The storyteller

Shirley Horrocks' documentary about musician Don McGlashan is set to hit the big screen. It's the latest in her long career of telling tales of creative and inspirational Kiwis.

- BY MICHELE HEWITSON

Documentary-maker Shirley Horrocks tells other people's stories. More accurately, she wants the person she is making a documentary about to tell their own stories. Her new documentary is Anchor Me: The Don McGlashan Story. She followed him for three years, around the country and to New York and Vancouver. Even if people know his music, she says, they probably don't know much about the travails and triumphs of his long career. The film premieres at Auckland's Civic Theatre on August 9 and nine other centres thereafter.

"Anchor Me was my first profile of a music icon who led bands," she wrote in a piece about the making of the film. "Don was relaxed and supportive about the documentary business, which is crucial to me as I always want the artist primarily to tell his own story."

Horrocks' own story "was preordained from the moment before I was born". When she left - reluctantly, you sense - Epsom Girls Grammar after her sixth form year, she went to work as an assistant in her father Louis's Dominion Rd pharmacy, which he owned for 43 years. Five nights a week, she went to pharmacy school. It was expected that she would one day take over the family business. She might have resented this. "No, no. I loved my dad. I really adored my dad." His was one of the old-fashioned type of chemist shops that no longer exist. "People used to come and ask Dad's advice for all sorts of things. I'll tell you a funny story. I used to work in the shop [after school] and I was given strict orders: 'You are not to serve any of the younger male customers that come in.' Because they might ask for condoms." Heaven forbid.

Did she ever get asked for condoms? "Once or twice. But I usually allowed Dad to deal with those men. I thought that was hilarious." Her mother, Rachel, worked in the pharmacy, too. She liked her mother, but she says they were too similar in temperament and so they clashed. She means they were both stubborn.