KEY POINTS:
Pressed against the window of an Auckland hotel suite yesterday, actors Sam Neill and Bryan Brown were staring skywards as they contemplated leaping off the Sky Tower.
"I will if you will," said Neill to Brown's constant needling.
"Well, I will if you will," Brown replied. And so it continued for a further few minutes, and, one suspects, throughout the rest of the day.
In town to celebrate the premiere of their new film Dean Spanley - an Anglo-New Zealand co-production directed by New Zealander Toa Fraser - the old friends indulged in some one-upmanship as they sat down to discuss the film, their friendship and just how Kiwi the production really is.
After meeting in the late 1970s as young actors on the Australian audition circuit, the pair became mates after a visit to an Italian film festival in Sorrento.
"The Italians were far more nice to us than they needed to be," recalled Neill. "They got us drunk for about a week. There were a couple of times I had to get Bryan out of trouble and I've been doing that ever since."
Since then, they have remained firm friends and celebrate their birthdays each year with a joint party.
"We have to do it because Sam hasn't got any friends," joked the Australian Brown, who said his friendship with Neill was similar to that of the two dogs in Dean Spanley.
"The mongrel leads the little spaniel astray," he laughed.
Over their careers, they have collaborated on film and television projects and Brown has employed Neill to work on three of his productions.
"That was a stage of his career where no one else wanted to know him," said Brown, before Neill interjected: "My side of the story would be I have been of immeasurable assistance to his career as a producer. I've lifted him up into the stratosphere."
Though there were a lot of laughs when talking to the co-stars, one subject brought out the serious side in both: the ongoing discussion about the New Zealandness of the film.
"Every movie, when they say action, is the same movie. You're telling a story," said Brown, explaining his take on the subject.
"You always go to the top as to what tone comes through something and the producer, the director and the writer of this are Kiwi.
"You've got to be careful with creativity that you don't just box it and say this is correct and this isn't."
Neill agreed: "Absolutely. Firewalling things in a provincial way is the worst thing.
"For instance, Murray Bale one of the greatest living Australian authors was, about 15 years ago, to do the definitive book on Colin McCahon, our greatest painter.
"Some fools scotched that because he wasn't a New Zealander. As a result, there is no great book on Colin McCahon.
"That's a national shame to me."
* Dean Spanley is in cinemas nationwide.
