Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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primary goal is money”. 959 Hollywood’s resistance to original ideas had been, for him,
the most frustrating aspect of trying to succeed in the American industry: “For four
years, I was going crazy here, trying to get these films out that I believed in
passionately, and I really wanted to do something that you could see a result for. When
I worked in New Zealand and Australia I always had a one-to-one ratio of things
developed to things made, and I always believed if you could get the script to where it
was considered good by enough people, or you felt that it was good, it would get made.
Here, that’s definitely not true. If it’s good and interesting – and certainly if it’s original
– it has less chance of getting made than a remake of what was made last year”. 960
Another difference in working in Hollywood is that “In New Zealand and Australia, the
film industry is director-driven. The budgets are small and that gives the directors more
independence. In Hollywood, the big-budget films are star-driven”. He believes that “it
is very difficult for most Australasian film-makers to work (in Hollywood), if they have
any voice […], unless you want to make ‘gun-for-hire’ films, which I don’t want to
make, and most of us don’t want to make, you have to constantly be wary, it’s a mine-
field”. 961
When asked if he had ever considered a different ending – that Chris was unable to
bring his wife back from hell – Ward replied that he had not because “it was never part
of the book. I’ve certainly had my share of dark endings, a love story also, but we felt
that we put the audience through a wringer and wanted them to come out the other side.
We wanted it finally to be an uplifting story, a story with some hope in it”. 962 An
alternative ending, with Chris being reborn in Philadelphia and Annie being reborn in
Sri Lanka, and the two characters meeting up later in life, was shot, but this ending was
rejected in favour of a more simplistic one. 963 Both the ending of the film - which New
Zealand critic, Helen Wong described as being “designed for American audiences” -
and the film’s sentimentality, were singled out for criticism by Antipodean critics.
“Chris and Annie are set up as the perfect fairy-tale soulmates, their separation by death
959 O'Toole, "The Navigator," 82.
960 Ward quoted in Ward, "After Life," D3.
961 Campbell, "Driven to Dreams," 40.
962 Sam Gaoa, unpublished interview with Ward, 17 October 1998.
963 This alternative ending is included in the Special Edition DVD of What Dreams May Come.