The majorly entertaining memoir from a major entertainer - Geoff 'Goodbye Pork Pie' Murphy tells it like it really was in this director's cut of his life and times.

"I'm taking this bloody car to Invercargill!"

It was the line that had cinema audiences cheering. Goodbye Pork Pie became an instant classic, and announced the arrival of a major new talent in director Geoff Murphy. With his next two films, Utu and The Quiet Earth, he cemented his reputation as a pioneer of New Zealand cinema, eventually arriving in Hollywood as a gun-for-hire in the super-charged world of studio politics and superstar egos.

He'd come a long way from his days as a struggling school teacher, and then a member of a madcap band of merry pranksters known as Blerta, founded by his great friend and collaborator Bruno Lawrence. But it was the same sense of adventure -with a healthy dose of Kiwi ingenuity - that defined every stage of his career.

In this candid and funny memoir, Geoff Murphy looks back on a life in (and on) film - from do-it-yourself shoots in the 1960s to epic work on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy - and delivers the director's cut of a truly remarkable life.