By Travis Johnson
The 1981 road movie Goodbye Pork Pie is a cultural touchstone for generations of New Zealanders. A rollicking comedy, the film charts the adventures of three strangers who, for various reasons, wind up on the run from the law and driving the length of the country, from Auckland (north) to Invercargill (way down south). Made for pocket change by director and co-writer (with Ian Mune) Geoff Murphy, it was the first Kiwi-made movie to win a substantial local audience, and remains a cult favourite to this day.
Not the sort of film you’d want to risk remaking then.
Although, you might if the director of the redux was Matt Murphy, son of the original creator, who worked on the first film as a teenager. It also helps if your cast includes noted New Zealand actors Dean O’Gorman (The Hobbit, Trumbo) and James Rolleston (Boy, The Dark Horse) who, along with Australian Ashleigh Cummings (Hounds of Love), make up the 2017 version’s renegade trio.
None of those things were on Dean O’Gorman’s mind when he took the role of Jon, a struggling writer who embarks on a desperate road trip to try and win back his long-suffering girlfriend after she walks out on him.
“My criteria are, do I like the script? Do I want to work with the people? And will it be fun ? That’s what I think about,” he tells us. “I can’t worry about what people think about remaking a New Zealand classic. I think, looking at it from an industry perspective, it’s a good thing that we now have enough history to be able to go back to do a remake. That we’ve come that far in New Zealand film.”
He does recognise, however, that being a remake does put the film in a certain light, perhaps making it difficult to judge it on its own merits. “There’s definitely more attention than if it was just a movie that people hadn’t heard of,” he admits.
Pork Pie isn’t just a remake of the ’81 classic, though – it’s a re-imagining in the true sense of the word, taking the original’s basic narrative framework and populating it with new characters and incidents. Gone are a lot of the more vulgar comedy elements that simply wouldn’t fly in the more woke world of today – although the film retains the irreverence of its progenitor.
It also retains the iconic bright yellow MINI Cooper that our three heroes travel in, which gets through its paces in a number of impressive stunt sequences. Sadly, O’Gorman didn’t get to pilot the vehicle in some of the more exciting scenes. Indeed, even for dialogue scenes, the vehicle was often out of his control.
“There’s a stunt driver on the roof,” he explains. “He’s got his own steering wheel. So when you see a closeup of me talking to James (Rolleston), I’m not actually driving.”
It’s certainly been a long road from there to here.
