Another chance to see ‘good-time movie’

Press, 11 July 1987, Page 19

Another chance to see ‘good-time movie’

A young Maori buys his dream car and sets off to make a fantasy come true in “Mark II,” TVNZ’s first telefeature, which is being repeated on Two tonight (Saturday) at 9. Eddie Aranui buys his uncle’s restored red and white Mark II Zephyr and heads out of Auckland with Matthew, his cousin, and Kingi, their friend to live out their fantasy of freedom on the road. “Mark II" is a “good time” movie, co-written by independent filmmaker Mike Walker and one of the stars of the movie, Mitchell Manuel. Walker describes “Mark II” as a “Polynesian ‘Goodbye Pork Pie’,” though with a wry smile — he wrote the first

script for “Mark II” back in 1975, five years before “Pork Pie” hit the cinemas. But "Mark II” did not get off the ground during the 70s because funding “just wasn’t there.” Instead, Walker tackled something less adventurous — and less expensive — with the young men at Kohitere, a correctional institution in Levin. “Kingi’s Story” is a serious film about the issues and pressures facing young Polynesians in New Zealand, largely scripted by the young men of Kohitere. Walker followed it with “Kingpin,” an independent film which premiered in Levin and did the cinema circuit. Walker still had the “Mark II” script tucked away in a drawer. In May, 1985, he got a phone call from Avalon and began work on updating it. “It’s a much more freewheeling movie than “Kingpin” ... the motivation was to produce a piece of entertainment,” Walker says. The feeling of getting something special from working on “Mark II” was shared by all those who worked on the movie. Anderson talks about “sharing the power" of directorship with Walker and the three lead actors who would take his ideas and make them their own — and make them better. All three projects, “Kingi’s Story,” “Kingpin” and now “Mark II," have evolved through Mike Walker’s close relationship with young Maori and Polynesians — work-

ing with them, drawing them, photographing them. “They are unselfconscious about performing,” Walker says. “The marae situation and ceremonies are a piece of theatre; there is a strong tradition of oratory, dance and music.”