Home by Christmas

Anyone who says he wasn't scared was telling lies.

– Ed (Tony Barry) talks about going to war

I was often trying to get my father to tell me about his war. It was Christmas time. Then he agreed to let me record his story. It was his present to me.

– Gaylene Preston

I was born into a world where there were three times. There was before the war, after the war, and a secret place that nobody talked about… during the war.

– Gaylene Preston

Bloody marvelous. She’s a terrific actress and she knew the character rather well having grown up with Tui living with me. And I thought to myself — someone is going to launch that actress and give her a lead in a film, so I’ll get to her first before she gets too expensive.

– Gaylene Preston on directing her daughter Chelsie, Flicks website, 27 April 2010

...an instant Kiwi classic, likely to be a classroom resource for generations ... While war is hell, Ed is more interested in recalling the larks ... Home by Christmas is a moving tribute to the sort of Kiwi joker who seems to be going the way of the dodo.

– Otago Daily Times reviewer Christine Powley in a four star review, 1 May 2010

It’s a new genre and to me it’s just a movie, but it’s not a dramatised documentary or a docudrama, so it’s a new genre, it gets a stab at a new name. 'Based on a true story' seems a bit too blunt for this one and doesn’t allow for the archival aspect. We have had to think about all this rather a lot you know!

– Director Gaylene Preston, on describing the movie as a 'film memoir', Flicks website, 27 April 2010

We thought we’d just go over there, and we mightn’t even see any scrap. Only last about twelve months and we’d have a free holiday and come home again.

– Ed (Tony Barry)

I stepped in to work with Tony one-to-one because we certainly didn’t have money to pay for another actor to come in and play me. If I had been making the film the usual way I would have cast an actor to be me, a younger actor ... that decision made the difference with the interview because I could make Tony really talk to me, I could catch his eye and direct him as he was going — the way a good documentary interviewer does. So a lot of the decisions that were made were made because it was a muck about, where we were just trying to find out how we could make this thing work ... if I had had another actor it would have just been too hard.

– Director Gaylene Preston on 'interviewing' Tony Barry for the film, Senses of Cinema website, October 2010

My father died in 1992. Ruby and Rata had just left the cinemas, and I interviewed Ed over Christmas New Year 1991 ... I had recorded ten tapes with my father — that’s 15 hours of tape. My father then goes into remission and refuses to mention it ever again. So there’s no way that I’d ever be able to film him. I mean we went off to the Sydney Film Festival screening of Ruby and Rata, and I had three or four days with my father, just him and me in Sydney. It was like he hadn’t told me anything about the war — it never happened, off the radar—in only the way that he could do ... with lots of jokes and evasions.

– Director Gaylene Preston on the interviews with her father that inspired the film, Senses of Cinema website, October 2010