the world’s fastest indian

Posted on | August 15, 2007 | No Comments

i finally saw this wonderful film, last night.
what a trip!

it is based on the life of burt munro, a new zealander who went off to bonneville salt flats in 1967, with his self-modified antique 1920 indian motorcycle and set a world record on it…..that remains unbroken today, forty years later.
i get goosebumps just typing that.

apart from all the thrilling motorcycle stuff, the film is a treasure trove of new zealand actors…..i was delighted to see annie whittle and tim shadbolt (i once worked with a cousin of his, the daughter of the brilliant maurice shadbolt….and in my senior year at school, i was invited to a rotary luncheon where tim shadbolt was the speaker, and he was awesome; witty and too clever by half. he holds a record for non-stop public speaking; i don’t believe that’s been broken either).
and anthony hopkins did a credible job at an invercargill accent.
i never thought about it before, but a NZ accent must be quite difficult to mimic.
we sort of flatten and clip our vowels oddly….different to australians and south effricans too.

anyway, lovely movie and i thoroughly recommend it.
the americans he meets along the way are all charming and kind….the sixties in the USA must have been a really great time and place.

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