Tony Hiles: Michael Smither, Peter Jackson, Jack Brown Genius and more...

Interview – 2009

Director/producer Tony Hiles worked on everything from documentaries to Bad Taste to TV classics like Country Calendar. In 1980 he left state television to make the films he really wanted to make, including a series of documentaries featuring artist Michael Smither. In 1996 Hiles won an NZ Film Best Director award for his debut feature, Jack Brown Genius.

Tony Hiles died in February 2021. In this ScreenTalk interview from 2009, Hiles talked about:

Busy days at state television's Avalon Studios, in the mid 1970s
Founding production company City Associates with his partner Judith Fyfe in 1980, and making local history documentaries
Making films with Michael Smither and photographer Robin Morrison, and the fun of small crew, seat-of-your-pants shooting
Capturing Smither as he tried to fly
Helping bring Peter Jackson’s breakout splatstick debut Bad Taste to the screen
Directing Good Taste Made Bad Taste, a documentary on Jackson and the movie
His friendship with producer Jim Booth, and the impact Booth's untimely death had on Hiles' movie Jack Brown Genius

This video was first uploaded on 19 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.

Direction and Interview - Clare O'Leary, Camera and Editing - Leo Guerchmann

The key to it for me was to be in at the beginning. To me what a true documentary is is being in at the start, and seeing the first faltering steps . . . you can see where the concept wants to go, but will it get there you know?
– Tony Hiles on directing documentary Flight of Fancy

Tony's Full Profile