Geoff Murphy

Geoffrey Peter Murphy (12 October 1938 – 3 December 2018) was a New Zealand filmmaker, producer, director, and screenwriter best known for his work during the renaissance of New Zealand cinema that began in the second half of the 1970s. His second feature Goodbye Pork Pie (1981) was the first New Zealand film to win major commercial success on its soil. Murphy directed several Hollywood features during the 1990s, before returning to New Zealand as second-unit director on The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Murphy was also a scriptwriter, special effects technician, schoolteacher and trumpet player at different times . He was married to Merata Mita, a film director, actor, writer. Early life Murphy grew up in the Wellington suburb of Highbury, and attended St. Vincent de Paul School in Kelburn and St. Patrick's College, Wellington, before training and working as a schoolteacher. Blerta Murphy was a founding member of the hippy musical and theatrical co-operative Blerta, which toured New Zealand and Australia performing multi-media shows in the early 1970s. Blerta were later allowed to make their television series, spawning what is arguably Murphy's first feature film, the 75-minute-long Wild Man. Several Blerta members would work on Murphy's films, including drummer and Blerta founder Bruno Lawrence, who had starring roles in Utu and The Quiet Earth. Early films Murphy made his name with road movie Goodbye Pork Pie (1981), the first New Zealand film to attract large-scale audiences in its home country. Made on a low budget, the film followed three people travelling from the top of the North Island to the bottom of the South Island, to growing infamy along the way. Murphy directed the film and co-produced it with Nigel Hutchinson. Murphy next directed the Māori Western Utu (1983) and the last-man-on-Earth piece The Quiet Earth (1985).