Written and Directed by: Gaylene Preston
Luanne Gordon says of her HOPE & WIRE character, Ginny
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- Stephen Lovatt plays JONTY
- Stephen Lovatt says of his HOPE WIRE character, Jonty
- Joel Tobeck plays GREGGO
- Joel Tobeck says of his HOPE WIRE character, Greggo
- Chelsie Preston Crayford plays MONEE
- Chelsie Preston Crayford describes her HOPE WIRE character Monee
- THE EASTERN
- THE EASTERN : Biography
Luanne Gordon says of her HOPE & WIRE character, Ginny: “Ginny’s in a really happy marriage - she’s been married for decades to a successful husband with his own law firm. They have money, they don’t want for anything and their children are at the finest schools. She sees her family as being nothing spectacular, just a regular family, although they have a lot of money and privilege. “After the earthquake, she loses trust in her entire family and she talks about how the earthquake - the rocking and shaking of the foundations of the earth - wasn’t the only thing that was rocked and shaken. It was the foundations of her family that were really rocked.” “She becomes less concerned with material things: her appearance, the superficial consumerist aspects to her life. Her life had always been perfect. She was always protected. When all that protection was eroded and she couldn’t trust her husband to take care of things, she had to go out and do it for herself. She discovered that she really cares about what’s going on, and that makes her much stronger, more capable and more courageous.” “I was away in the UK when the Christchurch earthquakes hit. I came back in November 2012, and I saw a Campbell Live story where they showed footage of Christchurch and how it was before the earthquakes and how it is now. I was watching that in tears. The earthquakes were a huge thing for people to go through. People outside of Christchurch talked about it for however long they talked about it, and people tried to help and did what they could, but then they tended to forget about it and get on with their lives. But people in Christchurch are still going through it and I think HOPE & WIRE is an important New Zealand story to remind us of what happened. I love that I’m back in New Zealand and involved in telling a really important New Zealand story.” “Gaylene Preston is one of New Zealand’s finest filmmakers. I do not know an actor who would have turned down a role in this series. She’s very organic in her approach and flexible to her environment. I completely trusted that she would know when she’s got what she needs. I felt I was in safe hands, and that’s a really fortunate position to be in for an actor.” Stephen Lovatt plays JONTY In HOPE & WIRE, Stephen Lovatt is Jonty, the lawyer who is caught out juggling a few too many things when the earthquakes strike. He faces questions from his investors and eventually from his wife, Ginny, when the money-go-around grinds to a halt. And there’s also the matter of his flirtatious dependence on his colleague, Emma. Stephen Lovatt has recently played two policemen – he was Officer Pete in Jane Campion’s acclaimed Top of the Lake and DI Kevin Gray in Harry and he was Rog the servo worker in the feature Fantail. He is best known for his role as Max Hoyland in the Australian soap Neighbours, and he also has major roles in US productions made in New Zealand. He played Tullius Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, Hades in Xena: Warrior Princess and Galen, the Vampire Hunter in Hercules the Legendary Journeys, as well as roles in Legend of the Seeker, Cleopatra 2525 and Power Rangers. His NZ feature film work includes Savage Honeymoon, Show of Hands, and The End of the Golden Weather and NZ television work includes Strongman, The Cure, Go Girls, Duggan, Waitangi: What Really Happened, Being Eve, Mataku and The Strip. Stephen Lovatt says of his HOPE & WIRE character, Jonty: “He’s just doing a perfectly adequate job as a lawyer and he’s got a lovely wife and two lovely kids and a lovely house and it’s all just fine really. He’s comfortable. They have the holiday home and the marriage is good. It’s a good life.” “Then the earthquake happens and in an instant Jonty realises that the house of cards that he’s been operating is going to fall around him because he hasn’t been running his trust fund particularly well. He realises that people are going to need their money and he has no real records of it.” “The structure of the story over the series as a whole is kind of like an earthquake. It fractures, it doesn’t have a central narrative, it breaks apart - often in strange and quite disconcerting ways - and you lose characters and then they pop up and their story has travelled and you just jump in and there they are, moving through the next bit. And then they turn around and talk right at you, and it’s all kind of discombobulating and fractured. It’s as if the way the story is structured is similar to what the story is about. It’s about a fractured community and people’s lives being fractured and it’s told in a fractured kind of way where hopefully the viewers are going to be hooked in because it’s an emotional ride for them.” “I really wanted to be involved with this. I heard that Gaylene was doing a television series set around the earthquakes and what’s happened to Christchurch and because I know Gaylene's work, I wanted to be in it.” Joel Tobeck plays GREGGO Joel Tobeck’s HOPE & WIRE character Greggo is a property developer who leaps out of bed, rushes to his car and drives naked through the earthquake-ravaged streets to check on his properties after the first earthquake. Writer/director Gaylene Preston says this incident is based on a true story. Joel Tobeck has an international career in television and film, which includes US series Sons of Anarchy, Spartacus: War of the Damned, City Homicide and Hawaii Five-O, Without A Trace, Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules, Young Hercules and Cleopatra 2525; Australian series Tangle, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, The Doctor Blake Mysteries and 30 Seconds. His NZ television drama work includes Siege, Underbelly NZ: Land of the Long Green Cloud, This is Not My Life, Lawless, Interrogation and Mercy Peak. His feature films include the critically acclaimed Little Fish, Eagle vs Shark, Memory & Desire and Perfect Strangers. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 30 Days of Night, The Water Horse, Mee-Shee: The Water Giant, Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell and Topless Women Talk About Their Lives, for which he won a New Zealand Film Awards best actor award. Joel Tobeck says of his HOPE & WIRE character, Greggo: “I don’t think Greggo changed much between before and after the earthquakes, given the way he operates as a property developer. Once the earthquake happened, he saw the opportunity to really take advantage of the situation, so I think his modus operandi is the same. For him, it’s about getting as much out of the situation as he can.” “I know property developers are not very popular at the best of times, which is why I guess in some unconscious way I've tried to make him more humorous, more of a likeable rogue. Because these guys aren’t popular. There are a lot of people there who have been ripped off by landlords and building companies and they’ll tell you they’re sick of it.” “The earthquakes are such a serious matter and there’s so much drama going on you have to make light of some things. It’s a reflection of the New Zealand spirit that Gaylene captures so well in this series. There’s a nice humorous side to it and the characters are quite endearing. I don’t think you want to six episodes of total cry-fest. It’s got to be balanced out.” On why he accepted the role: “Gaylene rang and obviously if Gaylene Preston rings and asks you to do something, you do it because she won’t take no for an answer. I’ve always loved working with her. We did Perfect Strangers together. She has a unique way of working. She can make stuff up on the go, which I love. She gave me a good break with Perfect Strangers in that I got to work with Sam Neill and she’s so respected and been around so long now that if she says she wants to you do something, you do it.” “She said ‘I've got this role I'd love you to do’, so I thought ‘well, in a small, peculiar, insignificant way this is my way of helping Christchurch.’ I arrived back from LA on the day of the earthquake and to see those images and to hear those stories . . . It doesn’t really hit you until you get here how tough it’s been for everybody, so I guess my taking part in this series is fairly paltry, really, in the light of what's been going on, but it’s all I can do at the moment.” Chelsie Preston Crayford plays MONEE In HOPE & WIRE, Chelsie Preston Crayford plays Monee, a teenage runaway living with a group of white power thugs with her beloved dog, Unty, who comes to Joycie and Len’s attention in the backyard of Muntville. Awarded the Australian Logie award for Outstanding New Talent in 2012, Chelsie Preston Crayford is establishing a successful career on both sides of the Tasman. The award was for her performance as Tilly Devine in the hit series Underbelly: Razor. She followed that with roles in telefeatures The Mystery of a Hansom Cab and Dripping in Chocolate. Her most recent Australian series is the upcoming CODE, a six-hour series for ABC TV, with David Wenham, Lucy Lawless, Adam Garcia and Dan Spielman. She played her own grandmother as a young woman in Gaylene Preston’s feature Home By Christmas and had roles in Anthony McCarten’s Show of Hands and Taika Waititi’s Eagle vs Shark and What We Do In The Shadows. Her NZ television drama work includes Fiona Samuel’s Bliss and TVNZ series The Cult, which earned her a best supporting actress nomination in the Qantas Film and Television Awards. She was awarded Best Performance in a Short Film at the 2007 New Zealand Screen Awards for her role in Peter Salmon’s Fog, winner of the audience vote at Cannes Film Festival Critics Week. Her theatre work includes the innovative Carnival of Souls, which travelled to Sydney and Perth Arts Festivals; Silo Theatre’s That Face, The Vagina Monologues, Ruben Guthrie and Angels in America. She has taken her first steps as a director, with her short film Here Now a finalist in the 2013 NZ International Film Festival Short Films competition. On HOPE & WIRE she also worked with the production as acting coach for some of the young cast members. Chelsie Preston Crayford describes her HOPE & WIRE character Monee: “She already lives in chaos – she’s estranged from her family, she’s caught up with a bad crowd - she has been isolated by her abusive relationship and her only friend is a dog. Through the earthquakes, she is liberated by the fact that everybody around her, for a moment, is in as much chaos as she is. Also, being forced to live in the backyard among people she would normally not associate with, brings light to her life.” On the attraction for her of HOPE & WIRE: “There are so many attractions to this job for me. It really did feel like a bit of a dream scenario because I love working with Gaylene. We are mother and daughter and creatively we speak the same language. We have innate trust and a really shorthand fast-track level of communication. I wholeheartedly believe and respect her creatively. It felt like an incredible time to be in Christchurch. It felt like a blessing to actually have an insight into what is happening on the ground there. I haven’t worked in New Zealand for a couple of years, and this feels like such an important story for our country.” “Gaylene’s work has always been historical, but this feels like current history. During the shoot we were living in a community, meeting different people every day, and everyone had a story. The stories are bursting out of them. It felt like a privilege on so many levels.” “ I’m also very attracted to roles that are really not like myself, so that’s another drawcard for me. Playing the character Monee involves a physical transformation and a psychological challenge – a transformation of attitude, everything. That’s about as good as it gets as an actor.” On her contribution to writing Monee: “I’ve got a bit of a fascination with quirky news stories, and every time I would come across an off-the-wall/offbeat story about Christchurch, I would send it to Gaylene. One of those stories was about a girl who was on trial for owning a dog that was trained to attack Asian people and I thought OMG this is crazy. Gaylene read the Court Report and decided the character could be a good girl who had been led astray by her boyfriend. Hey Presto! Monee!.” THE EASTERN The Eastern is the band that features in HOPE & WIRE, doing what they did with friends after the earthquakes – performing in any venue, including backyards, around Christchurch, buoying up morale, bringing people together. The Eastern song, Hope & Wire, inspired the title of this series and plays over the opening titles. Composer Adam McGrath says, “Songs have jobs to do, songs have work. They do different things and they have different things that they need to do. And this song had some work to do. Hopefully the little humble song is strong enough to withstand all of this.” “I wrote the song at Christmas the year of the earthquake. If you’re going to have a natural disaster and then try and express that in some sort of artistic way, you’re either going to go one way or the other: you need to be really hopeful or full of despair and we chose to be hopeful. Hope isn’t enough, though - it’s an intangible and it’s important - but you need the practical stuff, so that’s where the wire comes in.” THE EASTERN : Biography (from their Facebook profile) The Eastern are a string band that roars like a punk band, that swings like a gospel band, that drinks like a country band, that works like a bar band, that hopes like folk singers, and sings love songs like union songs, and writes union songs like love songs, and wants to slow dance and stand on tables, all at the same time. Whether roaring as their big six piece string band or swinging the loud lonesome sound as a two piece and averaging over 200 shows a year, The Eastern can hold it down in all settings for all comers. Constantly on tour, The Eastern have played in every nook and corner of the good isles of New Zealand, and have broken strings and dented floors in parts beyond. From Papanui to Portland, Shirley to Sydney they’ve seen more than their share of barrooms and street corners, but treat any opportunity to hold it down and play as a gift and one they’d be fools to waste. They play like they mean it, like its all they know how do…because they do and it is. They’ve toured with Steve Earle (twice), the Old Crow Medicine Show (twice) and the Lilʼ Band of Gold as well as opening for everyone from Fleetwood Mac to the Jayhawks to Jimmy Barnes to Justin Townes Earle as well as Jim White, Victoria Williams and Vic Chestnut. Over the past five years having delivered up two albums (‘The Eastern’ and ‘Arrows’), three e.p.s and near-on 1000 shows, The Eastern have garnered a reputation as NZ’s hardest working band. They gather converts and friends wherever they or their records land. Thrillingly, the rolling, rambling, shambling, spirit raising atmospheres they project in their live shows have endeared them to the hearts of many. It’s obvious they care about the audience as much as the songs. They make friendships and family wherever their songs and stories ring out. The trust they’ve built between themselves and the folks who come and hear them is something they’re rightly proud of and they remain thrilled and amazed it’s that relationship that has been able to keep their wheels on the road and their bellies fed, not least the fact that as the years pass the threat of their former day jobs coming back to capture them fades back into the ether. Due to start recording their third album in February 2011, plans were waylaid by the Christchurch earthquake, instead they gathered up friends and singers alike in their home town of Lyttelton (Christchurchʼs port) and begin work on the charity record ʻThe Harbour Unionʼ, ¬ the album debuted in the top 20 of the NZ Chart, was nominated for New Zealand country music album of the year and has proved to be a wonderful vehicle through which The Eastern and their friends can trade music for donations to the Christchurch earthquake fund. They released across New Zealand and Australia of their third and most realised record ‘Hope and Wire’… a double album rolling out at a single album price its loaded with stories, heart and harmony as well as the grand barroom philosophising and old time fury the band are known for. Hope and Wire debuted at number 11 on the national charts and maintained a top ten position in the NZ artist charts for the two months following as well as gathering incredible reviews across NZ and beyond. 
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