Brass clowns

How a comedy inspired by a gig at a World Cup game became a family affair for its Tongan cast and creator.  

- RUSSELL BAILLIE

In 2011, Halaifonua Finau led his Tongan church brass band onto the field at Wellington's Cake Tin ahead of the Tonga-France Rugby World Cup game. He had blagged his way into the role of drum major of the ensemble that had been hastily assembled to support the team - and to get free tickets to the game. He was, he thinks, a bit of a natural with the mace.

"I think it was from my childhood of growing up watching the Ninja Turtles and practising with sticks... all of that stuff was easy."

Clearly inspired by the overtures of the Taulanga Ū Brass Band and a stadium swathed in red and white, Tonga beat France 19-14. The team's earlier losses meant its opponents would still advance. Still, Tonga ended its RWC run that year on a high, as did the Wellington Tongan community. And now that high is about to return in the form of a feature film.

These days, Finau, who started out a dancer and actor - he was one of the kids in the David McPhail classroom sitcom Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby - is an established writer and producer. He was co-creator of The Panthers, the 2021 drama inspired by the Polynesian political activists of the 1970s, and a co-writer on the Jonah Lomu mini-series, Jonah.

Seeing a Tongan brass band at a touring Edinburgh Military Tattoo show in Wellington in 2016, he had a lightbulb moment. When he started bouncing around ideas and telling possible producers about his 2011 experience, he got told: "Write that". At first the film was called Dox - the Tongan slang equivalent of "Bros" - and it was headed towards being a movie about 20-something guys, well, blowing their own trumpets. "It was very much in the Sione's Wedding lane and tone," Finau tells the Listener.