I resisted the temptation to blog about the whole fracas that went down when Warner Brothers contemplated moving production of The Hobbit overseas. There were far more connected and more erudite people blogging on the subject. While I did go a bit nuts on my Twitter feed, I didn’t think I could actually add anything by blogging on it, particularly when Russell Brown was doing such a good job of pulling it all together.
For the record I am ecstatic that The Hobbit will be filmed here. I would have loved to have seen Guillermo Del Toro‘s take on it, but having Peter Jackson at the helm will be just as good, and have better continuity with the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.
What prompted this blog post was reading this article on Stuff, particularly the comments attributed to Peter Elliott:
“It’s time to put our big boys’ pants on and get in the room and start talking.”
He said the impact of the conflict was unexpected.
“Emotions exploded,” he said.
“Now everyone is aware of how to play this game. It was a wake-up call.”
The phrase that really caught my attention was “everyone is aware of how to play this game”. I was a subscriber to the theory that the actors’ boycott of The Hobbit was the result of political machinations on the part of the Australian actors’ union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), with which the New Zealand Actors Equity (NZAE) union had aligned itself. In this light, I find Elliott’s assertion that lessons have been learned to be heartening.
New Zealanders like to think of ourselves as punching above our weight, but in some areas we just don’t understand how to conduct ourselves. If we treat Elliott’s talk of playing the game as a metaphor, then we should extrapolate that to consideration of what the stakes are in that game. In the case of The Hobbit, and the New Zealand film industry, those stakes are high indeed. Now it seems that all parts of the industry have a cast iron appreciation of how easily things could slip away.
As kiwis we seem almost to have “she’ll be right” deeply ingrained in the national psyche. Perhaps it’s our isolation, or perhaps it’s hard to hang on to our worries when we’re confronted by an abudance of natural beauty on a daily basis. Whatever the reason, I got the impression that this was exactly the attitude that the NZAE and even the Council of Trade Unions seemed to take into their boycott of The Hobbit. It is right and proper that a union should show unwavering commitment to their cause, but every statement and appearance by representatives of the union and council appeared to show a complete disbelief that Warner Brothers would take the actions that Jackson was warning of.
Clearly, when half a billion dollars is on the line, she most definitely won’t be right. It’s hard for anyone to conceive of that kind of money down here in New Zealand. There are likely to only be a handful of people working here for whom that kind of figure is a reality of their daily business. It’s almost certain that none of those people are actors. That’s not a criticism, and I can count myself among those people that aren’t operating at that level. My hope is that out of this whole sorry saga there is a better appreciation for the hardball tactics and commercial realities of big budget filmmaking among members of the New Zealand film industry.
New Zealanders are talented in all facets of filmmaking, from acting to directing, effects, costumes and the rest. Two out of the five top grossing movies of all time globally in Avatar and Return Of The King were made here, utilising local talent for a large part of their production. About the only thing we’ve really needed from overseas to make them happen has been the financing. If this episode allows our industry to move forward as a more integrated, cohesive and worldly entity, then perhaps the episode wasn’t completely without profit after all.
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