Spooked
The only thing more dangerous than tracking a story – is becoming part of it.
 Spooked, New Zealand, 2004
Silverscreen Films, Ora Productions
Director: Geoff Murphy
Producers: Geoff Dixon, Mark Hotchin, Merata Mita, Geoff Murphy, Don Reynolds, Eric Watson
Screenplay: Geoff Murphy, from the book The Paradise Conspiracy by Ian Wishart
Assistant director: Dave Norris
2nd assistant director: Maawhi Torrance
Cinematograhpy: Rewa Harre
Casting: Ian Mune
Editor: Michael Horton
Original music: John Charles
Production design: Shayne Radford
Costumes: Brett Garton
Special effects: Jason Durey
With: Cliff Curtis (Mort Whitman), Christopher Hobbs (Kevin Jones), Andrea Kelland (Office Clearance Girl), Ian Mune (Dave Johnson), John Leigh (Jimmy Blick), Mark Ferguson (Bill Roberts), Greg Johnson (Jonah Levine), Kevin J. Wilson (Mike Taylor), Alison Bruce (Sheila Miller), Vincent Ward (Bill Thorpe), Raybon Kan (Lester Albright), Paul Barrett (George Drake), Geoff Murphy (Fred), Merata Mita (Fred’s Wife), Miriama Smith (Ruby Elder), Henry Davis (McCabe), Vanessa Rare (Bus Driver), Neill Rea (Davis), Murray Keane (George Lipsham), Wade Jackson (Mr SIS), Stephan Hall (Krause), Geoff Dolan (Simmonds), Peter Elliott (Randy Fox), Kelly Johnson (Spook), Andrew Lumsden (Technician – Bug Man), Pio Phillips (Monty Churchill), Tim Wong (Sports Shopkeeper), Brooke Peterson (Lover no.1), Warwick Epiha (Lover no.2), Floyd Driver (Man in Bar), Tony Blackett (Man in Bar), Sean Duffy (Corkill), Himiona Grace (King’s Hotel Barman)
35mm, 90 minutes, M
The only thing more dangerous than tracking a story – is becoming part of it.
Investigative journalist Mort Whitman is onto the story of his lifetime, the most important story in the nation. It was huge involving a big pay-off from a multinational bank to a second-hand computer dealer Kevin Jones. Tracing the days leading up to Kevin's suspicious death, Mort reveals Kevin's increasing paranoia and erratic behaviour through the eyes of his best mate Jimmy Blick and girlfriend Ruby Elder. What dangerous secrets had he stumbled upon? Did the forces - private security, police, SIS or CIA - that increasingly menaced his life, kill him? Or did he simply drink too much and crash his car? Mort is determined to get to the bottom of it, if it kills him.
“… Murphy wrote and directed Spooked, his first New Zealand film after 15 years in Hollywood. Spooked starring Cliff Curtis and Christopher Hobbs, is based on Ian Wisharts’ book The Paradise Conspiracy. It details the mysterious 1991 death of Aucklander Paul White in a car crash after he discovered sensitive international banking records on disks he got as part of a secondhand computer purchase… While the $2.9 million film could be labelled an action thriller, its satire and knowing Kiwi humour makes it more like Goodbye Pork Pie in tone than The Quiet Earth or Utu … Murphy says New Zealanders’ higher standards about our own films meant he spent a lot of time writing and researching ‘the under-story’ to Spooked… Murphy worked on Spooked for more than six years. Like many New Zealand films, a lot of work went into finding finance… Murphy also knew that he would have to convince his New Zealand audience that a conspiracy involving banks, politicians, spies and murder could happen here. ‘A New Zealand thriller is a very difficult genre because New Zealand’s not a very thrilling place. People are very critical and so they want to be convinced that what you are presenting as being thrilling is actually real, that it could happen. There’s a number of ways you could make a thriller that’s credible, but not many. We’re not given to driving around in fast cars with machine guns and bags of heroine, which is fodder for American films. We have to be a lot more inventive, careful and realistic. It’s like if you say, “Paul White was murdered”. Then who killed him? The bank? That seems ridiculous because banks aren’t in the killing business. The Government? I doubt it. The SIS? They might tap Maori radicals, but they aren’t going to go around killing people.” When Murphy first wrote the script he used the correct names of people involved, including White. ‘For several years, for five or six drafts, I did that and then I found that I wasn’t getting bogged down in the real story. But people don’t lead their lives in a very satisfactory dramatic shape, so we changed the names and made it a fictitious piece and then it started to work.’ … He is also getting used to often being asked if he thinks White was murdered. “It is a matter of public record that he had the disks. It’s a matter of public record that he was beaten up and harassed for two months. It’s a matter of public record that there was an injunction hearing at the end of that two months in which he settled for $15,000 and that night his car crashed mysteriously on the way home and the money disappeared. That will do me, ‘Do you think Paul White was murdered?’ I’d say, ‘There’s a good chance that he was’. But I wouldn’t say definitely.”… ‘I hope that it’s the sort of film that people will watch and then afterwards, over a cup of coffee, they’ll think, ‘Why did such and such happen?’ and another one will say, ‘Didn’t you pick up on the bit where…’ and so on. It’s one of those sorts of films. If it works like that, we will do very well, because that’s great for word of mouth. Other people who haven’t seen the film will go, ‘What the hell are they talking about?’.” — ‘Keeping it real in Kiwi thriller’, Tom Cardy, The Dominion Post, 4 February 2005
Screenings: Spooked screened on 7 November 2007 as part of the "Sleepers Awake" series, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Sleeping Dogs.
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