Now this is a really fuzzy question, but what do you think the NZ components – in terms of the various key creatives – of this UK/NZ co-production have brought to the realisation of Dean Spanley? Do you think something of an Antipodean/NZ sensibility has been brought to bear on the subject matter?
Umm. You know I was a little puzzled, I was surprised the Film Commission bought into it. As you say there are people – [producer Matthew] Metcalfe, [director] Toa [Fraser], Sam Neill, some of the technicians, I've got some kind of whatever because I've had a house on Kawau Island for 20 odd years and I've been coming here for 20 years, so.
But having said that, what's it got to do with New Zealand? And I remember actually when I wrote this thing initially, I showed the script to a couple of people here, a guy called George Andrews, a producer, and his wife Anne Andrews – friends, you know – and even they said, “Oh yeah, but it's got no relevance here, it's got nothing to do with NZ” – you could shoot here conceivably if you could mock up the English countryside and, you know, cityscape. So I never ever quite saw that.
Again, I've got to give that to Metcalfe for whatever energy he has managed to generate.
And there were a few sceptical conversations with people at the Film Commission about – not about its suitability for them but more actually about whether it was viable as a drama itself.
But I think it was just one of those little lucky things. I don't see it as being Antipodean in almost any sense of the word. I think there's a residual affection for the English language and the old country and all that, much muted now, in New Zealand. But I don't see its connection to the country at all.

Speaking of which, had you had much active connection with the NZ screen industry prior to Dean Spanley?
No, I couldn't get arrested here. I came over first a long time ago, when the government had a tax incentive for filmmaking – that's how long ago it was, the mid '80s. And when I came over I thought, “Oh well, you know, I'm a professional screenwriter, maybe I'll get some work.”
I thought it'd be more communal here, but nobody was interested and after sending a script to a couple of people I thought, “Fuck it, they're not going to be paying me any money anyway, so I'll just continue with my occupation.”
So I've never had any involvement with the New Zealand film industry. I've known a few of the people in it but I've never worked in it.

Perhaps people were a bit intimidated by you – especially in the mid '80s you would have had vastly more experience than almost anyone here?
Well, it might have been that. But also, the people I met were more financiers than filmmakers – I mean I never ever ran across Roger Donaldson or Jackson. I never actually met any filmmakers, it was only ever a few people looking to pump up scripts.
But you know, Kiwis don't really do intimidation, being intimidated all that well, I never got that sense, but I kinda got the sense– and this'll sound too harsh when I say it – “We are not impressed” was more the tone I got, though not offensively you know.
And also I began to realise how tight and small the market was and how every little niche had someone in it doing it and there wasn't much room, in a way, to come in. And it wasn't as if I was brandishing a set of original screenplays that were intimately of New Zealand. I was just saying, “I'm a professional writer, does anyone want me to write professionally for them?” [laughs] And the answer was, “Ah, thank you very much but that's fine.”

Speaking of which, though, I understand that prior to Dean Spanley you had been working with Philippa Campbell on an adaptation of The Beach At Falesa?
Yeah, that goes back to Rob Roy, the producer of which is a guy called Richard Jackson. After Rob Roy was finished Jackson approached me about adapting this little Robert Louis Stevenson novella, The Beach At Falesa. I started that – well, Rob Roy is 12, 14 years ago, and I wrote seven or eight drafts over a period of several years in the mid-'90s. But they could never get the script to work or a director attached or actors attached, so the project fell to the ground.
Then a couple of years ago Philippa – whom I knew through a guy named Vincent Burke who was connected to Falesa 'cos it was always going to be shot in this hemisphere – Philippa approached me and asked if I'd be interested in revisiting it, and since I'd always loved the story and never managed to make a decent fist of it I said “sure”.
So I wrote several drafts for Philippa and Richard, who was involved again, and because Philippa had just done No. 2 with Toa, and Toa was going to do Spanley, they saw that as a kind of a nexus, so Toa was brought in on Falesa. I had more to do with him script-wise on that than I ever did on Spanley. Ultimately he took the script off, after we did the pass last year, he took it off to rewrite it himself, presumably for some commitment to the project.

Have you seen a draft since then?
No, and we're at the stage where I think I should absent myself from the scriptwriting process. This is the director who's going to make the movie and he's taken it over to do things he wants to do. I don't think it really works if I come back and start writing on top of that. I think the baton's been handed over now and it'll depend on Toa getting it the way he needs it. I mean, I'm sure I'll see a draft – I saw Philippa the other day and she said, “We haven't got a draft to show you,” and I told her there's no great rush on that. I'd be fascinated to read it because I sweated bollocks over it [laughs]. Dylan Thomas actually wrote a draft of this a long long time ago and he fucked it up as well – it's a tricky little bugger.

After three decades or so of writing for the screen you're obviously very philosophical about letting go of projects.
Well, I wrote a couple of novels in the '60s when I was starting, and I've got a pretty clear idea of the difference between being an author and being a writer, you know. A screenwriter basically creates a document that someone is going to make in a totally different medium. And if you feel that strongly about it, you should direct it yourself. I mean, I directed a movie in the mid-'80s, which was enormously entertaining and informative for me but it demonstrated to me that I'm not much of a director. I'm not a bad writer but I can't direct that well. And I'm more than happy to play my part, and I like it and I'm not constantly champing on the bit and saying, “Why didn't you get it exactly the way I wrote it?” I suppose that's a form of philosophical resignation [laughs], I don't know.

Presumably it makes you a pleasure to work with.
It does, I'm a very, very good person to work with [laughs] – I take good meetings, you know ...
But when you're in the industrial aspect of the business, which is kind of where you are when you're working in American television, well, they build a certain kind of car and they don't build other kinds. And the Writers Guild is pretty rigorous with their rules – you write a storyline and four drafts for them. And in that process it's really enjoyable to sit back and let other smart people say what they think would be good and then try it. 'Cos you've got the four drafts to work it out, it's not like you've got to hit the gong first time. You've got your draft to get all your clever little lines in and then they say, “Yeah, that's all very well and good, but we need it to be a little bit like this,” so you try that way and then say, “See, that's what happens when you try to do that.” So I quite like that collaborative part of it; it's not really onerous in that regard.

I'm under the impression you're also working with Dean Spanley producer Matthew Metcalfe again, on an adaptation of Robert Fisk's The War on Civilisation...?
Well, I dunno if you've ever seen that book but you wouldn't want it to fall on your head – it's a fucking enormous great tome. I'd read the book – funny thing, the character in Spanley we invented is called Fisk and the only person I know called Fisk is Robert Fisk, so I guess I must have taken it from that. So a year and a bit later when Matthew came up with this thing of Fisk's I was quite intrigued in a completely Trivial Pursuits kind of way.
I think the main operative there is [attached director] Roger Donaldson. There's an old saying in the business that a producer is someone who knows a writer, and Matthew's found a writer he likes who tends to work for free if he likes it [the job]. I didn't take any money for Spanley because I wanted to see it get made. I mean, I got paid, don't get me wrong, I got paid at the end and an executive producer credit, which is what you get when you give a producer a free script.
So he came to me with this and said, “I'm quite interested in Fisk.” I read about 200 pages and then thought, “Oh fuck, this is a long way to go when I'm pretty sure I already know where he's heading,” because I've been reading Fisk for years. So I've done a document that might be used as a pitch document, but the principal movers in this I think will be Roger Donaldson and Fisk himself and Matthew.

How did you end up living in New Zealand?
When I'm asked that question I always say, “Ronald Reagan.” I moved to the States in 1970 – I'd written a couple of novels in the '60s and to my surprise they were immediately published and successful, so I thought, “Oh well, okay, I can do that, I'll have a shot at screenwriting and see what that's like,” because I was a big movie goer. The first things I wrote were Westerns and thrillers because I was writing pastiche – I wasn't writing about Scotland, I was writing about what I'd seen in the movies.
So I moved to the States in the '70s with my family and I'd been living there about 10 years and during that time four or five movies I had written had been made and it was all going along. And I'd started getting interested in American politics, which one does, and when Ronald Reagan was elected I was genuinely astonished – I thought “Fucking hell, this is weird”, you know. I didn't quite get it and it had all sorts of unpleasant connotations for me.
So I started thinking I wouldn't be living in the States permanently and I had kids in school, so that meant moving to somewhere English-speaking, and when you look at the world through that lens it boils down quite quickly. I didn't want to go back to England, I didn't want to go to Canada – too cold – I didn't even think of going to South Africa to be quite honest, and I didn't want to go to Oz. So I thought, “Oh well, I'll go and see what New Zealand is like.” So I came over and visited in '81 and came back the next couple of years and then finally found this place on Kawau, which by today's standards they were throwing away, and that was it really.

Well, I've pretty much exhausted my prepared questions – was there anything you particularly wanted to mention that we haven't touched on?
No, I just – I was enormously gratified, I might even say honoured, to have Peter O'Toole – who's, you know, Peter O'Toole – be so luminous [in his role in Dean Spanley]. I was just so touched – I keep thinking of that guy in Lawrence of Arabia and think, “Fucking hell, man – having him to get up and speak your lines.” So I was well pleased with that, well pleased – moved me to tears it did.

I'm interested to hear you say that about O'Toole, because it's not as though there haven't been a host of wonderful actors in your previous movies – Peter Fonda, Gene Hackman, Gregory Peck and so on...
Yeah, well, maybe it was age – I'm not saying Peter O'Toole is at the end of his career but he must be closer to the end than he is the beginning. And my feeling is that, may it be a long time yet, when the time comes for the retrospective of his film life, the last shot of Dean Spanley will get into it.

• Dean Spanley opens nationwide this Thursday (26 February) – see news item "Dean Spanley to open wide" on Onfilm's home page.

© Copyright Onfilm magazine, February 2009 www.onfilm.co.nz