I also noticed a pretty young woman sitting in the corner of a greenhouse talking about the script with Bruce Phillips, the actor who played The Crowman. I didn’t know who she was or what her job was, and I didn’t even get to meet her on that day, but I’ll always remember the fact that she made a striking impression on me, with her long black hair.
She was Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall’s New Zealand Script Consultant on the first Worzel Gummidge series and her name was Frances F. Walsh.
Costa recalls: ‘My first impression of Peter was of a rather bedraggled, shaggy-looking guy, wearing an awful cardigan (like Starsky used to wear in Starsky and Hutch) and a backpack. I hadn’t heard Peter’s name, but I had read something in the local film journal, Onfilm, about a bunch of loonies shooting a movie out at Pukerua Bay.’
The coverage in Onfilm had been a piece of publicity that Peter had managed to get for Bad Taste at a time when the group were feeling somewhat less than buoyant:
It was tough going on Bad Taste: we’d been shooting for years and had failed to get any official support. I thought it would provide a morale-booster for everybody if we were mentioned in what was a film industry journal. So, I wrote to Onfilm, told them what we were doing and sent them some photos and they printed a cool little story. It was the first ever bit of press about the making of Bad Taste – suddenly the fact that this movie was in production was ‘official’!
It also represented the first official announcement of the ‘film company’ making Bad Taste. Once Peter had started filming on 16mm, the exposed footage had to be sent off to the laboratory to be developed, accompanied by a form that had a space for the name of the production company. Filling in the form to go with the first reel of film, Peter had to make a decision: did he leave that part of the form blank or did he pick a name for himself?
I didn’t want anything that sounded too pretentious or self-important, like ‘Imperial Pictures’, so I decided to come up with something that sounded really dumb! I settled on the stupid name, ‘WingNut’.
The inspiration came from…a rabbit! Mike Minett had a pet rabbit which he had named ‘Wingnut’, because its big floppy ears had reminded him of the flared sides – or ‘wings’ – with which you loosen or tighten a wingnut. Apart from its literal meaning, ‘a wingnut’ has also long been a slang expression for a person with sticking-out ears or someone whose behaviour is a bit crazy or off-the-wall. In any event, Mike took Wingnut the rabbit into work to give it to his boss to take home and keep. Sadly, a few weeks later, the rabbit had an encounter with a ferret from which it didn’t survive. But, happily, its name is now memorialised as one of the most successful film production companies in the world!
This is Wingnut. For a few days he was kept as a pet in our photoengraving department at the newspaper. We made his pen from my favourite cardboard boxes. He disappeared as quickly as he arrived and I know little about him, but I stole his name for my film company.
The workshop coincided with work picking up on Bad Taste after Craig’s departure. Probably four or five months had gone by without any filming going on. For a while it felt like another project started but destined never to finish. The fact that I had never really finished a movie really concerned me and certainly fuelled my determination to complete Bad Taste, even though it had now changed from ten-minute short to feature film. Here I’m making a head cast in my new workspace, having decided I didn’t like the alien designs done a couple of years earlier.
Wingnut made his appearance at the Post around the time that I was trying to think of a name to fill in on the laboratory forms and ‘WingNut Films’ seemed nice and dumb! My only edict was to make WingNut one word with a capital ‘N’ in the middle.
The news item in the ‘Short Ends’ column of the August 1985 edition of Onfilm carried a photograph of a scene from Bad Taste being filmed on the cliffs at Pukerua Bay, with Pete O’Herne in front of the camera, Peter Jackson behind it and Dean Lawrie managing the soundrecording equipment. ‘WingNut Films,’ ran the text, ‘at work on Bad Taste, a sci-fi/horror 90-minute 16mm feature for the video market, described as “A mindless movie for the discerning armchair mercenary”
I met Costa Botes on the Worzel set, which led to a Bad Taste cameo for him and a lot of advice, assistance and introductions for me.
This is the photo I sent to OnFilm magazine, our local trade paper. At the time, I wanted to give the guys a morale boost, and seeing our project in print for the first time certainly made it seem real. By now, I had figured out and written a new storyline to use as much existing footage as possible.
…begun in October 1983 and worked on every Sunday since.’
The item gave details of those involved – billing Peter as producer, writer and director – and went on: ‘Although the team are all newcomers and part-timers working without pay, Jackson stresses it is not “some sort of Mickey Mouse home movie”, as it has already cost $10,000 (of their own money), and he estimates final budget at $30,000.’ This was the piece that had caught Costa Botes’ eye: ‘I remember laughing and thinking, “What is all that about?”’ Anyway, I got chatting with this guy who showed up on the Worzel Gummidge set – because when you talk to someone who is really into movies you almost always hit it off – and when he mentioned the fact that he was making a film at the weekends, I put two and two together and figured out that he was one of those loonies I’d been reading about!’
The film had continued to go through various ups and downs: there were precious film days lost due to bad weather and, for Peter, the frustration of having to compete with rival obligations on the part of some members of the team…
There was a social soccer club at the Evening Post and Terry Potter and Mike Minett, who were sporting guys, were members of the team. It was often the case that I couldn’t do any filming on a Sunday until the afternoon, because they’d be playing a match in the morning. That bloody soccer club was the bane of my life! I still remember one day, spent at Gear House, waiting for any of the guys to show up. I had the film gear, props and costumes. My parents dropped me off at 9.00am, and came back at 5.00pm to collect me. I was still sitting in the same spot. None of the guys had made it, and in the days before mobile phones I had no idea. I just sat there all day, waiting for anybody to show up, and no one did. I was almost in tears in the car driving home.
Various comings and goings, over the years, continued to ensure that the scenario for Bad Taste remained somewhat flexible. Terry Potter spent some time in Australia, but later returned to New Zealand and rejoined the project as, sometime during mid-1986, did the film’s original leading actor, Craig Smith, whose marriage had come to an end and who was now free of his dependency on alcohol, prescription drugs and religious convictions.
At the same time that Stephen Sinclair called me, we were welcoming Craig back into the Bad Taste team. His role as Giles had stayed in the film, although in an altered form, but he was game for anything. Here Cameron Chittock is strapping him into an alien costume.
‘When I decided to leave the team,’ says Craig, ‘the plan had been for Giles to die during the escape from Gear House and we filmed me being impaled on a tree branch. When, a year later, “the prodigal son” returned to the fold, the death scene was ditched – Peter cut away just before my impaling and Giles