The Long Plunge

1982

A screenplay

A good way to describe the making of The Long Plunge is to quote an excerpt from the Artist Statement from my 2013 exhibition, She Dreams of Liberation:

‘1982, I’m now a film student living in Sydney and have decided to write a screenplay. I know vaguely what I want to write; a black comedy about a delusional young man in the grip of religious mania who contemplates euthanizing his best mate. Again, in the absence of any life experience of the subject matter and without any real means or inclination to research the project, I do what I did with Heads You Win, Tails I Lose; I open my mind, I let it happen and The Long Plunge turns up.’

Looking back, although it seemed entirely normal at the time, ‘The Long Plunge’, a screenplay about a Terry, a young man living in the New Zealand town of Te Aroha, was a very unusual piece of writing. Initially there was no intention to write anything – it was done without a plan – and the scenes turned up out of order. From 1983 I wrote them down in freehand on A4 paper, folded them lengthwise in half, filed them away and didn’t refer to them until the last scene appeared and the story stopped 1985. Then I went through the folded scenes, ordered them, and typed it up while I was living in Paddington in Sydney. I didn’t add or delete any scenes.

This work continues to linger in my mind as something I must get back to. In the intervening years I have made several trips to Te Aroha and completed location reconnaissance for the project.