Steve Sachs
Steve Sachs moved to New Zealand in 1994 with his Kiwi wife, editor Margot Francis, and stayed. Sachs had previously worked in America on a range of TV and film projects. He is one of 17 producers listed on Fallen Champ, an acclaimed documentary about boxer Mike Tyson directed by Oscar-winner Barbara Kopple.
After arriving in New Zealand, Sachs produced television series True Life Stories. Drawn from an American concept, the show looked at true stories of young people as they overcame various difficulties from alcholism to eating difficulties. The show was notable for using a high proportion of women writers and directors — including Riwia Brown, Christine Parker and Niki Caro.
True Life Stories won an award for Best Drama Series at the 1995 NZ Film and TV Awards. It also introduced Sachs to his future directing partner, Mark Beesley (Outrageous Fortune). "Mark directed three episodes and we just clicked," Sachs said. The two went on to work together on 1997 Montana Sunday Theatre drama Highwater, which starred Michael Hurst as an advertising hotshot who discovers a better life in smalltown New Zealand.
In 1995 Sachs established his own company, Rocket Pictures, and worked with Beesley on developing Beesley's project Savage Honeymoon. Originally proposed as a sitcom about a party-loving West Auckland family, it became Beesley's first feature. The Savage shoot required constant juggling thanks to unexpectedly bad weather, which at one point flooded the film's camp ground setting.
Savage Honeymoon would win controversy after the Office of Film and Literature Classification gave it an R18 rating, thanks to scenes of drunkedness and a gas cylinder being placed on a bonfire (the rating was changed to R15 after appeals). Sachs has argued that "the whole film has a resonance for me, because I've always been a bit of a rebel."
On its release in March 2000, New Zealand Herald reviewer Peter Calder wrote that Savage Honeymoon was "a film with such a self-confident swagger that it gets under our skin". The Evening Post's Philip Wakefield praised the film's Kiwi characters and "infectious exuberance".
Sachs followed the rain-soaked locations of Savage Honeymoon with a rural horror movie, The Locals (2003), filmed almost entirely after dark. The offbeat supernatural tale was directed by filmmaker/musician Greg Page who Sachs had worked with previously on award-winning short film Sarah's Washing (1997).
Other shorts produced by Sachs include fisherman's tale A Moment Passing, the first of two shorts he made with director Charlie De Salis. The film won official selection at the 1997 Venice Film festival. Nothing Special (2005) was a tale of a man whose mother thinks he is the new messiah. Directed by music video-maker Helena Brooks and co-written by TV personality Jaquie Brown, the film was selected for the Cannes Film Festival.
Sachs also produced two made-for-television American movies that were shot in NZ: man lost at sea tale Deceit, partly filmed aboard the ferry Interislander; and 2004 romance Raising Waylon, directed by Sam Pillsbury. He is also part of the team of producers on 2016 Chinese-Kiwi fantasy film Into the Rainbow.
Sources include
Peter Calder, 'West side story' - The NZ Herald, 11 March 2000, page D1
Peter Calder, 'Savage Honeymoon' (Review) - The NZ Herald, 11 March 2000, page D5
Savage Honeymoon press kit
Nothing Special press kit