Numero Bruno

"His first name conjures up so many memories that the surname is just about superfluous" - Roger Booth, Bruno - The Bruno Lawrence Story.

Where to start with a man like Bruno Lawrence? Director Steve La Hood has packed an awful lot into a thorough 67 minutes. Starting with the awful finality of his passing, he retraces the steps of a wild man jazz drummer who became so much more, (arguably New Zealand's most screen-grabbing actor), ultimately circling back to Lawrence's tangi and last resting place.

The grave is a good place to start, as it characteristically sums up his quirky individuality. Lawrence is the only Pākehā in the cemetery, facing in the opposite direction to everyone else. Exactly how he joked he wanted it, in an earlier interview.

Lawrence's story is told largely through the reminiscences of his family and friends, but narration is also used to keep the story moving. An impressive collection of archival clips is employed. These not only transport the viewer back in time, they offer testimony to the sheer variety of Lawrence's activities.

The first half of the film concentrates on Lawrence as a creative rebel and pathfinder. His partnership with Geoff Murphy, in multi-media hippy touring troupe Blerta, and on film, helped to stake a claim for a new generation of film-makers. It's impossible to imagine how the independent feature film industry might ever have got going without the sheer ability and cussedness of characters like Lawrence.

But nobody's perfect, and having built up Bruno as an idol, La Hood moves on to detail the feet of clay; the flip-side to the free-flowing talent and expressiveness.

His womanizing, his drug abuse, his drinking - all these vices were pursued in legendary self-destructive proportions, and inspire some suitably colourful anecdotage, often expressed with a mixture of rueful regret and reluctant admiration.

As if these were not deadly sins enough, we then learn that Lawrence was a chronic gambler as well. At which point it becomes evident that the real hero of Bruno Lawrence's very wayward journey through life was his wife, Veronica, who somehow kept a home and family functional for a man whose demons drove him to acts of irrational chaos.

But the same demons fed his inspiration. As Ian Mune observes, "he didn't capture a scene, he created a scene ... a sense that anything could happen".

The link between personal experience and the evident truth in Lawrence's best acting work is made clear by this documentary.

One can also clearly infer the misery he must have felt taking part in ordinary fee-paying assignments for which he felt no special affinity. The picture of Lawrence near the end, alone and lonely in a small Melbourne flat, his most prized possession a large poster containing scribbled notes from his children, is especially poignant.