Roger Donaldson talks about The World's Fastest Indian, his most personal project to date, with Nerea Aymerich. The film is a tribute to legendary Burt Munro who, against the odds, broke the land-speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah with his Indian Scout Motorcycle.

Nerea: You met Burt Munro and that is where it all began…

Roger: When I was in my twenties I made a documentary about the real guy with my filmmaking partner (Mike Smith). It was one of my first films ever. After Burt Munro died I kept on thinking about this guy that I had met who seemed so interesting and complex, you know? There was something very appealing about him. I can only think of two other people I have ever met that had the same impact on me, one of them was a 103 year-old woman I met in America, Beatrice Wood, who had been a girlfriend of painter Marcel Duchamp and she had great stories to tell. The other one was Helmut Newton, the photographer, who I met right before he died. He was in his eighties and he had this wonderful love for life, you felt he was so much younger than he was, always wanting to be creative. And that was Burt Munro as well, a character that you couldn't resist. And sometimes you meet people like that.

How did you get to meet him?

Me and my filmmaking partner we were both into motorbikes, and we heard about this guy that lived in a very isolated part of New Zealand. We actually wrote to him, he invited us to come and meet with him, and we went down there and got to his house at about ten o'clock at night. At the back of the property there was a shed and we though 'this must be it'. We knocked on the door and this old guy came to the door. In the background you could see his motorbike and all his stuff, and he was very excited to see us. He brought his old motorbike outside and started it up and it made a horrendous noise. Then the neighbours asked him to shut up and get back to bed. We were just two young guys, and oh my God, you could see so much life in that character…I never forgot it, you know.

Did the idea of making a documentary come up after meeting him, or were you actually thinking about that before?

We were filmmakers, so we were thinking that maybe there was some potential in this guy before we actually met him, that's why we were interested in him. But I never ever thought that years later we would make a feature film about him… The other day I was departing from London and the guy in the front was reading a full page article in the Irish Times about the movie; I was like 'God, I can't believe it´'…I was just sort of in my twenties, at the very beginning of my career, and I decided to go into business. It reminded me of how one has no idea of where to go, what you are going to do with it, or what's important to you.

And years later you finally made the feature…

At the time I made the documentary I wasn't even making features, I was making commercials, that's all I did. Years later I made short films and then I started making features. Then in 1979 I started writing the script - that was a long time ago. I was working in Hollywood, just finishing a Hollywood film and people said 'what are you going to do next?' I was always talking about this movie and it came to a point where I thought 'if I don't do it, I'm going to be talking about this forever and never do it'. You know you wanna make it but you also know it's going to be a little bit of a sacrifice to make it because it's not a Hollywood movie, it's an independent movie. But it was a great opportunity to go back to where I come from, relive my past a little bit and get in touch with myself as a filmmaker and sort of do something that was personal. And I'm feeling very good about it because it is personal.

What were the main differences between the Hollywood way of working and this independent production?

Making the film is not different. When you are making a film, whatever the budget is it's still the same process but this movie has a lot of me, a lot of my own ideas about life, my humour, my personal feelings… It's just like Burt and his bike: It took a long time but I finally got there, and there it is.

Did you always think of Anthony Hopkins as Burt Munro?

No, I didn't. It became a possibility when I really got serious about making the film and you have to think of an actor to be in it. And it had to be an actor that the world knew. There are lots of movies that everybody is trying to make but they haven't been made because they just couldn't get the right people in them. And because it was such a personal story I didn't want to get it wrong. We had worked with each other many years before in The Bounty with Mel Gibson, we had talked about making another movie but it didn't happen, so I gave him the script and he read it and loved it and that's how it happened. He really enjoyed it. I think there is a lot of depth in this movie, personal feelings about fathers and grandfathers… everybody has those people, you see a movie like this one and you can't help thinking about your father and your grandfather.

And your documentary was Hopkins's main reference for playing Munro.

He looked at my documentary everyday before we started working. I think the most difficult thing was to give it some sort of sequence, because when you see the movie it starts in New Zealand, and that's what we shot last. As it moves he had to pick up his feelings, get rejuvenated, and feel younger when he gets to America. That was shot out of sequence and I think he did an amazing job, it just feels like this character is developed from the beginning to the end. And even when he gets home it feels like he's been revitalised and reinvigorated; it feels like this experience has been a very important one to him. He also made an amazing job with the accent, because the accent is a New Zealand accent with some sort of a Scottish burr, a lot of the immigrants of that part of NZ came originally from Scotland.

And now The World's Fastest Indian is one of the most popular films in New Zealand.

It's the most popular New Zealand movie ever!

What's left to say for those who don't have a passion for motorbikes?

I didn't make the movie for speed lovers. It's a movie that hopefully explains that sort of passion, but there is a lot in the movie that's not about motorbikes. Everybody seems to like it the same way, it doesn't matter what age you are, and I think that a lot of it is because it's a movie that reminds the audience of their own lives. Not everybody is into motorbikes, so I had to be aware of that, it's more about what's important in life.

But there's something certainly captivating about the motorcycle sequences and the desert landscapes where they've been shot.

I love America and I also love New Zealand, even though I come from Australia originally, but I've put all my passion for these places.

There is a very interesting and enjoyable part of the movie that captures the cultural differences between Munro's world and the American world and it's displayed through the variety of characters he meets during his journey. Did that actually happen to Burt?

I found ways to put his stories into the movie. We had talked about the First World War and casualties having a relation to him, and I was looking for ways to tell that story. For instance the guy he meets who has just come back from Vietnam, that's all completely fiction but what he's saying is not all fiction. And there are some other parts of the story where you see some people helping him, those are real people and that's what they did for him.

What's on the film that you were unable to capture in the documentary?

The documentary is very interesting, but it doesn't have any deeper feeling; it doesn't make you feel emotional in the way that the film does, and it was that emotion what I was trying to capture.

What projects are you working on at the moment?

A lot of things. I have to make some decisions; I've been putting a lot on making this picture get to an audience.

The World's Fastest Indian is released on 10th March 2006.
See review here.