I didn’t have any editing equipment, so I just shot and shot and shot and stacked the film away under my bed. Although I knew that it wasn’t finished, I was still, at the time, thinking in terms of a ten- to fifteen-minute film.
Eventually I took a week’s leave from work – I was only allowed three weeks off each year – went to the Film Unit and hired a little machine, called a Pic-sync editor, and a splicer for joining the cut footage and a pair of rewind arms so that I could manually wind back and forth through the film spools. I put the rewind arms on an old plank of wood, which I then clamped onto my parent’s dining-room table – for the week while I was editing, they had to eat off their laps in the lounge!
I had shot four hours of film and – by the end of the week – ended up with 55 minutes of edited footage. I was amazed, I’d no idea we had something that was almost already an hour long…There was a moment where I debated trying to cut it back down to the original ten- to fifteen-minutes, because I knew that there was always a possibility of showing a short movie at film festivals. On the other hand, no one would want a picture that ran for an hour – there was no market for it. It was a pivotal moment, but I figured, ‘I’ve only got another half an hour to go and I’ll have a full-length feature!’ So, all of a sudden, Giles’ Big Day was going to be a feature film…I was shocked, because I’d never even considered the idea until that point.
If the little amateur movie was now to run to feature-film length then clearly an injection of cash was required to make that possible. To date, Giles’ Big Day had cost $8,500 (of which Peter had invested $8,000 and Ken Hammon $500) and Peter decided to turn for help to the New Zealand Film Commission. The founding of the Commission, less than a decade before, had been based on a series of proposals written on behalf of the Cultural Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs by Jim Booth, later assistant director of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand and a man who was to play a significant role in the shaping of Peter Jackson’s career.
Jim Booth’s proposals were for a Film Commission that would be totally ‘market-orientated’ as opposed to the government-sponsored film-making undertaken by the National Film Unit (where, as a schoolleaver Peter had gone in search of employment) or the funding of experimental films, which was to be left to the Arts Council.
The Film Commission was to be run ‘strictly on an investment basis with an eye very firmly on the market’, investing in the production of films – for television and theatre – that, in addition to generating income, would provide ‘cinematograph expressions particular to New Zealand’ as opposed to what was seen as being a ‘largely unrelieved diet of films from foreign cultures.’ In addition it was hoped that such films would ‘do much to announce the existence of New Zealand to the world at large’.
Jim Booth, the author of these plans, had become Executive Director of the New Zealand Film Commission in 1983 and it was two years later – on 18th January 1985 – that a fifty-five-minute videotape and a nineteen-page document entitled Giles’ Big Day arrived on his desk from a ‘Peter Robert Jackson (copyright owner)’ who was applying for $7,000 ‘to assist the completion of filming on a low-budget 16mm Feature Film’. On the following page, the applicant refined that definition to ‘Ultra low budget,’ and went on: ‘I would be tempted to call it zero-budget if it hadn’t been for the fact that I’ve put $8,000 of my own money into it.’
It was to be the beginning of an exchange of correspondence that would eventually bring about a break-through in Peter’s long-held ambitions to be a film-maker, but which, again and again, demonstrate the extent to which the determination and tenacity that would become hallmarks of the Jackson personality were already firmly established.
Peter’s letters to Jim show him to have been a young man with strongly held views that he was not afraid of expressing, with belief in his skills and abilities – articulated with self-affirming confidence but also a total absence of arrogance – and with a positive, upbeat philosophy of life that was undimmed by momentary disappointment. The occasional typos and spelling errors have been corrected – ‘(excuse the mistakes)’ he added in pen at the bottom of the nineteenth page – the italics, where used, are my own.
By way of introduction, Peter offered the following self-portrait: ‘I am 23 years old and all I want to do is make movies. I’ve always been keen on films, especially ones of the fantasy/horror genres. Special
My bedroom in my early twenties, already starting to groan under the weight of geekdom books and videos.
effects have long been a fascination, ever since being exposed to Thunderbirds at the age of 5. All I wanted to be when I was a little boy was a special effects man. Fortunately I didn’t just dream, I grabbed Plasticine and started making monsters and masks when I was still at Pukerua Bay Primary School. It is this grounding that I’m finding so useful now…’
Of the film he was attempting to make, Peter wrote: ‘The movie is science-fiction/horror film with large doses of extremely black humour, some of which is quite tasteless. It is science-fiction but not in the connotations that most people have with that term (i.e. Star Wars, Doctor Who etc.) The horror is mainly in the gore field. We sacrificed potential “scariness” for humour at an early stage…’
As his mother would later report: ‘I didn’t think it would be quite so gory as what it is, but then as Peter said: “There’s a laugh with every drop of blood, Mum. There are laughs…” I know him very well, he’s always had a great sense of humour, I think that’s his forte, but he covered it with horror, too…’
Despite its laughs, Peter stressed that the story, had ‘its moments of suspense’ and was ‘aimed directly at the Monty Python/Animal House punters, as well as the standard sci-fi/horror buff. Someone who goes to Friday the 13th to enjoy eight inventive murders will have plenty to drool over in our film.’ Lest the concept of drooling over grisly deaths strike a wrong chord, he added a disclaimer of the kind usually displayed on films in connection with the treatment of animals: ‘Having said that, I must make the point that NO women get killed or threatened in the film.’ His point, and it is the redeeming feature of the eventual messiness that is Bad Taste, was that not only were its horrors tempered by humour, but that the film could in no way be accused of being exploitational.
Peter provided details of those involved in the project and what, to date, had been achieved. ‘Continually giving up Sundays over such a long period of time is a lot to expect of a fairly large group, and it is to everyone’s credit that interest and enthusiasm has hardly waned since the start. In fact it is stronger than ever now as in the last couple of months everyone has suddenly realised that it is GETTING SERIOUS.’
However, he went on to explain, he was now facing problems: the film contained a great many special effects and he simply did not have the time during the week to get everything made and ready for the following Sunday’s shoot and the other guys in the group couldn’t assist either because they didn’t live close enough to ‘pop around’, had wives and families to think about or lived in flats that didn’t have sufficient space to work. ‘Above all is the simple fact that the work is so complex and requires a knowledge of materials and techniques that takes a long time to develop, as well as a fairly high level of artistic skill.’
Lest the point hadn’t been clearly enough expressed, he added – using words that have a prophetic ring when one remembers the level of personal control exercised over every facet of the filming of The Lord of the Rings – ‘I also like to be in complete control of the look and quality of the stuff that goes on screen.’
One can only speculate on the picture of Peter Jackson which must have begun to form in the mind of Jim Booth, before he even reached ‘The Proposal’ which was for $7,000 to enable him to take four months unpaid leave and work on ‘the extensive make-up and visual effects that form the last thirty-five minutes of our already partially completed feature.’
The