Geoff Murphy, pioneer of modern New Zealand cinema, dies aged 80
Geoff Murphy, the film-maker who was a key pioneer in the development of the modern New Zealand film industry, has died aged 80, the New Zealand film commission has confirmed. With hits such as Goodbye Pork Pie and The Quiet Earth, Murphy stood alongside Roger Donaldson as a central figure in the creation of a homegrown industry.
Born in Wellington in 1938, Murphy made his mark playing the trumpet in travelling performance co-op Blerta in the 70s, performing at festivals and living as part of a commune. Having made TV shorts in the early 70s, Murphy’s first feature, Wild Man (1977), grew out of his friendship with Blerta founder Bruno Lawrence – who would go on to act in a number of Murphy’s films as well as Donaldson’s 1981 hit Smash Palace.
But New Zealand was a cinematic backwater compared with its near neighbour Australia, which had produced a series of masterpieces in the 70s. Murphy finally hit the jackpot in 1981 with Goodbye Pork Pie, a freewheeling road movie featuring two men, a woman and a yellow Mini. It was a huge box-office hit in New Zealand, prompting Murphy to move on to Utu, a large-scale epic “Maori western” set during the land wars of the 1870s. Murphy took pains to depict Maori culture with authenticity, and Utu became part of the “Maori renaissance” of the 1980s and 90s.
Murphy then filmed The Quiet Earth, a dystopian sci-fi tale that featured Lawrence as a scientist who wakes up to find he appears to be the only survivor of a planetary catastrophe. After his action comedy Never Day Die, Murphy found work in Hollywood, as the director of Young Guns II, the sequel to the infamous brat pack western. Although critically derided, Young Guns II was a commercial success and demonstrated Murphy’s facility for action cinema. However, his next film, the sci-fi tale Freejack, which starred Mick Jagger and Emilio Estevez, was a disaster, with Murphy sidelined by producers after test screenings went awry.
Murphy bounced back, making TV films for HBO, and then being hired on to his biggest commercial success: the Steven Seagal vehicle Under Siege 2: Dark Territory – which he later described as “a very dreary process [with] lots of arguments”.
Murphy’s reputation for blunt speaking and confrontation with producers meant that his Hollywood career began to dry up, and he began working for other New Zealand directors. He was second unit director on Donaldson’s 1997 volcano movie Dante’s Peak, and then returned to New Zealand to work in the same capacity on Peter Jackson’s blockbusting Lord of the Rings trilogy. Murphy’s final released feature was the 2004 conspiracy thriller Spooked, and he completed an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, for the New Zealand film festival in 2009.
Murphy was appointed officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit 2014.