A CHAT WITH...
HARRY SINCLAIR
Music, theatre, movies, television – Harry Sinclair has run the gamut of creative arts over the course of his 40-year career. Early forays as a poetry publisher and jazz clarinettist notwithstanding, he first rose to fame (or at least notoriety) as one half of musical duo The Front Lawn alongside future Mutton Bird Don McGlashan. “We started off being quite serious, brainy rock and rollers – that was our ambition, and then we became sort of humorous, acoustic theatre storytellers,” Sinclair says more than 35 years later. Moving on to feature film-making in the late 90s, Sinclair wrote and directed Topless Women Talk About Their Lives, The Price Of Milk and Toy Love. These days he’s finally found what he calls a “steady job”, and for the past few years has reunited with old mate McGlashan to lovingly turn out almost 80 episodes (so far) of the musical stop-motion animation series Kiri and Lou, which was recently nominated for a Bafta Children & Young People award in the international section. The awards take place in London on November 27.
Sinclair tells Shaun Bamber about making gentle TV for kids, dealing with emotions and remaking Beverly Hills, 90210.
Congrats on the Bafta nomination – was that ever on the bucket list at all? Thank you – and no, it never occurred to me! When I got the email I thought it was a joke or something. I was really shocked, and my producer Fiona Copland said: “Oh no, this is real.” It was not something I ever dreamed of, but it’s very exciting.
How did first come to life? About seven years ago I was watching TV with my daughter and I just had the feeling I could do something in the way of kids’ TV. I wanted to do something that was a bit more calm and not so frenetic – just a gentle show for kids, that was the initial thing. I love the forest – New Zealand’s native bush is a very beautiful and meditative sort of space to be in – so I started thinking about a show set in the bush. And then the characters came along later.
Kiri and Lou
Did your daughter lend a hand with that? Yes she did – she still looks at my scripts, or looks at the edits of the episodes and gives me some feedback. She was a big inspiration because I was able to watch her with her friends and see how they interact, and it just helped me remember what being a child was like myself. One of the central themes of Kiri and Lou is how to deal with your emotions, so seeing my daughter and how she handles complicated issues such as sharing really helped inspire some stories.
You’ve had an interesting career. When you look back on it yourself, how would you describe it?
I’ve had the privilege of doing all kinds of things – The Front Lawn with Don [McGlashan] was amazing, then I was an actor for many years, made some low-budget movies, and then moved overseas, working in theatre and directing TV in Los Angeles. It’s been great, but I finally feel that I’m doing some mature work now – I’ve never been more pleased than I am with Kiri and Lou. It’s also the longest job I’ve ever had. In the past I’d get work for three months or something and then be unemployed for a year, totally in a state of panic that I was never going to work again and go bankrupt or whatever, so it’s been very unusual to work solidly for four years on something.
At one point you were directing the reboot in the US. How did that compare to your earlier work as an independent filmmaker in New Zealand?
90210
It was really fun making films and working with very small crews and low budgets – I loved it and I’d like to do it again one of these days. When I was in LA I managed to get work directing TV and that was a great experience. I really loved that too, because when you’re making a movie that you’ve written yourself, you obsess about every tiny detail, and you’re part of the post-production for another six months after you finish shooting – but if you’re a director for hire in Hollywood, you just turn up for a couple of weeks and try to do your best with the script and the actors. I loved it, it was a blast with the very big budgets and huge crews. It was also very intense, but I loved sort of managing this enormous number of personalities – because sometimes we used to have a crew of just 12 people on our movies, but this was about 90 people all rushing around, so it was pretty different.
Your dad (historian Sir Keith Sinclair) and older brother (playwright, screenwriter and novelist Stephen Sinclair) were both writers and poets. Did they influence you creatively at all? Totally. I remember my dad saying to me when I was a kid that one of his favourite things in the whole world was to have a pen and a blank piece of paper, because he just liked to see what would come out on the page. So I learnt a lot about the excitement and joy of writing from my father, and then my brother Stephen had this incredible appreciation of language that he shared with me a lot, and my brother Cameron was also writing poetry when I was a kid, so there was a lot of poetry in the house. It was really an incredibly privileged childhood, to be surrounded by people who really thought writing was important – for me as a kid it was a lucky place to be, and very inspiring.
“[My daughter] was a big inspiration because I was able to watch her friends and see how they interact, and it just helped me remember what being a child was like myself.”