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With the All Blacks
intent on becoming
the first rugby nation
to win back-to-back world cups,
you would think that the last
thing the team and management
would have wanted would be
a documentary crew filming a
portrait of captain Richie McCaw.
However, according to
Michelle Walshe, who together
with Justin Pemberton directed
the just released Richie McCaw:
Chasing Great, both the players
and the rugby union couldn’t
have been more co-operative.
“It was super ambitious to ask
to do it during a World Cup year,” Walshe admits.
“We were very lucky: New Zealand Rugby
were really on board because Richie wanted
to do it, and that made all the difference. I
think he realised if he was going to
tell his story there was a lot of
value in doing it at that time.
But it was also really brave
because we didn’t know
the outcome – there
was a very good chance
that it could have ended
differently!”
It certainly paid off:
Chasing Great offers a
revealing portrait of one
of New Zealand's greatest
sportsman, a film that not only
celebrates his triumphant final year
as All Black captain, but also explores
his early life and what drove him to
become one of the best players rugby
have ever seen.
McCaw has always been an
intensely private person but luckily
for Walshe they had known each
other for quite a while: she had
previously worked with him on the
doco Making Of Black, which was
about the history of the All Black
jersey, so she had a good relationship with him,
his management and New Zealand Rugby.
“It was actually my husband Leon who first
thought we should a documentary on him
because he was going to retire,”
she continues. “Richie’s first
response was ‘no-one would
ever want to watch 90
minutes about me’. And
then we were doing a
shoot with him a month
or two later and he said
‘I’ve got this box of VHS’s
from my childhood, would
you be interested in having
a look at that?’ We couldn’t
believe that nobody had seen
this box of recordings from his
childhood before. Within a couple
of days, we had gone down and met his
mother at their home in Christchurch
and we just sat on the floor and went
through all these VHS’s and saw that it
was something very special.”
Of course McCaw is no stranger to
cameras, having fronted up to media
regularly during his long career.
However, the filmmakers
were upfront about the
fact that they would
we set out to tell
a really inspiring
story about the
secret of success
Chasing Great director MichelleWalsh talks about the challenges of shooting a documentary
about Richie McCaw during an All BlacksWorld Cup campaign. Words John Ferguson
be digging a bit deeper for their
documentary.
“We didn’t set out to make
an expose, we set out to tell a
really inspiring story about the
secret of success,” Walshe says.
“We talked in the beginning that
this was not going to be a ‘This
Is Your Life’ type story and it
was not going to be something
where he could be trotting out ‘media’ answers.
Sometimes he would go into that sort of mode,
but then you could see him realise that he could
talk freely and that we needed to see more of
him that we had before. But, you’re right, he is
naturally an introverted person and that made an
interesting character study as well.”
Chasing Great has since gone on to become
New Zealand’s highest grossing documentary
of all time and while that is probably mainly
down to our love of the All Blacks, Walshe has
been pleasantly surprised by the feedback she
has received from non-rugby fans as well. She
hopes that McCaw’s story and how he set about
achieving success will help inspire children in
particular to pursue their dreams, no matter how
unattainable they might first appear.
As for Walshe, she is already looking ahead
to her next project, which will explore the world
of sports psychology, a subject which she
touches on in Chasing Great. While she has
worked on fiction projects – like David Farrier
(see feature page overleaf) her credits include
the mockumentary series Short Poppies –
documentaries remain her first love.
“I absolutely love documenting real
stories,” she says. “Building a rapport
with somebody and finding a story
that hasn’t been told before is
incredibly satisfying.
visit DVD&BD FEATURE
16 DECEMBER 2016
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CAPTAIN
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•Richie McCaw:
Chasing Great
is out now
Richie McCaw chatting with
director MichelleWalsh