Trojan horse for truths

• Published date: 26 October 2023
• Author: Rebecca Fox
• Publication title: Otago Daily Times: Web Edition Articles (New Zealand)

New Zealand screenwriter Michael Bennett has turned to a life of crime and is loving every moment

It is not the balaclava-wearing, ram-raiding type of crime, but an imaginary world where he gets to tell the stories he is passionate about.

And it only started about six years ago when he was introduced to the case of Teina Pora, then still in prison for the 1992 rape and murder of Susan Burdett.

"Since Teina Pora, my life is almost completely crime now, and it's really enjoyable — it's what I chose in my reading and watching in any case."

It was through Pora that Bennett started writing prose rather than the screen scripts — comedy, short films, feature films, television — he has become known for over the decades. He has written episodes of Mercy Peak, Mataku, Cover Story, Outrageous Fortune and more recently gang drama Vegas and detective show The Gone, and has been involved with feature films such as Matariki, Jubilee and short films Cow, Kerosene Creek, Night Shift and Ross and Beth.

Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue) was heavily involved in the fight to have Pora's wrongful conviction for Burdett's murder overturned — he became a trusted friend of Pora, was on his prison phone list and sat in on the Privy Council case in the United Kingdom texting Pora developments as they happened.

He wrote, directed and co-produced documentary The Confessions of Prisoner 'T' which aired two years before the Privy Council quashed Pora's convictions and then TV film, In Dark Places, based on Pora's story. He received the best director award at the 2019 NZ Television Awards for that work.

Being so close to the story, Bennett got to know all the players very deeply, and wanted to tell Pora's story — which he believes epitomises how the justice system fails Māori — but felt the film and documentary genres had their limitations.

"It was out of necessity I suppose. I really wanted to go more deeply both into social aspects of it and the legal, but also the Teina I knew, and to give the reader a look behind the newspaper headlines and get to know this guy for the kind and extraordinary human being I knew him to be."

So a book seemed the only way. Bennett wrote In Dark Places: The confessions of Teina Pora and an ex-cop's fight for justice which went on to win the 2017 Ngaio Marsh award for best non-fiction.

"I found I loved it."

He found the difference between screenwriting and writing a book is that people read a writer's words and have a more intimate connection with the...