Tom Scott

Though best known for his satirical cartoons and columns, Tom Scott’s career as scriptwriter and filmmaker kicked off even before Robert Muldoon lost the snap election. Much of Scott’s work for the screen mines his background in politics and comedy.

Part-Irish but born in England, Tom Scott, escaped down under as a toddler. In the early 70s, after selling some cartoons to The Listener, he was among the cadre of talents introduced to the magazine by incoming editor Ian Cross. Scott was possibly the only member of the parliamentary press gallery with shoulder-length red hair and platform shoes. His fame was sealed after Prime Minister Robert Muldoon began banning Scott from press conferences and press tours. Muldoon couldn’t handle “any form of mocking”, though Scott argues he later mellowed; he praised Scott’s press gallery comedy Press for Service, and "was quite pleased” with mini-series Fallout — “he knew it was honest”.

In the 80s Scott spent time at The Auckland Star, then in 1987 began an extended run with The Evening Post (later the Dominion Post). During the 90s he won the Qantas Award for Cartoonist of the Year six times, and other awards besides.

Scott’s first scripting job came after the BCNZ asked him if he had any story ideas. Remembering a manipulative anorexic student he had encountered in a psychiatric hospital while studying for his Bachelor of Science, he wrote half-hour drama Inside Every Thin Girl (1979). The tele-play revolved around life inside a psychiatric unit, and featured Jane Brimilcombe, Peter Hayden, and Rawiri Paratene.

In the early 80s cartoonist Murray Ball asked Scott to help him write the screenplay of comic strip Footrot Flats. The two had both experienced the rural environs of the Manawatu as teenagers; Ball considered Scott NZ’s funniest writer. The pair developed the Footrot Flats script during spare moments over two years. Rolling a length of white sheet along the wall of Scott’s living room, they literally built their screenplay from a series of peaks, troughs and Ball’s pencil sketches. At one point Scott spent six weeks in his attic transferring it into a written script, discovering enough material for two and a half films.

By the time Footrot Flats - The Dog’s Tail finally became a big-screen hit in late 1986, Scott had scripted further small-screen projects. Partly inspired by his encounter with Muldoon, he satirised life in the parliamentary press gallery in 1982‘s Press for Service, part of anthology series Loose Enz. It was later reborn in 1986 as a short-lived series. The show can be seen as a loose cousin to Gliding On, and shares some of the same castmembers. Scott has also spent time on the writing team of McPhail and Gadsby, puppet show Public Eye, and political satire Spin Doctors. In 1990 he demonstrated comedy was not his only talent, after winning an award for scripting Electrocorp-funded short Our Future Generation.

Scott would mine his press gallery experience on two notable projects inspired by Muldoon’s successor as prime minister, David Lange. The first was 1994 mini-series Fallout, which dramatised events leading up to Lange’s anti-nuclear stand. Directed by veteran Chris Bailey, the project entailed one of the largest casts of any local production yet made. Scott and co-writer Greg McGee won a 1995 TV Guide Television Award for their efforts, as did Ian Mune for his portrayal of Robert Muldoon.

In 2004 Scott wrote, directed, and extracted impressive interviews for Lange doco Reluctant Revolutionary. By now television was keeping him busy indeed. The same year he provided the comical script for Hurricane Brash, which provided a fly-on-the-wall glimpse of Don Brash’s first 100 days as National Party leader. The previous year Scott had written and presented documentary Cartoonists Inc, and made his directorial debut with Hillary on Everest, a shortened international version of a four-part series Scott had written in 1997. After befriending Hillary, who Scott has called “the rarest of men - a genuine hero”, Scott and camera crew would follow him in India, Europe and the South Pole.

In 2003 Scott set up production company Direct Hit with director Danny Mulheron. Casting around for a project to excite TVNZ executive Tony Holden, they managed to get him laughing thanks to Mulheron’s un-PC character Mr Gormsby. The result was school-set comedy Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, co-written by Mulheron and Scott, a rare Kiwi television comedy to win an Australian TV slot. The Sydney Morning Herald called it “quick-witted" and "darkly funny”; locally The Dominion Post’s Jane Bowron joined the praise, while critiquing the show’s 9.30pm Friday screening time.

2009 saw the completion of a circle - the feature film script Scott had been developing for over two decades finally came to the screen as Separation City. Directed by Paul Middleditch, the comedy-drama examines what happens when a married couple (Danielle Cormack and future Warrior star Joel Edgerton) fall out of love. Scott credits the film’s funding to the doggedness of Australian producer Mark Overett.

Scott, now named an ONZM, went on to work on tele-movie Rage with his brother-in-law Grant O’Fee, the policeman he had worked with on unsuccessful 1998 tele-movie Tiger Country. O’Fee was a detective sergeant during the tour, while Scott had begun campaigning against apartheid since high school. After years of debating the tour, Scott suggested the two make a drama out of it. Said O’Fee: "I think that's what we've both achieved: both the perspective of protestors and the perspectives of police are shown. Ultimately the villain of the story is apartheid.”

Sources include
'Tom Scott - from portraits to production' (Video Interview), NZ On Screen Website. Director Ian Pryor (Uploaded 27 August 2009). Accessed 19 January 2011
Jane Bowron,‘Orthodoxy and the cult of Gormsby’(Review of Seven Periods with Gormsby) - Dominion Post, 2005
Lesley Ann Low, ‘tv previews'(Review of Seven Periods with Gormsby) - The Sydney Morning Herald (The Guide section), 24 November 2005, Page 14
Joseph Romanos, ‘The Wellingtonian interview: Tom Scott’ - The Wellingtonian, 8 April 2010
Kimberley Rothwell, '1981 Revisited' (Interview) - The Dominion Post, (TV Week section), 30 August 2011, Page 4
Tom Scott, 'Sir Ed: big man, good man' - The Dominion Post, 15 January 2008, Page B5
Lesley Stevens, Footrot Flats The Dog's (Tail) Tale - The Making of the Movie (Lower Hutt: Inprint Limited, 1986)
'Tom Scott -Cartoonist/writer' (Profile) Arts Foundation website. Accessed 19 January 2012
‘Rage’. TVNZ website. Loaded September 2011. Accessed 19 January 2012