Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

100
Zealand, if “the marketing potential existed and the budget necessitated it”, and indeed,
as work on the film progressed, White approached Frame personally to give her
permission for marketing in Europe, the U.K. and North America. 333
It was remarkable that Frame gave her permission for two young unknown student
filmmakers to make the first film of her work. She had previously been approached by
some “quite influential people from the film and literature circles in the USA that had
explored trying to make her material, but nothing had come of it”, and was disillusioned
with the process and just “plain scared” of how the material might be treated. 334 On the
publisher’s recommendation, White wrote “a very personal” letter to her, to which he
received a “very sweet response, very straightforward”, granting them the film rights to
the novel. Later, when the film was completed, Janet Frame was “just too scared to see
it in a public forum, where it premiered at the Wellington Film Festival”, so White
arranged a private screening for her in the auditorium of the local school. As he had a
projectionist’s certificate, he was sitting at the back, operating the projector, while she
sat down at the front. White recalls that: “One of the more terrifying sort of moments of
my film career” was waiting for Frame’s reaction to the film. “I eventually plucked up
the courage to walk down (from the back of the auditorium), figuring I’d give her two
minutes of silence […]. She had tears rolling down her cheeks. She said it was like a
beautiful poem and thanked Vincent and I for making it. That was a great moment, and
one of the more gratifying ones, from terror to one of exaltation”. Frame also pointed
out to White that the music he and John Cousins had chosen for the film was by the
favourite composer - Chopin - of the woman she had based the novel on. Afterwards,
White stayed at Frame’s house overnight, and she explained that the primary reason for
her giving permission for them to make the film was that White had written the letter in
“beautiful italic calligraphy” and she felt that “anyone who could write like that would
have to make a beautiful film”. 335
White feels that Janet Frame responded to the “intense sort of lyricism” which Ward
had managed to give the film, and that her later decision to allow Jane Campion and
Bridget Ikin to film her autobiography may have been because her experience with A
State of Siege had been a good one. He believes she felt “there was something in youth
333 White, "Production of a Film Drama," 4.
334 Lynette Read, interview with Timothy White, 29 September 1999.
335 Lynette Read, interview with Timothy White, 29 September 1999.