The roots of the movie magic

Peter Jackson, with his mother Joan, on holiday in Taranaki, above, and with his father William in the Coromandel, below, circa 1964.

.

Relevant offers

THE PHOTO with me and mum was at Mt Egmont, as it was called back in those days. I was about three years old. We were on a family holiday and I remember that particular trip very well. I got terribly car sick – I still do. We had a little grey Morris Minor – it's amazing how you remember number plates – it was CK4194.

I remember walking through the bush and looking at the waterfalls. Mum used to tell me stories about elves and fairies in the woods. That's what's happening in that photograph – she's telling me a tale of some little creatures that live in the trees. She was wonderful at making up stories. I remember it in a kind of majestic way.

We weren't posing or anything – dad just happened to take the shot.

After the holiday we drove back home to Pukerua Bay – and there in the middle of the living room was a big cardboard carton. Mum and dad had bought our very first television set – it was a black and white Philips. I remember watching dad screw in the legs and trying to get an image on it with the rabbit's ears.

That TV was the introduction to the world of Stingray and Thunderbirds – I was absolutely besotted.

But it's those two photos which really have significance – because I'm listening to a magical story she is telling. Mum would tell me bedtime stories all the time – and here I am having a bedtime story in the middle of the day. I was raised on a diet of stories.

My childhood was idyllic – I know it's easy to look back on your childhood and use terms like that – and what do they really mean? But I look at those photos and they remind me of what my childhood was.

They show a close relationship with these two slightly older parents. I know they had wanted to have a child for a while. My relatives would tell me that later on. I finally arrived as a sort of last-minute thing. Mum would've been about 41.

In the photograph of dad and I, we were in the Coromandel and had pulled over to the side of the road.

We were waiting for the billy to brew. I used to help boil the water. We'd often stop on the side of the road and I'd run around finding twigs to start the fire. Making a cup of tea was an adventure in itself.

I guess I could have picked photographs of my childhood in Pukerua Bay. It was a remarkable place to grow up – like an adventure playground. It felt exciting with the caves and the cliffs and gullies.

I had no photos of us in Pukerua Bay like this, though.

Dad died in 1996. Mum died in 2001, just before The Lord of the Rings came out.

I remember always being included. I was the apple of their eye. I was raised as an only child, and it sounds terrible but that was helpful in the sense of exercising your imagination. I didn't have periods of reacting and responding to brothers and sisters – I had periods of being alone.

If my parents weren't with me at any given time I'd be lost in my own imagination. I was really comfortable with that. I was never lonely and I was never bored. I always happily occupied myself. I could entertain myself. It's an irony that my mum and dad gave me a lot of attention but I didn't seek any more than they gave me. I was very happy to lose myself in my imagination.

With my children, we try and follow our parents' example and do the sorts of things they did with us. But in a way I don't think it will ever be that simple again because even just watching our kids growing up, it's kind of impossible. Kids are bombarded by pop culture and it seems to be so invasive today. You can't keep it away. You can't fend it off and kids today absorb a lot more than they seem to have absorbed in the generation I belonged to.

There seems to be a sophistication that is forced upon children a lot earlier now. I think they get older quicker. They become teenagers when they're seven or eight years old. In the old days you became a teenager, well, when you became a teenager. I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing but it's certainly different.

What would I say to that little boy now? Just enjoy growing up, because life gets very complicated the older you get. I haven't changed that much. But you end up in a world where you're dealing with so much – some things are terrific and fantastic, like families and partnerships – but others are tough and arduous.

There is something simplistic and pure about that childhood – and those photos remind me of that. How simple it was back then.

The Lovely Bones is in cinemas December 26.

- © Fairfax NZ News