Murray Grindlay: Film composer and jingle writer extraordinaire...

Murray Grindlay first rose to prominence as the lead singer of somewhat rebellious 60s blues band The Underdogs. Since then he has written music for movies Sleeping Dogs, Once Were Warriors and Broken English, as well as hundreds of TV commercials, including the classics Dear John and the Great Crunchie Train Robbery. 

In this ScreenTalk interview, Grindlay talks about:

• Not being a fan of iconic Underdogs single 'Sitting in the Rain'
• Creating the music for the Great Crunchie Train Robbery TV commercial
• Working with director Roger Donaldson to create songs for breakthrough movie Sleeping Dogs
• Reworking a country song for the Dear John commercial 
• Being convinced to change the style of the song 'Shoop Shoop Diddy Wop Cumma Cumma Wang Dang'
• Lying to Australian radio stations after the song became a hit
• Enjoying the talent and enthusiasm of Lee Tamahori on Once Were Warriors
• Collaborating with a very hands-on director for Broken English
• Creating web-based kids music show The One Winged Bee Called Emily
• Feeling blessed to have had a job that doesn’t feel like work

This video was first uploaded on 6 October 2014, 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, Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside