Roger Donaldson: Sleeping Dogs, Smash Palace, Hollywood, and more…

Interview – 2014

Early in his career, director Roger Donaldson was mixing adventure documentaries with adaptations of classic Kiwi short stories (Winners & Losers, made with his friend Ian Mune). Donaldson and Mune then turned CK Stead novel Smith’s Dream into movie Sleeping Dogs. Donaldson's follow-up Smash Palace got him noticed overseas. Since then, he has thrived in Hollywood, working with Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, and Kevin Costner. He returned to New Zealand for Burt Munro biopic The World’s Fastest Indian.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Donaldson talks about:

Filming commercials for Norman Kirk’s Labour Party
Taking risks to film at high speeds on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats for Offerings to the God of Speed
Treacherous conditions on The Adventure World of Sir Edmund Hillary, and warming his feet in someone else’s armpits while sheltering in a snow cave
Getting support from Don Brash and the NZ Air Force for his counterculture movie Sleeping Dogs
Arranging a private screening of Sleeping Dogs for then Prime Minister Robert Muldoon
The moment he was inspired to write Smash Palace
Convincing a reluctant NZ Film Commission to back the film
Changing the child character from a boy to a girl after meeting Greer Robson
How Smash Palace’s climactic train scene was filmed
Writing a draft of a Conan the Barbarian sequel with Ian Mune
Taking over from David Lean as director of The Bounty
Helping to create a Beach Boys revival thanks to the soundtrack to Cocktail
Making up with Anthony Hopkins after falling out on The Bounty

This video was first uploaded on 8 September 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 and Editing – Gemma Gracewood. Camera – Brett Stanley

...I was in a coffee bar one day having a cup of coffee and I see a headline that says 'boy five in gun seige'. I realised it was about a father who had taken his own son hostage, a cop actually. And so I thought 'I've got an idea for this film'. I couldn't stop writing.
– Roger Donaldson on the birth of his movie Smash Palace

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