By Erin Free
Over twenty years since he delighted audiences as shambling crim Johnny “Spit” Spitieri in the 2003 crime caper Gettin’ Square, David Wenham is back in the thongs and mullet for the belated but very welcome sequel Spit.
“We’d never thought of doing a second movie…that was never even on the cards,” David Wenham tells FilmInk. It might not have been on the cards, but the follow-up to the actor’s 2003 film Gettin’ Square has indeed happened. And yes, that means David Wenham is back as the inimitable Johnny Francis “Spit” Spitieri, the supporting character who stole Gettin’ Square right out from under everybody else. In director Jonathan Teplitzky and lawyer-turned-screenwriter Chris Nyst’s slick, rollicking crime caper about flashy low-level crims on the glitzy Gold Coast, the hilariously pathetic Johnny Spitieri is indeed the joker in the pack. He’s the prison buddy of lead character Barry Wirth (Sam Worthington), who’s desperately trying to go straight after being released from prison. The hapless Johnny wants to get clean too, but he’s sidelined by a heroin problem and a distinct lack of brainpower.
Shambling, stupid, but well meaning, Johnny keeps getting himself and Barry into trouble, and hits his comic aria in a courtroom scene that rates as one of the funniest things ever committed to Australian celluloid. While being verbally prodded by lawyers and the presiding judge, Johnny nods off, asks who’s going to be paying his bus fare, and falls off his chair. “I’ve seen a lot of Johnny Spitieris in my life,” David Wenham told FilmInk back in 2003. “I love characters that are extreme. And you don’t often get to play such a loveable rogue. He’s a sad case, but he’s pretty endearing. I had an absolute hoot playing him.”
Fast forward to 2025, and David Wenham is in the middle of a very busy promotional tour for the release of the sequel to Gettin’ Square, the practically named Spit. Backing the film in a way not usually seen in Australia, Wenham has been doing multiple Q&A appearances alongside screenings of the film, along with all the usual media commitments… the man is working hard for his film. David Wenham’s energy levels, however, are well and truly up, and his passion for Spit is engagingly palpable. “It’s pretty full on,” the actor says of his schedule. “But I realised that the only way that we’re going to get bums on seats is if I actually do this and go around the country and chat about it, and then hold screenings before we even preview, and then just engage in conversations with the audience. It’s been a fantastic journey so far. We’ve got a couple more weeks to go, but we made it for the cinema. We want people to come along and have the cinematic experience. We want them to laugh along and feel like part of a community. We want to share the experience of watching the film.”
The experience of watching Spit is indeed a fun and surprisingly heartwarming one. The film begins with the hapless Johnny returning to Australia after disappearing, presumed dead, to London after the heist that closed out Gettin’ Square. Instantly bringing on the wrath of border security, the Aussie-as-Aussie-can-be Johnny soon finds himself in a detention centre for illegal immigrants, where he sticks out like a mulleted, be-thonged sore thumb. The ever-laidback and non-judgmental Johnny, however, soon has a group of new friends from around the world, but his return to Australia has also raised the ire of the corrupt cop (David Field), vicious drug dealer (Gary Sweet), and uptight fed (David Roberts) that he screwed over in Gettin’ Square. Things are about to get hot for Johnny “Spit” Spitieri…
How did this sequel concept kick off?
“Gettin’ Square wasn’t a huge success when it was released theatrically, but subsequently it’s found this rather enormous post cinematic release life, first on VHS and then DVD, and then via an illegal version on YouTube. It’s the character that people want to talk to me about more than anything else, which is sort of fascinating in a way because Johnny was a support character in a film that wasn’t widely seen initially. We never considered anything after Gettin’ Square. But about ten years ago, I was away at a film festival, and I just started chatting with a very good friend of mine. He actually brought up the character of Johnny, and I just started riffing on all the different situations that I could throw Johnny in. And he said, ‘There’s something in this’. And I went, ‘Oh, really?’ So, I rang Chris Nyst and he said, ‘It’s really funny you should ring because Jonathan and I have been thinking the same thing, and I’ve actually got something’. He eventually sent over the very first draft of that script, and it was absolutely inspired. None of us wanted to do Gettin’ Square 2. There had to be a really solid reason and a foundation to actually bring that character back. It had to be really solid. Chris got the hook instantly… the first draft was extremely funny.”
The whole concept of Johnny being in a detention centre for refugees was just pure genius. Was that there in the first draft?
“That was the thing that hooked me. I just thought, ‘Oh my God, what have you done?’ Chirs walked such a fine line with the script. At the time, there was a little bit of a hullabaloo – as there so often is – about immigration. Chris couldn’t understand it. He said, ‘Look, I’m a migrant. We’re all migrants, or we’re the product of migrants. We’ve all come here from someone else essentially’. He didn’t quite get it, so he came up with the idea of throwing Johnny into that. That was the initial kernel of an idea for Chris to write this script, and off he went. We kept working with Chris, and introduced the backstory of Johnny as well, so the audience can understand why he is the way he is. He’s flawed like all of us, and he’s got his quirks and idiosyncrasies, but Johnny is also the least judgmental person you’ll ever come across. It doesn’t matter your religion, the colour of your skin, how much money you’ve got in the bank, or what you do for a job or don’t do for a job…he doesn’t care. Ultimately, the film is a celebration of the best of humanity. And ultimately, it’s a film about what we always bang on about here in Australia, which is mateship.”
He’s like the ultimate awkward best friend or something…he’s like Australia’s Ratso Rizzo. I liked that you didn’t back away from the fact that Johnny is older now, and a little creakier. I especially loved that you gave him a bald spot to go with his mullet…
“I’ll take credit for that one! It was important to us to acknowledge that Johnny has aged, because there’s a big time jump since the last film. I worked with Tess Natoli, our hair and makeup artist, to create the look of Johnny all these years later. I came up with the idea of him wearing glasses, because there would be a lot of potential to play with that. Aging was important, but the great thing is that Johnny really hasn’t changed. He’s gotten older. We can see the ravages of his life on his face, but he hasn’t changed. He’s got back to Australia, and Australia’s changed. That’s a really interesting thing at the beginning of the film: he’s the alien thrown into a foreign world.”
I imagine that Johnny must be a lot of fun to play. He has so many idiosyncrasies…the kind you don’t usually see in a leading character. There’s so much going on with him physically, and he’s such a good soul. That must be fun?
“It was, definitely. The film was shot quickly…seven weeks was all we could afford, so it was very quick. That said, it was one of the most fulfilling creative periods of my career. I absolutely loved every day turning up and playing, and that’s what acting is… playing. Jonathan sets up a really wonderful playground for me and the other actors every day to literally play. We’ve got a very solid foundation in the incredible script that Chris Nyst has written, and from there, I can then spontaneously and organically work as Johnny in whichever way the character wants to head. It’s a privilege to be able to play Johnny.”
Where do you draw Johnny from?
“It’s a character that I sort of know so well. I lived down the road from Kings Cross for 30 years of my life. I’ve been an ambassador for The Wayside Chapel for a long time. I’ve seen and met many characters that are not too far removed from Johnny. I’ve seen them, and I’ve spoken to them. I have a great affection for the people who live in and around that area. The very first time I read the script for Gettin’ Square, I could see Johnny and I could hear Johnny. I knew how he should sound, how he should move, and I knew I could understand his thought processes. He sort of lives within me, and he came back pretty instantly even after 22 years. I knew it as soon as I put the thongs on, because I hadn’t worn thongs in the intervening years! And as soon as I put thongs on, it instantly dictated how I just got into Johnny Spit mode. The posture, the pace, his rhythms, the way he moved, his voice…it all came back. I’ve consciously tweaked a few things as well. There’s obviously his age, so he is slightly more stooped, and vocally he’s ever so slightly different as well, because importantly, he’s been off the gear for twenty years, which will change your voice. That obviously also impacts the way that he interacts with people as well. And as we find out, being off the gear has indeed been very, very helpful for Johnny.”
I might be stretching it here, but when I was watching this, I really felt that there’s a lot of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin in Johnny. Are they touchstones at all?
“Not consciously, but it’s interesting you picked that up. When I was studying acting, I had to write a thesis, and I actually wrote it on Charlie Chaplin. This was obviously before the internet, so I had access to all of Chaplin’s films; they were sent to me and I could watch them in a little library on campus. So, at a relatively early age – in my late teens and early twenties – I watched all of Chaplin’s films. I studied them very carefully. Buster Keaton, of course, is an incredible physical comedian, and he may have influenced me, but I’ve never actually consciously thought about it. It’s not something I get to do very often, but it’s something that I absolutely revel in. I actually think it’s probably one of my strongest suits, but my career has gone off into other little alleyways, which have been fabulous, but which haven’t allowed me to do that sort of thing. So, this was great.”
Are you improvising much here, or is everything on the page?
“It’s in the script, but I do springboard off. I don’t prepare anything because otherwise it looks rehearsed. So even with dialogue, just learn my lines, but I don’t know what’s going to happen until I actually get there. It happens in the moment, especially the physical stuff. For example, the scenes of Johnny falling off the chair in the first movie came about by Jonathan just setting up a camera angle and saying, ‘Okay, let’s just do stuff. You’ve got two minutes… you can play’ . And then I do stuff… some of it might just be from using things around me that I’ll interact with. Or Jonathan might just throw a word in and then I’ll just play. I love it… it’s just instinctive and organic. There are just moments of play, and Jonathan’s captured them.”
Would you like to revisit any of your other films? Would you like to do more sequels? You could do ‘Even Better Than Sex’! ‘Four Dollars’? ‘Breaking The Bank’?
“No, no! None. Done! The only character that I really would’ve liked to play again was Murray Whelan. I did two telemovies back in 2004 that were adapted from books from Shane Maloney… Stiff and The Brush-Off. I played a political advisor called Murray Whelan. Sam Neill directed one, and the late John Clarke directed the other. I had the most brilliant time. Sam’s a great friend of mine, and I love working with him. John Clarke, and I don’t use the term lightly, was a genius. And to work with John on that film was one of the great delights of my life. John was so disappointed when a particular network who had it didn’t commission more films. He wanted to keep going, and he wanted to take them to another network, but it never happened. I really would have liked to do more of those telemovies. That was a really special, creative time of my life. I learned so much from John Clarke.”
Before I let you go, I just have to ask you about Johnny’s first pair of thongs in this new movie. He’s famous for his grungy thongs, but seriously, the first pair of thongs that Johnny wears in Spit are quite possibly the worst thongs I’ve ever seen. When he takes them off and there’s that closeup, it’s just so appalling. Where did those thongs come from?
“I got the art department to get the crappiest pair of thongs that would fit me, and then wear them down as much as possible with what they could do. They did that, and then they gave the thongs to me, but I didn’t think they were worn enough, so I went away myself and rubbed them against cement. I got a little cigarette lighter to burn the rubber a bit, so it was a little bit more exposed, and I really just wore them down, and kept wearing them down. I kept working on them and working on them until I could finally say, ‘Yep, that’s it…they’re Johnny Spitieri’s thongs’ .”
Spit is released in cinemas on 6 March 2025 For a chance to win tickets to Spit, click here.
