Whatever happened to Mike Riddell?
Here's a specially-written introduction to The Insatiable Moon, the film by Greenbelt regular Mike Riddell, which will be showing at Greenbelt 2011...
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Back in the day, Mike Riddell was a regular speaker at Greenbelt. The behatted Mike, a one-time Baptist pastor, worked the crowds in 1994, 1997, 2000 and 2003. His book Godzone was something of a cult favourite in edgy circles. He was the back cover writer for Third Way magazine, and a regular visitor to the UK on speaking tours.
So whatever happened to him? Where is he now? While some might suspect he washed up on a park bench clutching a bottle of sherry and muttering about God, Mike reports that’s only partly true. The truth is much worse. He’s become a Catholic, and got mixed up in making films.
Those with tendencies to schadenfreude can see the depravity to which he’s sunk by attending the Greenbelt 2011 screening of feature film The Insatiable Moon. Mike wrote and helped to produce the adaptation of his novel that began his journey down the slippery slope of moral destitution.
"It all began with a silly idea," says Mike, "I knew a Maori guy with mental health issues who claimed to be the second son of God. A few years after he died, I thought it could be good to explore the notion that he was actually telling the truth."
The result was the novel, published by HarperCollins The Insatiable Moon. It gained notoriety in certain arenas for the presence of degenerate angels and a sex scene that lasted for the best part of a chapter. The publication in 1997 also precipitated the demise of his career as a lecturer at the NZ Baptist Theological College.
"I kind of hoped it might have been because of the dodgy theology," ponders Mike. "But, typically, it was all about the sex. While Baptists have been known to engage in it, evidently they shouldn’t talk about it.” A keen Evangelical reader referred the book to the Censor’s Office as potentially obscene, which was a source of bemusement to them.
When Mike spoke at Greenbelt in the year of publication, Cole Moreton spiced up a seminar on pornography by inviting Riddell to participate. The irascible Moreton planned to read titillating sections of Chapter Six, affectionately known as Chapter Sex, but fortunately ran out of time.
Rejected by the Baptists, Mike found a home in what he describes as the last refuge of scoundrels, the Catholic Church. When asked by a priest why he wanted to join, he elaborated: “If I was going to be associated with institutional scandal, I thought I might as well come to the mother of them all.” Fortunately the priest had a sense of humour.
Finding a position at the University of Otago, Mike resumed teaching theology and completed a doctorate on a suitably disreputable NZ poet by the name of James K Baxter. He then wrote a play about the man, entitled Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which toured to Edinburgh and beyond, including a performance at Greenbelt 2003.
Despite its staging in a tent next door to a drum & bass gig, an overflowing crowd endured numb bums for a couple of hours and rose to give it a standing ovation. Mike says it was a huge validation for him. “Since being ostracised for my writing, there’d been a kind of fracture between my art and my faith. The Greenbelt performance helped to mend that.”
“Something else that happened along the way was that I despaired of speaking to solely Christian audiences. I got very cynical about it, wondering if it wasn’t just a form of entertaining the in-club. Basically I was always a story-teller. So I decided to break out of the ghetto and tell stories that were accessible to all the world.”
For Mike this meant a journey into screenwriting, given that he regards film as the primary story-telling medium in contemporary society. He discovered a tough world, where projects typically floundered in development for years, and often then didn’t make it to the screen.
Good friend Pip Piper of Blue Hippo Media had taken an option on the novel back in 2002, and asked Mike to take on the job of writing the screenplay. Over many years, Pip and business partner Rob Taylor stayed loyal to the project despite many setbacks. By the beginning of 2009, the film was at the starting blocks with a budget of $7m and a cast that included Timothy Spall and James Nesbitt.
Then, mid-year, the funding collapsed, and it looked like the venture was going to fail. “I can’t describe what it’s like to envisage seven years of your life and work about to go down the drain,” says Mike. Undaunted, the team attempted the impossible – to shoot the movie on a nonsensical budget of $300,000 (around ₤150,000), solely from supportive investors.
Against all the odds, the film was shot in Auckland at the end of 2009 over a five-week period. It starred such veteran Kiwi actors as Rawiri Paratene (Whale Rider) and Ian Mune. The Insatiable Moon, currently on release in the UK, has had a huge impact on audiences around the world.
The pre-eminent magazine Empire gave it four stars and said: “Call it One Flew Over The Kiwi’s Nest... There’s a remarkable sense of place and emotional power, in a moving, original movie that deserves to be seen.” And industry Bible Screen International chimed in: “A low-budget local movie with a whole lot of heart, The Insatiable Moon is a good-natured and sweetly uplifting New Zealand film… It is a provocative and at times emotionally challenging film, nicely performed and with a message of tolerance and good will.”
This year you can see for yourself at a specially arranged screening of the movie. Mike suggests it will tie in well with this years theme Dreams of Home. “The storyline follows the struggle of a group of street people to remain in their boarding house – a place they call home.” He describes the film as something of an emotional roller coaster.
Although Mike can’t afford to make it the journey, UK producers Pip and Rob will be there for a Q&A at the Greenbelt screening. They’ll be promoting the UK launch of the DVD in October of this year, which will enable the film to reach a new audience. They’ve also produced an associated documentary on the stigma attached to mental health.
Mike is happy to have made it to his long-time goal of spinning yarns in the big wide world. “If the term ‘Christian artist’ means someone who produces art for a Christian audience, then it’s fundamentally deficient,” he says. “I can’t separate my faith from who I am, but if my art is not accessible to people who don’t share that faith, then I feel I’ve failed.”
With a number of other film projects in train, Mike hasn’t given up on writing books just yet. “And I really do want to make it back to Greenbelt sometime. I regard it as one of the thin places in the world, where something special happens. I’ll return, like an Antipodean zombie! In the meantime, all I can do is dream of home.”
