Comments on: Peter Jackson, and the alleged need to keep up with the Australian film industry

By: Stephan

Stephan — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 11:05:38 +0000

I lived in New Zealand and believe me it is not easy to get funding, but I will see what Screen will do when we apply for our first feature film…This comment about Ruth Harley is not very helpful…

By: Joe Wylie

Joe Wylie — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:06:47 +0000

Screen Australia is currently headed by ex-NZFC supremo Ruth Harley, a woman once described by Jackson as a self-serving bureaucrat.

By: Joe Blow

Joe Blow — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:32:19 +0000

I’ve got pretty poor taste in film but I’ve noticed some pretty good gore/horror coming out of Oz. It’s not Hollywood blockbuster material by any stretch of the imagination and that’s why it’s really good. Why are we not getting into sickos gone bush who have decided to butcher up British and German tourists for fun? Could it be that in Oz they’ve had the real thing? Surely we’ve had a serial killer worth ripping off for a flick. Even if we haven’t it’d surely be doable anyway… those Europeans find the wilderness down under awfully scarey… low overheads… anyone got a camera who can shoot?

By: mike

mike — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:38:22 +0000

Why should the NZ film industry strive to be ideologically “pure” as an economic sector – ie. not publicly subsidised – when other sectors show no such desire?

If one is looking for far more significant forms of subsidisation, one need only turn to rental housing (lack of capital gains tax) and dairy (mortgaging the future of the rural environment).

Filmmaking is a highly productive sector that employs thousands of people – in a sense it is now a successful form of NZ manufacturing. We lament the closing of manufacturing plants that make tyres or washing machines. It is hardly “rhetoric” that such industries can’t disappear. Why shouldn’t we respect Peter Jackson’s efforts to keep his “factory” open?

Of course, he is also a capitalist and has a large personal stake in maintaining tax breaks. He also seems to promote NZ as ideal for Hollywood productions due its minimal unionisation, which I find a bit dodgy.

Nonetheless, he employs a lot of people, seems to pay them reasonably well – isn’t that worth some protection in this day and age?

By: stuart munro

stuart munro — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:44:11 +0000

Any industry that demands special treatment on the threat of decamping needs to be treated with a certain scepticism.

More often than not it is a rhetorical threat, like that of northen English manufacturers to throw their factories into the North Sea in Dickens’ Hard Times, or for that matter, the incipient failure of the hugely profitable ACC due to insufficient funds.