Not so long ago I attended the NZ Film Festival in Auckland.

Living in the country, this is the “annual urban reward” I give to myself.

In the weeks before the festival, I study the program, circle the time slots and try to arrange to see a dozen or so movies – two or sometimes three a day.

I drive to the Big Smoke, park my four-wheel drive and spend a luxurious day on my own watching some outstanding examples of cinema, quite often about people or places I would never normally watch at a ‘mainstream’ cinema.

I probably look like a sad ‘Nigel no-mates’ down there on my own, but the fact is there are times when I enjoy my own company, and this is one of them!

In between movies I sit on my own, browsing in Border’s bookshop or people watching. Pure luxury!

Usually out of 12 movies, 3 will be fantastic, 4 or 5 OK, and 3 or 4 truly tedious (at least by my standards).
My strike rate in 2008 was much better – they were just about all superb movies for a variety of reasons. Certainly no duds.

So, why am I telling you this?!

In 2008 a couple of complimentary parking passes arrived with my cinema tickets. What a bonus!
Normally when you park in Downtown Auckland you have to sell a body part or one of your offspring to pay for it.

I actually couldn’t picture this particular carpark, and I know Auckpand pretty well, so I Googled it and printed the map, which I dutifully followed and parked in the Elliot Street carpark.

This wasn’t one of your purpose built facilities. This was an open piece of tarseal hurriedly applied over a vacant lot that presumably resulted after a building had been demolished and cleared some years ago.

It was about 100m from the Civic Theatre though. Perfect!

I saw two incredibly good movies that afternoon (‘Mongol’ and ‘Man on Wire’) returning to my wagon at ‘ground zero’ about 5 hours after I had left it.

The only major improvement to the carpark was the little hut that the man sat in to collect the money. It wasn’t much of an improvement.

I drove up to man in the little hut and passed over my complimentary ticket.
Expecting the barrier to rise so I could go and join thousands of other people crawling out of the Auckland CBD at 4 km/h, I was a little surprised when it didn’t.

I was more surprised when he said “that will be $48”. Actually, “surprised” would be the polite description.

I explained to the man in the little hut that I had a complimentary pass, and that there must be some mistake.

“Yes”, he said, there was a mistake – I had parked in the wrong carpark.
The FREE one was hidden around the corner.

Now, over the years I have learned that when you are organizing ANYTHING for the ‘public’ that you have to apply what I call the “moron factor”. You design things so that even the people who were born without a commonsense gene can work it out!

The FREE carpark would not have passed the Moron Test.

So there I sat. A complete moron on a demolition site, minus $48.

I didn’t feel I had had value for money. I was steaming and later on it got me thinking about Cinema & Chardonnay, which actually have a lot in common.

Those movies I saw that day, particularly Mongol, would have taken thousands and thousands of hours by hundreds of passionate and talented people to make, not to mention tens of millions of dollars.

To spend $12 to watch such an epic masterpiece, that still stands vividly in my mind, was outstanding value.

At home that same night, I opened a bottle of our “Ascent” Reserve Chardonnay from 2005 (which is stunning drinking right now).
That wine took 12 months of hard work in the vineyard, and another 18 months in the winery to make.
It was crafted from an expensive piece of property, using very expensive pieces of equipment, not to mention hundreds of hours of expertise by several passionate & talented people.

At $35 per bottle, I believe it too is outstanding value, evoking a whole range of senses.

Combining art and technology, the movie maker and the wine maker have a lot in common.

So, on that particular Thursday I really learned to appreciate the value of a great movie and a wonderful bottle of wine that both gave me happy memories for a combined $47.

One dollar less than the soulless demolition space made by a man with a wrecking ball that contained my car for all of five hours.

This entry was posted on Monday 8th September 2008 and is filed under Vineyard News. Both comments and pings are currently closed.