The Holy Roller

It’s a big and nasty place, you know?

– Reverend Bob (Martin Howells) reacts to Pastor Luke (Angus Benfield) saying he wants to move to the city

I mugged a Catholic priest once… I think he cried. I felt bad.

– Sid the Mugger (Patrick Duffy)

It was the afternoon of February 22, 2011. My last session of audio postproduction was scheduled for that evening. I was still in my pyjamas — having done two all-nighters — and was heading for the shower, when the earth jumped violently. Barefoot, I raced across broken glass to shelter my screaming wife and child. We were traumatised, but safe ... at least a dozen locations were either destroyed or badly damaged, changing the city skyline that features in the film.

– Director Patrick Gillies on having almost completed the film when the second big Christchurch quake hit, The Sunday Star-Times, 8 September 2011

Writer and lead actor, Angus Benfield, believes this is the first feature film shot in Christchurch to premiere since the earthquakes and may be the only one for a long time, due to the damage to the city’s infrastructure ... Benfield estimates that between 25% to 30% of the film’s locations have been destroyed or severely damaged in the earthquakes.

– Press release for The Holy Roller, 18 July 2011

The experience [of the Christchurch quakes] made me appreciate some of the sentiments in the film. I used to think 'hope' was merely a carrot, a means to anaesthetise us from our own inevitable mortality. Now I realise it's also a survival instinct, a powerful source of motivation when surrounded by helplessness. The Holy Roller is an unashamedly uplifting film and a celebration of the noblest of human values: a good ol' dose of feelgood.

– Director Patrick Gillies on what The Holy Roller means to him, after the Christchurch earthquakes, The Sunday Star-Times, 8 September 2011

Angus [Benfield] doesn't give a hoot that I am a dirty heathen. His mission is to make a mainstream movie that will appeal to anyone, regardless of their philosophical beliefs. In mid-2008, a phone call: we're in the money. A mainly Christchurch-based business consortium has fronted up with $160,000 — a pot of gold to someone like me who has never made a film for over $45,000.

– Patrick Gillies on completing and screening The Holy Roller after the Christchurch earthquakes, The Sunday Star-Times, 8 September 2011