Roger Donaldson is Rocket Man

In his latest film expatriate director Roger Donaldson -a godfather of New Zealand film - heads back to Washington and back in history to the crisis that was the making of JFK. He talks to PETER CALDER.

There's no getting away from it: Roger Donaldson is looking more than faintly presidential. Tall and lean, crisply turned out, the 55-year-old is every inch the well-heeled American abroad as he sits in a top-floor Auckland apartment and looks out at North Head and Rangitoto.

But wait. That full head of well-groomed hair is only faintly grizzled. Those even, boyish features, those sparkling eyes. He could be ... if you squint ... dammit, this could be a Kennedy.

The similarity is striking, the more so since the latest project by the expatriate New Zealand director, who's now one of the hardest-working helmers in Hollywood, is about two Kennedys and zooms in on the fortnight when the world came closest to the edge of the nuclear abyss.

In October 1962, American U2 surveillance photos revealed that the Soviet Union was installing nuclear weapons in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy's military chiefs wanted to respond with air strikes but other advisers, led by JFK's brother and Attorney-General Robert, urged caution to avoid a nuclear showdown.

Thirteen Days is a solid, if unspectacular, but strikingly gripping account of what history came to call the Cuban Missile Crisis, told almost entirely through the eyes of JFK'S policy adviser Kenny O'Donnell (Kevin Costner), whowas a crucial player in the drama.

The $200 million production includes some big airborne and waterborne action sequences but is mostly a film of men in suits talking

It picks up a thread that runs through Donaldson's film-making career - a fascination with the process of political power and how it is exercised.

Audiences have been kind to the loud, unsubtle star vehicles that have studded Donaldson's career: the hideously adolescent Cocktail, starring Tom Cruise, was the runaway success of its year (a fact Donaldson raises when asked how he could have become involved with such rubbish) and the volcano drama Dante's Peak was an explosive success despite having dialogue and plotting as turgid as a lava flow.

Even a string of relative flops, including White Sands, Species and the Robin Williams' comedy Cadillac Man, has apparently done nothing to dent the bankability of Donaldson, who remains in the front rank of Hollywood's directors-for-hire.

But whatever one's misgivings about his crowd-pleasers, in political drama he has always been light on his feet. His first feature, 1977's Sleeping Dogs, which kickstarted the modern era of New Zealand film-making, was an accomplished debut. Marie (1985) with Sissy Spacek, the true story of a woman who blew the whistle on corruption in the Tennessee state government, was small and compelling. Two years later, No Way Out (Donaldson's first collaboration with Costner) was an edge-of-the-seat thriller set in the Pentagon.

So is Thirteen Days a return to favourite territory?

"The first films I ever made," Donaldson reflects, "were campaign films for the Labour Party [in 1972]. I've always been interested in politics, and particularly in American politics because it has such a big impact on the rest of the world."

Born in 1945, Donaldson is old enough to remember the events of October, 1962. A 16-year-old at high school in Australia, he kept a diary.

"They announced what was happening at school and I went home and wrote what I thought about it. What will happen? Will it be all right? Will the world come to an end?

"And, of course," he adds with a chuckle, "I was concerned about how my girlfriend was."

The project was ambitious, even by Hollywood standards, says Donaldson and several studios passed on it before New Line picked it up.

"But there was a lot of interest in it from directors and when I found out Kevin [Costner] had come on as one of the producers - Kevin's a friend of mine - I lobbied quite hard to do it."

The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis is, for much of the moviegoing audience, ancient history (try asking your 15-year-old for the decade of the Kennedy assassination, say, let alone the Wall St crash) but Donaldson believes an equal number remember every detail. In any case, he's not out to provide a history lesson so much as to capture something of the essence of what summit-level brinkmanship is about.

"A lot of people who've seen it, who were involved at the time, acknowledge that it's a movie and we have had to take artistic licence with it.

"But the one thing they all agree on is that the feeling of dread is the way it was. That's what I was out be honest to.

"The film was a great opportunity to get to the nitty gritty of what politics is all about. It's arguing, there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that nobody sees or talks about. I spoke during the research to some of the people who are still alive who were there [in the White House]. They all remember that they were totally convinced this was going to end badly, that they had painted themselves into a corner and that neither side wanted to capitulate."

There's no denying that Thirteen Days is an American perspective on the events of October 1962. The Kennedys emerge as the princes of a Camelot whose escutcheon was never tarnished. O'Donnell, for his part, is the ultimate best mate, a level-headed good buddy to the great men, even though some remember him as a man who numbered procuring female company for the President among his duties.

But Donaldson rejects the idea that this is a Kennedy hagiography.

"The military wanted to take a very hard line. That's a fact. Kennedy went from that position and his brother persuaded him that this wasn't good morally or for his place in history. So the whole movie is about the fine line of his getting his way.

"It was basically very true to the events as we know them. It wasn't about whether he was screwing Marilyn Monroe. It's about what being a politician is all about - compromise, arguing, different people's opinions.

"Whether people love [JFK] or hate him, the one thing they are all agreed on is that his reputation was built on this event. This is why he's gone down in history: because he realised that he was responsible for more than just the American people."

Donaldson's been back in New Zealand more frequently of late, looking over his newest achievement - a vineyard near Queenstown. The 1999 vintage chardonnay is releasing now under the label RD1 - a sly joke that will pass over the heads of Northern Hemisphere drinkers but pays due homage to the country he calls home.

"Until now I've been selling the grapes but I thought it was time to have a go. Later there will be sauvignon blanc, pinot noir and pinot gris."

Vineyards are popular investment projects for expatriate Kiwis who have made it big in the movies. Sam Neill, an old mate of Donaldson's, encouraged him, and cinematographer Michael Seresin's surname is familiar to wine buffs.

"It seemed to me it was a good business to have because it would be a real reason to stay in touch with New Zealand. It's a relatively small amount of wine, it's not going to take the country by storm. But it's a good investment in terms of my own psyche because New Zealand has always been very important to me.

"Even though I was born in Australia, I came here at the age of 19 and all the good things that happened to me, happened here. I could have done a vineyard in America but it wouldn't have been the same. It's a reason to come here. But getting the first bottle of wine off your property, I have to tell you, I was more nervous about that than I have been about any movie."

* Thirteen Days opens on June 14.