Pat Cox: On Footrot Flats, Murray Ball saying no, and more...

Interview – 2009

Producer Pat Cox instigated Kiwiana classic Footrot Flats: The Dog's (Tail) Tale and has produced some of New Zealand’s most iconic commercials, including the long-running Speights 'onya mate' adverts, the "these things take time" ad for Mainland Cheese, and a 100% Pure New Zealand tourism campaign.

In this ScreenTalk, Cox talks about:

Growing up in Ireland and getting into filming while drumming in bands
Early screen gigs in the late 1960s in Ireland and America, before emigrating to New Zealand in the early 70s
Forging a freelance career in a country where there was virtually no film industry, and setting up Film Editing Services, and importing the country's first Steenbeck editing desk
Teaching film and TV to future screen legends at Wellington Polytechnic
The growth of the commercials sector in the 1970s, and working with Geoff Dixon, Tony Williams and John Blick
Production managing on Tony Williams’ first movie Solo (1977), in an era when there were barely enough people to make two local features at the same time
Getting to grips with New Zealand culture as a fresh off the boat Irishman, by reading Janet Frame and Footrot Flats
Cold-calling Murray Ball and proposing a movie of the Footrot Flats comic strip, and being flatly refused — at first
The long and painstaking task of animating the film with 1980s technology

Images courtesy of Pat Cox. Selected images are from Wikipedia Commons, or courtesy of the NZ Film Commission and The Post.

This video was first uploaded on 25 February 2009, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview - Clare O'Leary. Camera and Editing - Leo Guerchmann

...when Solo was made Roger Donaldson was doing his first film at the same time, and so we had no idea how we were all going to have enough crew . . . there were so few crew here in those days we had to train people virtually as they went on the job.
– Pat Cox on the early days of the Kiwi film renaissance, when Solo and Sleeping Dogs were both made at the same time

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