Witi Ihimaera - Bulibasha

Nice try, Witi.

Even worse, Dad’s and my uncles’ (and, okay, I will admit it my ) love of illustrated comics and 1950s movies began to infiltrate any attempts to aim for a higher literary purpose. Instead of Pagnol, Bulibasha decided to model itself on films like Shane, The Eagle and the Hawk, High Noon, Bullwhip, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and River of No Return . The race to the church comes straight out of the film Friendly Persuasion .

‘This is all your fault,’ I said to Dad during one of our phone calls. ‘I’m in France to write something that will lend lustre to the Fellowship and instead I find myself writing a … a … puha Western.’

‘At least that’s something of yours I might read,’ he answered.

I gave up and let myself be run over by a convoy of shearers on their way to a shearing shed. As a consequence the words gushed out of me, surprising me with their uninhibited zest for life. They made me rediscover the joy of spontaneous creative energy and, ever since, I have always tried to write without really thinking. I imagine myself drinking clear water from a virgin spring that comes from high in the mountains.

I now trust that spring.

By winter, when the swallows were skimming across the Mediterranean to warmer climes, I had completed the book. There was no better place to do it than in the south, close to Italy, where the temperament, passion, pain and laughter were so much akin to the Waituhi Valley’s own passionate involvement in life, death and history. As I returned to Aotearoa, I paid tribute to the sun, mountains and peoples bordering the great Mediterranean Sea.

Bulibasha, King of the Gypsies was published the next year, 1994. I dedicated it to my grandfather, Dad and the great Smiler shearing gang of hard cases, studs, roustabouts, fleecos and sheepos.

By that time, however, I had left the smell of wool, sheep dip and dags way behind. I was already at work on my next — literary — novel, Nights in the Gardens of Spain . I wasn’t really paying attention when Bulibasha became a finalist in the Montana Book Awards in 1995. On the night of the awards, I turned up late at the Langham with Jenny Te Paa, thinking the formal ceremonies would be over and we could boogie away the rest of the night. Geoff Walker said to me, ‘Where have you been?!’ I didn’t even have time to reply because I heard my name being read out and Bulibasha being crowned the winner.

How had that happened?

I blundered my way through an acceptance speech. And then I began to laugh: ‘Dad, this one’s for you.’

Twenty-one years after I published the book, it has become Mahana , the fourth film adaptation to be made from my work.

Luckily it didn’t take as long to bring to the screen as Whale Rider . That film took twelve years; Mahana took around seven. I have to thank my dear friend and trusted colleague Robin Scholes, who picked the project up when it fell off the sheep truck and took it into production.

Robin was the producer of, among other films, Once Were Warriors (1994) and it was her inspired idea to bring Lee Tamahori, the director of Warriors , back home to make his first New Zealand movie in twenty-one years. Not only that, Robin and Lee decided to cast the magnificent Temuera Morrison, who had been Jake in Warriors , as Tamihana Mahana, the patriarch in Mahana . No wonder that some people like to call the film Warriors Meets Whale Rider .

I have to say that my experience with Mahana , not just as the writer of the book but also associate producer of the film, has made me realise that every movie made in Aotearoa is an achievement of considerable tenacity.

Robin brought on board a small team to spearhead the production, including Janine Dickens as co-producer. Robin had previous experience with international scriptwriter John Collee, who scripted Happy Feet, Master and Commander and other important films, and she managed to secure him to write a new script of Bulibasha , which underwent a change of name to The Patriarch .

While the team was being sorted, the money began to be raised in tandem. Film funding, even with ‘star’ participants, is difficult to secure in a competitive international market. Being a Gizzy boy, I had hoped that we would be able to film in Poverty Bay; the beautiful Kaipara Harbour and Helensville were among the twelve Auckland locations that stood in for the East Coast. The budget came from multiple sources: the New Zealand Film Commission, New Zealand on Air, Maori Television, Hopscotch/eOne, Wild Bunch, private equity investors and, in a final scramble, two hundred individuals via the Snowball funding platform.

Thank you, youz fellas.

The next issue was, when was Lee available to direct? As a popular and highly sought-after director, he and his agent had to juggle his schedules but — hurrah! — he had a short window in 2014 which we tried for … and missed. There was another window in April 2015, but would all the funding elements be together to allow the film to start on time?

We had to make it, otherwise the film would have been delayed, possibly another year. Our funders would have lost their window as well and put their money towards other projects. Production staff would have moved on, actors too. We would have had to start the entire production countdown again. Worse, the film could have died on us.

I tell you, making a film is not for the faint-hearted.

Meanwhile, with Tem Morrison at the head of the Mahana family, other casting occurred around him. Nancy Brunning became Grandmother Mahana; veteran actor Jim Moriarty was cast as Tem’s arch rival, Rupeni Poata; and youngster Akuhata Keefe was plucked from Ruatoria to play the plucky hero, Simeon. The cast was a big one but they became a wonderful family, and not only on-screen. When Akuhata’s grandmother died, for instance, his movie grandfather Tem Morrison flew to Gisborne to represent the cast at her tangi.

I was on location when Lee was filming the race to the church. I marvelled at the mastery of his direction and the concentration of the production staff and cast. We are lucky to have had Ginny Loane as our director of photography. I was also on location when she and Lee and her team filmed the ‘rape’ scene. Over and over they went through the rehearsal as a very huge and heavy camera was carried around Grandmother’s house, onto a crane and up, so that the audience could ‘look’ through the window and into Ramona’s bedroom. On the day of filming, the scene took almost the entire day to film. On screen it lasts, say, a minute, but it has such power and potency.

I was also on location during the filming of the Golden Shears sequences. You wouldn’t know it, but the rain was absolutely bucketing down. Extras had been bussed in and must have been freezing. How everyone maintained concentration, I just do not know.

The film was shot over thirty-five days in April and May 2015. Now titled Mahana , test screenings were held two months later. I fell out of my chair with laughter when I saw that Lee had added his own love of 1950s movies by referencing My Darling Clementine, 3:10 to Yuma and Elvis in Flaming Star .

After she saw one of the early screenings, a friend of mine told me she felt that she had been invited into the film and the family. My Dad would have been proud of that comment.

One last memory: when I first went on location at Jonkers Farm, what I saw was a group of film trucks and vans, with crew and cast laughing and taking a coffee break. My mind went back to France, 1993. A Romany encampment. Men and women and children chatting and having lunch just outside Nice. I was with my friends William and Nelly Rubinstein.