There’s a very go-to kind of attitude in New Zealand that stems from that psyche of being quite isolated and not being able to rely on the rest of the world’s infrastructure.
If justice is supposed to be fair, than any justice system you would hope is based on fairness.
I don’t think that because you die and move on to somewhere else that you lose your sense of humor.
For me, utter failure is to make a film that people pay their money to go see and they don’t like.
If you take a regular animated film, that’s being done by animators on computers, so the filmmaking is a fairly technical process.
I used to send away for eight-minute Super 8 movies of various Ray Harryhausen scenes advertised on the back of ‘Famous Monsters of Filmland’ magazine.
‘Heavenly Creatures’ was really the idea of Fran Walsh. It was a very famous New Zealand murder case, but not one that people knew much about.
Learning how to edit movies was a real breakthrough.
I think everything that you do, you’re learning. I mean, every movie that you make is like a film school; that’s one of the things that I enjoy about filmmaking.
I think we’re going to enter a phase where there’s less interest in the CGI and there’s a demand for story again. I think we’ve dropped the ball a little bit on stories for the sake of the amazing toys that we’ve played with.
I just got tired of being overweight and unfit, so I changed my diet from hamburgers to yogurt and muesli, and it seems to work.
The most honest form of filmmaking is to make a film for yourself.
I’ve always tried to make movies that pull the audience out of their seats… I want audiences to be transported.
What I don’t like are pompous, pretentious movies.
There’s a generation of children who don’t like black and white movies. There’s a level of impatience or intolerance now.
100 years ago, movies were black-and-white, silent, and 16 frames a second. So 100 years from now, what are they going to be?
One of the best things about growing up in New Zealand is that if you are prepared to work hard and have faith in yourself, truly anything is possible.
48 frames per second is something you have to get used to. I’ve got absolute belief and faith in 48 frames… it’s something that could have ramifications for the entire industry. ‘The Hobbit’ really is the test of that.
No film has captivated my imagination more than ‘King Kong.’ I’m making movies today because I saw this film when I was 9 years old.
If I’m lucky enough to be involved in the Academy Awards in the future, I’ll just let people make up their decision without being involved in any politics. Because it shouldn’t involve that.
Obviously, movies, you’re often on location, out in the rain or the sun, in a real place where the trees and the cars are real. But when you’re on stage, as an actor you’re imagining the environment that you’re in.
What I think is remarkable about my mum and dad is they had no interest in films, really. None.
My dad always told me that the principal reason he chose New Zealand to emigrate to after World War II was the high regard his father had for the Kiwis he encountered at Gallipoli.