Wellywood zombie arises

Written By: - Date published: 1:14 pm, May 21st, 2011 - 43 comments
Categories: scoundrels - Tags: ,

Wellington airport has decided to go ahead with its fucken ugly, stupid, unimaginative, probably illegal, laughable, hick-imitating-city-sophisticate ‘Wellywood’ sign. It’s “bullshit” says a Wellington director. “Try-hard” says a branding expert. Does the airport know they’re spending hundreds of thousands on what will immediately be bonfire fuel?

We went through this shit last year. 15,000 people joined an anti-Wellywood sign Facebook group. Thousands of parody signs were made. The only person who had a good thing to say about it was the awful Kerry Prendergast.

I just honestly don’t understand how Wellington Airport’s management can possibly believe this is a good idea. How out of touch with reality are these corporate elites?

There’s nothing to add beyond what my comrades wrote when the idea first came up:

Irish: Wellywood? Welly-hick more like it

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with provincial towns, they’re part of what I really like about New Zealand but occasionally these wee towns throw up an idea that is so cringingly hick, so small-minded and embarrassing you can’t help but break out the language of the big-city snob.

In this case it’s Wellington’s turn to be the laughing-stock of anyone who doesn’t think guessing the weight of a sheep is a great day at the county fair.

And they’re doing it in grand bumpkin style with plans to erect a huge sign on the Miramar cut declaring the place to be “Wellywood”

That’s right, when people fly into our capital city the first impression they are going to get is of a city, if not a country, that is willing to crawlingly bastardize its name in order to try to gain just a little bit of reflected glamour from a city on the other side of the world.

Marty: A sign of how corporates think

The more I think about the ‘Wellywood’ sign the angrier I get. Who does Wellington Airport think they are imposing this monstrosity on the people of Wellington without any consultation?

If you don’t know the city, the sign will be sitting above a roundabout at the end of the main road in and out of the Eastern suburbs. Everyone living there will have to pass it twice a day. And the poor sods in Hataitai will have their view of the harbour ruined by it.

I just don’t understand what is in the heads of the airport. Why do they think they can just act how they please without any consideration for the rest of us? Maybe it’s just another example of the corporate mentality in this country – a subtle blend of arrogance and idiocy, without a hint of taste.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it was a decent feature. But that’s the point, the airport didn’t even bother to ask the people who would have to put up with the sign if they liked it.

Still, it must be abundantly clear to even the thickest executive by now that there is incredible depth of opposition to this ugly, tacky sign (8,000 members in the anti-sign Facebook group in two days) and if it goes up it will soon be coming down…

… Update: I’ve just heard on the radio that the Hollywood sign is trademarked and the owners always decline requests to imitate it. The beautiful part was a representative of the trademark owners saying they encourage cities to do something that represents the uniqueness of their own communities.

And to top it all the bunker scene has weighed in. (The perpetrators have disabled embedding)

43 comments on “Wellywood zombie arises ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. todd 1
    21 May 2011 at 1:17 pm

    Perhaps PRIVATE WOOD would be more fitting.

    • Chess Player 1.1
      21 May 2011 at 6:28 pm

      Nah…Wallywood sums it up – they take themselves a bit too seriously down there….

      • D-D-D-Damn ! 1.1.1
        22 May 2011 at 3:54 am

        Yeah, I’ve got no time for this embarrassing sign…BUT…A little less Wellington-bashing from our crass, money-grubbing, simple-minded northern friends, please.

        Aucklanders calling Wellingtonians “provincial”, now that really is hilarious !

  2. freedom 2
    21 May 2011 at 1:33 pm

    it appears we have a classic If they build it, It will come down, kind of moment

  3. Treetop 3
    21 May 2011 at 1:43 pm

    In March 1989 around 9 pm there was a major scrub fire which took two minutes to race up the Maupuia hill, 150 metres heading left of the proposed Wellywood sign. I was in the path of the fire until it skipped to the left. There was also another fire that night at South Wellington Intermediate. I thought that I was imagining hearing fire engine sirens, but I wasn’t. (I went to stay at my parents home in Berhampore near the intermediate the night of the Maupuia fire). Both fires were major fires.

  4. todd 4
    21 May 2011 at 2:18 pm

    I wonder how much the security fence and guards will cost?

  5. Hilary 5
    21 May 2011 at 2:38 pm

    Doesn’t Mosgiel already have a similar one? Isn’t that enough?

    • Draco T Bastard 5.1
      21 May 2011 at 3:40 pm

      found it

      And yes, one copy is enough.

    • felix 5.2
      21 May 2011 at 7:35 pm

      The Mosgeil one has a lot more style and sophistication than the Wellywood proposal.

      For one thing it’s the actual name of the town – something people who live there can be proud of – as opposed to a lame pun that was never really that clever but even if it ever was is definitely well played out by now. So there’s that.

      And also the Mosgeil one is just a big sign which visually suggests an ironic, slightly self-deprecating but ultimately warm and light-hearted joke about small town life at the bottom of the world, as opposed to an unnecessarily ostentatious and grandiose statement posing as ironic humility. So there’s that as well.

      Mosgeil, in this instance, is smarter than Wellington. More sophisticated. More stylish. Srsly.

      • James Newtown 5.2.1
        21 May 2011 at 9:03 pm

        I normally wouldn’t say anything, but the number of times you made the spelling error of calling it ‘Mosgeil’ has made me feel rather unhappy, unless it’s some sort of joke that flying straight over my head. I before e except after c…

        • Lanthanide 5.2.1.1
          21 May 2011 at 11:09 pm

          ancient, species, science, sufficient, seize, weird, eider, either, height, foreign, leisure, counterfeit, forfeit, neither, atheist, their

          • McFlock 5.2.1.1.1
            21 May 2011 at 11:20 pm

            and Water of Leith, a stream in Dunedin

            • terryg 5.2.1.1.1.1
              22 May 2011 at 3:56 am

              ya.

              i before e except after c unless it doesnt apply

              fat lot of use a “rule”like that is.

              • Peter Johansson …
                22 May 2011 at 9:49 am

                It’s good rule for unifying error: 2% of the words are spelled correctly and the other 98% are spelled incorrectly, but at least in the same way. An attempt at grammatical relativism, at it’s best. If a word is spelled wrong and no one notices, is it really spelled wrong at all?

                A bit like the proposed changes to the left turn road rule, except that goes one step further, inventing the new philosophy of legislative idiocy. Right becomes wrong and wrong becomes right. Should be easy to reduce crime in NZ to zero with that kind of thinking.

  6. dave brown 6
    21 May 2011 at 3:15 pm

    What’s wrong with Warnerstown?

    • Tiger Mountain 6.1
      21 May 2011 at 4:48 pm

      Excellent suggestion Dave, if accompanied by a graphic bared backside.

      • Rex Widerstrom 6.1.1
        21 May 2011 at 7:47 pm

        And the tongue. Don’t forget the huge tongue. We would turn it into a waterslide, from the top of the hill into the harbour… at least there’d be some benefit to the locals.

        Or if we’re going for body parts, a giant upraised middle finger, a message from the airport to the people of Wellington.

        Given that the last bunch of pasty white ignorant wankers who went round erecting structures other people found offensive right were the KKK, how ironic that this giant insult will also no doubt be set alight. How I wish I were back there to contribute a burning torch (I don’t normally carry one, But I’m sure I could borrow Garth McVicar’s for the evening).

  7. Jeff 7
    21 May 2011 at 3:15 pm

    I used to work in Mosgiel about 23 years ago, just after the Mosgiel sign went up. It caused some considerable snickering from those in Dunedin.

    At least the Mosgiel sign announces the town’s correct name. It is also placed to be visible from Highway 1, and serves a function of announcing the existence of Mosgiel to people who are driving to Dunedin. It probably serves its aim of getting some travellers to divert in, and pay the town a visit. So it serves a real function.

    This horrible idea of a Wellywood sign won’t even have that function, as the people who see it are already either here, or just about to leave.

  8. the sprout 8
    21 May 2011 at 3:20 pm

    It’s a magnificent ode to the total absence of any imagination.
    A stunning masterpiece of unoriginality.

  9. Jan 9
    21 May 2011 at 4:22 pm

    Is there a word that captures the essence of cringe – but magnifies it exponentially?

  10. Adele 10
    21 May 2011 at 4:35 pm

    Teenaa koe, Jan

    A welly ‘woody’ perhaps?

  11. Irascible 11
    21 May 2011 at 4:43 pm

    The sign is totally in keeping with the Key-led govt resolute cultural cringe policies.
    I’m sure that the sign is justified and will be endorsed by Key, who will be BMWed to the road below the site from whence he will be helicoptered above it to unveil it to the world, as he announces that this is a vindication of his sale of the NZ legislature to Warner Bros along with the $60million sweetener he gave to keep Hobbits in Miramar.

  12. Armchair Critic 12
    21 May 2011 at 6:27 pm

    Obviously the people who advised ACT to reanimate Don Brash are also advising Wellington Airport.

  13. marsman 13
    21 May 2011 at 6:36 pm

    DOLLARWOOD? But seriously.It’s sheer corporate arrogance to want to mar a green hillside with a rip-off, totally crappy sign.

    • Rex Widerstrom 14.1
      21 May 2011 at 7:49 pm

      Brilliant, sprout!

      With the subtitle (do signs have subtitles? Well this one should): They told us not to erect it: we said “stiff”.

  15. felix 15
    21 May 2011 at 7:13 pm

    Do it Wellington, who gives a shit.

    You will need to STFU about being the “creative” capital though, obviously.

  16. weka 16
    21 May 2011 at 8:00 pm

    “That’s right, when people fly into our capital city the first impression they are going to get is of a city, if not a country, that is willing to crawlingly bastardize its name in order to try to gain just a little bit of reflected glamour from a city on the other side of the world.”

    Kind of appropriate though, given we’re selling our collective soul and the rest of the country to the god of Tourism anyway.

    Don’t they need resource consent to put up something that big?

  17. ZeeBop 17
    21 May 2011 at 9:50 pm

    Instant history. The real Hollywood sign was an real estate advert for the area.
    Just passover a whole bunch of kiwi culture and imitate a classic, who was
    pissing in their beer that night.

  18. stever 18
    21 May 2011 at 10:42 pm

    It all really sums up “the management” in NZ really—right form the PM and FInance minister downwards. They are incapable of genuine invention, discovery or originality—and when they do see it they feel so inadequate they squash it. Look at how the Universities and R&D is treated here.

    We’re becoming a cargo cult for innovation—and this is just a simple illustration of that sad, sad fact.

  19. ak 19
    22 May 2011 at 2:16 am

    Right-wing humour

    Right-wing empathy

    The ghoulish glamour

    Of Mauler Benefit sympathy

    Serving dainty tea

    Neath Arbeit macht frei

    As Joky Hen

    In a tiki tee

    Thrusts his shark-eyed love

    On an innocent puhi

    On Paul Reeves sleeve

    The gap is now a chasm

    And enough

    Is now surely,

    a FUCKING nough.

    If this erection gains traction, consider malefaction: time over for calm, break out the napalm.

    .

  20. terryg 20
    22 May 2011 at 3:59 am

    here’s an idea: spoof some wellington council letterheady thing (but not quite – misspell something so as not to get nicked for forgery/fraud eg wallington), and write to the rights holder asking for permission.

    then publish the “no piss off” response…..

  21. vto 21
    22 May 2011 at 8:31 am

    It seems clear to me that the letters “.ell….” need to be changed for “.ank…..”.

  22. weka 22
    22 May 2011 at 11:29 am

    http://wellywood.skullandbones.co.nz/gallery.html

    http://wellywood.skullandbones.co.nz/

    Apparently skull and bones got a cease and desist letter for that website, but it’s still up so I guess Hollywood’s arm doesn’t reach that far.

  23. Brett Dale 23
    22 May 2011 at 1:04 pm

    This sign has nothing to do with Hollywood or Peter Jackson or John Key, perhaps if you guys got the chip of your shoulder about America and Capitalism and complain to the right people you could get this eyesore stopped.

  24. randal 24
    23 May 2011 at 12:07 pm

    dompost banner this morning, “is this crass”. of course it is crass. its something some drunk screamer in a little black number shrieked out ata arts do somewhere and it got out of hand. thats the way decisions are made here!