Production
Director Roger Donaldson had been working on this film for over 20 years before he started filming it, and had previously directed a short television documentary about Munro called Burt Munro: Offerings to the God of Speed in 1971. Many of the props used for filming were actually owned by Munro, including all the exploded pistons and the piston mould that Hopkins uses for a scene in the film. These were on display at the Southland Museum and Art Gallery.
The location used for Burt Munro's workshop in New Zealand took place on land once used as the headquarters for the notorious Black Power gang during the 1990s until the house burnt down in 1998. A house has been built on the plot since the film was released.
In interviews Hopkins has stated that Munro was one of the easiest roles that he has ever played in his career, simply because Munro's view on life was not all that different from his own.
Chris Bruno stated this was "one of the most exciting jobs" he's ever done.
Read more about this topic: The World's Fastest Indian
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)