Reviewed by Helen Martin

Doc­u­men­tary NZ 2011  prods Tom Parkin­son, Robert Boyd-Bell co-prod Toby Parkin­son dir/co-writer Ian Mune co-writer Phil Gif­ford ed Mar­got Fran­cis cam­era Waka Attewell sound Dick Reade, Tom Miskin com­poser Bernie Allen footage researcher Angela Boyd 90 minutes

Both times I saw Billy T: Te Movie the audi­ence stayed on for the cred­its, savour­ing every last drop, delighted when the wait was rewarded with one last and very funny skit. It’s easy to see the rea­son for the wait. The sub­ject mat­ter of Billy T: Te Movie, described by co-producer Toby Parkin­son as come­dian Billy T James’s “career and his com­edy as a reflec­tion of the cul­tural shifts hap­pen­ing in the coun­try” (Onfilm, August, 2011) is fas­ci­nat­ing in itself. Add to that superb craft­ing in the sto­ry­telling, with image and sound a per­fectly matched cor­rel­a­tive to the nar­ra­tive and spirit of each sequence, and you have a cap­ti­vat­ing whole that is so much more than the sum of its parts.

From the explo­sive open­ing, one of the stand­out qual­i­ties of the film is its energy, dri­ven by a pump­ing sound­track which exu­ber­antly rein­forces the many upbeat times in Billy’s life, most notably when he’s on stage. This is bal­anced by a qui­eter energy in the more con­tem­pla­tive moments, when sad­ness replaces joy. Epit­o­mis­ing this, the arrest­ing scene where Billy’s friends and col­leagues, each in a sin­gle close-up, word­lessly reflect on his early death, is mas­ter­ful in its under­state­ment and elo­quence.  
   
Exhaus­tive research has turned up a wealth of visu­als, all dig­i­tally re-mastered, pro­duc­ing a rich haul of rel­e­vant and some­times sur­pris­ing images – news footage of the 1950s drift of rural Maori to the cities (“Te great migra­tion”), of the 1975 Maori Land March, and, amaz­ingly, archival footage of Billy’s birth par­ents, Sally and Jimmy Smith (“Te whanau tale”). We see in action the British stand-up come­di­ans Billy learned from on his early Euro­pean tour with the Maori Vol­canics, and the early audi­ences who rolled in the aisles at his first stand-up gigs.

While much of Billy’s per­for­mance footage has been lost, there’s enough of it to anchor the nar­ra­tive, to keep it mov­ing and to show­case the range of his work, good and bad. Con­vinc­ing re-enactments are cut seam­lessly into the flow, as are dozens of stills, again the result of painstak­ing research. Mon­tage is also used to pow­er­ful effect, as are the quirky con­nect­ing graph­ics which act as sign­posts while echo­ing Billy’s artis­tic flair.        

And then there are the inter­views, where a parade of fam­ily, friends and col­leagues talk about Billy, his tal­ents, his flaws. You expect to hear from grate­ful fellow-comedians and musi­cians, fam­ily, pro­duc­ers and man­agers but, adding flavour to the pot, you also get to meet peo­ple you couldn’t pos­si­bly have known about: mates from school and from the Maori hos­tel where he stayed when he first moved to the city; a man Billy sup­ported as a teenager as he waited, like Billy, for a life-saving heart trans­plant; the cou­ple who drove baby Billy in their meat truck, in 1949, to be handed over to the rel­a­tive who was to bring him up. Notably absent is Billy’s wife Lynn, who appears in a shot of their wed­ding, then van­ishes like a wraith. That part of the story is not told – per­haps it needs a doc­u­men­tary of its own.         
          
It’s a clever bal­anc­ing act, with con­tem­pla­tion of the per­plex­ing issues – Billy by and large blanked out his Maori her­itage, as a worka­holic he couldn’t see mean­ing in life unless he was per­form­ing, many never knew the man behind the come­dian – threaded into the tex­ture of the nar­ra­tive with­out dam­ag­ing the over­all mood of cel­e­bra­tion and love for the man who remains the fun­ni­est come­dian this coun­try has produced.