‘The way they worked together was an incredible thing to see,’ said Melanie Lynskey, who as dumpy, brooding Pauline witnessed the Jackson-Walsh double act at first hand. It was a true creative partnership, the distinctions of writer and director far less defined than the credits suggest.
Here was a clear signal of the maturity they would bring to Tolkien: the concentration on character, the unhurried but intent building of story and the way in which the camera became a participant in their fantasies. The Parker-Hulme friendship also crossed class boundaries, a theme explored to a more positive outcome with Frodo and Sam.
Here too was Jackson and Walsh’s growing felicity for casting. Neither had done any significant acting, and this would be an astonishing exercise in sustained hysteria. Walsh discovered Lynskey at a Christchurch high school near to where the real girls first met. She was looking for someone who in any way resembled Pauline.
‘This girl really loves acting,’ her teacher had said, pointing out Lynskey. ‘She puts on plays that nobody wants to see.’
For the superior, pretty fantasist, Juliet — who had lately arrived from England — Jackson had plucked an unknown British girl from Reading from 600 hopefuls. Kate Winslet had been working in a delicatessen when the call came.
‘I’ll never forget it as long as I live … I actually fell on my knees,’ she admitted. Within four years Winslet would be one of the most famous faces on the planet, star of James Cameron’s Titanic.
Here too is the promise of a cinematic New Zealand being unveiled: the unique light; the vast, primordial landscape; and the confidence with which the local crew rose to the challenges set before them by their ambitious director.
Perhaps most significantly, Jackson would inaugurate a new digital division of his and Richard Taylor’s special effects house, Weta (named after a local cricket-like bug1), in order to create the abstract world of the girls’ flowering imaginations. Key to understanding Hulme and Parker’s descent into murder is the film’s ability to slip inside the sickly dreamspace of their conjoined imaginations. A similar sympathy for the devil would be applied to the depiction of Gollum (over which Walsh would have a significant influence).
Between them, the girls invented their own fantasy world. Borovnia would become more meaningful than reality: they traced royal lineages back over the centuries and wrote melodramatic adventure stories set within its colourful bounds, thirteen novels’ worth. They dreamed of having them adapted into big Hollywood movies starring tacky 1950s heartthrob Mario Lanza. Movie mad, we catch them watching Orson Welles in The Third Man, and Jackson does a brief rendition of noir in its honour. The resonances — and ironies — are there for all to see.
It was a film about the dangers of losing yourself inside a fantasy world.
Weta was still a single unit at this time. Taylor’s workshop would make the rubber suits for the actors playing the ‘living’ versions of the Plasticene Borovnians the remarkable girls sculpted. Led by George Port, who had worked with Jackson since Meet the Feebles, Weta also ambitiously pursued a series of digital effects shots inspired by the groundbreaking work of Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day. ‘What the Hell,’ was Jackson’s attitude, ‘let’s try.’ Their computer graphics department boasted a solitary Silicon Graphics SGI computer and a scanner. Which thankfully came with an instruction manual. By post-production on The Two Towers, Weta Digital would boast the largest amount of processing power in the Southern Hemisphere.
There are fewer CGI shots in Heavenly Creatures than is generally recognized. Taylor takes it as a compliment that his prosthetics are mistaken for CGI. The true digital shots were localized to Christchurch’s Port Levy morphing into a too-colourful, too-exquisite ornamental garden, complete with giant butterflies.
Extraordinary for 1994, these digital effects now appear charmingly antiquated, but that somehow makes them more fitting for the strange climate of the film. Jackson was using visual effects to express emotions.
‘And all for a three-and-a-half-million dollar budget,’ announces Kamins proudly. Behind him on his office wall there is a framed poster of Heavenly Creatures, with the girls leaping into a pristine lake, a film that remains not only an early marker of Jackson’s prowess, but a minor classic in its own right.
New Zealand might be a long way from Hollywood, and leagues further from New York, where Miramax resided in the hip Lower Manhattan neighbourhood of Tribeca. However, word soon reached Harvey that this was a significant film. There was a scramble to pick up the American rights, and Miramax’s bullyboy sprang into action, elbowing aside competitors and making entreaties to Jackson. Miramax’s Vice President of Acquisitions, David Linde, was despatched to Wellington to see an early cut. Blown away both by the film and the young director, he reported back to Harvey that something major was growing in New Zealand. Linde has remained a good friend to Jackson ever since.
Harvey, wielding his considerable clout, swiftly acquired Heavenly Creatures for distribution and negotiated a prestigious berth for its world premiere — opening The Venice Film Festival.
Being picked up by Miramax had distinct advantages. Founded in 1979 by the two brothers from Buffalo, brash in manner but brilliantly acute in business, it had risen to prominence through films as diverse as My Left Foot; sex, lies and videotape; and Reservoir Dogs. It would rise yet further on the glories of Pulp Fiction and The English Patient to come. Bob Weinstein handled the genre side of the business through the Dimension label, but both brothers always had their say.
The disadvantage was the Weinstein temperament. When things were sunny, all was well. Cross them, particularly Harvey, often over things that ordinarily appear reasonable or, at least, professional, and he would rain down his righteous (or not) fury. It was also a prime negotiating tactic. This was, of course, long before multiple accusations of sexual harassment and worse would bring about an ignominious downfall for the mighty Harvey, sending shockwaves across Hollywood. At this time, he was merely viewed as an industry bully boy.
In 1993, flushed with success, the brothers sold Miramax to Disney for $75 million. They would remain at the helm, with the power to greenlight a film up to the significant figure of $15 million. Any higher and they would require the consent of Disney’s hierarchy. Inevitably, the brothers would come to chafe against such restrictions.
After a lauded run at the box office, and with the assistance of Harvey’s golden touch at the Academy, Heavenly Creatures was nominated for Best Original Screenplay.
‘Boom!’ declares Kamins. ‘The whole perception changed the second the film got nominated. I mean, everything changed — perceptually. Now I got my calls returned and the speed with which I got them returned changed; the kinds of conversations that we were having. Everything shifted. Not even in ways that sort of guided a specific path, but just atmospherically it all felt different.’
Smartly, as well as agreeing a deal to distribute Heavenly Creatures in America, Harvey had insisted on pinning down Jackson to a first-look deal with Miramax. While offering an avenue for any new film idea he might have, it would soon feel like he was tied to Weinstein’s often inflexible apron strings, who now had a prize, Oscar-nominated asset.
Jackson would never bind himself to a studio again. ‘It was sort of a strange thing where they would pay some overheads: an office and some people we could hire. In exchange for that they get first refusal on any script we wanted to do. If they say no that’s fine, you can take it somewhere else. Also if you get offered something you are allowed to go and take it. It is not like an old studio contract where you are locked into MGM.’
He would ultimately never make a film with Miramax.
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First Jackson met Robert Zemeckis, and together they made The Frighteners, a warped comedy-horror about a spiritual conman (played by Back to the Future’s Michael J. Fox) who can actually behold ghosts. It was to be Jacksons’ first studio picture. Universal were attracted to a commercial-sounding