Filming 'Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence', 1982


The 1982 movie Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (starring David Bowie) was filmed in New Zealand and the Cook Islands, with most of the European casting being done in New Zealand.

As New Zealand actress Mabel Wharekawa-Burt has mentioned, the Cook Islands has long been a favoured place to make movies because of things like accommodation, location, the New Zealand dollar and the availability of cheap casting for extras.




Aerial view of Wanganui Collegiate where the school scenes were filmed.


As early as 1980, Bowie had been approached by the renowned Japanese director Nagisa Oshima with a view to starring in his next movie. Bowie was immediately attracted to the idea of working with Oshima, whose award wimming masterpiece Ai No Corrida (In The Realm of The Senses) had sparked a famous Japanese obscenity trial in 1976. But just as Ai No Corrida had been rejected by Japanese backers and eventually produced with French money, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence with it's homosexual subtext and unflattering portrayal of Japanese wartime atrocities, was forced into postponement while Oshima found finance in England and New Zealand. When he was ready to begin shooting in Rarotonga on the Cook Islands in the summer of 1982, Oshima contacted Bowie with only 3 weeks notice.



"I'd just finished The Hunger and the last thing I wanted to do was make a movie" recalled Bowie. "I just wanted to have a holiday. So I took advantage and took my holiday in the South Pacific. I got to know the islands pretty well before Oshima got there with the crew, so by the time everyone arrived I felt pretty much as if I'd been on the island for some time, which, in fact, I was supposed to have been in my role."



Shooting in the Cook Islands and later New Zealand (for the flashback scenes of Bowie's childhood with his brother) was completed in seven weeks. At the end of shooting, Bowie staged a ribald revue for the cast and crew, before returning to New York to begin work on Let's Dance.



TRIVIA: The slouch hat worn by Jack Celliers (played by David Bowie) in the film is often mistaken as an Australian hat, but is in fact the type of hat worn by units of the British Army in India. This confused the Japanese in Burma and led to reports that they were fighting Australians there.

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