"Hallucinatory power and psychological refinement... a feverish intensity"
New York Times
"Deeply Warped! Excellent performances. At once affecting, funny and horrifying.
★★★★"
Empire
"A masterpiece! Original. Astonishing. Breathtaking images."
L'Écran Fantastique
"This stylish nightmare... surreal Gothic horror... deliciously hellish sense of
humour."
New Zealand Herald
"A heady witches' brew. Haunting, almost Lynchian"
Leonard Maltin
"Radioactive fury... extraordinary beauty... Jack Be Nimble is a
masterclass
in tone, form and the power of strong performances"
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Association of Women Film Journalists
MoMA Acquisitions
It’s finalised, so I’m thrilled to announce that two of my films have been acquired by The Museum
of Modern Art in New York. These are supernatural horror Jack Be Nimble (1993), and
experimental documentary Naughty Little Peeptoe (35 mins, 2000). These films are now in
MoMA’s permanent collection, to curate, program and preserve.
The great performances of the leads, Alexis Arquette, Sarah Smuts-Kennedy, and
Bruno
Lawrence (plus a sterling support cast) elevated Jack Be Nimble to another level, which is
recognised by this next step in the film’s life. And again I must acknowledge the key crew, Donald
Duncan NZCS, Grant Major, Ngila Dickson, Chris Neal, Dick Reade, John Gilbert, Viv Mepham,
and Robin Murphy, who made real art from my dark vision.
For too long, the film’s reputation was dubious. Was is a too-arty horror? Was it a genre-hopping
(read “disqualified”) tragedy with aspirations to comedy? Melodrama? Splatter? None of this
uncertainty was helped by botched releases in the United States and also in the UK.
Weirdly, wonderfully, Jack has endured; MoMA calls it “A lost classic.” Looking back to its making,
I remember thinking “Yes, I do know what this is, and no, I do not have time to doubt.” That
selfbelief,
it doesn’t always happen, but this amazing boost I’ve got from MoMA made me realise that
I haven’t finished with this story; I’m happy to say I’m underway writing a sequel, set in the
present day, thirty years later, for the spectacular Sarah Smuts-Kennedy. Creatures of The Wind -
this working title is an homage to the haunting popular hit song Wild is the Wind: “Like a leaf
clings to the tree/Oh my darling cling to me/For we're like creatures of the wind/And wild is the
wind.”
The Museum’s second acquisition is the 35-minute documentary I made with my departed friend,
author and filmmaker Peter Wells in 2000 - Naughty Little Peeptoe - about shoe designer and
fetishist Doug George. This film had a unique origin. At the time when I was helping Doug’s sister
Beren look after him towards the end of his life, novelist Debra Daley and I were working on a
comedy script to lift our spirits and we interviewed Doug about goings-on in a shoe shop, on
Debra’s dictaphone.
Neither of us anticipated that Doug would seize the opportunity to regale us with an urgent
download of his opinions and his life-story, detailing how shoes became a vehicle through which
he could communicate his creativity and his originality, when other avenues seemed closed to
him. He knew he was dying of HIV-AIDS and he held nothing back. A few months later, he was
gone.
This little tape played on, and in, my mind, and in time I realised it might be possible to use it
for a
film about Doug, and about language, voice, inspiration, ways of seeing, originality,
self-invention,
and survival. It was also scandalously funny.
Peter Wells joined me (it was too much for me on my own, too raw) and together we devised a
way of working that was light enough to match Doug’s high-speed lateral-thinking: two little digital
cameras, and the intimacy of two directors exploring visual possibilities unmoderated by a crew.
We deployed our beautiful stand-ins to enact Doug’s story in his absence - dance star Taiaroa
Royal created sequences of dreamy eroticism, the Hero Festival Marching Boys became our cast
of characters, and our multi-talented friend, director/photographer/lighting assistant and singer
Lisa Morrison stepped in to improvise the film’s soundtrack in one unforgettable session at Dick
Reade’s sound studio. Editor Matt House matched our images to the framework of Doug’s voice,
a jazzy kind of visual two-step. With the belief and care of producer Michele Fantl, in 2000 MF
Films released Naughty Little Peeptoe. It screened at the Grey Lynn Community Centre as part of
the Hero Festival, with Doug’s family in attendance.
Ron Magliozzi, film curator at MoMA, says “Naughty Little Peeptoe honors its subject’s fulfilling
commitment to fetish and offers witty testimony to the durable, liberating spirit of a queer
perspective.”
Additionally, Michele and I are over the moon that Peeptoe is being offered in a side-bar in the
Derek Jarman: Delphinium Days retrospective co-developed by the Gus Fisher Gallery in Auckland
(15 June - 14 September) and the City Gallery, Wellington (from early Oct - Feb 2025). From the
helter-skelter torrent of fast-cut images in War Requiem, to the slapped-face aesthetic of Jubilee,
to the lingering survey of male skin in Sebastiane, many of Jarman’s explorations leave traces felt
in Peeptoe. We hope to make it available for streaming thereafter, in NZ, and worldwide.
Jack Be Nimble was featured recently in Art News New Zealand where Museum of Modern Art film curator Ron
Magliozzi spoke
about how this classic film resonates with today's viewers in a meaningful way:
“What continues to make (Jack Be Nimble) so relevant is its focus on gender roles in the context of the
family. The film
satirises and rejects traditional, socially sanctioned notions of the family, and suggests there are
other models for
what family could be.”
“What makes (Jack Be Nimble) work as horror is the way it exaggerates the family theme in gothic ways
that are
frighteningly close to reality. Toxic masculinity and toxic femininity and the extreme behaviour that
results from them
- emotional and physical violence, self-harm, bullying, sexism, child abuse, and so on - are themes that
fuel and recur
in the horror film today.”
- Ron Magliozzi, Film Curator, Museum of Modern Art, NYC. Quoted from ART NEWS New Zealand, Summer issue
2022.
