Robin Scholes was honoured in early November as Screen Producers New Zealand’s 2023 industry champion, a lifetime achievement award. An academic who switched lanes to film-making, Scholes’ credits include Once Were Warriors, Mr Pip, Mahana and Rain and, for TV, miniseries like Black Hands. Her most recent film production is Warriors’ director Lee Tamahori’s The Convert.
You carved out an impressive career making factual television. What inspired you to change to drama?
It was a great privilege to make documentaries, because very rarely do we talk in depth to people about their lives. Eventually, I became frustrated with the limitations of reality. So, I decided to tell stories dramatically, but for a long time I was hooked on documentary.
Do any of those real-life stories still resonate with you today?
In the 1970s, I made a show about older people called A Good Age. One guy had lived on a huge station in the South Island until he gave it to his son and walked off. When I met him, he was living in a tiny cabin with his two dogs, and he said, “When I roam the hills, I realise that all this life is just a blink in the eye of eternity.”
Where does your story begin?
I grew up in a two-bedroom state house on Tautari St in Ōrākei, Auckland, with a steep, one-acre section, beautiful trees and amazing views over Ōkahu Bay. My father planted thousands of freesias on both sides of the path, and my earliest memories are of Mum teaching me how to sow seeds, and not plant them all in one spot.
Your father died when you were five. How did your mother cope, raising you on her own in the 1950s?
I’m sure Mum was grieving, but people back then hid their feelings in favour of a stiff upper lip. Mum was also very clever, and she took over running our family’s Irish linen company, selling trousseaux to newly engaged young women.
Did you expect to follow in your mother’s footsteps?
I was 16 when I started selling linen and lingerie, back when people put engagement notices in the newspaper. We’d make an appointment, then visit with bags of samples. Sitting in the living room with the mother and daughter, we’d sell lingerie, a nightie and linen. I did that for a year and earned good money.
Was university a natural progression?
My father left money in his will for my education and I went to teachers’ training college first. When I went flatting above Barry Lett’s art gallery, I met various artists, including the potter Jeff Scholes, whom I married. His father had a gallery in Rotorua where I first saw a Colin McCahon and a Gretchen Albrecht, and art became part of what I love. That marriage lasted only two years, but I still think very fondly of Jeff.
How did the art scene pull you further into its vortex?
I was studying English and Italian by then. I didn’t feel smart enough to be an English professor, but art history was an open field. Looking at art was a real joy for me, but what interested me most was the context in which art is created. Who were the people who were able to pay for art? What did they intend by collecting or commissioning works? After finishing my thesis at Edinburgh University, I found my dream job teaching at Essex University, which was a hotbed of radicalism back then.
What prompted you to return to New Zealand?
An accumulation of many things. When I came home for a holiday, I realised how much my own country meant to me. Being on a west coast beach, with my bare feet in the sand, I knew this was my place. So when I was 27 and offered a job lecturing at Auckland University, I took it.
How did you transition from lecturing to making films?
I met radical socialist sorts at Essex, people creating agitprop films about coal mines closing, which they’d then show to the miners. I’d also started making films, and once back in New Zealand, that sense of social purpose stayed with me and has been my litmus test throughout my career.
How did Once Were Warriors cross your radar?
The wonderful randomness of life. It was the 1990s, after a board meeting at Communicado [the production house Scholes co-founded in 1983]. We’d decided we needed multiple income strands. Corporate, entertainment, advertising, inflight, documentary – and that I should do drama. After the meeting, I walked into the huge open-plan office and announced I was to make a film. [Producer] Robert Boyd-Bell threw a copy of Once Were Warriors at me and said, “If you’re going to make a film, do this.”
Was it difficult to gather such an exceptional cast and crew back when the film industry wasn’t especially diverse?
[Film-maker] Don Selwyn was my mentor in the world of Māori film and he did an extraordinary job of casting. He auditioned thousands of actors. People in gyms. Kids at schools. If I ever thought it was tough being a woman in the film business, he made me realise how hard it was to be Māori. I have deep gratitude to Don.
What drew you into that story?
In 1983, Mark Stephens broke into my house and beat me, breaking a lot of teeth and bones in the process [Stephens was jailed for the savage attack]. Once Were Warriors was about violence from the woman’s point of view. That was one of my reasons for doing it. I also took up the challenge that Don Selwyn had laid down for me of making a Māori story.
What are you most proud of?
All those years, coming up with big ideas, pitching them, making them a reality. My satisfaction was in creating substantial productions that fed people’s families.
How did you keep going when your husband, Ivano [Bargiacchi], was diagnosed with cancer?
I didn’t manage very well at all. [The couple were married for 29 years.] Ivano was the love of my life and to lose a great love is the worst thing that can possibly happen. I’m also lucky to have loved so deeply. But life hits you with things you hope you never have to deal with, so when they happen, there are no rules. No guidelines. He is at the cemetery at Waikumete and I visit him each week. I will be buried beside him.
Have you ever had therapy?
Why would I burden someone else with something I need to work out for myself? Grief is deeply personal. We are all very alone in this life, and it is you who must choose the next step.
What do you think you’ll make next?
I’ve made everything I’ve ever wanted to make.
How do you decompress?
I go on huge walks. I love gardening. Even though I’ve had moments when things have been extremely difficult, I now think of hardship as a moment that will pass. Knowing that gets me through, and some things you just have to live with. Now that I am older – I’m 78 – I just feel lucky to wake up each day.
