Graham Reid | | 3 min read
Some many decades ago, after my dad and I had returned from an extended overseas trip, we were having dinner with some friends of my parents.
At some point one of the guests – perhaps annoyed we had been banging on about some interesting places we'd been – spoke up for the beauties of Auckland and said, “In what other city in the world can you be swimming in the beautiful sea in the morning and go skiing in the afternoon?”
My dad, quick as flash-lighting said, “Beirut” . . . where we had recently been.
I was reminded of this when the kerfuffle blew up over The Hobbit and Peter Jackson said they'd just shift the whole production to Eastern Europe. It might have sounded petulant and a threat – but it is also the reality in the international world of film-making.
The union issue isn't my concern here – although I thought it howlingly funny that letter to the Herald in which some guy complained you couldn't support a family on what they pay for an extra. (!)
I have been more inclined to think about our magnificent landscapes as seen in the Rings trilogy and how proud we are of them.
On talkback radio people were saying it was unthinkable The Hobbit could filmed anywhere other than in our beautiful mountains.
I'm sure I heard one guy say, “There's nothing like them anywhere else in the world” which rather overlooked their name: “The Southern Alps” which implies there might be . . . Hmmm Northern Alps, you think?
Yep.
We are rightly attached to our Alps, Muriwai, the Hokianga and so forth – but just as the Japanese discovered when Taranaki stood in for Fuji, landscape is malleable in the lens and, frankly, it's everywhere.
No one should be in any doubt that while our country is gifted with beauties so are many other places. We aren't unique in that regard.
And they all scrub up on film.
Former Waitakere mayor Bob Harvey was on the radio the other day saying enthusiastically that West Auckland bush could be used as a stand in for . . . and then he listed some places (the Amazon? I forget.)
It's true – but I was lucky enough to
spend some time on Kaua'i – the “garden island” in the Hawaii
group – and that too stands in for just about everywhere. I took a
four-wheel drive tour of various movie locations on that island not
much bigger than Great Barrier and saw Jurassic Park, Vietnam,
Cambodia, Tahiti, Australia, Africa and even Fantasy Island.
Jesus, I did silly poses at the gates of Jurrasic Park.
You also don't have to be too long in Vancouver, Canada before you stumble over a Hollywood crew.
Last time I checked over 200 films had been shot there and the city has stood in for Boston, the Bronx, Chicago, Washington DC . . .
The reason they are there? The lower Canadian dollar, proximity to LA, the infrastructure established and the support the city gives to film-makers.
And that is pretty much why the Rings trilogy was filmed here – except for the proximity thing perhaps, but maybe distance was what Jackson also wanted.
But these days everywhere formerly remote can be in touch with the rest of the world. I visited a production studio in Auckland and basically they were e-mailing the day's cuts of various television series and movies shot in Auckland to the LA studio for overnight approval. (“A bit more red in the faces.”)
Instant.
So the brutal truth is that while New Zealand's landscapes can be breathtaking – and I don't mean a look across industrial Penrose – we aren't that unique.
What is unique is our response to our landscape – but it's as unique as the Ethiopians, Spanish, Kurds and so on are to theirs.
In 1995 Simon Schama wrote a wonderful and provocative book Landscape and Memory about how we find meaning and myth, symbolism and metaphor in landscapes. Ours informs not just art and culture but how we define ourselves – and maybe how we wish to be seen by others.
In those towering mountains which gave character to the Rings trilogy we maybe wanted to see something of ourselves -- a rugged individualism perhaps, if you can make it there you make it anywhere.
Think how we have mythologised the “Southern man” – or at least ad agencies have . . .and brewers and cheese-makers have done the rest.
Oh, mate.
Great tracts of our landscape have a rough-hewn and imposing solidity which makes us ponder – even if just for an instant – the transitory and fragile nature of our existence. The Christchurch quake – along a fault-line no one seemed to know even existed – simply reinforces that feeling of uncertainty in these Shaky Isles.
We rightly brag about the part of the world we live in – it can take your breath away, even on film – but you can also swim in the sea and go skiing on the same day in many places.
And towering mountains or broad vistas are not our preserve alone.
Argentina anyone?
And frankly, a Hobbiton could be built anywhere.
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This article was written in 2013. I think the points still apply, perhaps even more so.
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These entries are of little consequence to anyone other than me Graham Reid, the author of this site, and maybe my family, researchers and those with too much time on their hands.
Enjoy these random oddities at Personal Elsewhere.
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