Real Life With John CowanKevin has been a fixture in the Aotearoa New Zealand film industry for over thirty years. He directed the highly successful Air New Zealand Nothing to Hide Brand campaign. His other celebrated projects, which have become cultural icons in New Zealand, include the Mitre 10 “Sandpit,” Toyota “Everyday People,” and the National Depression Initiative, which featured rugby legend Sir John Kirwan.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kevin reached out to support the film community, and the floodgates opened. This led him to pursue studies in chaplaincy to acquire the skills necessary for offering a calm, compassionate, and empathetic presence to those in need.
Kevin holds a master’s degree in Chaplaincy from the University of Otago and is currently pursuing a PhD. He has also been formally ordained by the Anglican Church of Aotearoa. With his deep commitment to listening and supporting others, Kevin is well-equipped to serve the film community.
Kevin and his wife, Nikki, reside in Auckland and have three daughters and a son-in-law.
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Caday, Welcome to real Life. I was delighted when I learned that Kevin Denham was going to be my guest because I used to know a nineteen eighty five version of Kevin Denham, and I'm sort of interested to know what the twenty twenty four versions like. So, Kevin, Welcome to real life.
Hi John, good to see you again.
A few things have changed over the years.
Indeed they have. I've got less hair.
Oh well, look, that's a sign of maturity. I think it suits us both very well. It does. At about that stage when I knew you said decades ago you were heading off into a career in film, and you've done pretty darned well in that. I mean, you've had decades now of being an award winning film producer, mostly commercials.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've had an amazing career. Actually with our company Exposure, We've done all sorts of things, traveled all around the world. We've done a mixture of documentary work, particularly in the humanitarian space, but also lots of commercial work for the likes of Toyota and ye New Zealand and whatnot.
I went on your website and saw that most of the ads that I've sort of remembered over the years, for Toyota and Yar New Zealand and Whittakers and even the minor ten ad of the Kids in the Sandpit, you know, you've produced them. Yeah, it's quite a portfolio.
Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun.
And so you've been doing that for decades and decades, being incredibly successful, and then bang you turn around to become an Anglican priest. What they heck's that about?
Yeah? Great question? Maybe perhaps that was what COVID did to.
Me, Is that right? It was during that time that you'd considered a change of track.
Look, COVID was certainly a catalyst for it, but it was something that it's been bubbling away there for me for a very very long time.
Right. I guess it shouldn't be a complete shock because I know your mum and dad very well. In fact, I've seen more of them over the last few decades than I have of you and your dad. Was a Baptist minister, correct, and so the fact that you would be inspired by what he did not very surprising that you'd want to consider that line. Why Anglican? You know, he was the Baptist of the Baptists.
Yeah, well, Dad asked me that same question. Why Anglican? For me, what really appeals to me about the Anglican tradition, I think is the tradition and the fact that it is probably the broadest church in this country.
It's broadest in what sense.
Well, it accommodates a whole wide variety of approaches to spirituality and Christian faith. At one end you might have very liberal people and at the other end extremely conservative. But we all meet around a central table, which I really love.
Okay, So when someone says they're an Anglican, they still haven't told you very much, have they?
And I think that's exactly right.
I have to tell what type of Anglican that you are. I mean, as your faith growing, I mean growing up in a Christian home. I've observed that some people, especially perhaps p KS preacher kids, they can either rebel against it or they can adopt it, but more typically they modify it. Is your faith different from the faith that you would have had as a young person.
Great question, and I think the honest answer to that is both yes and no.
Oh you should go for politics, mate, the Anglican thing doesn't work out. Yeah, yes, that out.
No, Look, but it's genuine. Firstly, as you've mentioned, I grew up in a really strong faith based home, hugely influenced by my mother and father and their life of service. And so this faith that I had, this God that I believed in, was formed very early in my life, and that faith has remained. That the sort of almost that fun childlike aspect of my faith remains today. But what has changed is perhaps my understanding of what it looks like. I've been really fortunate in my work to travel extensively.
Fifty countries I saw on a list somewhere you'd.
Put, yeah, it's actually a lot more than that, but really, yeah, it's actually closer to one hundred. But yeah, it's a huge amount of travel. But in that I've been able to see witness be part of all sorts of faith expressions and not just Christian and that has helpful my worldview.
Okay, so did that answer your question. Yeah, so it's perhaps not as finely focused. Are your PEPs are shrug your shoulders at what other people are doing? More and go? Yeah, I can accept that as valid as well.
One hundred percent. So yeah, absolutely have become less black and white and hopefully a whole lot less judgmental.
Yeah. So yeah, okay, yeah, So as this faith thing is is real to you? When can I ask you? When? Is God real to you? When do you spoke most sense? Yeah, that God is there for you? Yeah?
Again, great question. I think I sense God's reality every day in various ways. Primarily, I would say through his creation, So through this insanely beautiful country that we live in. I spend a lot of time out on our tier Great Barrier Island, and you know, God's very close to me there. But also I would say in the people, this wide, vast, deeply rich range of human beings that we have on this planet, as He got in all of them.
Now, I could understand someone saying God's very real when you're walking through a beautiful piece of bush or a lovely beach over on Great Barrier, But you've also been in Brazilian prisons, You've been with people dying from AIDS. Is God real? Then? Yeah?
Probably more so. Actually, I think God tends to My experience is that God often shows up during the toughest times of someone's life, whether that be in around death, dying, grieful loss, or or some sort of hardship. We've done a lot of work in prisons around the world, and you know, there's a you know, I don't know who quoted it, but the saying was, if you want to if you want to meet God, go to prison. And it's sort of true because people often at their lowest point, will then reach out to something that is perhaps a higher power, a higher sense, something certainly a whole lot bigger than themselves.
Okay, now, preparing for tonight, I've looked through your website and noticed an awful lot of pictures of you hanging around with glamorous people. There's people you have movie stars and bear grills and as you've mentioned, zotting off around the world and you've become an Anglican priest. Yeah, okay, isn't that very dull compared to what you are doing?
No, it's not so a little bit of history, Yes, it is true. We have I've been able to live a very fortunate, very exciting life of travel and meeting call people and all the rest of it. But alongside that, I guess I've always had some sort of, I guess a sense of calling around the pastoral needs of people and our industry. The film industry is an industry that is really hard. It's a very very tough industry.
To be in.
It's it it's huge, long hours, demanding schedules. You know, you're only ever as good as your next job, which you don't actually know which it is. And so there's huge insecurity in our industry and it takes a huge toll on people's well being, their relationships, their own mental health. And so I've always had a bit of an ear to the ground for that stuff, probably because of the family that have come from.
So you were sort of like a de facto past or even within the industry before you became officially a priest.
Yeah, so yeah, probably, I'd certainly had a lot of people that would make their way to my office or have a quiet conversation. And then actually during COVID, our business really hit the wall because we couldn't travel, We had all our local clients stopped, and after thirty years of trading pretty successfully, we had to virtually shut the doors. Very tough time. But what I did was on that first week of that very first lockdown, was that I sent an email out to about three hundred of the crew that I had worked with in the previous six months or so, and I just said, hey, look, you know that I'm a director. You know that that's you know, this part of me. But what you don't know is that I actually have been training in pastoral care and then some chaplaincy staff and if you want to talk, now as a good as time as any, and the floodgates just opened.
Well really yeah, So yeah.
I had over one hundred responses from that one email.
Well, okay, I'm a little gobs back because I sort of think of New Zealand as been pretty secular, and the film industry could even be especially secular. And so if you throw the word chaplain or pastor or something at an industry like that, a culture like that, I would have thought people would have thought that is very alien to me. I'm a generation or so removed from anything to do with church. It's a little bit weird. That's not the response you've had.
Well, I should say that that was before I became an actual ordained.
So at that point you were just a mate who had some skills and people were keen to talk about as a mate and a fellow director sort of thing.
Yeah, correct, and probably didn't have this you know, label on me priest. Yeah, yeah, or chaplain. I prefer to say chaplain, but.
Yeah, look, you're probably better define that term chaplain.
Yeah, okay. One of the very best descriptions of what a chaplain is simply a non anxious presence. That's what a chaplain does.
Oh, I think I need several of them exactly.
But it's quite lovely, isn't it. A non anxious presence.
Yeah.
So in order to be that, you have to be present, So you have to be there. You can't call it in. So firstly, you have to walk the walk. Yeah, And that's the great thing about the film industry as we have to be present. We have to be on location, all of us, whether we're the director or the camera person or the whatever, and now in my case the chaplain. But we as a chaplain, my job is simply to offer a non anxious presence in a very anxious environment.
And because you've got this title of priest, even if people aren't very church affiliated these days, or have much experience, they know that instantly they can probably start talking at a fairly unguarded level about things close to their heart.
Correct, Yeah, it probably. It probably works as a sheepgate, to be honest, What does that mean? People either go yes, you're in or no, you're absolutely I don't want to have anything.
To do with you. You get that result. Yeah.
Look, I think there's a few people that just they see me coming and stare at their feet.
I wonder if that's because they've had some negative experience in the past of some of highly luck person of a religious label, highly love and I'll project that onto you absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, that'll be a tough one to work around, forssible. Yeah, but in general now ministers work out of churches and things like that. So you're not working out of.
A church, No, No, I'm not. So what I'm doing is trying to establish this film chaplaincy service. So I've got this very cool caravan and a great Toyota to pull it along, and they is that I will be a rock up onto a film location and set myself up. I've got a beautiful lumma sooka coffee machine, and we just go from there.
I'm talking with Kevin Denham, a very successful film director and producer, and he has a change of direction and now a film chaplain. I'm going to ask him after the break whether his caravan's got stained glass and how he actually goes about this, and also some other interesting things I know that he's involved in. This is real life. I'm John Cown talking with Kevin Denham.
Intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on News Talk ZB.
Welcome back to real life. My guest tonight is film producer Kevin Denham, now the Reverend Kevin Demnham Denim who's picked some David Bowie for us? What's the story behind that?
Look, I'm just a huge Bowie fan. I always have been since since I was young. Yeah, I'm just a complete fan.
Which Bowie meaning that there was a nineteen eighty five version of you in a twenty twenty four version. There's about five versions of David Bowie too.
And that's what I love about him. He was just so brilliant and I just thought, look, you know, I knew we'd probably be talking a little bit about this transition that I hadn't in my life so the song changes seemed somewhat appropriate.
Changes, correct. Yeah, and during the break you mentioned a fascinating interaction that you had with David Bowie. You've beat the man up exactly. Yeah.
Look as a little fifteen year old I, in fact, this is how I got into film. I was lucky enough to have a small role in the movie Merry Christmas, Mister Lawrence, where when Bowie was in the prisoner of war camp, he had this flashback of when he was a kid, and anyway I was. I was the low bully that beat them up, but brute, but was fortunate enough to also have lunch for them one day.
So okay, I wonder how many people thinking, yeah, I'd like to have a career in film. I think I'll start off with a big, big start in a Hollywood movie. So that was a pretty good step up in the in the industry for you.
Well, it was genuinely my first experience. And I remember going on to the set and they had this incredible table at lunchtime where there was oysters. Remember that, and I was like, man, this industry is for me.
Did you get an IMDb entry for that?
No, it's my eternal It still hurts, and I'm sorry you even asked.
That that was a bruise.
It was so for whatever reason, even though I had a very small speaking part and cut me from the credits.
Oh well, look, I did some research before speaking to you. They don't mention film chaplains in the credits and movies either, And I did some digging around and they said no, they they limit it to production crew. They don't. They limit to everybody. The first cousins of the people related to get gets listed in those credits, but no chaplains.
No.
Well, so you're not going to be getting mentioned in these movies that you're going to be providing the health for.
Correct.
How we were talking before the break about how you now a film chaplain. You've got this big caravan, you take it to where the crews are working. Then what do you do? Do you just lurk around behind the cameras and people grab you? Or so? How does it work?
Okay, So there's this another really great phrase when you asked about what a chaplain does? We loiter with intent, which you know you've got to be a bit careful where you pull that line out. That is literally, well, what a chaplain does okay, so the beauty and look, I must state that this film chaplaincy thing is in its infancy.
You've worked out how to do it as you're doing I.
Literally am you know. It's very very early days.
Yes, and runs on the board already.
There's to use yeah yeah, not physically on location that has yet to come, but.
Definitely people working within the industry have availed themselves.
Absolutely, and a lot of people have made their way to my not so little caravan.
Yes, so it's the how religious is it? I mean? I can imagine that people might come and talk to you about stress and anxiety and mental health and relationship problems, maybe even work problems. Do you actually does it touch much upon religious stuff?
Only if they bring it up. So again, chaplain says for all faiths and none. So we're not there to proselytize. We're not there to sort of waive this big Christian banner, but we are there to offer perhaps something around spiritual support and and what that looks like in a world where you know, there's lots of support you can get for mental health now and coaching and all sorts, but there's very little available for that really deep stuff around crisis. You know, if you are having a real crisis, often you just need someone to talk to or that can listen to you.
You know, you mentioned you go over to Great Barrier, and I do did hear that you went over for a holiday in Great Barrier over the summer and all of a sudden people started dying around you. I don't think you were responsible, but.
I hope not.
How many funerals did you end up doing on your holiday? Well, I ate eight funerals on your holiday.
Yeah, but look, it's I should state it's not my holiday, and it's like, is my home my yea, so it's I. I sort of live between Auckland and Great Barrier, and so I'm very much lucky to be part.
Of that community over there. It is.
Yeah, So yeah, I'm very closely connected. So all of these people I knew they were all.
In that case, by sympathy is for losing so many people, you know, but you've but that would have this idea of dealing with people in their crisis, and there are times of deepest need that would have been you must have been thinking, this is what I was training for, This is my calling.
Absolutely right, that's absolutely right. I feel so privileged to be able to be with people, particularly around death, whether that is someone who is dying. And maybe that's where this role of the priests comes in.
Now that marks you out, as you talked about a calling, and I think you'd need a calling for that, because a lot of people would be hearing this and thinking, no, you'd find somewhere else on the island to go if that was you know that was going on. But you don't mind being there.
Quite the contrary, Actually, it's I mean, you don't say you enjoy it, but it is such a rich experience to be with someone as they are passing from this world into whatever they feel is coming next, and to be with them and also their families and their loved ones at that time, and to be able to perhaps hold them or hold the space in a way that what do you mean by that, Well, you're I guess the role of a chaplain or a priest, or a minister or in that space is to hold something of the sacred that is happening. It is death is a very sacred thing. You know, whether you believe in this that or whatever it is, it is still a very powerful moment in time. And so to be present there and to be able to offer support in some way.
Is yeah, Kevin, I can. I can see that this is your thing and that the excitement of working with movie stars and things pales with this idea of dealing with things that are sacred. Kevin, it's been a privilege talking to you. Great catching up with you after all these years. Thank you for coming in.
Thank you, John.
This is real life on News talk S ed B. I'm John Cown. Been talking with movie producer. Now meet your film chaplain, Kevin Denham and he's chosen Purple Rain to go out with. Kevin.
Thanks so much, Thanks so much, John.
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