Sam Hunt: Poet, drunk, or genius?  A documentary featured in the New Zealand International Film Festival sheds a light.

WHEN filmmakers Jim Scott and Tim Rose applied to the Film Commission for financing their documentary about poet Sam Hunt, they were told: “why would we want to fund a movie about a drunken hippy poet?”
A harsh blow after the two had spent much time and effort meticulously preparing the necessary documents for the commission.
“You do have to spend time jumping through hoops, which in itself is difficult; you’re feeling good about it, and then this woman says [that],” says Scott.
The pair took the comment on the chin, and almost two years later Sam Hunt: Purple Balloon and Other Stories is the only Kiwi film playing at every New Zealand International Film Festival location.
While other documentaries about Hunt have followed him on the road, Scott and Rose have beamed a light onto the valuableman behind the bottle, who didn’t talk until the age of four-and-a-half.
Rose has known Hunt since he was four, and Hunt considers him “like a brother”.
“My father used to make wine out of broom flower, and Sam would ask me to go down to the basement and get some for him, which was a big adventure for me at the time,” says Rose. “He certainly made an impression – he had a large presence. His son Tom says Sam treated him as an adult from the age of two, and growing up, I felt that as well.”
Knowing Hunt so well also meant making the documentary as honest as possible had its difficulties, however Hunt wasn’t fazed by his portrayal, says Scott.
“He is who he is, and the film doesn’t brush over the drinking, it’s a part of the whole thing. He saw a rough cut with his 12-year-old son, who was a bit put off, but Sam said ‘no, we’re not lying about this’”.
Although both men had been involved with filmmaking before, using different sound techniques, and a variety of film formats including highly expensive ($1,400 a minute) archival footage meant a huge learning curve making this documentary, which was created over a four-year period.
Purple Balloon was initially halted by a surprise side-project, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Scott and Rose approached Larry Parr, programmer at Maori Television, hoping the station would be interested in airing the Sam Hunt film.
Parr was more interested in a documentary about James K Baxter’s wife Jacquie (aka J.C. Sturm) after seeing interviews with her as part of the Hunt project.
“He said if you make it, we’ll put it on Maori Television. That was the real beginning of the learning curve in terms of documentary making. It gave us that confidence, and it gave us some money as well,” says Scott. The hour-long Sturm doco subsequently aired on the channel three times.
After the break, it was back to Hunt with a renewed vigour. The pair say the four years it took to make the film now seems like “quite a respectable amount of time”.
Along the way, Rose says he learnt much more about his long-time friend.
“His recall for poetry is amazing – he’s probably got 2,000 poems he can recite from memory,” he says.
Hunt’s gold memory extends to when he’s drinking, and while Scott and Rose would be left wondering what had happened after big nights out, Hunt remembered all. They say his lifestyle, works for him.
“It’s just him. It’s not harming anybody. I think we live in a pretty hypocritical society where everyone seems to be on prescription drugs,” says Scott.
Interviews throughout the documentary with many big names in the arts world (including Robin White, Gary McCormick, C.K. Stead, David Kilgour, Dick Frizzell, and Brian Edwards) also illustrate that Hunt is respected (and, more recently discovered, most probably the bastard grandchild of Irish literary hero Joyce Cary).
Hunt has fans that extend to the likes of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.
Hunt opened for last year’s Cohen concert in Wellington at the insistence of Dylan himself.
“The story goes that when Cohen lost his fortune through management embezzlement, he went and saw Dylan, who apparently underwrote the world tour,” says Rose. “He said to Cohen, ‘when you’re in New Zealand, get Sam to open for you’.”
Hunt did, and after finishing his set, he felt a hand tap him on the shoulder. He turned around to see Cohen, who uttered perhaps the greatest endorsement of New Zealand’s own. He said, “That was poetry, man”.
Sam Hunt: Purple Balloon and Other Stories, Paramount Theatre, 6.30pm, July 29, and 11.15am, July 30.

Even more poetry
THE release of the Sam Hunt documentary is well timed with National Poetry Day, on July 30.
This year a record number of events, are planned from major city centres, to small towns. Here are just a few of the ways you can celebrate the power of the pen in the Capital.

• National Poetry Day Capital Poetry Marathon: NZ’s largest live street-poetry event, eight hours of non-stop poetry, turn up and recite your favourite verse, 9am-5pm, the Bucket Fountain, July 30.
• Te Papa Poets: Poets from Te Papa will come out of the shadows to perform some familiar and some surprising work, 12.15-1.15pm, The Marae, July 30.
• Poetry at OUR Edge of the Universe: A free evening of poetry performance, music, art, audience competition, and costume characters, including a performance by jazz/rock band Freaky Meat, and celebrated poets James Brown, Ingrid Horrocks, and Anna Livesay, while poetry is projected on the walls, 8-10.30pm, Bettys Function House and Bar, July 30.
• Whitereia Poetry Reading: Whitereia students and tutors talk about their work, 10-11am, Mana College, August 6.
• Poetry reading with Jenny Bornholdt: One of NZ’s first five Poets Laureate Jenny Bornholdt will read poetry, 7.30pm, Upper Hutt’s Central Library, July 28.