people made possible and I just helped to bring it to birth.

 

Is that in part to do with the Kiwi ethos of not putting your hand up and saying ‘I’m fantastic’?Rawiri: Not really. Not in terms of film and film director. Certainly Boy is a film by Taika Waititi and Whale Rider is a film by Niki Caro. The role of a director is acknowledged in New Zealand as it is internationally. When you think of films, the directors are remembered and sometimes the stars, but not the writers. Film really is a director's medium but this was very different in the organic-ness or cooperative nature of the film. It was a breath of fresh air, to tell you the truth.

 

Mike: There was a huge generosity involved from everyone. It was a fragile production because of the budget. We really had to trust each other.

Rawiri: Major generosity from the Director, if I may add. I’ve been travelling around with Mike and Rose for some time now and Rose is incredibly self-effacing in terms of the role she did play on the set and she gives a lot of the credit to the actors themselves but the actors know that we need direction. Performances don’t just happen and without strong direction, you can have the best actors in the world and the film still won’t happen. And with the casting, big budget films have casting directors playing a big part, enabling the director to see the cream of the crop.

The Insatiable Moon was cast by the director, and beautifully cast..The other night I was paying attention to the Real Estate agent (Matt Chamberlain – Black Sheep) and he is beautifully cast. When he stands up in that community hall he has a whole different feel to him, a different aura to the majority of people in that hall. He stands out, confident in the world he moves in. He’s utterly believable. I have a theory that part of it is that Rose is a judge. She gets to deal with a wide range of people and has been a lawyer. Those experiences come through because it’s impeccably well cast, like the woman who stands up in the church with a cigarette (who happens to be a casting director for Shortland Street). The casting is no small achievement.

Rose: I think that says something about the range of ability there is in New Zealand. We have an astonishing wealth of acting talent that’s equal to anywhere in the world. Wonderful actors just waiting for great scripts to show what they can do. We lose so many overseas because they don’t get to showcase their talent at home.

So what do you want from this movie? What are you hoping for?Mike: We all have aspirations for this story. The reason you make it is because you want people to see it. We want the story to travel. Our experience has been that if audiences come, they love the film. The problem is getting audiences to the film because we don’t have a big budget to spend. We rely on word of mouth. I’d just like a lot of people to experience it. One of the by-lines that the New Zealand distributors have used is ‘a small film that might just change the world’ That would be great to aspire to that.

 

Rawiri: Great line!

Rose: I’d like to see those people who put money into this film repaid. People who invested in this during the project believed in it before it ever got to the screen. They believed in it on the strength of the story and what they were told about it. I really want to see people who have invested in it, people who have taken a deferment of their fees until the movie shows a return, I would like to see them honoured by making some money. That’s important to me.

Rawiri: I want the word of mouth to get going. It deserves bigger audiences than it’s getting back home at the moment. I want all of the things that Mike and Rose mentioned. I think it deserves to get into an A-list festival, which will help its life along. It’s a nice festival movie.

Rose: Just talking about the opening back home, it wasn’t great. It all depends on word of mouth, but we’ve had email now saying that the Bridgeway and Rialto cinemas in Auckland have had full houses, so maybe this is the first momentum. The other feedback we’ve been getting is that people are going back a second time and taking their friends with them.

Monday in the Q&A session went into racial issues. There was a gentleman asking about how the film depicts the plight of Maori and how that could be related to Black exploitation in general. Did you expect that?Rawiri: No, totally unexpected because the film doesn’t go into any of that. Other people were asking me afterwards ‘where did that question come from’? I didn’t feel hijacked but it didn’t relate to the film at all. It brought out the best politician in me, though.

 

And there was another gentleman who had issues with the laughter levels.Rawiri: Yes, that was different because it did come from the film. As he said, he’s a mental patient. It was extraordinary and I really felt for him because he genuinely felt that the film was making fun of him and his life. I know he’s not right. I know that the film is not poking fun at him but the fact of the matter is that for that one guy, for better or worse, felt that it was, so it certainly registered.

 

But I felt that his statement that the film was for cheap laughs, a money-spinner and was crap was an incredible gift for a Q&A because mostly Q&As are for ‘Darling, you’re beautiful, you’re the best!’ and stroking our genitals, so that to me was a real breath of fresh air. It was kind of like some moments in the film.

I thought we got through it ok. It could have got out of hand and he could have been kicked out. Pip, the facilitator handled it well and the audience received it well. I was having a beer afterwards with some of my friends and they’re all actors and one in particular was saying ‘wow, you couldn’t have cast it better. That was by far the best Q&A I’ve been to’.

I spoke on the night about storytelling and you might be the most gifted storyteller in the world but it doesn’t mean that everyone is going to like your stories. I tell stories to my grandkids. Some of them hang on my every word, some of them find me a boring old fart. That’s the reality. ‘Hurry up, Koro, I want to go outside. This is boring.’

You've probably been to countless Q&A sessions. What are the questions that you enjoy answering?Mike: The ones no one has asked before.

 

Rose: I quite enjoy the questions that ask me to reflect and make comparisons on being a judge because I get very little opportunity, in fact no opportunity to speak publicly and nor should I but this does give me an opportunity to reflect on mental health, or lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key mentality of New Zealand, so I need to tread a bit warily but I enjoy the questions that allow me to… stray into that territory.

Thanks so much for talking with the three of you. It's been a real pleasure. Last words. What would you say to our UK readers?Mike: Go to the movie!

 

Rose: I’d like to say two things. First, if they’re intrigued by the film, then tell to tell their rellies and friends back home to go see it. And also, when it comes out in January in the UK, put it on your ‘must do’ list.

Rawiri: I just hope that when the New Zealander in them hears that it’s a New Zealand film, that they’ll just want to see it and support it because that’s what New Zealanders do.

Mike: What they said.

With a round of laughter in response to Mike’s answer, the interview was over. The coffee wasn’t the best but the company made up for it. Mike, Rose and Rawiri moved on to their next engagement, leaving me to muse on how such a great little film as The Insatiable Moon could have been overlooked in the funding stakes and hoping that audience reaction will soon make up for it. So, whether you’re in the UK or New Zealand, make sure you get to a screening as soon as you can to repay a little bit of the faith that these gutsy film makers placed in their story.

Insatiable Moon Review

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left by luke hurley 22 Oct 2010

Its the Gone With The Wind of mental health.

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