Highway 1 revisited
In his rebore of the classic Kiwi flick Goodbye Pork Pie, director Matt Murphy gets a chance to follow in his father’s smoking tyre tracks.
In his rebore of the classic Kiwi flick Goodbye
Pork Pie, director Matt Murphy gets a chance to follow in his father’s smoking tyre tracks.
When director Geoff Murphy decided that he was the best stuntman for the job of driving the cop car into the lake on the shoot of Goodbye Pork Pie, he did so over the objections of one low-ranked crew member. “I wanted to drive it, but Dad wouldn’t let me,” says Murphy’s son Matt. “I was arguing that you can’t risk the director.”
Then a teenager, Murphy was a general dogsbody on the 1979 shoot, lugging gear and stopping traffic. Now all grown up, he’s directed two new blokes, Dean O’Gorman and James Rolleston, in a slick update of the original, as they drive another bloody car to Invercargill.
The historical record shows that Murphy Snr survived turning that HQ Holden into a boat. His film became a runaway hit and a landmark of Kiwi cinema.
The film-maker added Utu and The Quiet Earth to his local credits before heading to Hollywood. He also helped create a labour force for the industry he left behind. All five of his kids ended up in the business, in various roles.
Matt, Murphy’s third child, knew he wanted to be a director long before Goodbye Pork Pie. He had watched his dad work film-making out for himself as he and his older siblings, Robin and Paul, starred in their father’s early 8mm films, made as the soon-to-be ex-schoolteacher taught himself the basics.
Then came the Murphy clan’s involvement in Blerta, the early 70s music and screen collective based in a commune – “I think everyone called us a commune except ourselves” – in the Hawke’s Bay coastal settlement of Waimarama.
“As an 11-year-old, when your bedroom is being transformed into a submarine set for a skit for Blerta, it just seems like a playground.”
Matt Murphy accompanied his father on a few more shoots before striking out on his own as a production designer and art director.
Eventually, he graduated to commercials director, specialising in high-concept, high-end car ads.
When producer friend Alan Harris mooted a Goodbye Pork Pie remake, adman Murphy wasn’t instantly keen. Why would he want a remake as his debut feature, let alone something his father had made?
Still, the more he thought about it …
“It occurred to me I was in a unique position. I had worked on the original and I knew the film inside out. I was around when Dad was writing it. I’d heard the yarns late at night when they were putting it together. So, I felt like I had an innate understanding of the chemistry of it.
“And being a Murphy, it made me feel like I could interact with the material in a way that didn’t seem like trespassing. I felt I had the freedom to reshape things and reinvent things.”
It would be four years of script drafts by Murphy, as well as funding manoeuvres and sponsorship deals, before a new Pork Pie – the “Goodbye” dropped – would be Invercargill bound under the guidance of The Dark Horse producer Tom Hern.
Yes, Murphy consulted his father, who had written the original with actor and director Ian Mune.
“I showed him my very first draft, which was pretty woeful, and he was very restrained in his reply. I had sort of written a Hollywood version of Goodbye Pork Pie.”
Murphy Snr told him that the original had worked for New Zealand audiences because they could see themselves as the tearaways in the Mini. “When I took that advice on board, it began to ground my version of it back as a Kiwi film.”
But remaking any movie brings with it inevitable questions: in particular, why bother? In this case the result will find it hard to compete with the deep affection older fans have for the 1980 movie.
“That question is often asked with a sense of, ‘What was wrong with the original?’” says Murphy, delivering what sounds like a well-rehearsed reply. “It is kind of more, ‘What is right with the original?’ Because no one wants to remake something that didn’t work.
“It was definitely not lost on me that it was a challenge. There was a lot to get right. We did want to take care of fans of the original, but also didn’t want the film to be
“I worked on the original and I knew the film inside out. So, I felt like I had an innate understanding of the chemistry of it.” Matt Murphy
smothered by unnecessary history.
“Because they were so blown away by the film, fans remember the time and the whole social circumstances around that as well. But in the actual film, not a lot of that is expressed. There is the irreverence and anti-authoritarian aspect to it, but not much social commentary, really.”
In the new film, the stolen Mini is still yellow, but it’s a flasher car than the tinny 1979 model – and it stays intact. In the original, the characters played by Tony Barry and Kelly Johnson sold bits of it to fund their escapade – the cannibalised car was inspired by one of those late-night yarns.
“It didn’t seem to be something people would do in a modern context,” says Murphy.
They smoked more dope back then, too. Everyone seemed crazier. The new Pork Pie comes with the fugitive “Blondini Gang” going viral on social media. There’s a teenage romance between Rolleston and Australian actress Ashleigh Cummings, who hitches a ride. O’Gorman replaces Barry’s cool, laconic John with an insecure, verbal writer with anger and commitment issues.
The film was shot in 39 days, using four sponsors’ Minis over many thousands of scenic kilometres early last year, starting with a déjà vu zip through Wellington Railway Station. It’s the sequence the director is proudest of.
This Murphy isn’t the only Murphy in the credits of the new film. His brother Miles was a second-unit director; sister Robin (also a veteran of the original) was a locations manager; feature director older brother Paul ( Second-Hand Wedding, Love Birds) consulted on the script. Matt’s daughter Saoirse worked in the costume department. So, some family traditions endure? “Yeah. But it’s not nepotism if they are great
at their job.”
And next? Yes, Murphy has his sights on another feature, “but no, not Utu 2”.
Or A Quieter Earth?
“I don’t think so.”