Joe Lonie
Joe Lonie’s impressive run of clever, concept-driven music videos hasn’t always been a guarantee of work.
"I wasn’t making 'let’s make the band look cool' videos," says Lonie. "So it was harder for me to get jobs than you think, because I always wanted to push that envelope. Surprisingly, a lot of bands didn’t want to roll around in mud or move furniture all day."
Lonie’s filmmaking career developed in sync with music. He was born in Dunedin in 1974. His mum was a kindergarten teacher and his dad a "'lifer" muso, who was part of an art rock band called Stuffed Husbands. Lonie’s parents parted when he was one, and he moved to Auckland with his mum and stepfather. Although he was surrounded by music, films were his biggest love, with 70s blockbusters like Star Wars and Jaws among his favourites. At Seddon College he met a group of fellow creatives who would profoundly influence his life. Lonie felt compelled to join the new band his mates were putting together.
"I tried out as a slide guitarist but I wasn’t any good...I was drifting along. I went back to Dunedin to visit my dad and we borrowed a bass guitar from someone in The Clean. I took to the bass like a duck to water and got good really fast."
Lonie demonstrated his new skills to his mates, and Supergroove was born. The band grew a devoted audience off the back of school shows and live gigs, and soon attracted management and a record deal with BMG. The teenage Lonie was now a bona fide muso. Lonie was close to Supergroove’s motivated vocalist Karl Steven and the pair wrote most of the band’s material. Just before Supergroove took off in 1993, Lonie had signed up to a 12-week, 8mm filmmaking course, so when it came to making the video for second single 'You Gotta Know', the band looked to him.
"Culturally in our band it was 'do it yourself'. These days I’m really glad of the nudge I got from them because I wouldn’t have forced myself into that job — that’s not the sort of person I was."
Lonie was 18 when he directed You Gotta Know, with some help from music video veteran Kerry Brown. Lonie would shoot 10 music videos for the band, including Scorpio Girls and their biggest Kiwi hit Can’t Get Enough, which won him Best Video at the 1995 NZ Music Awards. AudioCulture writer Gareth Shute describes the track as "hook after hook, without even a nodding attempt at meaningful lyrical content ... combined with a video that packed every frame with a similar sense of youthful enthusiasm".
Lonie counts himself lucky how things turned out. "I always wanted to make movies...I followed Supergroove’s trajectory because it took off quicker, but film is my number one passion."
He learnt his craft on set, but his nose for a story was instinctive. Supergroove split in 1995 but other artists were soon knocking on the door. By 2003 Lonie had worked on 35 Kiwi music videos for such major talent as Bic Runga, Brooke Fraser, Shihad and the full gamut of Finns, from Tim and Neil, to Liam. For the majority Lonie worked with cinematographer and close confidane Duncan Cole.
On his early videos, Lonie both produced and directed, before gradually realising that it made more sense to leave the producing to others. "The two jobs are at odds with one another — a director can't do their job properly if they re distracted by budget and time issues". The Samoan shoot for King Kapisi’s 2000 hit Screems from da Old Plantation is a case in point. The final video sells a "cruisey, laidback vibe", but Lonie remembers his frantic scramble to make up shots on the fly after the first day shoot was a write-off. "Somehow we managed to pull this video out of our butts on the last two days."
His cinematic knowledge came into play in this video for Brooke Fraser’s 2003 song Lifeline, which was inspired by a day becomes night scene in classic movie Midnight Cowboy. Fraser walks towards the camera through ever changing landscapes, the success of the idea requiring exact choreography and continuity. Exact choreography was also needed for Liam Finn’s 2007 video Gather to the Chapel, shot outside Parnell’s St Stephen’s Chapel. Lonie got the "impressively nimble" Finn to duck and dive behind a roving camera operated by Alex McDonald, to "magically reappear" in marked areas. "It was like they were dancing together."
Lonie is closely linked to group Goodshirt thanks to his iconic videos for four songs; hit 2002 single Sophie, Blowing Dirt, badminton in the bush epic Monotone, and the gravity-defying video for Green. Each time, the band were willing to submit to all kinds of physical punishment to nail the key idea Lonie was playing with.
Blowing Dirt is done in one take, a challenge Lonie would make a habit of. A mutilated Mazda 929 is gradually resurrected, then driven away by band members clad in scuba gear. The video in reverse required precise choreography, with vocalist Rodney Fisher memorising the lyrics backwards. Lonie says he probably couldn’t have made it in 2020 because of health and safety requirements. He also recalls the many times he almost lit a cigarette on-set, before realising he was standing in "oil, mud and petrol".
Lonie turned the band upside down for 2001 video Green; they performed mundane bathroom chores like toothbrushing and facewashing while hanging from the ceiling. Lonie admits there was one casualty: drummer Mike Beerhe did his best, but ended up vomiting after his shot.
The one shot video for Sophie is arguably Lonie’s most beloved. A woman listens to music via headphones, oblivious to the burglars cleaning out her apartment. The band members became crack furniture removers to make the tight timeline. In 2020 band The Eels debuted a video that is suspiciously similar. Sophie won big at the 2003 NZ Music Awards; Lonie finds the song "super-catchy", but it has taken years to appreciate his own contribution. "I always thought of it as 'excellent idea, passable execution'. But now I feel better about it."
Lonie feels that restrictions — whether of budget, time, or available talent — can be good for creativity. "I might not have come up with some of those ideas for Goodshirt if I hadn't had so many constraints budget-wise". Many of his videos have been made with NZ On Air's regular funding of $5000; Lonie once estimated that if everyone had been paid at normal rates, they would have cost six times that.
His experience as a musician meant that despite describing himself as a "quiet guy with long hair" he has rarely felt panic-stricken promoting his ideas with famous bands. "I have a lot of tolerance for artistic sensibilities as well."
In 2003 Lonie joined production house Flying Fish, and began directing commercials. He continued to succeed creatively; his Don't Feed the Ducks ad for Goodman Fielder picked up a Gold Lion at Cannes. Although it was great to be "treated very well for the work you do", his heart was elsewhere.
He'd started working on his own scripts and in 2011 debuted his first short film, Honk If You're Horny. Screen veteran Andy Anderson stars as a randy taxi driver telling stories. The result won awards in the United States, Italy and Spain. Back home, it took multiple gongs (including Best Film in its category) at both the NZ Film Awards and festival Show Me Shorts.
His second short Shout at the Ground (2016) is also set in a moving vehicle; Lonie describes it as "wilder, crazier and even more disgusting" than the first. It won awards for directing and its ensemble cast at San Francisco fest The Best Actors Film Festival, plus awards elsewhere for its cast and editor Bryan Shaw.
In the same period, Lonie jumpstarted his experience in drama, by directing 20 episodes of South Auckland web series The Factory.
In 2016 Lonie left Flying Fish, to concentrate on writing features, and playing and teaching music. He teaches bass, guitar and songwriting around central Auckland, and performs with his band, Kathy Bates Motel.
Lonie is developing two feature projects. Both involve horror, the genre "closest to my cold, dark, twisted heart". "I've learned from what I did well, but I learned a lot more from what I did not do well," he says. "I can't wait to put those lessons into practice."
Written by Gabe McDonnell; published on 20 February 2022
Sources include
Joe Lonie
Emma Philpott, 'Motivating the Video Makers' (Interview) NZ Musician, Vol 10, April 2003, page 2
Francesca Rudkin, 'Director Joe Lonie - Honk If You're Horny' (Interview) Rialto Channel website. Loaded 14 November 2013. Accessed ddd February 2022
Cathrin Schaer, 'Secret of Joe Lonie's Success'(Interview) The NZ Herald, 24 October 2003
Gareth Shute, 'Supergroove' AudioCulture website. Loaded 19 July 2013. Accessed 20 February 2022
'Joe Lonie' Fish n Clips website. Accessed 20 February 2022