The New Zealand International Film Festival debuts in Christchurch this Friday, before opening its doors to 11 other cities and towns around the country.
English film, documentary and music video director Julien Temple most recent work - Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane McGowan, will be screening as part of the festival.
Shane MacGowan Photo: AFP/FILE
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In the documentary Temple explores the close ties between The Pogues' Shane MacGowan - Ireland's beloved punk poet - and his home country's tumultuous history.
MacGowan is typically forthright in the film, Temple says.
“Yeah, he's not afraid of stating what he feels Shane McGowan. That's one of the great delights about the man, he says what he thinks, and he doesn't really care what anyone else feels about that, you know, so there's something fresh and honest about him.”
MacGowan famously dislikes the English, Temple says.
“I was a Brit bastard for most of the time, but you’ve got to roll with it with Shane, his modus operandi is attack, you know, to keep a space around him.
“But there is a very vulnerable, almost childlike side to him that I hope the film brings that out as well, a very sweet, generous side as well as the monster people talk about.”
MacGowan’s early life straddled Ireland and London and he would holiday in Tipperary with his Irish relatives.
“It's almost like a Grimms fairy tale his time in Ireland, you’ve got to remember he was probably living in the 18th century over there. You know, it was horse and carts, no water, no electricity, the last of the old, rural, Irish traditional way of life that Shane bizarrely saw as well as living in parallel in kind of suburban London.
So, it must have been a head trip, and no wonder he found it exotic and mesmerising and built his whole persona around those school holidays that he'd spent there.”
The film uses animation to tell MacGowan’s life story, Temple says.
“His childhood on the farm is in the style of the kind of 50s Animal Farm George Orwell animation. The school days are very much The Beano and then obviously you get more Art Crumb and you know, kind of out there in the psychedelic Jimi Hendrix acid trip times.
“We had Ralph Steadman do one for the nightmares on tour in New Zealand actually, he communed with the Māori ghosts while he was on tour, and Ralph Steadman illustrated that particular moment.”
Johnny Depp is a good friend of MacGowan’s, but that doesn’t stop the singer having a go at the Hollywood star.
“Shane’s like that with everyone, that's the name of the game - doesn't matter who you are. He'll take you on.”