‘The Desk’ Featuring Paul Henry to Have NZ Debut

The Documentary Edge Festival is thrilled to announce The Desk as a late entry to its 2015 Programme. The film, featuring local broadcaster Paul Henry, will have its international premiere on May 21 at 10pm at Q Theatre (book now at qtheatre.co.nz) with limited screenings also on offer in Wellington and Auckland. The Festival is also delighted to announce that the film’s director, US journalist Andrew Goldman, will attend the screenings and participate in the Screen Edge Forum.

Documentary Edge Festival tickets for Auckland will go on sale on April 15. Check out the full timetable at http://documentaryedge.org.nz/

The Desk follows the making of a short film with Paul Henry after his departure from TVNZ in 2010. In the midst of directing the scripted short, Goldman was fired from his job as a weekly interviewer for The New York Times magazine. The Desk documents Goldman’s life falling apart and his mad adventures with Paul Henry in the making of this film. A combination of behind-the-scenes footage and reenactments, The Desk features Paul Henry, veteran porn star Ron Jeremy and fitness guru Richard Simmons at their finest.

It’s not often we get to see a local celebrity featured in an international film. The Desk raises important questions about the role of the mainstream media today. We are proud to host the international premiere of this entertaining film, following its appearance at the Florida Film Festival, say Festival Directors, Dan Shanan and Alex Lee.

The Desk is one of 58 films featured in the best line-up at the 10th anniversary Documentary Edge Festival, playing at Auckland’s Q Theatre from May 20 – June 1 and Wellington’s The Roxy Cinema from June 3 – 14.

FROM THE FILMMAKER: The Desk dees categorization. It is a buddy comedy, a document of a man’s midlife crisis, as well as a cri de coeur about the crumbling ethics of print journalism. In 2013, Andrew Goldman, a magazine journalist, set out to write and direct his rst lm, a short, based upon the actual adventures he’d had with Paul Henry, the outspoken and unltered host of New Zealand’s most popular morning news program, until he was red in 2010 following an outburst on live television many deemed racist. Goldman discovers Henry after the kiwi host’s moment of infamy goes viral. He lures Henry to the United States in pursuit of fame and fortune. But in Hollywood, the pair experiences abject failure getting any project off the ground. The lm also includes an unscripted element—having utterly blown their shot the conventional way, Goldman and Henry agree to create their own homemade talk show by convincing celebrities to be interviewed by Henry from behind a desk the pair tows around Los Angeles on a trailer. In the midst of lming this lighthearted short, Goldman is red from his regular job as weekly interviewer for the New York Times magazine , he believes, because he’s offended a powerful advertiser. At this point, Goldman highjacks the project, and turns it into something else entirely, a far darker project: an investigation into the forces that cost him his job, a look at the vapidity of Twitter outrage culture, and a blistering look at the New York Times , a paper that can no longer afford to be the paragon of pure journalism it still pretends to be.

Trailer:
https://vimeo.com/124077261

ENDS

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