Roger Donaldson Interview
SUB HEADING - The director of 'The World's Fastest Indian', out this month, on how this very personal film made it to the big screen.
| 17 Mar 2006
Burt Munro, the central character in 'The World's Fastest Indian' has held a fascination for director Roger Donaldson for over 30 years, as he explains to The Skinny:
"The movie spans my entire film career. It started with a documentary I made in my early 20s. I heard about this old boy from the South of New Zealand, wrote to him, he invited me to visit and I thought he'd be a great subject for a movie. [In 2003] I finished my last movie 'The Recruit' and I thought 'I'd better make this film now or stop talking about it!'"
Donaldson was particularly attracted to Munro's eccentric character: "he was an obstinate person who had a real philosophy on life, the glass was always half full. I asked him once, why do you want to go faster and he just grinned and said, 'everyone wants to go faster'. He liked the fact he was one of the oldest guys in the world setting records, on the oldest motorcycle still running." Anthony Hopkins plays Burt in the film, but wasn't always first choice: "It's not easy to find actors who are that age who still have that vitality about them; at first he wasn't the most obvious choice to me but the more I thought about it, I realised that he would be great precisely because he wasn't the obvious choice." In the end Hopkins channelled Munro very convincingly on the shoot: "I looked around and behind me a couple of Burt's daughters were in tears and said 'that's our dad you got there'."
Donaldson had previously worked with Hopkins on 'The Bounty' (1984), a notoriously tough shoot. "It's no secret that Anthony and I were at loggerheads making that film but part of that was down to stress. It was a very demanding shoot, we were both young and less forgiving. Maybe it was because we had such a tough time on that film that we were determined it would be different this time." The bike scenes were demanding for Hopkins; "almost harder for him than the real Burt Munro. Anthony had to be on and off the motorcycle all day and the Salt Lake scenes were tough but you just gotta do it."
It's easy to read the movie as Donaldson's story as much as Munro's, as the man himself confirms, "the movie is about Burt's relationship with me. The boy in the film is me, but for events that I didn't witness I needed to create other characters, the kid going to Vietnam for instance." When it comes to the film making process Donaldson is very open about what drives him: "Creativity, combined with group effort. I can't wait to get up in the mornings and don't want to go to sleep at the end of the day; that's when you know you're alive, nothing gives me more pleasure than being creative."
"The movie spans my entire film career. It started with a documentary I made in my early 20s. I heard about this old boy from the South of New Zealand, wrote to him, he invited me to visit and I thought he'd be a great subject for a movie. [In 2003] I finished my last movie 'The Recruit' and I thought 'I'd better make this film now or stop talking about it!'"
Donaldson was particularly attracted to Munro's eccentric character: "he was an obstinate person who had a real philosophy on life, the glass was always half full. I asked him once, why do you want to go faster and he just grinned and said, 'everyone wants to go faster'. He liked the fact he was one of the oldest guys in the world setting records, on the oldest motorcycle still running." Anthony Hopkins plays Burt in the film, but wasn't always first choice: "It's not easy to find actors who are that age who still have that vitality about them; at first he wasn't the most obvious choice to me but the more I thought about it, I realised that he would be great precisely because he wasn't the obvious choice." In the end Hopkins channelled Munro very convincingly on the shoot: "I looked around and behind me a couple of Burt's daughters were in tears and said 'that's our dad you got there'."
Donaldson had previously worked with Hopkins on 'The Bounty' (1984), a notoriously tough shoot. "It's no secret that Anthony and I were at loggerheads making that film but part of that was down to stress. It was a very demanding shoot, we were both young and less forgiving. Maybe it was because we had such a tough time on that film that we were determined it would be different this time." The bike scenes were demanding for Hopkins; "almost harder for him than the real Burt Munro. Anthony had to be on and off the motorcycle all day and the Salt Lake scenes were tough but you just gotta do it."
It's easy to read the movie as Donaldson's story as much as Munro's, as the man himself confirms, "the movie is about Burt's relationship with me. The boy in the film is me, but for events that I didn't witness I needed to create other characters, the kid going to Vietnam for instance." When it comes to the film making process Donaldson is very open about what drives him: "Creativity, combined with group effort. I can't wait to get up in the mornings and don't want to go to sleep at the end of the day; that's when you know you're alive, nothing gives me more pleasure than being creative."
The World's Fastest Indian is released on March 10 and is reviewed on page 22.