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So we're standing on Wellington's waterfront. It's a beautiful, sunny summer's day and there are heaps of people around. Um, this was actually the place 100 years ago, or just over 100 years ago, where troops departed for World War One. it was also the place where troops departed for World War Two. And, um, I have with me will be who's just, uh, finished a movie. Uh, about, uh, a troop story in World War Two will be Can you tell me about it? So it's it's called Sparrow, and [00:00:30] it's a a short film, but it's based on a true story in New Zealand, but one that hasn't been documented. And it's about, uh, one of those those hidden areas, like desertion and suicide in war, but also about gay men in war. So those three areas are almost and visible in our story. So when you talk about people leaving here and coming back, even though those our people were there fighting in the war, they came back as heterosexual or nothing the way they're perceived. But similarly, if they [00:01:00] attempted to commit suicide or deserted, they were the The story was played right down, so it didn't interrupt the heroic narrative of the surviving, sacrificing soldier. So how did you come across the story? It's family. It's in the family. It's in the extended family. And, uh, I didn't realise I didn't actually realise that even existed. We used to. You know, my my great uncle used to march in the ANZAC parade with my my, uh, my cousin used to wear all these medals, and we always understood that this that the you know, that their [00:01:30] grandfather had, uh, had died in the war and he had died a hero saving soldiers. And he got all these medals and the family wore them in the parades. He didn't die in the war. He was brought back and put in a psychiatric institution because he attempted to desert. And so that's I mean, in the first World War, we were calling that shell shock today, we'd call it, um, post traumatic shock. But, uh, at that time in the first World War, we actually rendered that, so it was no longer a condition. So it became No, it was no longer a diagnosable [00:02:00] condition. So these men came back and they had there was nothing registered wrong with them. And so they either disappeared back into families. Uh, with chronic alcoholism unable to sleep, sometimes unable to walk properly, a lot of them committed suicide. Or they were put into psychiatric hospitals. But into the back wings, not in the front wings of hospital or so if they're in a public hospital, they the men with physical injuries were in the front wards, and the men with the psychological injuries were at the back where you didn't have to encounter them. [00:02:30] So what was it like? Uh, bringing a story to the screen, which was obviously so personal, so close to your own family. So I had to protect, uh, I had to protect the family for they they didn't want it as a documentary. And I can understand that a documentary is very invasive. Um, so II I decided to take a completely different approach. And I, I did it as the most beautiful poetic story I could tell about the most terrible, heartbreaking situation. So, you know, the core [00:03:00] of it was that he signed up with his mate and his, um they went when they were fighting in Egypt. There was a very poor commanding officer. These these men were lovers. It was understood and completely accepted by the other men who were fighting. Um, and when his mate was shot due to the bad um, um, commands of the officer that he he took off his uniform. So he stripped naked. So if you in in war, if you take off your uniform, you you technically desert. So he [00:03:30] stripped and then carried the body of his mate out into the gunfire. And he wasn't shot by the Germans in Egypt, but he came back with an injury in his back. So he was shot. He had to have been shot by the by the New Zealanders. And it's just showing at one little, tiny, tiny scene in the film. And you go, OK, so clearly it wasn't the Germans who shot him. So he was charged with desertion. But because he was they considered that he he was mentally unstable and that it had a kind of a meltdown. He was put in the psychiatric hospital, but [00:04:00] the the difficulty was that the family couldn't cope with the the shame of the story. So they invented another story around him and he died in the hospital. The family never came to see him. And all I had to go on was the letters that had written to his son asking him to come and see him. And in amongst those there were these pieces of story that I put together that I was able to piece together for for Sparrow. What was it like? The process of uncovering that story in relation to how your family dealt with this kind of, um, discovery. [00:04:30] Uncover. So it was just it. It's still silenced within the extended family. The story and I and I understand that. And that's why I I'm very careful about how much information I give away, because it's a kind of coming out. And if you know, if we're not ready to come out and people have got our story, then we have to treat that with respect. And I think that's one of the things I learned as a gay man is when you're approaching people's stories, they are the people who who should make the decision about how far out they come. So when they give you permission to do something, you have to work in parameters. [00:05:00] So, um, there's still much in the parades, and everything's still accepted. And the the film is done in such a way that it doesn't point the finger clearly at anybody. So, uh, so there's a passing parade of Wellington waterfront. So which a world away from war stories? Really? So, um, so you know, in as a filmmaker or any kind of storyteller when you have somebody else's story, you either can treat it very exploitive and and, uh, and create something of high impact [00:05:30] that's going to gather in audiences. And people are going to be able to play the voyeur on somebody's difficult story. Or conversely, you treat it, uh, with exquisite beauty and and delicacy. So it's the most light handed film I've ever made, and, um, and you watch it and it unfolds almost hypnotically. And then you understand, at the same time what a terrible, gut wrenching thing this is that's happening. And it doesn't have any spoken dialogue. It has only one tiny piece where the the so [00:06:00] it maps two stories together. It maps that story and a so this was part of the way. I kind of kind of hid the story. Um, it also takes the story of of my childhood where I I used to believe I could fly and I used to wear wings to school. And, uh, that's why that's a false tooth in the front that I got smacked out primary because of that. But but in the in his letters, he talks. So I used to feed the sparrows and think I was a sparrow. But in his letters he talked about the fact that the men found a sparrow and they kept it in the dugouts [00:06:30] and they fed it their rations. So I pushed those two stories together. That would it be if the boy discovered these letters and tried to make meaning of it, Tying his story of, um, thinking he's a sparrow and feeding sparrows and the the the the the his grandfather's story of, um, protecting a sparrow and the sparrow being the only way they could show love in this environment was the care of this bird and the bird bird. At the end of the film, we [00:07:00] see the bird back in the present and the I'm not gonna say how the film ends, but you'll see it's very delicately done. It's trying to weave those two things together in the publicity for the film. You're saying that you want to get this to the widest possible audience, and I'm wondering if you can talk about, um, making a rainbow themed film for a wider audience. Yes, So, I, I have this anxiety about feeding a ghetto that I because I don't think ghettos help us. Um, and while recently we've seen things like Moonlight [00:07:30] and God's Own Country, those films that we call them crossover. But I actually don't even think that I. I just think that, um, any film can explore the human condition, and it can choose to either treat it as light entertainment. Or it can ask profound questions and that people are interested in the human condition. The difficulty is with the film is that it doesn't do it in a very, um, it's not social realism. And so you've got a a subject that you expect to see handled like that handled very lyrically. [00:08:00] So it's done really well in festivals, not just the LGBT festivals. It's you know, it's been in Paris and Berlin had huge trouble getting an uptake. So it wasn't selected for the New Zealand Film Festival. And then when you see what's in there, it's a mile away, stylistically and I I mean, I understand all my work is kind of, um, a mile away. Stylistically, perhaps, But you know, and I don't begrudge that I just understand that you, when you're making stories that sit outside of the the expected frame, you're [00:08:30] going to have to work a little harder to get those stories taken up or you have to search to find those places. But once they get, once it starts rolling, then you're fine. But but I thought that's what film festivals were all about, presenting stuff that you wouldn't necessarily see in a normal week. So film festivals are interesting because they all have a kind of a personality. They have very diverse personalities, so but they also have to balance something that audiences that they have to predict an audience. So that and [00:09:00] I have I have nothing against the New Zealand film festival that brings in great films, but in the end you you have to make they have to make a call going. What is the ethos What is the spirit of our festival and what is the body of work that best exemplifies that and is going to get an audience so that, um so some LGBT festivals would would never pick Sparrow. But then lots of, um, uh, kind of films that are, uh, festivals that are interested in cinematic innovation. They pick it up. [00:09:30] So my my sense is just because something's new doesn't give it a ticket into a festival. You know, you've described your filmmaking process in the past as, um, kind of drawing out the stories. So not having a script and not necessarily having a storyboard. Can you tell me about that process? So this this film had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of drawings in it because I was wrestling with I was wrestling with. How do you take the profound and make it beautiful? And, um, so it took me a long time [00:10:00] to get there, and especially because I had to try and understand the texture of the emotion in it. And and you can't do that with words. And, uh, so the stories went through a lot of transitions, So if you, uh, the the pictures went through a lot of transitions. So in the end, I ended up with about four seminal images that I I recognised, as in the film. And they are actually created in the film. They those images actually appear there. So when he is shot, that is, there's actually a drawing of that which I don't normally use. Uh, images didactically. [00:10:30] I don't use them to kind of go. This is specifically what it was. The rest of them are finding the tone of the work, but they are around. Um, you know, they are around. I mean, we were shooting Egypt in a in a quarry in in the pouring rain. And although it doesn't look like that in the film, we were cutting channels in the mud to get rid of the rid of the water. But because you understand, you know, really understood what? This Hm. Uh, it's gonna sound strange what this mell and tasted like it was [00:11:00] quite easy to go. OK, so here we've got pouring rain in the quarry. This is the way we're gonna have to shoot it to get the taste that taste in the film. And I. I think it worked, and so quite a large cast. 70. So for a short film like this is like not a new normal New Zealand short film. So traditionally, I, I sometimes think New Zealand is a little conservative with the way it perceives short film it they normally go single narrative straight Arc one protagonist, 15 minutes, um, limited cast [00:11:30] limited budget and you create something like this and you go, Well, let's just forget all of that and go, How do we tell a profound story? So in this case, yep, 70 70. But I had AAA wonderful Robin Murphy who produced it. She was really good and we had amazing good will. So one of the lovely things is when you build a reputation in the country, even if you sit outside the mainstream the goodwill we had coming into it. So we had, you know, some of the country's best people just going look, we'll work for next to nothing, because we think [00:12:00] this is a story that should happen, so they're very humbling. But you you as a as it puts a burden on you because you you have to make it really good because it's the only way you can give back to these people for the generosity they've poured into the work. So it's not as if it's it's not an experiment. It's It's a a fulfilling of a dream, such that it lives up to what it says it could be. What about financing? Was it hard to get funding for this project? Oh, fuck, yes. So So we we took it twice to the film commission, [00:12:30] and both times they said no. Um, and that's fine. They've got a limited amount of stuff that they can fund. And, um, you know, I've never been funded by them. We've always had it either through Creative New Zealand or other areas in this one. we knew it was going to be quite hard film to get the subject sounded enticing. But when you saw the way it was going to be treated, it kind of put people off because they went well, it would be great if it was a do. And, um, so we we I I got some money for an award [00:13:00] academic award, and and so that gave me 20 grand. And then, uh, university gave me 10, and then we crowd funded And, uh, you know, I'm I was very new to crowd funding, and I actually I find it very exposing it. It's not a thing that I I like, but But I have to say that, uh, I understand now why it's so important because a lot of the art that gets made in New Zealand actually happens because of that and the generosity of people with that and the the phenomenal power of social [00:13:30] media, which was, you know, I don't even have a I don't have any social media presence such a private guy. But the film does And, um, yeah, so, so I, I realise. And now I I you know, I donate to things like boost it because I actually see that it's part of us, uh, feeding the lifeblood of the country because our funding agencies won't always move towards the more risky edge stuff. But it's that stuff that moves us culturally forward gets us telling stories that might that might add to the way we tell stories, rather [00:14:00] than play into the safe zone of another safe story that will get its audience that will get its money back. Or that approach. Do you think there is an element of homophobia? It's a Well, that's a really interesting question. So we're all supposed to say now that we're all post gay and everything's cool? Well, I think that's bollocks. I think it's far more difficult to discern it now. But I, I I'll give you an example that ran up to against recently when someone went, Oh, [00:14:30] well, we don't you know, we've already got a gay movie that's just come out and you go, Oh, so is there a head count for this? You know, no one goes. There's already a heterosexual movie out, but so So women. Um uh, ethnic minorities. Minorities face this a lot, but it's one of those. It's those kind of like New Century stuff that where something where where Rainbow pride and and the all the banks in New Zealand march in the pride parades and wave their flags and the gay men stand on the on the side and wave [00:15:00] and look at it. And but in fact, underneath that, on a deeper level, we've run the risk of becoming a tokenized tick to get a rainbow tick. We've become a thing to get on side to show how tolerant something is. So when we throw the word diversity around, I'm very suspicious of it because I think we've become a commode. Um, social. Uh um object. Almost. So I know this sounds a little uncharitable, so [00:15:30] it's a lot better than being, You know, I remember the early days of marching down Queen Street in parades of eight people and being spat at. It's a long way from there, but it hasn't gone. Fear is still fear and fear of difference is still fear of difference and a being accommodated because you are fashionable to be accommodated. I mean, I sometimes wonder if we didn't have the pink dollar. Whether we be where we are in reality, I mean, why are banks turning some assaults To be, um, to show how loyal they are? That doesn't actually happen because of a social conscience [00:16:00] and then moving on from the the the funding issues. What about getting people to actually act in a gay themed, uh, film or actually being part of it? What did did you have any challenges there? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no. There's no problem although interesting, because we've just finished casting for the the the new feature and, um, one of the guys. There's a young guy in it and he is, He is. He's vicious, [00:16:30] but he's also he's the most. He's the guy with the biggest balls in the film. He's the most. He's the truest man in the film, but it's a very he's a He starts off as a very unlikable character, so I didn't want to create one of those. Oh, he's the gay guy that we're all going to love and feel sorry for. Like he's got a mouth like a septic tank. And he's he's very, very tough. And, um and we had It was interesting because he's about 18 years old, and so we had. Well, kids were interested. Someone's parents weren't that keen that their kid [00:17:00] auditioned, although we had. I mean, let's say we had lots of people auditioned for it, and we found somebody really good. I just can't talk about that until it's in production. So Sparrow has been seen internationally. Um, can you run through some of the festivals that it's been to? She also, uh, it was in Interfilm Berlin which is what? That's the big, uh um, German International Short Film Festival. And that's the film. That's the festival that boy won back in 2004. So, um, and it's been in our, um [00:17:30] so some of the LGBT festivals there's, uh, Montreal. There's, um, Philadelphia. There's Atlanta. There's Paris. There's I can't remember them all. It's terrible Robin to keep going. Oh, it's in this one. It's in this one. You go, Oh, good and all. All you do is a filmmaker going. Shit. I hope they got really good projection and really good sound, you know, because that's it. That's the true reason that you and as a director you want it there because all the work you put into the fine tuning of it is lost [00:18:00] if they if it's played on a bad system. And, uh, whereas generally in festivals, the stuff's on really great screens, so you know you'll see it for its richness. And what about screenings in New Zealand? So, uh, Robin said it. It's available just for this little gap before it goes into it into the other festivals. And she said, Well, why don't we bring it home and do something for New Zealand. And we had the first people who were in to support this was actually the Rule Foundation, and it was so touching [00:18:30] because, I mean, we're sure our people are short of money. I mean, you might call about the pink dollar, but we're trying to run so many things to try and lift our community and support it that they would support something like this. But they gave us two grants and then, uh, James Wallace came in, but and I kept thinking, Well, in truth, I'm a gay man, and I'm standing on my feet when mates of mine top themselves during AIDS or went into the closet and stayed there. So how can I give back? So we've done things [00:19:00] like, uh, we we screened it in Auckland and in Christchurch and Dunedin as part of the pride thing. Um, so in Auckland, it was for to earn money for the AIDS Foundation. Um, Wellington. It's for the archives, but that's because we actually used a lot of archive material. When I was, they were they were pretty. They were very good. So, um, it was just a way we just go. I think this thing I was talking about before that often these films you because they're fed on such generosity, you have to turn around at the end and go, Well, what can we do in return to, um, [00:19:30] to to feed back? Because this these stories, if they're important, they only exist because of that support. But if you don't feed support, if you don't give back, you just become another draw on limited resources. And so, you know, like the Auckland one. The theatre was packed, and and, uh, it was great to be able to go. Well, there's something, you know, something that we can give back to. That's a really good cause and and, um, yeah, so that's kind of the approach that we've taken. And did your family see it? Yeah, Yeah, Oh, yeah. They [00:20:00] were all cast and crew screening, so they're very they're very well. Their nuclear family did, um, the wider part of the extended family, uh, they I showed the people that it was directly related to, and I showed them the an uncut version of it to check that everything was fine. But I also showed them because you do have to take it to a screen play at some point because you got to give directions for your your actors and your your your crew. So I showed them that they wanted two things changed, which was absolutely fair. And, uh, so I kind of, you know, because you're treating with [00:20:30] some reverence. So that was all that was all fine. But But the understanding is, and you know, that's why I'm careful in the interview. Uh, I can't expose them because they're not ready to come out with that yet. And, um, you know, and that's perfectly understandable. There's lots and lots of those stories in this country that still I just said that people's over the tea cups and people's houses and they don't get out there. They're not. They're not going into the oral histories yet. What's the reaction been from the audiences that have seen him crying? Yeah, yeah, because [00:21:00] it's It's very It's fucking sad at the end, uh, sad in a kind of beautiful way, but it actually ends with a actually euphorically in a in a very delicate way. But it's not a redemption story, you know, Um, so and and I think it's also it's it's tuned so so emotionally, delicately that it's quite it's not hard to push people's hearts just over the edge with it and a director as a manipulative shit. [00:21:30] And that's what I set out to do. So it's had a It had an amazing, uh, I couldn't get to Berlin when it was an inter film, but, um, one of our one of our crew was over there, so she introduced it and she said it had just astounding reaction. So and that's and that's interesting because it was a film that actually showed the Germans as compassionate, you know? So it was an interesting thing to take a story in there that was around a difficult part of their history, too. And, um, and for it to be reacted to in the way it was, so it was great. [00:22:00] And this story springboards into your new feature. Yeah. So this is, uh, one of the reasons I wanted to make it was that, um, the feature, actually, the the boy who's the who believes he can fly is actually the feature picks him up about, uh, 11 years later and everything that he had become in The film has fallen apart and he's become a boxer and he's living his dad's dream. And and that's actually what he's wrestling against in the short film. And so, and and [00:22:30] he doesn't realise that that's at the beginning of the film, that he's gay. But by the end of the film, he's kind of. But he's a heroic boxer in a small town. So it kind of looks at the hyper masculinity of small towns and where, where our sports people sit in that in that world And, you know, my it was based loosely. No, I guess I could say it was inspired by my partner, who was, um, the Kevin Todd who, um died of AIDS in the 19 nineties. And he came from a boxing family. But he became a, uh he [00:23:00] represented New Zealand in the Commonwealth Games as a as a triple jumper, and he trained a lot of a lot of G BT athletes, a lot of our sprint champs, and, um and so I kind of wanted to. I drew a lot on the difficult relationship that he had with family and with the wider world in in in punch. And when is that due for production? Well, we're just trying to argue it across the line with the film commission at the moment, So we've got international distributors for it. So it's got It's got, we've, [00:23:30] we've We've always had really good international reaction to the stuff. It's just getting it, uh, just getting it across the line here. That's that's always the the slightly bigger, um, difficulty. But, you know, I'm an optimistic man and and stubborn as hell. And somewhere between those, we'll get the film. We'll get the film across the board, but we're not going to get. We're not gonna have, like, a 5 million budget for it at all. But because I'm so fussy about production values, we've got to have enough to make sure that it's a really [00:24:00] a magnificent film, you know, And just finally just heading back to Sparrow. What WW What do you come away from seeing Sparrow When When it's on the screen? What do what do you feel? Um, that's a really hard question. So on one level, uh, I moved into film from Theatre for a reason is that film is a durable, is something durable remains at the end of it. So you know, I'm not leaving kids behind on the earth, So I want [00:24:30] to make sure that when I go, what I do leave here is of quality and is worth something worth something both artistically and socially. So, uh, I come away proud, but always riddled with a little bit of doubt, because I'm such a perfectionist that I'll see anything that's wrong, even if maybe other people don't. So and that's the same with everything I do. But, uh, but I, I now know that I treated that story with absolute dignity and reverence, and it took something where there's a statistic saying, You know, five [00:25:00] men attempted, uh, committed suicide. I know that's not true, and that's all there is in New Zealand for those stories. Well, here's one that now sits in the cinema and goes, you know, there's another. There's another version of this, and also it's given. I mean, as gay men growing up, trying to find where you were in wars in times of war, we were rendered invisible. So you go well. Here's at least one where we it's absolutely upfront about it. It goes. These men were not judged by their colleagues in the [00:25:30] in the in the trenches or the or the dugouts. They they weren't all all pariah. These are men thrown into difficult conditions, and there was actually a very high level of wasn't even tolerance. It was just like accommodation. And so that's kind of not in the history books, because there's a lot of homophobia exists in the meta narrative of war around masculinity because it's seen as some kind of threat to masculinity, which causes bollocks. And I guess you know, we can often presume that historians, [00:26:00] when they're looking back at war stories, are kind of acting in a kind of a neutral space. But actually, if they are homophobic themselves, they they would never have those stories. There's no neutral space in the telling of stories of war. Even the the stories that get nominated are nominated unevenly So and so I understand myself as subjective, too. Uh, the difficulty is, I don't believe that war is a when people talk about the theatre of war, I don't think it's a theatre. I think it's the failure of civilization and to, and so I'm really [00:26:30] interested in making sure those difficult, difficult human things that are involved in in something like, well, I. I mean, I did film title sequence for, um TV and when we go to war, which is World War One, you know, and and I make that stuff commercially, but it it actually truly just reinforces the known stories. And so, you know, if you if you try to expand this, you know, look at our own stories when when we were trying to get something more authentic than gay. Guy likes to shop with his best [00:27:00] friends, who's a woman and wears designer labels. Or, um, gay guy is an unremorseful slut who has. He hangs out in bars and backrooms, whatever. So we have those awful cliches that sit there and still pro still propagated today. We think it's acceptance it's not. It's narrowing down who we are. So when our wider stories of gay guy who's a boxer in a small town, they don't get it, they don't get out there. We we've got this. Let's get the gay character so we often become the character in somebody else's story, and as a character, we're supposed to be lovable. [00:27:30] Well, we're prickly, and we're as prickly as anybody else. And so getting those prickly, um, personalities but also prickly, uh, ethical stories out, I think is, is part of contributing to a better fabric in your country.
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