Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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directed by Mike Figgis, One Night Stand (1997). Ward had started doing
improvisation at the age of fifteen and had always done occasional acting work, an
experience he saw as useful for a director: “I find that I’m respectful of what other
directors do: generally I’m the most supportive person of the director on the set because
I just want them to have their chance in every way”. 900 Working with other actors has
also been important in helping Ward keep in touch with the film-making process from
the point-of-view of the actors: “I feel it makes me more empathetic with my actors and
more available to them. It keeps me on my toes, it forces me to work on accents, it
forces me to be somewhat more knowledgeable about them as a director”; but at the
same time he acknowledged that: “I was really putting myself in the front line, it was
scary”. 901
Another project that Ward worked on in Hollywood during this period was the early
version of what became The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick, 2003). He was initially
asked to produce and direct the film, and he spent five years researching nineteenthcentury
Japan and developing the script with a number of different writers. His version
of the story centred around an American salesman who got caught up in the Samurai
rebellion of 1876 – an event which had enormous social and cultural consequences for
nineteenth century Japanese society - but he became more interested in focusing the
story on a female character caught between the two sides, rather than on the male lead.
Realising that Hollywood would not be interested in expanding the female side of the
story because it would make the film less action-orientated, he offered the story concept
to the film’s current director, Ed Zwick. As with his experience of working on Alien 3,
Ward realised that “creative differences” with the production company would not allow
him to pursue his vision of the film. When the film was finally released, however,
Ward received credit as an executive producer. 902
In 1995 Ward returned to New Zealand to direct a Steinlager commercial for Saatchi
and Saatchi, the first television commercial he had made for some years. (He had
directed some in Australia.) At the time, he was working on the script of what would
become What Dreams May Come, and its film production company offered him the
equivalent amount of money to stay in Los Angeles, an offer he refused. This would
900 Sam Gaoa, unpublished interview with Vincent Ward, 17 October 1998.
901 Sam Gaoa, unpublished interview with Vincent Ward, 17 October 1998.
902 Butcher, "What Films May Come," 82.