Roger Donaldson Quotations

I'd made this naive little documentary about the real Burt Munro, very early in my film-making career, and this character always stuck with me. I thought, 'God, what a great subject for a feature film!' And it's a project that I've been keeping on the back burner ever since.

I came with him on one of his last trips to America. The character in the film is really based upon the character that I knew.

Hemingway invited him to Havana for some weekends and the movie is really about what happens when he goes there,

The optimism in the film is really based on my own experience of coming to America,

Tony talked to me a fair bit about that movie, which I hadn't seen. Campbell felt compelled to do whatever he was doing, because of his father - so we'd talk about some of the motivations of Munro, too.

It's a thriller, it's a love story, it's Hemingway as he falls apart and is suicidal. This guy was a witness to it all.

It's a pretty ambitious movie for what it is Hemingway is a great writer and a great character. If anybody can play Hemingway, Tony Hopkins can,