Bret McKenzie

Bret McKenzie is half of musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, alongside actor Jemaine Clement. In 2007 the group's success earned them their own show on American network HBO, which became a global cult success. Aside from playing in a number of bands, McKenzie featured in the 2004 documentary Frodo is Great...Who is That?, which looks at how a brief role in The Lord of the Rings helped win him a devoted fan following. In January 2012 he was nominated for an Academy Award for his song 'Man or Muppet' from The Muppets.

The Conchords parody a range of musical genres, as well as the idea of two naive Kiwis failing to make it big in the United States. With Grammy Awards, HBO success and sell-out concerts in America, Flight of the Conchords can be described as New Zealand's most successful comedy act to date.

Bret McKenzie grew up Wellington, the second of three sons. His mother, dance teacher Deirdre Tarrant, commands Footnote Dance Company. Her sons would often travel with her overseas for work. Bret's father Peter worked as a lawyer, and sometime actor and singer (he would later have small roles in The Fellowship of the Ring and King Kong).

Encouraged to try dance, music and sport, Bret learnt to play a number of instruments, including guitar, ukulele and keyboards. At Victoria University in Wellington, he studied drama and and film. There he met comedian/musician Jemaine Clement. They became flatmates, and alongside director Taika Waititi briefly performed together as part of a larger comedy group, So You're a Man. McKenzie also worked on a number of plays. Dirt (1998), which he directed, won a Chapman Tripp theatre award for best original production.

During this period McKenzie and Clement formed a band. McKenzie has said that their first gig was meant to be supplying music for a comedy night, but they inadvertently became one of the acts instead. The new duo decided to write their own songs, partly because if they got them wrong, people were less likely to notice.

In 2001 the Flight of the Conchords took their first full-length show to Canada's Calgary Fringe Festival. The following year their show Folk the World played at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, winning them a Fringe award, and invitations to discuss projects with casting directors in Los Angeles. "It was really exciting," McKenzie later said, "but you needed to have a clear idea of what you wanted to do. And we didn't really have any idea at all."

Their next show High on Folk was nominated for England's prestigious Perrier Award, and they recorded an award-winning self-titled series, based around the idea of the band trying to make it in London. It finally aired on BBC radio in 2005.

The band's humour came not just from their parodies of a wide range of musical genres, but from their deliberately awkward banter between songs, making a virtue of Kiwi naivety, obscurity, and self-deprecation.

Meanwhile McKenzie was winning recognition in another area, thanks to a blink and you'll miss it appearance as an elf in Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring. The role spawned him a 12 second return cameo in the third Rings film, another in The Hobbit, and the nickname Figwit. The title of a 2004 documentary on the fan phenomenon - Frodo is Great...Who is That? was born from fans' reactions to the sight of McKenzie on-screen.

Attempts to pitch a Conchords show to New Zealand television had met little success, but by 2004 the band were attracting overtures from American TV networks. The following year executives from cable network HBO invited the duo to perform in Los Angeles, for an episode of stand-up comedy show One Night Stand.

The programme's success encouraged HBO to sign the Conchords to make a pilot for a series. It was one of only four made by the company that year. The series saw the pair playing versions of themselves. The mixture of the band's particularly Kiwi brand of humour with a New York setting would spawn cult success.

For four months, the duo alternated five days of filming, with weekends working on scripts and music. McKenzie, Clement, and British director/scriptwriter James Bobin (Da Ali G Show) were all fans of understated comedy: the Conchords series has few punchlines, and no laugh track. McKenzie found HBO creatively "incredibly supportive", letting the trio have roughly "90 percent of what we want".

In August 2007 the Conchords released their album The Distant Future; it later won a Grammy for best comedy album, and became the first album by a Kiwi band to ascend pop charts in the US since Crowded House. A second TV series began airing on HBO in January 2009.

Outside the Conchords flight path, McKenzie's acting CV is shorter than that of his partner. McKenzie has a small role in Kiwi digi-comedy Futile Attraction (2004) alongside Clement, and also appears in Jason Stutter horror comedy Diagnosis: Death (2009). McKenzie and Clement have also been asked to add their voice talents to The Simpsons and two episodes of The Drinky Crow Show, the tale of a suicidal crow and a sex-obsessed monkey.

In 2011 McKenzie wrote three songs for the James Bobin-directed movie The Muppets, and also taught co-star Chris Cooper to rap. Credited as the film's music supervisor, McKenzie's contributions include opening number 'Life's a Happy Song', and the Oscar-nominated 'Man or Muppet'.

His first big-screen starring role will be in dark comedy Two Little Boys, from the talents behind university tale Scarfies, Rob and Duncan Sarkies. The film will be released locally in March 2012. McKenzie plays Nige, whose close encounter with a Scandinavian backpacker has grevious results, while also testing a longtime friendship. McKenzie told the Otago Daily Times that it was the best script he had read in two years.

He will also appear in Brit-shot romance Austenland, which marks the directorial debut of Napoleon Dynamite co-scriptwriter Jerusha Hess.

On the music front, McKenzie's debut solo album Prototype hit stores in April 2004. The musically-diverse album is often referred to as The Video Kid, the moniker McKenzie released it under. Aside from work as a producer and engineer, he has also toured as part of dub/funk band The Black Seeds, and appeared on their first three studio albums, Keep on Pushing (2001), On the Sun (2004) and chart-topper Into the Dojo (2007). McKenzie has played drums with musical collective The Dub Foundation, and is a founding member of the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra.

 

Sources include
Ellie Constantine, 'Sarkies taking 'Two Little Boys' to the Catlins' - Otago Daily Times, 10 December 2010
Amelie Gillette, 'Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords', (Interview). A.V. Club website. Loaded 27 July 2007. Accessed December 2009
Adam Sternbergh, 'On Composing for Kermit the Frog' (Interview) - The New York Times, 17 November 2011
Anonymous, 'Flight of the Conchords' (Biography) - Current Biography, March 2008