Skin And Bone

The Makers - Skin & Bone ScreenWorks Director: Chris BAILEY *Producer: Chris HAMPSON* *Writer: Greg McGEE*
ScreenWorks
ScreenWorks is unique in New Zealand. Three working production veterans; producer Chris HAMPSON, director Chris BAILEY, and writer Greg McGEE formed it in 1988. They had no capital beyond their shared experience and few resources beyond a cramped office above a Ponsonby Rd fish & chip shop. Line Producer Jane .Mother. LINDSAY joined the team a year later. As McGEE tells it, ScreenWorks was largely born out of frustration and the desire to have creative control over their own projects. According to HAMPSON, “we wanted to make our own mistakes – not other peoples“. ScreenWorks is a niche production company, concentrating on feature films and high production value film drama for television. They aim to produce work with high International appeal and have to date sold product throughout the South Pacific, in France, Australia, Yugoslavia, Russia and across the African Continent. The ScreenWorks team is just that. a team. Their philosophy is that they spend so much time with other team members; they have to work with people they like. Being a tight-knit group also enables them to work within stricter time and budget constraints than many others. The company has to date produced four series of their flagship prime time drama Street Legal, the 13-episode children's series Hard Out, and the short film Tick, written and directed by Rebecca Hobbs. Tick opened the New York Film Festival, with the premiere of Jack Nicholson's About Schmidt. ScreenWorks are also developing an adaptation of the children's cult classic Under the Mountain, which Chris Bailey directed as a television series in the 1980s, and working on a major project for screen that should come to fruition in 2004. ScreenWorks flagship drama, Street Legal won 6 AFTA Awards in 2003: 1. Best Episode of a Drama Series or Serial: "No Silver Bullet" 2. Best Drama Series or Serial 3. Best Actress: Katherine Kennard 4. Best Supporting Actor: Charles Mesure 5. Best Camera, Drama: Fred Renata 6. Best Original Music: Don McGlashan Back
Director: Chris BAILEY “It’s better than I ever thought it could be. When I look at it I think ‘man did we make this?’ I could watch it again and again”.
Chris Bailey's film and television credits extend back across three decades of New Zealand television and he shows no signs of slowing down. BAILEY directed forty of the fifty-four hours of ScreenWork's immensely popular drama series Street Legal now seen on screens around the globe. His numerous television credits include direction of Letter to Blanchy, Cover Story, Plainclothes, Marlin Bay, City Life, and Greenstone. In 1991 he won a New Zealand Film and Television Award for his direction of the series Gold, and many other productions, either directed or produced by him, have won various awards both at home and abroad. For several years he was head of production at South Pacific Pictures, overseeing numerous co-productions with the UK, France, Canada and the US and garnering international awards for The Ray Bradbury Theatre and Kurt Vonnegut’s Monkey House: Fortitude. He was also executive producer on New Zealand's longest running drama, Shortland Street. Bailey's early television credits include work as director on such New Zealand icons as Gloss, Mortimer’s Patch, and the cult children's hit Under the Mountain, which ScreenWorks plans to develop as a feature film. With over 30 years in the New Zealand television industry, BAILEY is regarded as one of the country's top producers and directors. He has an international reputation for excellence and in 1986 directed New Zealand's first-ever international co production: The Adventurer, produced with Thames Television and starring Temuera Morrison. “I could always tell when Bailey had directed an episode. His episodes had a lovely visual flow to them – a way of moving the camera. They were always a lot more vital and visual than others.” - Greg McGEE on Bailey's award winning direction of *Marlin Bay* Back
Producer: Chris HAMPSON “I’ve only ever made two films I was completely happy with. The first was Illustrious Energy, the second is Skin And Bone. It’s exactly what we discussed. It’s exactly what we set out to make.”
Chris HAMPSON is the final member of what could be dubbed ’television’s most talented trio’. His career has spanned more than twenty years in most aspects of the New Zealand film and broadcast industries. He has produced numerous film and television projects, written for television, directed for professional theatre and acted on both stage and screen. Before turning to the screen HAMPSON was part of New Zealand's literary scene, forming a publishing company with poet Sam Hunt that in 1977 published Hunt's Drunkards Garden and in 1979 published Jan Kemp's Diamonds and Gravel. In the late eighties HAMPSON produced (with Don Reynolds) the Cinepro feature films Illustrious Energy and Arriving Tuesday before becoming Head of Development at South Pacific Pictures Ltd in 1992. He served as Executive Producer on that company's broad production slate, specifically for the first three years of the highly successful serial Shortland St; two series of the prime time drama Marlin Bay; the family drama serial Deepwater Haven and the mini-series Fallout. In 1994 HAMPSON began a two-year project as producer of twenty-six hours of a prime-time drama series Cover story, with the Gibson Group, while developing a range of projects for that company. He has also produced the Sunday Theatre drama Share the Dream and a four-hour mini-series The Chosen for Communicado. Although ScreenWorks was originally formed to produce Street Legal, the company has also produced Hard Out, a high-energy children's drama for TV2 and is now developing many new projects. In addition, HAMPSON oversaw production of the short film Tick that opened the last New York Film Festival. HAMPSON was an integral part of developing the New Zealand Film Commission’s low budget feature scheme, ScreenVisioNZ. He was executive producer for three of the six films - Via Satellite, Savage Honeymoon, and Scarfies. “Greg McGEE and I are both small town boys who went to University in the city. Romantically you want to go back home but realistically you can’t. Greg has managed to capture the humanity of small town New Zealand through the prism of rugby. That’s what I love about the movie. It’s about ‘us”. Back
“I never saw a perfect production of the play. The movie is much closer to the images I had in my head. I can’t wait to see how the audience reacts.”
*Writer: Greg McGEE* Greg McGEE has experienced Rugby at the highest level. A two-time trialist for the All Black No. 8 position, McGEE believes leaving him out of the All Blacks was a brilliant decision by the selectors. “I got close enough to the dream to realise that it wasn’t what I thought it was. At that time the Rugby world was ultra-conservative and a long-haired student would not have fitted in”. Instead, McGEE became one of the first New Zealanders to play rugby in Italy. It was there that his enduring work Foreskins Lament was first conceived, then written and refined during playing and coaching stints in London and Washington DC. By the time he returned to New Zealand in 1979, the play was all but finished. McGEE is quick to point out that Skin And Bone is not the film version of the play. It is neither an update nor an adaptation. Instead he refers to asset-stripping the original. “I wanted to take certain elements and characters and put them in the era of professional rugby. I wanted to look at them through that prism and see how it worked.” Another reason for not merely adapting the play was the sheer number of times he'd seen it since it's debut in 1980. He believes that Skin and Bone will be a highlight of his career. right up there with the first time Foreskins Lament was workshopped at Victoria University. “People actually stood and clapped after the reading. It was unheard of. And it was at that moment that I thought “I’m a writer” Another highlight was his award-winning drama Erebus: The Aftermath. “It was so brave of TVNZ to put that to air. The research nearly killed me but everything that’s come to light since has borne out the conclusions we reached”. McGEE is currently engrossed in a long-nurtured project for screen that, he hopes, will come to fruition in 2004. AWARDS: 1993 US Writer's Guild Foundation International Screen and Television Festival - Screen Writers Award Marlin Bay 1992 New Zealand Film and Television Awards . Best Screenplay Old Scores 1988 New Zealand Film and Television Awards . Best Television Drama Writer Erebus: The Aftermath 1981 Best Play Foreskins Lament FILM HIGHLIGHTS: Skin and Bone, Crooked Earth, Via Satellite, and Old Scores. TV HIGHLIGHTS: Street Legal, Fallout, Marlin Bay, Erebus: The Aftermath, Greenstone, Roche, and *Cover Story.* STAGE HIGHLIGHTS: Foreskin’s Lament, Tooth and Claw, Out in the Cold, White Men, and This Train I’m On. Back