Coming Home - Roger Donaldson & Steve Millen

Film director Roger Donaldson and motor racing legend Steve Millen both began making their mark in New Zealand, before making the move to California. The first Coming Home episode sees them at work in the USA, and visiting old haunts in Aotearoa. Donaldson shoots the effects-heavy Dante's Peak and prepares $100 million thriller Thirteen Days, while Millen hits the race track, in-between running his custom car parts company. Later he returns to the farm near Auckland, where his need for speed began on the family tractor. Donaldson heads to Auckland and Queenstown.

In many ways they had no choice: the desire for faster cars and bigger movies meant heading to the country where everything is bigger, and supposedly better.

– Narrator John Sumner, on Steve Millen and Roger Donaldson heading to California in the 1980s

Key Cast & Crew

Roger Donaldson

Subject

Julie Christie

Writer, Producer

John Carlaw

Producer, Director

Sue Woodfield

Network Executive

Rosemary Finlay

Line Producer

Darren Tinkler

Pencil Camera