Tall tales

Greg McGee's haphazard journey as unlikely writer, rebellious rugby player, ambivalent protestor, lawyer and defendant, mutineer tourist, dilettante coach and incompetent kangaroo culler has taken him from Ponsonby to Paraburdoo, Tapanui to Harlem, Dunedin to Venice and various other T-shirt destinations. During this time he has crossed paths with a diverse cast of characters, from Peter Mahon to Keith Murdoch, Peggy Guggenheim to Duncan Laing, Ken Gray to Billy T. James, Raymond Hawthorne to Bert Potter, not to mention Grizz Wylie, Janet Frame's brother, Sicilian witches, Vincent van Gogh and writers, actors, producers and other denizens of stage and screen. For theatre, he has written both Foreskin's Lament, which has been described as 'the great New Zealand play', and Whitemen, which McGee describes as 'New Zealand's biggest home-made bomb'. He also wrote the controversial mini-series Erebus, The Aftermath and much else for television, and has published the odd short story and sports column. Tall Tales (Some True) is an unabashedly subjective account of that journey, and of the backstage mechanics of a particular writer's life. It is a seriously entertaining attempt to answer the question writers get asked most often - 'Where do you get your ideas from?'