‘In the end,’ recalls Terry
Potter who admits to not being much of a cinemagoer before meeting Peter, ‘he talked us all into liking movies and, eventually into making movies. It started out with our lending a hand when he needed people to help with transport and carrying equipment: it really wasn’t that much hassle and, after a bit, we started enjoying it.’
‘There were times,’ says Mike, ‘when it was terminally boring. It would be: “Just ten minutes more…” “Not long now…” “Almost ready…” We’d be waiting and waiting till it was all boredom, boredom! Then, instead of just helping out as crew, we got the chance to be in front of the camera!’
Had they but known it, Terry and Mike along with Pete, Craig and Ken, were getting themselves involved in a project that, whilst bringing them none of the usual trappings associated with being film stars, would at least give them cult-movie celebrity status. Almost twenty years on, they are still occasionally recognised and asked for autographs; Pete and Mike, particularly, are in frequent e-mail correspondence with fans all over the world, and Terry Potter, when attending the premiere of The Two Towers, was introduced to ‘the Hobbits’ and was amused to be greeted with bows from the young stars who happen to be keen fans of Bad Taste.
Back in 1983, such goings-on would have been unimaginable. Most of the guys who helped Peter in pursuing his hobby thought of it as no more than that: a sometimes fun, sometimes boring way of spend a Sunday, hanging around with a few mates, playing at film-making and having a few beers at the end of the day.
However, what the story of the making of Bad Taste shows – and confirms again and again – is that Peter Jackson was already developing the talents, displaying the personal philosophy and demonstrating the stamina and tenacity that would equip him to tackle The Lord of the Rings and sustain him through its making.
‘Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this little amateur movie,’ says Craig Smith, ‘is the way in which Peter was developing his skills as a film-maker, as a special effects artist – even as an actor. It is the story of someone developing his craft from scratch and necessity…’
Over the best part of the next three years (specific datings are difficult due to the fragmentary nature of the way in which they worked and the inevitable haziness of people’s memories), Peter would succeed
A home-made camera crane perched on the cliffs above Pukerua Bay. I had no way of actually seeing what I was shooting, so I’d point the camera in the basic direction and hope for the best. I’d find out how successful the shot had been when I looked at the 16mm print.
in enthusing and involving work colleagues and friends (and often friends and relations of friends!) either as full- or part-time crew members or as ‘extras’ for those scenes involving the cannibal-cum-aliens.
Peter built his own camera equipment including tracks and a dolly for moving the camera along the ground and a home-made version of a ‘Steadicam’ – a spring-loaded, weight-counterbalanced camera harness designed to allow the filming of action scenes in cinema-vérité – which, at the time, would have cost upwards of $40,000 but which Peter constructed for just ‘twenty bucks’! He also made an aluminium crane, ‘put together like a giant Meccano set’, that allowed – more or less! – professional-looking crane-shots…
Once I’d mounted the 16mm camera on the end of the crane there was no way of looking through the lens, so I simply pointed in the general direction of the actors and hoped for the best! Actually, I discovered that if you used a wide-angle lens, then you’d generally get away with that sort of thing!
Peter also created the film’s props, including a convincing-looking arsenal of weapons made out of aluminium tubing, cardboard and wood and ‘largely held together with glue!’ He particularly relished the opportunity to create the alien make-ups that were, had the world but known it, forerunners of the armies of prosthetic grotesques that would, one day, march out of Weta Workshop and onto the battlefields of Middle-earth! The foam latex was whisked up in his mother’s food-mixer and baked in the family oven – the size of which was the only constraint on Peter’s imagination…
I sculpted the alien heads to a precise dimension so that I could squeeze them into the oven with about half-an-inch to spare – which is the evolutionary explanation for why the aliens all had somewhat flattened head shapes!
As Joan Jackson would later recall, ‘Peter would often take over the whole kitchen. I’d have a menu planned for dinner and we’d end up
This is the gang of photoengraving colleagues I rounded up for a scene in a crowded room. We shot it in one of the darkrooms after work on a Saturday. It was edited together with reverses of Craig in the barrel, which I shot in my parents’ garage. I used to buy old white shirts at the Salvation Army store and dye them blue – it was the cheapest alien wardrobe I could think of!
having sausages under the grill because Peter was using the oven!’
Peter’s diverse creativity and astonishing proficiency impressed those who knew him. Work colleague, Ray Battersby, who would briefly join the ranks of ‘Aliens 3rd Class’, recalls, ‘I was amazed at his confidence and authority on set. He was in total control, handling everything with complete aplomb. I should have known better than to have ever underestimated Peter, because he could turn his hand to just about anything: he was the Swiss army knife of creative ability!’
Not content with his various creative responsibilities off-screen, Peter had also written himself into the action as the ‘scruffy, bearded, tramp-like character’ with the bayonet that attacks Giles on his arrival in Kaihoro. As anyone who has ever seen Peter demonstrating to actors how a scene is to be played, there can be little doubt that had he been subjected to one or two different influences or have been given some alternative opportunities to express his imagination and creativity, he might easily have been drawn to a career in acting.
Week in, week out, on as regular a basis as possible, the guys got together and filmed. Around this time, Peter wrote, ‘I love writing, I love editing, I love dabbling in special effects, but organising everyone and getting out and filming is a real chore.’ Nevertheless he did and he got the other guys to do it, too.
‘After all these years,’ says Mike Minett, ‘we are all still talking about it and, of course, we always say what fun it was and how we all established this crazy, nutcase friendship…But we all had our lives and jobs and there were times when it was hard to get up on Sunday mornings – especially if it was cold or even raining – and go off filming. But Peter couldn’t afford not to film: he’d have got his pay-cheque and bought a few more reels of film. If he didn’t film, he’d get behind schedule. So, he had to do it – and we had to help him do it.’
Craig Smith reflects, ‘I often ask myself what it was about Peter that made us all get involved and go along with his schemes. Peter was something of an oddball character, but then, the truth is, we were all oddball, nerdy fan-boys, hanging out together, going to movies and then trying to make a movie…But Peter had a knack for motivating people. I believe he felt completely secure in himself – he had inherent self-belief and was always totally focused – and those are qualities that attract other people like a magnet. That’s what kept hauling people in Sunday after Sunday.’
Jamie Selkirk, Peter’s long-time editor and co-director of Weta Workshop, sees him as employing a similar, if refined, technique today: ‘Peter has a great knack for starting people off with something that is little more than the germ of an idea. He gets people excited and committed, draws them in further by soliciting their input and then develops and embellishes the idea to a stage where they’re hooked! Then he can push them, because he knows that once they’ve made a creative and emotional investment,