Mr Wrong

You've got to go.

– Meg (Heather Bolton) gets serious with her car

I wanted to make a film that didn't have a car scene, didn't have a rape scene and didn't have Bruno Lawrence playing the tortured neurotic male with a gun and chooks.

– Writer/director Gaylene Preston, quoted in Deborah Shepard's 2003 book Reframing Women: A History of New Zealand Film

The queues were so long they went right around the corner and around the block so we'd race down there and help sell the ice creams to speed things up.

– Director Gaylene Preston, on renting Wellington's Paramount Theatre to screen the film, The Dominion Post, 28 February 2014

You can't expect me, as a person who abhors sexism and sexual harrassment, to make a traditional thriller in which the woman is a helpless victim, a sexual distraction for the hero or a passive motivator of the hero's action.

– Writer/director Gaylene Preston on trying to turn the thriller genre on its head, OnFilm magazine, April 1985, page 8

The organisers, employed full-time by the French Ministry of Culture, had about 500 films submitted to them last year. Nine features were actually selected for the festival, so the fact that Mr Wrong was on the programme was quite something.

– Writer Merrill Coke on Mr Wrong's invitation to the Créteil International Women's Festival (where it later won the audience prize), OnFilm, June 1986, page 17 (volume three, number four)

[We] signed deals for 67 territores, including the United States. Mr. Wrong remains the only film in the world, that I know of, officially registered as perishable goods.

– Director Gaylene Preston touches on the complex legal deals needed to finish the movie, in her 2022 autobiography Gaylene's Take - Her Life in New Zealand Film, page 256

Feminist ideas had seeped into experimental cinema that screened to tiny audiences in lots in Soho. Unspooling to the converted. But film is a mass medium, and if feminist films couldn't crack in, then how was the overwhelmingly male-centric storytelling ever going to change? ... I badly wanted to make films that were in opposition to the films I was watching. The world wasn't going to change if privileged women like me didn't take on that mission. I needed to make my first feature or die.

– Gaylene Preston getting fired up about male domination of the film industry at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, in her 2022 autobiography Gaylene's Take - Her Life in New Zealand Film, page 227

When I came to make Mr Wrong, apart from Geoff Murphy who gave the script a serve, the people who were with me were the kids of my peers. They were kids who were used to helping their dads and it was with the kids and the wives and ex-wives and Robin Laing and Al Bol [Alun Bollinger] that I made Mr Wong.

– Writer/director Gaylene Preston, in an interview for 1996 book Film in Aotearoa New Zealand, page 170

The obvious, huge, gaping gaps for me from 1965 until 1978 were in seeing any women's work at all in mainstream cinemas.

– Writer/director Gaylene Preston on the lack of women movie directors, quoted by Estella Tincknell in 2007 book New Zealand Filmmakers, page 74

The film traces Meg's growing anxiety about the secret the car contains in parallel with her experiences with various unsuitable, predatory, or downright threatening men, "Mr Wrongs" of all kinds.

– Writer Estella Tincknell in 2007 book New Zealand Filmmakers, page 80

Of the 23 directors responsible for the last decade of New Zealand films, only three are women.

– Reporter Alison Parr talks about the lack of women directors in the period up to 1987, in Kaleidoscope documentary NZ Cinema, The Past Decade

The crowd began laughing early on and the laughter grew more and more hysterical, until at one moment towards the end the Civic erupted in a big laugh followed by an ear-piercing scream. The sound of grown men screaming in the movies was something I hadn’t heard before, and I’m here to tell you there can’t be too much of it. The rest was a blur.

– Gaylene Preston on the reaction at the 1985 Auckland Film Festival, in her 2022 autobiography Gaylene's Take - Her Life in New Zealand Film, page 262

We needed to buy his [Merv Kisby's] cinema for a week or two and get this film launched. It’s called ‘four walling’. Not unheard of, but hugely risky. The producers rent a cinema for a season and take the financial risk. They cover all costs and pocket the profit — if any. We were running out of options fast. We had to secure the Paramount for Friday the 13th. The date was in black-and-white in the Woman’s Weekly and The Listener.

– Gaylene Preston on trying to find a cinema for Mr Wrong, in her 2022 autobiography Gaylene's Take - Her Life in New Zealand Film, page 264

...I actually am a big fan of Mr Wrong ... it was a good thriller.

– Director Quentin Tarantino, in an interview with Radio New Zealand, 21 January 2016

To my mind Mr Wrong and An Angel at My Table work better than a lot of feminist films I have seen because they are less strident, more entertaining and do not take the easy road, fall into the trap of male/female role reversal or sacrifice any of the characters to ideology.

– Filmmaker Merata Mita, in 1992 book Film in Aotearoa New Zealand, page 48