Peter Jackson: A Film-maker’s Journey. Brian Sibley

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СКАЧАТЬ discretionary fund. ‘For that money,’ Jim told Peter, ‘you will have to screen the movie for the board of the Film Commission.’ It was another nerve-wracking experience, worse even than screening his raw footage for Jim Booth, because, if the board refused to approve the funding, then Bad Taste was unlikely to ever be completed.

      All the members of the Film Commission board were sitting there, seeing Bad Taste for the first time. This, of course, was Jim’s plan: show them the film in its most polished state; don’t let them see it in the state that he saw it in, but let them view it as a finished cut so that it feels more like a proper movie…

      David Gascoigne’s memory of meeting Peter the first time is of someone who was ‘pleasant, fun and imaginative but who also had a level of magical persuasiveness! I liked him but “liking” isn’t enough, I thought there was evidence of real ability.’

      Lindsay Shelton agrees: ‘Over the years, the question has often been asked, “How could the Film Commission have ever invested in a splatter movie?” Actually, it’s easily answered: they were backing talent; they took a look at what was on offer and decided that this was a talent that they wanted to assist. And they were right.’

      ‘They were a bit shocked by the footage,’ says Peter, ‘but I think they saw that there was a film there…’ As David Gascoigne recalls: ‘Seeing the footage was a cathartic experience! Of course some members were concerned or had reservations – being dependent on public money, the board had to consider how the film would be viewed on the political landscape, because if you offend too many politicians then you won’t get any more money and that hurts the industry. Happily, despite some nervousness, the board approved the post-production funding without significant dissension.’

      A major issue in post-production was the vocal performances of the cast. It was the view of some that ‘The Boys’ needed to be dubbed by professional actors and it was an issue that Peter had tackled in his original nineteen-page approach to the Film Commission:

      ‘If needs be, me and the others will go out and tape all the sound effects, use our voices and compose and record our own music (a couple of the guys are in bands) BUT I don’t really want to do that. The sound plays such an important part in this film (many times I’ve said to the others, “Don’t worry if it doesn’t look too great, the sound will carry it through,”) so I want to make sure that it is as best a job as can be done under the circumstances. I would like to hire two or three professional sound recordists and editors and I’d like to get professional actors to provide the voice characterisations…’

      In the event, Tony Hiles convinced everyone that The Boys should dub their own voices and, though initially a little apprehensive, they quickly mastered the technique and provided strong vocal performances that now seem an essential ingredient of the film’s ‘home made’ appeal. Only Lord Crumb, the head alien, who had been played by Doug Wren, one of Peter’s older colleagues at the Post and an amateur actor, was dubbed by a real actor, Peter Vere-Jones, a man with the fully rounded tones of an old-school thespian. Vere-Jones also served as voice-coach to The Boys, who treated the whole experience with characteristic level-headedness, especially any attempt to get them to open the vowels and enunciate correctly! Mercifully, The Boys (who refused to join the actors’ union) stayed completely themselves and the contrast that they provided to Vere-Jones’ plummy old alien is one of the joys of Bad Taste.

      Everyone was in agreement about the importance of finding the right film score for Bad Taste. At first, Peter had thought he might be able to incorporate numbers by his favourite group, The Beatles, and former work colleague and fellow fan, Ray Battersby, remembers Peter talking about using the group’s 1964 number, ‘I’ll Get You’ (‘So I’m telling you, my friend,/That I’ll get you, I’ll get you in the end,/Yes I will, I’ll get you in the end’) over the closing credits. Rights and permissions made this proposal impossible, although The Beatles did manage a ‘guest’ appearance in the film. When the ‘brain-dead’ Derek

      LEFT: As Jamie laboured away on the final edit, the cast had to rerecord all our dialogue. Here, Pete O’Herne and I try to match our lip movements from a few years earlier. Brent Burge did our final sound mix for Bad Taste. Recently, Brent did a brilliant job designing the gorilla vocal sounds for our King Kong movie.

      pursues the aliens in a bizarre-looking saloon car with an ‘upper deck’ (having been adapted for a disabled driver), the passengers in the front seats are life-size cardboard cutouts, painted by Peter, of The Beatles in their ‘Sgt Pepper’ outfits.

      In Peter’s first letter to the Film Commission, he had written of his musical ambitions for the film: ‘Above all I want a good musical soundtrack. That is the most important thing of all. A soundtrack that carries the film along, smoothing over the rough bits, providing a mirror to what the people are seeing, amplifying the different moods the film contains. Mike and Terry (our two band members) may well be able to come up with something good: they play rock music, and one of my pet hates is a rock soundtrack. Mike had a go at some mood music with his electric guitar and various gizmos a couple of months ago, and it wasn’t bad, but I’d love a more orchestral-sounding score if I could get it. A good example of what I like are Brian May’s two Mad Max soundtracks – overly loud, overly dramatic.’

      The first that Wellington composer, Michelle Scullion, heard of the project was an intriguing telephone call: ‘Tony Hiles said that he was working on a project with a young guy who was making his first

      feature. All he said about it was that it was “unusual,” that it might be my kind of thing and suggested that I have a look. So, I had a look…’

      Tony and Peter screened half an hour of edited footage for Michelle on a Steenbeck machine in Jamie Selkirk’s editing suite. ‘That first ever meeting,’ says Michelle, ‘I remember lock, stock and barrel, clean as a whistle, clear as a bell! Peter had messy hair, quite a stammer and a certain coyness about him. The film was incredibly wacky and even though the acting wasn’t brilliant, it was honest and had an innocent “boys own adventure” charm.’

      There was no sound, but Peter and Tony provided an aural sound score to the movie, creating the effects with mouth noises! ‘I was in hysterics; hooting; tears running down my face! It grabbed me and reminded me of going to the local “bug-house”, as a kid, to watch giant versions of John Wayne and Donald Duck when, if anyone messed around or made too much noise, the film would be stopped and we’d be told if we didn’t quieten down we’d all be sent home!’

      At the end of the screening Tony asked if Michelle wanted to work on the film. ‘Of course I wanted to work on it! Not because I wanted to work on a feature film – it was to be my first – but because I wanted to work on this film!’

      Michelle did her research: ‘When I work with a film-maker, I want to get into their mind, know what they’re thinking of in relation to the score. Peter told me he was a great fan of The Beatles and would have loved to use Beatles songs on the soundtrack; I also discovered that he was a fan of James Bond, so I went off and watched about nine Bond films and some zombie splatter movies that Peter lent me

      I was worried about copyright issues involved in using an existing image of The Beatles, so I painted these myself. I’m not a great artist but the silliness of it all gets the laugh I was after. For a long time I harboured a dream of including one or two Beatles songs on the Bad Taste soundtrack, but that could never have happened.

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