{"id":407321,"date":"2026-05-01T21:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T21:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/407321\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T21:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T21:12:08","slug":"mum-how-do-you-feel-about-the-movie-i-made-about-us-chelsie-preston-crayford-and-gaylene-prestons-heart-to-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/407321\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cMum, how do you feel about the movie I made about us?\u201d Chelsie Preston Crayford and Gaylene Preston\u2019s heart-to-heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

For her feature-directing and writing debut Chelsie Preston Crayford has kept things close to home. Kind of.<\/p>\n

\n Caterpillar, she says, is a work of autofiction in its story of three generations of women in the same Wellington house: a sulky teenager with acting aspirations, a harried film-maker mother
\n and a grandmother facing the onset of dementia.\n <\/p>\n

Preston Crayford, the acting daughter of director Dame Gaylene Preston, grew up in such a place with her mother and her grandmother Tui, who died in 2006.<\/p>\n

Gaylene Preston had been inspired by her mother\u2019s life in her films Home by Christmas and War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us. Now her daughter has added a third to the Tui Preston trilogy, though it\u2019s a fictionalised drama with the three leads playing characters with soundalike names. It stars veteran NZ actress Lisa Harrow as \u201cHuia\u201d, up-and-comer Anais Shand as \u201cCassie\u201d and Australian star Marta Dusseldorp as \u201cMaxine\u201d.<\/p>\n

The film arrives three years after Preston\u2019s memoir Gaylene\u2019s Take charted her struggle to juggle her life at home with Tui and Chelsie, with a precarious arts career. Preston Crayford addressed the struggles of her own young motherhood in her 2018 short film Falling Up, not long before starting the Caterpillar script.<\/p>\n

The senior film-maker\u2019s only credit on the new film is \u201cstunt driver\u201d when Huia ill-advisedly gets behind the wheel of the family car. Given the intriguing line between family history and fiction, we asked the two directors if we could eavesdrop on a conversation about a film that is, partly, kind of, set in the space between them.<\/p>\n

\"LisaLisa Harrow as Huia. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

Chelsie Preston Crayford: How are you feeling with Caterpillar about to be out there?<\/p>\n

Gaylene Preston: Ah, well there\u2019s a thing. What you\u2019ve done is really interesting. You have trawled a lived life. Yours and everyone else\u2019s. While the context is the same \u2013 yes, the house was falling down around our ears; yes, our bedrooms reflected our different worlds, Tui\u2019s all pink and floral with yours electric blue with a drum kit in the window and mine full to the brim of scripts and scribbled notes \u2013 you have built fictional characters and a plot that is entirely made up. No event in your film actually happened, but it could have. You have elevated and heightened the story to make it more enlightening, more entertaining, and more universal. But somehow you have kept the relationships true to us. It\u2019s not necessarily easy for me to look back on but it\u2019s definitely truthful. That space between us that made that time so difficult for us will illuminate to many what many mothers and daughters often face. I don\u2019t know how you did it. But you have.<\/p>\n

CPC: Did you ever feel worried when I was exploring this territory and these characters?<\/p>\n

GP: Well, I haven\u2019t got a leg to stand on, have I? I could worry my way through it but what\u2019s the point? I mean, I\u2019ve done it myself to Tui twice, so I can\u2019t very well stand on ceremony if you want to do it. The characters are enhanced, they\u2019re embellished. And they\u2019re made more entertaining than us.<\/p>\n

CPC: Yes, although you are pretty entertaining. It was an interesting challenge to take this territory of our lives and make it into a story. The characters are not exactly us because they can\u2019t be. They have to serve a dramatic purpose. The antagonist of the film really is dementia, that\u2019s what\u2019s putting the family under threat, and forcing them to grow. Tui\u2019s dementia took three years, probably longer. But it\u2019s a 90-minute film and you have to force those characters to all hit up against each other. That is why I wanted to work with all three generations, even though I was told so many times to choose one character and make it their story. It would have been much easier. <\/p>\n

\"Anais\u00a0ShandAnais\u00a0Shand as\u00a0Cassie. Photos \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

GP: I was very impressed with how you stuck to your guns on that one, through making a script over, was it four years?<\/p>\n

CPC: Actually, it was six for the writing of it.<\/p>\n

GP: That\u2019s crazy.<\/p>\n

CPC: You must have done that.<\/p>\n

GP: Oh yeah, but I don\u2019t expect anyone else to. When you told me you wanted to make a film about a maternal line living separate lives under the same leaky roof, generations transitioning through the main stages of womanhood, I thought, \u201cThat\u2019s a brilliant idea. I wish I had had it.\u201d Then I thought, \u201cHmmm. How do you make that work?\u201d Three equal characters intertwined, living separate lives together. A serious comedy full of the drama of small things.<\/p>\n

CPC: It was definitely not the easiest choice for my first time writing a feature. To make a narrative weaving their three experiences and make it complex but not complicated. That took me many years to crack.<\/p>\n

Tui\u2019s third film<\/p>\n

GP: Do you realise Tui has had three feature films made about her now?<\/p>\n

CPC: Yes! She\u2019s inspired three whole films. Isn\u2019t that amazing?<\/p>\n

GP: She\u2019s probably setting some sort of record.<\/p>\n

CPC: What do you think that\u2019s about?<\/p>\n

GP: Well, being the mother of a film-maker and the grandmother of a film-maker is probably somewhere to start. It\u2019s unavoidable really.<\/p>\n

My two mothers<\/p>\n

CPC: I wonder if it\u2019s also that both you and I have ended up making work primarily about women. I\u2019m very obsessed with and inspired by motherhood in my work. And the complex relationship between mothers and daughters. And Tui was my other mum for a good while there.<\/p>\n

GP: Well, she was. You were 7, when she moved in and she was completely grief-stricken and actually quite sick. She was deeply depressed because she was so missing her mate, my father. So, when she moved in, I thought she\u2019d only be alive for another three or four months. But I got her a doctor who could do house calls. And then you cheered her up. You know, having this little bouncing kid around, it healed her. So, I sort of gave her to you, and I gave you to her.<\/p>\n

CPC: Wow. That\u2019s a beautiful way of putting it.<\/p>\n

GP: That allowed me to be able to work. Which allowed me to pay the bills and keep the roof over our heads. So somehow the infrastructure all worked.<\/p>\n

\"ChelsieChelsie with grandmother Tui. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

CPC: Yes. You guys didn\u2019t have the easiest relationship but you struck a real harmony in terms of co-parenting me during that period.<\/p>\n

GP: Yes. Tui and I were not really aligned on many things. She thought I was a bit cocky but we were rock solid on parenting. She would never overrule me. I knew I was the boss. And I appreciated that.<\/p>\n

CPC: When I was writing and trying to understand the characters, I realised where a lot of that tension could have come from. If you think about the eras in which you grew up and what you both had to contend with, they were so vastly different. Tui left school at 13 and had to raise her siblings. She was very clever, but she couldn\u2019t have ever imagined doing what you, and therefore the character Maxine and now me, do. In your life, you have had the courage to ask yourself what it is you want and then go after it in a sort of bloody-minded fashion. You believe in your ideas enough to make them into a real thing.<\/p>\n

GP: In my case, no choice. Probably in yours, too. You have a bent bit of wiring when you\u2019re an artist. Tui thought I was selfish. People say, \u201cWhen did you become an artist?\u201d I\u2019ve noticed that touring with Robin White [for Grace: A Prayer for Peace, the 2025 documentary Preston made about the artist] we get asked that question. She\u2019ll say, \u201cWell, I didn\u2019t, I just never decided not to be one.\u201d If it\u2019s in there you can\u2019t do a thing about it, you have to surrender to it. With Tui, we had an Edwardian in the front room, who was actually a very tolerant Edwardian, but an Edwardian, nevertheless. And I was Dora the Explorer. Look Ma, no hands!<\/p>\n

CPC: Yes. You were forging a new path in so many ways. Particularly in that time in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Back to the noughties<\/p>\n

GP: This film\u2019s set in the 2000s. There\u2019s a film industry by then, sort of. I think Caterpillar is quite an interesting snapshot of that time in the evolution of feminist film-making. It takes the piss beautifully through Maxine trying to get finance for a film in which menopause is the main antagonist.<\/p>\n

CPC: There was another thing that got questioned a lot throughout the development of the script. Does it have to be set in the 2000s? You suddenly can\u2019t shoot anywhere that you can see a car, but it felt really important because technology changes all of their stories. Maxine would have had Zoom. She wouldn\u2019t have to be away as much. But most importantly, Cassie would have had social media and the internet.<\/p>\n

GP: I\u2019m so glad we didn\u2019t have to cope with all that. We were already in separate worlds under the one roof. But if you added social media to the situation we were in, I think it would have been very isolating.<\/p>\n

\"MartaMarta Dusseldorp as Maxine. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

CPC: And I was an anxious kid, I think. That\u2019s where Cassie\u2019s at when we meet her; she\u2019s kind of spiralling all the time and she\u2019s impossible. She\u2019s on the precipice of womanhood but still a kid. She needs her mum to be there, but at the same time she doesn\u2019t want her mum anywhere near her.<\/p>\n

GP: Yeah, I used to be in Sydney, or be somewhere and I\u2019d go, \u201cLook, I\u2019ve got to race home now so they can ignore me.\u201d<\/p>\n

CPC: Oh, that makes me feel so sad \u2026 what is so interesting about Caterpillar is that when I started writing it, I remember thinking, \u201cWhat is this about for me? Why am I interested in this time?\u201d I wasn\u2019t interested in making a coming-of-age. And I knew I was fascinated by these relationships, particularly between the grandmother and the granddaughter, because I do think that\u2019s the pivotal relationship of the film.<\/p>\n

GP: Well, it is. If you\u2019re thinking of an idea, it better have enough meat on the bones to sustain you for the years it could take while you\u2019re developing it.<\/p>\n

CPC: Exactly. You can\u2019t know everything about it. I was hunting around in the very early stages for what it was that kept me coming back to this material. And then you had your head injury [in 2019, Preston was knocked over by a mountain biker in Wellington], and I had a little kid, and I was a single mother. And I just suddenly realised, \u201cOh, I\u2019m Maxine. I\u2019m the mother in the middle.\u201d And it became not just about us, but about this rite of passage. The cyclical nature of our roles as women.\u201d<\/p>\n

GP: These stages are elemental. They\u2019re not by choice. Childhood, young womanhood, motherhood, the crone, the elder, the wise woman. The best thing is to actually get a bit strategic about it and work out how it\u2019s going to go if you possibly can.<\/p>\n

CPC: I think that aspect of you is the most remarkable thing. You are completely obsessed and dedicated to your artistry, but you bring everyone with you. You\u2019re certainly never out for yourself. Maxine could be interpreted as out for herself. I do think women are interpreted like that far more often. I often think about if Maxine was the dad, how that character would be interpreted.<\/p>\n

GP: If Maxine was Max, he\u2019d have so much sympathy. The plot could stay exactly the same and Max would be Saint Max, wouldn\u2019t he? They wouldn\u2019t mind that he couldn\u2019t cook a chook.<\/p>\n

The cast<\/p>\n

CPC: Let\u2019s talk about Lisa Harrow. What\u2019s amazing about Lisa\u2019s performance is that she\u2019s very like Tui and she\u2019s nothing like Tui.<\/p>\n

\"CaterpillarCaterpillar stars a sulky teenager with acting aspirations, a harried film-maker mother and a grandmother facing the onset of dementia. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

GP: She is quite extraordinary.<\/p>\n

CPC: I just couldn\u2019t believe my eyes when I saw her audition. She\u2019s such an extraordinary actress. And she was so uncomfortable in all Huia\u2019s costumes. She\u2019s such a stylish, worldly woman, and that\u2019s not Tui. Tui was stylish in her way but she was, as you say, Edwardian and very working class. She loved a purple tracksuit.<\/p>\n

GP: She did.<\/p>\n

CPC: I was editing the film at my house with Jonno Woodford Robinson. Lisa came over to the house and Jonno couldn\u2019t believe it. Because she\u2019s nothing like Huia, who he had spent the last 12 weeks with, in the edit suite. Transformative. And then Marta Dusseldorp is just a powerhouse, and Anais Shand is total magic. The crazy thing about the casting is they were all no-brainers. Thank god they all said yes. Anais is just going to knock everyone\u2019s socks off.<\/p>\n

GP: Absolutely.<\/p>\n

CPC: You are credited in the film as being the stunt driver, because we used your real car from that period, a 1987 Fiat Panda you still have, and you are the best at driving it.<\/p>\n

GP: And the terrible thing about that wasn\u2019t driving the car, it was putting on Huia\u2019s costume. I just about had a nervous breakdown.<\/p>\n

CPC: That was a big moment. I feel that was the most confronting part of the whole thing for you. Not Maxine or Cassie or the story or the mother-daughter relationships or the conflict. The scariest part was actually dressing up as your own mother.<\/p>\n

GP: It was. Dressing up as your own mother to be in a film. I wouldn\u2019t recommend it. Psychologically, you need the strength of an elephant.<\/p>\n

CPC: Well, thanks for having this conversation. It\u2019s been a real joy for me to talk to you in this way about the film.<\/p>\n

GP: Isn\u2019t it good? We\u2019ve never done it.<\/p>\n

CPC: It\u2019s very liberating because it\u2019s a work of autofiction. People don\u2019t know where the line is between reality and fiction. Maybe that\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n

GP: And for the record, I can cook a chook.<\/p>\n

CPC: For the record, I cannot cook a chook, so there you have it. Who\u2019s who? We will never know.<\/p>\n

GP: I never taught you how to do it. I blame the parents. <\/p>\n

Caterpillar premieres in Wellington on May 6, in Auckland on May 7 and has Mother\u2019s Day screenings at selected cinemas on May 10 before general release on May 14. <\/p>\n

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