A scene from Blind Bitter Happiness, starring Tilly and Peter Feeney. Photo: Tinderbox Productions
Most people considered mastering sourdough or juggling work and home-schooling enough of a challenge during New Zealand’s Covid-19 lockdowns. But Peter Feeney isn’t most people.
The Auckland actor and writer went over and above the usual hobbies and activities, convincing friends and family – including his three children – to film a four-part dark comedy series.
Blind Bitter Happiness, now screening on RNZ, is the result.
Banal family conflicts are an infinite source of dramatic riches, Feeney told RNZ Nights.
“All of the dramas that go on behind closed doors, for me they're just as interesting as cop shows or legal dramas. When you’re losing your rag at your kids and they’re yelling at you and doors slamming and all the rest of it. I just thought that what we would think as banality, there's all the drama that you'd ever like.”
Blind Bitter Happiness is based on Feeney’s self-published semi-memoir, which he says caused “small scandal among certain circles” when it came out.
The story focuses on the death of family patriarch Denis, and how his son, middle-aged doctor Peter Fahey (played by Feeney), and superstitious and ritual-obsessed granddaughter Scarlett, come to terms with their grief and their relationship with the cantankerous old man.
“The best things come from more than one wellspring,” Feeney says.
"It was my childhood, but then of course I had kids. So it was a collision of the childhood I’d had growing up, in the very dull and boring Pākehā suburbs in the 1970s, where nothing ever happened, but when it did, it had enormous emotional significance.
“So it’s all those lazy Sunday afternoons strung together with the experience of being a dad with these incredible passionate bombs that explode in front of you constantly… I just thought there's some really good truth there that everyone's going to relate to."
Filming Blind Bitter Happiness was a family and friends-heavy affair. Photo: Tinderbox Productions
Feeney says the universal experience of death and loss felt like a solid starting point.
“Something that's such a part of our lives is dealing with loss, whether it be death or whether it just be watching your kids growing up and leaving.
"I remember my grandfather's death and I remember his funeral really clearly even though I was only six. And I thought that's a really good place to start from because everyone comes together. It just puts people under a really interesting lens of pressure.”
Feeney wrote the pilot episode and assembled a cast and crew when the lockdown ended, “kind of shooting in and out of various outbreaks”. Six months after the pilot was filmed, a producer provided funding to shoot another.
“I went in and did another episode and then I sort of said, staring at these things going, well, I've got two episodes out of eight and I'd quite like to make the series but in the end, what I did was just keep going and filmed a bit more and made a web series out of it all.”
The series was largely crowd-funded, “mostly built on the goodwill of people,” Feeney says.
“You know, if you ever make something for nothing, you've got to be nice to everyone all the time, and believe me, it's quite strange. But we had a lot of talented people who were backing me.
“You’ve got to honour the fact that people are professionals and deserve to be paid and make a living out of it. That's a really important principle, but on the other hand… there's always room to contribute and help someone else. I've done plenty of those gigs in my time for other people who just need a bit of a hand right now.”
Tilly Feeney in Blind Bitter Happiness. Photo: Tinderbox Productions
The Feeney children – Arlo, Frankie and Tilly – appear alongside their father and a cast of familiar New Zealand actors, including Lisa Harrow, Claire Chitham, Lisa Chappell and Mark Wright. Feeney says his children were well-used to hanging out with actors, but it was a surprise to learn that Tilly, then nine, was a natural.
“We didn’t know she could act until we arrived on set, and she was just amazing.
“She had this volcanic personality, and so when I wrote it, I wrote it around her. And then when we came to cast it was pretty obvious that she should do it.
“In terms of convincing them, it was really simple. I just didn't give them a choice.”
