STACK NZ Dec #80

DVD & BD FEATURE

visit stack.net.nz

Chasing Great director MichelleWalsh talks about the challenges of shooting a documentary about Richie McCaw during an All BlacksWorld Cup campaign. Words John Ferguson CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS

W ith 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

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

DVD & BD

Richie McCaw chatting with director MichelleWalsh

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

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.

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.

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

we set out to tell a really inspiring story about the secret of success

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

“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.

However, the filmmakers were upfront about the fact that they would

• Richie McCaw: Chasing Great is out now

DECEMBER 2016

16

jbhifi.co.nz