The little New Zealand road movie that made its mark on the country's cultural landscape, is about to celebrate its 25th anniversary.
Goodbye Pork Pie is the tale of two dope-smoking car thieves driving down the country, one for love, the other just for the hell of it.
It is now 25 years since Geoff Murphy and his crew of just 24 people, including cast, spent six weeks shooting one of our most memorable films. And like so many classics these days, it's ready to live again.
The Goodbye Pork Pie anniversary is being marked with a special DVD release that has the original souped up like a boy racer's Mazda.
Director Geoff Murphy says it is amazing how strongly the film has stuck in the New Zealand psyche, becoming a kind of cultural icon.
"I remember someone told me that when it first released on television, I don't know whether this is true but, it was 94 I think, the year of the first world rugby cup, '87, and it was reputed to have outrated the final. There was just something about the film, that has stayed with us."
And for the film's most recognisable, actor Kelly Johnson, even 25 years later being recognised is a daily occurrence.
However, Murphy says the film's myth shouldn't overtake the reality.
"You know, people wax lyrical about what a fun shoot it was, and all that, but I don't remember it like that at all! All I remember is it being really hard work. We did have a sense that we were doing something a bit special."
Johnson speculates that shooting the film north to south helped the performances too.
"I think the chronological thing helped me as an actor, because I was inexperienced in film, and films are often made out of sequence, you get the last scene shot first and so forth. But this started from the beginning to the end, so I was able to get a sense of where it was going."
Sincerest form of flattery
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Wellington group Rhombus are clearly fans. Their latest sharply-shot music video is a tribute to Goodbye Pork Pie, even containing an original cast cameo.
It's a lingering form of tribute that Murphy says comes as a surprise.
"I never had any idea that was going to happen, I was very disappointed it wasn't on the [Goodbye Pork Pie] DVD, but I think they had some rangle with the music company or something about copyright, which I thought was odd, because they pretty much violated our copyright!."
Goodbye Pork Pie is also famous for its iconic car chase scenes using a battered mini. Stunt driver Peter Zivkovic says the tiny car provided an extra challenge during filming.
"When we got into driving down into the railway station, we wound up with a camera in the back of the car, sound recordist in the car, and camera operator, focus puller in the back of a mini, then we had another actor in the front seat, and myself driving, it was really quite difficult."
"It was tight, the only way we could get round there was to use the handbrake, I couldn't go down forwards without actually sliding the car before I got round the corner cause it wouldn't make it."
The then-19-year-old Peter was well practised in minis, having raced them for three years.
But Peter didn't do all the stunt scenes. A budget blow-out meant they couldn't fly him in for one, so the director Murphy stepped up to the task of flying a police car into a lake.
"I remember a big debate on whether we have the windows were up or down, or what would happen if the car flipped on its back, or sink like a stone, how would I get out."
"I mean today, if you did a stunt like that, you'd be required to have an oxygen bottle, with a regulator, full diving kit there under the seat, that the driver could reach, you'd be required to have done some training in using it. All that stuff's become very regulated, cause people have died doing those stunts."
"We had no idea how deep the lake was, we just knew those Westport lakes are very deep."
Both the stunts and the film as a whole played up to New Zealanders' common sense nature, in an effort to help it connect with its audience. Johnson says that is part of Goodbye Pork Pie's success.
"Any comedy has to have a basis of truth, and when things are over the top it's usually because people are trying to be funny for the sake of being funny. But I think once you've got the underlying truth, then if comedy comes it's as a result of that. As opposed to just trying to dress up in a funny hat, and put on a funny laugh."
