Like all natives of Dunedin, I am pathetically grateful when anybody remotely famous or interesting deigns to grace us with their presence.
So when Jane Campion and an army of stars from shows as terrific as Madmen and films as fabulous as O Brother, Where Art Thou agree to come to an alpine holiday resort in the same region as us, it is cause for plenty of fawning and other obsequious activity.
That's what happened when Elisabeth Moss (Peggy from Madmen) and Holly Hunter (Holly Hunter!) came to Queenstown to film Campion's six-part mini-series Top of the Lake last year.
It was all terribly exciting, and the end result on UKTV in March was really very good.
Now we can not only return to those heady, heady days, but also sip from the sweet cup of inside knowledge, when From the Bottom of the Lake graces our widescreens this Saturday evening on BBC Knowledge.
From the Bottom of the Lake takes the idea of a ''making of'' doco one might see on the DVD version of a show, and expands on the theme to develop a film in its own right.
Film-maker Clare Young, as we are told in text as the movie begins, met Campion at a barbecue in Braidwood - a town in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales.
Campion asked to see her short film; Young asked if Campion would be her mentor; Campion said ''yes''; Young asked Campion if she could document the development of a six-hour crime mystery she was developing for the BBC; Campion again said ''yes'', though reluctantly; and a ''making-of'' doco was born.
And From the Bottom of the Lake, despite Campion's role as a mentor, gives a fascinating warts-and-all view of the creative process.
The action begins far, far from the shores of the cruel, dank and sometimes fatal Lake Wakatipu that is a central character of Top of the Lake.
It is 2010, and Campion and co-writer, Australian Gerard Lee, are ensconced in a somewhat bucolic kitchen in Devon, southwest England.
Campion complains Lee's writing is cliched.
Lee tells her she has no perspective.
Then the pair of them get tired of Young's filming and have a bit of a go at her.
It's terrific.
Later we see Elisabeth, Holly and local actors workshopping and rehearsing at sites around Queenstown, including the containers that end up as the scene of the camp for disturbed women in Top of the Lake.
There's plenty for wanna-be award-winning writers and directors to ponder, and plenty to enjoy for those wanting to relive the glory times of living in a small southern city, knowing that just a few hundred kilometres away, famous people were doing stuff.
- Charles Loughrey
