Posts by David Herkt
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Attitude is everything, Emma, but you already know that, I figure. I suspect it is exactly the same approaching a novel or a big operation. It is that old the-stance-of-the-archer-about-to-shoot-the-arrow Zen thing. Get the beginning right and everything else follows in accord.
-
I particularly found the quoted poem interesting.
“Oh Mother, save me from Dr. Gray
‘Cause teacher says he’s coming to-day
And if I’m stupid he’ll take me away…’
In Janet Frame’s novels [including the vastly under-rated 'Intensive Care'], there are many variants on this, in verse and in prose. Frame herself had been a resident at Seacliff, and her experience is translated quite clearly into her work. I’ve got used to the fact that Frame’s works are not as fictive as people think…
This is a version of State Power and its proponents in New Zealand that doesn’t often get explored, but somehow it still affects us today in many ways.
I find it immensely sad.
-
Hard News: History repeats: New…, in reply to Steve Curtis,
Thanks for the citation, Russell.
Seeing as it has come up, I’d like to respond to Steve Curtis a little – in explanation.
High Times was a 3 x 44 minute series funded as part of the NZOA Platinum Fund and screened by TV3. Subtitled ‘A Social History of New Zealand Drug Use’, it was to cover the period 1960 to the present.
I wanted it to be fast-cut and media-rich with as many historical images and sounds I could gather. I wanted to use relevant New Zealand music. I especially wanted to use the archive creatively and one of my favourite sequences was the POV shots of an imagined drug-user in the early 1970s waking up, going downstairs (Wallpaper! Shag-carpet!), out the front door, driving to a phone-booth (Red! Wood!) dialing a number on an NZ Post Office phone (Rotary-dial!) and driving off again – where each of those shots had been gathered from entirely separate early1970s footage and edited together with historical accuracy.
Each of the interviews we shot was around 2 hours long and we shot 104 of them. That is around 200 hours of interview. There were interviews from Police, drug-users, medical people, social-history experts, musicians, and many more. We got incidents from both sides. There were wonderful people and wonderful stories.
However because of the nature of television, they had to be edited down. I’m inclined to think of it as ‘distillation’ but it is an awful process. Often a 2 hour interview could be reduced to between 9 and 20 seconds. It sounds it terrible, but this is the way of documentary TV in a commercial environment, particularly on such a vast subject.
In order to cover 55 years with a cast of 100 in 122 minutes, and allowing for visual punctuation and historical archive, it was an exercise in editing and omission.
So yes, you are right Steve. It was a screenplay version. There were focus stories in each segment, but they too were a maximum of two minutes. I tried to make up for this by making every shot count – there were newspaper stories, ad campaigns, TV dramas, news footage, objects (including a Blue Lady syringe to illustrate the Hello Sailor song than a bFM callout helped locate) and anything else I could find. We returned people to the original scenes. The nice cleaned-up Ponsonby house you see in the sequence of Greg Newbold’s arrest is the exact house that was raided in 1976. However ultimately we could only do what TV can do…
It is interesting to note that Episode 1 and 2 had no network interference at all. Episode 2 is my favourite. Episode 3 (from 1990 to the present) on the other hand was a different story. It was too close in temporal terms. I had got away with murder in the other episodes by presenting people who enjoyed their drug-use – often with relish – it was not going to be the same thing for Episode 3.
I can recall being told that “this isn’t a commercial for drug-use you know” when it came to the Ecstasy years. I’d had real problems finding someone – Police, medical experts, you name it – who’d say anything bad about Ecstasy. In fact the Police were remarkably positive… However, after an really extensive search, a Police Officer was eventually found, who was suitably dire.
Also, with proximity in time it was hard to get current drug-users, so we were left with those with therapeutic barrows to push. I can barely watch Episode 3.
As whole series it might have been a once-over, but it wasn’t intended to be a microscopically detailed version (although I certainly had the footage). It was a broad social history of a broad period of time. I like to think we partially achieved our aim. I particularly regret losing the mushroom eaters in Wanganui and the man who hid drugs up his anus, who didn’t shit for one of the longest ever periods ever recorded (which was rather interestingly count-downed in the NZ media).
I also hoped that it would open things up so that the stories we discovered could be used by others in more depth. -
I can only echo everyone’s thanks, June. There is nothing quite like communicated experience to allow other people to consider things. I can feel the ordeal – and its awful repetitions.
I sat on a jury in a sexual case two years ago. It was vastly different from your own. Two charges of attempted sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection. Evidence was given by close-circuit TV, so there were more distances than in your own case – the downside is that appearance on TV changes the way a jury in the TV Age views testimony. There was an amount of evidence that the charge had been constructed by family dynamics and revenge. There was ample evidence that stories had been substantially changed over time – from ‘nothing happened’ to ‘something happened’. There were no real witnesses and no forensic evidence. Nothing really made sense when it came to reactions or time. There was also a surety that there was a lot that we weren’t being told based upon us having to leave the court so frequently for legal discussion – and when these directions came.
As a jury we took four and a bit days in an airless, windowless room to reach what could be loosely called a decision. Hung on one charge and 11-1 for innocent on the other – both results were given in open court. The debate in the jury room was intense and the case hit every raw nerve in modern society – race, underage sex, religion, and money. The final hung vote on the last charge (we took votes at frequent intervals towards the end) was really a self-engineered vote by the jury to say that we didn’t know and were stuck. After four days we were exhausted. I barely slept for two of the four nights, and not much for the other two.
The discussion was seldom rational after the second day. It was as if everyone’s fears and worries had raised barriers that were eventually insurmountable for our twelve jurors. I hated the racism. I really did not like the way one juror’s prudishness dominated his reaction. I did not like the unexamined sexism. The personal dynamics in the jury room became awful and counter-productive the longer we were there.
It made me realise that the adversarial system in cases like this isn’t quite the answer. The inquisitorial system where a judge has a bigger role in conducting the case strikes me as being better – based on my small experience. I saw just how the adversarial system hurt both witnesses and complainants.
In the adversarial system the jury becomes a audience manipulated by showmen. It isn’t fair on complainant or witnesses – or the jury, to be frank. Then sitting in the jury room, with an inexperienced jury foreman (and how do you get experience?) was not productive in other ways.
I don’t know any answer, but I do know that my experience left me sure that things weren’t being done well – and with some very profound doubts.
Thanks again, June, for giving the matter a very human face.
-
"...sucking on the blackened, empty glass pipe of accountability as if it’ll deliver the hit he needs" must be one of the best political metaphors of the whole election so far.
Great piece.
-
Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Russell Brown,
Yes, Russell, I’m inclined to agree about the claim that Curia was hacked… In fact, to me, its just a misleading claim and hysterics, pointing in the wrong direction… There was even a copy of a Curia call doing the general rounds a while ago that I read with interest because its order and phrases (or it seemed so to me) were weighted to produce what I thought was a particular response. So its certainly not the first time Curia calls have been in the public realm…
The one thing that was particularly interesting about Hager’s book was its revelations of a particular atmosphere. I’ve always admired the Nat’s Good Cop/Bad Cop blogging strategy with the Unspeakable Cameron and the Loveable Rolly-Polly Farrar, and really thought the parties of the left should adopt some version of it.
It was very successful as any perusal of the comment threads on either blog indicated – reaching far and wide into differing sectors of the population. Hager’s book reveals the cynicism under the surface of this strategy. Maybe I’m easily shocked, but the sheer contempt that was manifested about the public was just amazing… This isn’t easily translated into a news-story, unfortunately.
In many ways, Dirty Secrets is a character study of a corrupt, self-serving, dog-eat dog, and grasping sector of NZ that is not in any way shape or form 100% Pure. Slater proves himself a representative character, an embodiment of values that no-one should want to emulate or even come within infection-distance. I figure that this will be one of the consequences of Hager’s book. Slater’s dark machinations and his various enablers from Collins to lobbyist Carrick Graham are now in full view.
But I have so many sections that I want to ‘favourite’, from Aaron Bhatnagar being used and disposed of with great haste (he, I imagine, will be reviewing some decisions a little), that great bit of conversation with lobbyist Simon Lusk creating an image of himself as a huntin’, shootin’ killer with a 4-wheel drive, and that marvelous e-mail from ex-pat legal-eagle Cathy Odgers (quoted by Dominic above) that gives a not-exactly tourist view of Hong Kong society. The whole book is filled with so many resonant details. Future novelists wanting to recreate our times will relish it.
-
Notes & Queries: Time & Perfume, in reply to Andrew C,
Hi Andrew, Le Feu d'Issey? For discontinued brands you have a few options like ebay, or samples websites like Perfumed Court or Surrender To Chance which can provide various sized small decants - but at a price (and probably hefty in the case of Le Feu d'Issey). I don't know anyone who mixes up 'smells-like' fragrances, though I guess they exist.
-
Notes & Queries: Time & Perfume, in reply to Kebabette,
In my original conception, I really wanted to do Shalimar (1925) and Vol de Nuit (1933), but gradually they began not to fit my scheme. They are both great fragrances – and I have a special fondness for Vol de Nuit.
Like you I’m quite interested in those very precise evocations of odd smells. I’m smelled a few of those Demeter fragrances and there is also CB I hate Perfume which has the best tomato patch in summer (Memory of Kindness) and the best cold wintry mud (Black March). I used to love wearing Black March to business meetings in the TV industry. There was something nice about sitting there smelling of rich cold mud that worked for me a lot… (Hello TVNZ!) and my bottle is nearly empty which shows quite a bit of use.
I always wear Apres l’Ondee to funerals, Chanel’s Cuir de Russie to impress men, Vetiver and Habit Rouge for ordinary daywear – but Mitsouko for myself.
-
Notes & Queries: Little CD in a Prospect…, in reply to Aotearoan,
Aotearoan, her dancing to Proud Scum was amazing. She had a real fondness for the AK79 album. I think she was word perfect for the whole album. ‘I don’t feel any pain…’ she’d sing along with Chris Knox. It was really nice when she put it on and really real and she was great. I always felt blessed when it happened. I remember the first time it happened in Parnell after I’d first met her, and I remember the last in Sydney. It was always late at night and just her and I. It was a million miles from all the crap that I’ve seen this week.
-
Notes & Queries: Little CD in a Prospect…, in reply to Raymond A Francis,
The detail about Charlotte's method of death was in the Australian papers, Raymond. I guess it is a matter of national media differences that it wasn't reported here. I know its not nice, at all. And as far as "should we be told", yes, I think we should.