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Geoff Murphy is a successful New Zealand filmmaker best known for his work during the renaissance of New Zealand cinema that began in the last half of the 1970s. He directed a string of big-budget Hollywood features during the 1990s, before returning to New Zealand as second unit director on all... three movies of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. He has also worked as a scriptwriter, assistant director, special effects man, schoolteacher and trumpet player. Murphy grew up in Highbury, Wellington and attended St. Vincent de Paul School in Kelburn and St. Patrick's College, Wellington , before training and working as a schoolteacher. Murphy was a founding member of legendary 'hippy' musical and theatrical co-operative Blerta, which toured New Zealand and Australia performing multi-media shows in the early 1970s, and together made the feature film Wild Man. Many members of the group would work in Murphy's later films - in particular drummer, and founder, Bruno Lawrence. Murphy made his name with the classic road movie Goodbye Pork Pie , one of the first New Zealand films to attract large-scale audiences in its home country.
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