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Pop CultureAugust 8, 2024

How Bookworm is reviving the myth of the Canterbury Panther

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Alex Casey talks to Bookworm’s Ant Timpson and Emma Slade about breathing new life into a decades-old Canterbury urban legend. 

Legend tells of a farmer who was driving home across the Canterbury plains at dusk. In the distance, right in the middle of the road, was a huge, jet black creature noshing roadkill. The beast stayed still as they slowly, drove past. “Then this thing looked up at the car, and its eyes were shining bright yellow,” Emma Slade, producer of Bookworm, recounted breathlessly. “That’s when they realised it was a ginormous cat – not a domestic cat, but a full-on panther.” 

That “full-on panther” is better known as the Canterbury Panther, an urban legend that has stalked the Canterbury plains for half a century. Kaiapoi resident Frances Clark made national headlines in July 1977 when she opened the blinds early one morning to see a large tiger-sized cat sitting at her front gate. “I know a pig when I see one, and I know an Alsatian as well,” she said at the time. “But it was definitely a tiger.” 

Clark was initially discredited, until sizeable paw prints and large droppings were found on a nearby beach in the days following. A military grade search was launched across land and sky, but no giant cat was found. Things remained relatively quiet until the late 90s, when a woman spotted a black cat “the size of a Labrador” in 1996, and another sighting of a black panther was reported in Mackenzie Country in 1999. 

The 2000s also brought many brushes with big cats, including a big black cat “with a tail too long to be a dog’s”, spotted by a truck driver on a Mayfield farm. A disturbing 2007 encounter, recorded in Scott Bainbridge’s New Zealand Mysteries, details a large black cat seen dragging a lamb across a paddock in Mount Somers. In 2011, Campbell Live’s Geoff Mackley and Bradley Ambrose captured a “large mystery cat” while filming a snowstorm on Kaikōura Road. 

There’s been dozens more blurry photographs and videos captured throughout the region, including this compelling footage from mountaineer and researcher Mark Inglis in 2020, and a harrowing testimony from a possum hunter that same year. Jesse Feary described seeing “this black streak” in the Ashley Forest. The next weekend, he returned to the same site and shot a big 1m long black cat that weighed 11kg and had 14mm fangs – and he thought it was a baby.

“I do a lot of possuming, I see wild cats all the time,” he said. “Normally they are quite scrawny, but this is monstrous.’’ 

Ant Timpson, writer and director of Bookworm, has long been a fan of the Canterbury Panther. “Look, I used to believe in Bigfoot and absolutely believed in the Bermuda Triangle too,” he laughed, before cursing how QAnon and other “conspiracy bullshit” has tainted the beauty of a good urban legend. “They are profoundly nostalgic, in a way,” he explained. “They give us this sense that the world is this great, beautiful, wondrous place where anything could happen.” 

That sense of wonder is why the panther became the perfect addition to Timpson’s family adventure film Bookworm, in which the precocious Mildred (Nell Fisher) heads into the Canterbury wilderness with her dropkick magician father (Elijah Wood). “I’ve got deep family roots in that area and wanted to set it there, so the panther was just a natural, beautiful cohesion to have in there,” said Timpson. “It’s a love letter to the region, to be honest.”

Slade didn’t share the same connection to the panther. “I knew nothing about it at all,” she laughed. “Even when I read the script, I just thought it was some weird thing that Ant made up.” It wasn’t until she visited the Canterbury region to scope out locations that she heard compelling encounters from locals, who spoke of scuttling shapes and destroyed stock. “These were real salt of the earth, no fuss kind of people,” she said. “And some of them were genuinely fearful.”

Nell Fisher and Elijah Wood in Bookworm

Morgana O’Reilly, who plays Mildred’s mum Zo, admitted to being a “self-absorbed JAFA” who knew nothing of the panther before the film. Theo Shakes, a hiker they encounter on the trail, was also none the wiser. The Spinoff had slightly more luck with Vanessa Stacey, who plays Angelina. “I lived in Ōtautahi from the age of eight and had heard of the urban myths about a Canterbury Panther but like most myths I can’t actually remember where I’d first heard of it.” 

But the reporting equivalent of a Canterbury Panther sighting was getting comment from Lord of the Rings star and honorary New Zealander Elijah Wood, who graciously shared the following thoughts. “I initially assumed it was a fictional invention and later realised it was indeed mythic lore, with many sightings over decades,” he said. “Having spent nearly two months in the region, I did hear more than one account to suggest that there may be something out there.”

“Could it simply be very large feral house cats that have mutated over time, or is there some relative of a panther roaming the countryside?” Wood mused. “We may never know.”

Ant Timpson directs Nell Fisher on location. Image: Supplied

During the 27 day shoot in the thick of the panther zone (Stuff has a terrific interactive map of recorded sightings across the region), Timpson wondered if life might imitate art. “I wanted to believe,” he said. “There was always the hope, and the fear, that we’d have a sighting – especially when we were pulling carcasses around.” Alas, the most unusual encounter was with large wild deer, which Timpson still optimistically posited “could be a big meal for someone.” 

In a shocking admission of poor health and safety protocols, Slade revealed she did not draw up an action plan in the event of a panther encounter, or attack, on location. “When we were out there, there was definitely a part of me going ‘stop it, it’s not real, but then another part of me going ‘…but what if it was?’” she said. “But no, I didn’t get quite as far as creating a health and safety plan – I had so many other things to think about, I didn’t get round to that one.”

Despite there still being no concrete proof of the Canterbury Panther – Feary’s compelling big black cat from 2020 was later dismissed by DNA scientists as “just a cat” – Timpson hopes that Bookworm will reinvigorate a new generation of believers. In fact, he’s so impassioned by the cause that he is willing to put forward a reward himself. “You know what? I’m putting $5000 down now. I can’t afford what the film offers but, if you have definitive proof, I will personally drop 5k.”

Elijah Wood and Nell Fisher in Bookworm

For any enthusiasts out there, Timpson suggests starting by triangulating all the sightings, and pindropping the best pie spots along the way for sustenance. “We travelled great distances on our days off just to look for meat pies, which I feel is an ode to a panther on his great search for meat as well.” He recommends the BP in Methven, sausage rolls in Mount Somers and, of course, as many visits as you can to the world famous Sheffield Pies. 

“Sheffield Pies was actually on the call sheet, that’s how deranged we got about it. I think it’s probably the first time Sheffield Pies has ever been put into a call sheet.” 

Even if you aren’t a fan of pies, nor panthers, Timpson hopes there’s still plenty more in Bookworm for audiences to enjoy. “It’s a love letter to that deep south where I had a wild summer as a kid, just roaming around.” It is also an ode to the films that raised him. “This is a really nice throwback to the type of cinema that a lot of parents grew up with,” he said. “It’d be just great if all it does is help people forget about the woes of the world for a couple of hours.”

And if things go well, Slade even pledged to come up with an appropriate panther safety protocol in the event of a Bookworm sequel. “I reckon we’ll definitely have one in place by then,” she laughed. “Bookworm 2: The Revenge of the Panther.” 

Bookworm is in cinemas nationwide from today

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The Civic Theatre, gloriously kooky since 1929. (Image: Auckland Live)
The Civic Theatre, gloriously kooky since 1929. (Image: Auckland Live)

Pop CultureAugust 8, 2024

In praise of the Civic Theatre, an enchanted castle where the ordinary is left behind

The Civic Theatre, gloriously kooky since 1929. (Image: Auckland Live)
The Civic Theatre, gloriously kooky since 1929. (Image: Auckland Live)

Is there any better movie experience than the film festival at Auckland’s opulent cathedral of cinema?

A trip to the cinema can be transcendent. There are “great similarities between a church and a movie house”, reckoned Martin Scorsese, who once imagined he’d be a priest but went another way. “Both are places for people to come together and share a common experience, and I believe there is a spirituality in films.” 

You know what he means when you go to the Civic. Sat squarely, handsomely in the centre of Auckland city, this is our cathedral. There is nowhere more awesome, more breathtaking, transporting, spectacular, to watch a movie in New Zealand. That much was obvious to everyone there last night. Two thousand people got swept up in and swept away with We Were Dangerous, a vivid, funny and viscerally timely new New Zealand film.

You could and should see We Were Dangerous anywhere you can. But if you’re really lucky, you get to see it at the Civic. Since it was lovingly, expensively restored in the late 90s, the theatre has been equipped to host musicals as well as film, and there have been some spectacular shows mounted since (Mary Poppins sailing to stage on a flying fox above the audience is a personal highlight) but at heart and origin this is a hall of pictures. You can feel the lungs of the Civic filling when the film festival comes around.

Opened to fanfare in December 1929 (and therefore today on the brink of a telegram from the King and a glorious birthday), Tāmaki Makaurau’s “wonder theatre” was born in the golden age of cinema, and is today one of just a handful of remaining “atmospheric theatres” – the sole survivor, they say, in the southern hemisphere. 

If “atmospheric” sounds a bit kooky, well, yes, it’s that. Good kooky. Kooky on a giant, unabashed canvas. Spellbinding kooky. Even before the first frame is projected, you’re in a kind of fantasyland. Through the foyer and along the labyrinth of linked hallways stalk a menagerie of elephants, horses, panthers, monkeys and crocodiles, spilling out of the friezes and minarets and chandeliers. In keeping with the Indian-inspired theme, several Buddhas cast gaze disapprovingly at latecomers.

Inside the cinema itself, a trio of flamingoes stare out from a giant curtain you want to curl up in. (After the original flew to Kapiti, a group of legends painstakingly stitched together a replica, which was hung in 2000.) Guarding the giant cloth are a pair of lions crouch, their eyes ablaze in vicious opal. “I got told off for climbing a lion,” said director Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu – a name you should get used to hearing – introducing We Were Dangerous last night on the stage of the cinema she venerated as a child. “I kind of want to say to that usher, take a look at me now.”

What a place to show your film. Above, past the green glowing spiral towers, beyond even the big cats and mad winged globe that perch above the proscenium arch, is an epic starscape, complete with rolling clouds. Even though I know it’s there, every time I go my head tilts inexorably back, as it did again last night, like a gaping fairground clown.  

Who knows what was going through the minds of Australian architects Bohringer, Taylor, and Johnson when they designed this thing in a hurry, a mishmash of inspiration under commission from the effervescent developer Thomas O’Brien, who got the Civic built, incredibly, within eight months. (Alas, things went awry for O’Brien; he was bankrupted not long after, and legged it to Australia.)

“One gets the idea of an Eastern potentate’s palace,” was the impression of the Auckland Star in December 1929 upon walking into this newly opened “wealth of ornament”.

It continued: “There is not one feature that is reminiscent of the usual place of entertainment. Rather one imagines that he is in foreign lands, and he almost feels inclined to clap his hands in the Oriental way, to see if he cannot summon the genii of the Ring or the Lamp, who would bow before him and execute with impossible celerity his wishes, no matter how fantastic.”

I might give that a go this week. The place is flamboyant, phantasmagorical, gloriously and giddily silly. I love it, and every time I go I notice something new. The Elephant Bar, the Boro Bodur Bar, the Safari Room, the Taj Mahal Room; downstairs to the Wintergarden, which has seen a few things in lives as tearoom, ballroom and nightclub frequented by American sailors. 

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Toby Manhire
— Editor-at-large

All of that could so easily have been lost. Through the 1980s, the Civic was showing its age. It was a struggle to get audiences in, and the spectre of demolition loomed. As part of a campaign to save the theatre, Auckland arts titan Peter Wells made The Mighty Civic. “There would be an international outcry if Vatican City authorities decided to demolish the splendour of Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel,” began one newspaper report on Wells’ film. “Unless action is taken, a ceiling some regard as the most precious in New Zealand faces this fate.”

Wells described his own transcendent experience as child in the 50s, which began with the thrill of going in to town on the tram. “Waiting for me on the crossroads of Queen Street,” he said in the film, “was an enchanted castle where everything ordinary was left behind.”

The Civic Theatre, opening night of the NZ International Film Festival, 2024

Another Civic champion was Bill Gosden, who ran the NZ Film Festival for three decades, and whose spirit, alongside Wells’, can be spotted glimmering through a constellation in the ceiling if you know where to look. He called it “the grandest venue we’ve ever known”. 

Bill fought hard over many years to ensure not just that the Civic survived but that it survived as a cinema. In his souvenir programme introduction for the film festival in 1996, with the future of the venue hanging in the balance, he exhorted the council to “protect – and radically enhance – its role as a glorious setting for the big-screen, big-crowd experience. It’s an experience some of us consider one of the essentials of civilised life.” Happily, they were listening. 

These days the opportunities to watch movies at the Civic are few, mostly limited to big premieres or the midwinter congregations of the NZ International Film Festival. If you haven’t seen a movie at the enchanted castle, I urge you to try it; you won’t regret time spent with the elephants and flamingos under the stars. 

The place is humming, glowing and warm, unforgettable on a festival night, as it was last night. It’s a different kind of magic in the daytime. There’s no tram to catch, alas, but to sneak away from ordinary life in the morning, slip into the giant Civic, ideally taking a risk on a film you know nothing about, buzz out at the inside-sky and soak up the huge screen – there’s no feeling quite like it. It’s as though you might just have clocked the universe.

Toby Manhire is a NZ International Film Festival trustee. The festival opens in Auckland on Wednesday August 7, is under way in Wellington, opens soon in Christchurch and Dunedin and continues around the country. More details here.

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