Making its World Premiere at Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival 2023, The Paragon is a locally-made phantasmagorical black comedy starring Benedict Wall (Shadow in the Cloud), Florence Noble (The Most Fun You Can Have Dying) and Jonny Brugh (What We Do in the Shadows). Heroically made on a $25,000 budget, we ask the film’s director-writer-editor-cinematographer-producer Michael Duignan a few questions.
Describe your movie in exactly eight words.
A dark comedy about finding a higher consciousness.
How’d you come up with the idea for this Kiwi phantasmagorical comedy?
I love second-hand bookstores. I always head to the esoteric section, looking for weird books about new age religion, psi phenomena, western mystery traditions, that sort of thing.
Esoteric knowledge is all about individual effort to gain spiritual insight. I got interested in the idea of the wrong guy seeking some kind of higher power for all the wrong reasons. He is selfish, he is lazy, he is arrogant, and he thinks revenge will solve his problems. But in order to get it, he must gain higher knowledge, and that knowledge will change his path.
I wrote the script in about six weeks. Two months after I finished the first draft, we were shooting it.
Did you purposely set yourself a budget of $25,000 when you started, or did it simply end up costing $25,000?
We budgeted every dollar. 25k was about what I could reasonably raise from friends and family, but at that budget level everyone is basically working for free. So then the question becomes, how long can I reasonably ask people to come and work for free on this film for? The answer is about 10 days: in the end, we shot the film in 13.
The only way to shoot a film in that space of time is to plan everything as much as possible, and even then, you need a little luck. My biggest piece of luck was teaming up with Lissy Turner who produced with me, and knowing actors who would bring their A game to our Z list production schedule.
What was the biggest advantage, and biggest disadvantage, to being the film’s director-screenwriter-cinematographer-editor?
The biggest disadvantage is that the director in me wishes I was a better writer, while the editor in me wishes I was a better cinematographer, etc etc. The biggest advantage is that I am also the film’s producer, so all those suckers can stop their pretentious gas bagging and get on with it.
During production, what was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome?
One of our actors came down with Covid, followed by two crew members. We had to shut down for a week. On a production our size, that could have easily been then end of us. But thankfully everyone came back the next week and we got the film in the can.
What are your thoughts on the current state of independent filmmaking in this country?
The only thing I know is that movies are the best thing ever, and we should be making more of them. The country is packed with filmmaking talent and everyone is always being told to wait. I know, I was one of them. At some point I realised, what am I waiting for? Pick up a camera and start making stories, because that’s what we need: not content, not engagement, not eyeballs—we need stories.
It’s madness out there man, and stories are the only way our little monkey brains are ever going to make sense of anything.
For you, what was the most memorable part of this whole experience?
Maybe when it got dark halfway through shooting a scene in a park and so we kept shooting and incorporated it into the story. Or when we got kicked out of the hall by a volleyball team. Or when I had to dress up as Lyra to shoot her side of a scene. Or when our producer had to intervene in a gang related road rage incident. There are too many, but I hope that in ten years’ time, the most memorable moment was watching [the film] for the first time with an audience.
What was the last great film you saw?
Sorcerer (William Friedkin, 1977). The third of Friedkin’s triology of masterpieces after The French Connection and The Exorcist. Overlooked in favour of Star Wars. Taut, visceral, uncompromising, and scored by Tangerine Dream. It is about desperate people at the ends of the earth, trying to achieve something incredibly dangerous, and fundamentally insane. Pretty sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
