Smash Palace

Bruno got that scene by the scruff of the neck. He just marched up to that door... and he cut loose. it was the quintessential Bruno.

– Editor Mike Horton, on the scene where Bruno removes the front door by force

Used to give me the creeps living out here in the middle of nowhere. That's why I left. I couldn't stand it Tiny. I tried to talk to Al about it, but we never got anywhere.

– Jacqui (Anna Maria Monticelli) to Tiny (Desmond Kelly)

God Foley, what do you want from my life? You've got my wife and the kid. Tell you what, I'll give you the shirt from my back. Here yar. She bought it.

– Al (Bruno Lawrence) to Ray Foley (Keith Aberdein)

The film is so deeply imbued with a New Zealand atmosphere ... should be top ranked too because its story demands and gets so much more from its actors than most films dare to try for ... it's a a wrenching portrayal of a marriage breakdown.

– Geoff Chapple, reviewing Smash Palace in The Listener, 16 January 1982, page 24

...it's really significant actually, because I think we seem to struggle to do contemporary drama, we hide behind the caper genre, which we seem to have done to death. In fact we've almost reinvented it ourselves. We hide behind all kinds of things as a film industry and I think that's maybe to do with how old we are. But I think Smash Palace is a bit of a blimp, a bit of an odd aberration.

– Smash Palace Production Manager Dorthe Scheffmann on the film's place in Kiwi screen history, in documentary The Making of Smash Palace

One of the things that I felt about a car wrecking yard as being sort of symbolic of the sort of the pain of this story, is that every one of these cars wrecked by the side of the road is somebody's dream that has come to an end; you know somebody's got hurt in these cars, or somebody's life savings have gone down the drain. If you're looking for a symbol of relationships under crisis and a story that had a lot of tension to it then you couldn't set it in a better place than somewhere like this.

– Director Roger Donaldson on the Horopito Motors car yard, in documentary The Making of Smash Palace

When I found Greer, Greer became Georgie, and the rest is history.

– Roger Donaldson on casting child actor Greer Robson as Georgie, in documentary The Making of Smash Palace

[Smash Palace] made the year's best ten films list of both The New York Times and two critics in the Village Voice — two papers poles apart in politics, style and audience.

– Onfilm's American correspondent Roy Murphy, August 1984, page 37 (Volume 1, no 5)