Chasing Great, But The Corporate Dollar Too: The Richie McCaw Story

Quite inadvertently, it was the comedian whose question summed up the new Richie McCaw film best.

"Is there a deleted scene when Richie is designing his Versatile home - and he designs the chimney that was his idea?" Guy Williams, a Kiwi radio funny man who rolls his oats in low IQ bro-dad humour, asked.

McCaw – ex-All Black captain, 'legendary living New Zealander' and long-time Versatile Homes advert front-man – shifted in his seat, and smiled.

It was the day - yesterday - after the world premier of Chasing Great, the newly released documentary on his life and sporting legacy.

He was at Auckland's Heritage Hotel for a soft-toss press conference on what it was like to have a camera crew following him for the final season of his career, which only ended last year.

"It didn't make the cut," McCaw told Williams, amongst the shaking, smiling heads of the gathered press.

"It's been well played, so we didn't want to overdo that one."

A trailer for Chasing Great. Source: YouTube.

McCaw is probably the best rugby player New Zealand has ever produced. He's likely one of the three or four finest that has ever played, worldwide.

He wears a crown of NZ sporting celebrity that is perhaps only approached by Steven Adams; the cheeky, mustachioed Oklahoma City Thunder NBA star currently back home on a basketball youth camp tour of the country.

But when it comes to McCaw, it's becoming hard to separate 'The Humble Country Boy Made Good' from 'The Walking, Talking Corporate Advert' in New Zealand these days.

AIG, Adidas, Mastercard, Mercedes-Benz, Air New Zealand, Fonterra, Westpac, Beats by Dre and, of course, Versatile are the big name brands that McCaw associates with, endorses or is brand ambassador for.

If you're going to spin that many plates, you're going to have stay clean.

Maybe by accident, Chasing Great captures that, in a cinematically-stunning 100-odd minute film that could have quite easily been a TV ad for a sports drink.

It's got all those great marketing narratives: country kid with a dream, works hard, sets his mind to something, becomes national hero, overcomes adversity, fights his way to ultimate glory after running around streets a lot listening to his headphones.

Chasing Great co-director Michelle Walshe, who had worked with ABs for several years before the McCaw documentary work began, said she had to prove herself to gain the trust of McCaw and the All Blacks. She had to establish a line of what to record, and when.

Walshe and co-director Justin Pemberton recorded 700 hours of footage for the McCaw project. She says there was "probably 200 different ways, 200 movies, you could have told."

"I was really aware, the entire time, where that line was," Walshe said, at the press conference.

"If I got an inch, I took three quarters [of it] just to make sure I wasn't a distraction."

This is perhaps the most illuminating statement on the whole process of making a film about the life and career of McCaw, and the primary reason this film is a failure.

Without any real life-altering tragedies, McCaw's life has been straight-bat, pragmatically followed - and already writ large for any who wanted to learn about it. Almost everyone knows that as good a rugby player as he was, McCaw is pretty damn boring. He's like a singular modern day version of Gordon McLauchlan's infamous "passionless people."

What New Zealand really wanted to know existed in the remaining quarter inch she and Pemberton never explored.

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Things like: what does McCaw make of the vile, hyperbolic way New Zealand reacted to the 2007 World Cup loss to France? What does McCaw think of the way New Zealand over-obsesses about rugby?

What does he think of concussions in rugby? What does he think how rugby's undeniably masculine negatives feed into our national psyche, stifling cultural growth?

None of those things answered, or even tickled at. Were you expecting them to be?

In a column for the Dominion Post earlier this week, journalist Kevin Norquay certainly didn't.

"With the interest$ of $o many inve$ted in Ordinary Guy Richie, expect nothing outside his controlled public image," Norquay wrote.

Two hundred different possible films on McCaw, but, really, this was always going to be this one that got made.

Clean, safe and boring. Much like the bloke himself.

Adams isn't any of those words, but provides the total juxtaposition to McCaw in terms of Kiwi sporting profile – and inertia.

On Monday, Adams met Prime Minister John Key at the Beehive wearing bush camo.

Key has never missed a photo opportunity to knock back a Steinlager Pure with McCaw in a changing room, post-test match – and has successfully turned the ex-All Black captain into a political tool.

McCaw would never wear bush camo to meet Key. Instead, he would wear a clean, crisp Barkers suit.

Not only does Adams have bucket-loads of original personality, the Oklahoma City Thunder star cares about Kiwis with a below-the-radar humility that someone like McCaw may well understand – but has never publically shown.

Adams gave a brief, unrevealing press conference at the start of his return home, but has shunned publicity since – instead focusing on the camps and connecting with the kids.

Countless other Kiwi kids still want to be McCaw, or play for the All Blacks, but Chasing Great won't move the needle on that.

McCaw's message is one of an older generation, with cinematic corporate packaging.

Adams cashes a few checks too, sure, but he's capturing a next generation of Kiwis with an approach that seems close to 100 per cent genuine, has some spark – and altruistic, too.

Two athletes 'Chasing Great,' but only one on a Versatile ad.