Lovable junkie with a heart of gold, John Francis ‘Spit’ Spiteri, first appeared on film screens in Gettin’ Square, an Australian crime comedy shot on Queensland’s Gold Coast and released in 2003.
Played with comic brilliance by David Wenham (Seachange, Lord of the Rings), Spit stole his Gettin’ Square scenes, particularly the courtroom scene where he outsmarts a room full of lawyers, while clearly very stoned.
Getting Square became a cult classic and in 2025, Johnny returns for the sequel, Spit, featuring several actors from the original film.
Gary Sweet’s back as criminal kingpin Chicka, David Field as crooked cop Arne Deviers, Helen Thompson as gangster widow Marion Barrington, Bob Franklin as Craig Knobes, Marion’s new hubby and David Roberts as police investigator Niall Toole.
On the run
The film’s slogan is ‘Everyone deserves a seventh chance’. After being overseas and on the run from police for over twenty years, Spit may just be on that seventh chance.
Thrown into immigration detention on his return to Australia, Spit befriends several refugees and teaches them Australian vernacular including the most important meanings and contexts of the f-bomb.
He befriends Jihad, played by ‘hard walker’ Arlo Green who skilfully plays straight man to Wenham’s Spit. Green tells the horrific story that led to his refugee status in a way that’s moving without being mawkish.
When an official sneers that Jihad tried to ‘jump the queue’ or ‘buy his way out’ by paying a people smuggler, Jihad burns the officer, stating baldly: ‘There was no queue. People were dying all around me. I decided to live.’
David Wenham as Spit with mate Jihad, played by Arlo Green
Contemporary themes
This plot-line plants the film firmly in the present day and shows how Spit’s character is about what it’s like to be Australian and give everyone one a fair go, including refugees.
The film also gives the audience Spit’s heart-breaking backstory which may help explain why he became a junkie and a crim. He’s been running all his life but his past becomes his present with a seismic punch that makes Spit want to ‘run no more’.
It’s complicated though, he’s got a target on his back. Deviers and Chicka want Spit dead, so he doesn’t dob them in; the federal cop wants Spit to help finally close the case on corrupt Deviers.
David Field as crooked cop Arne Deviers (left) and Gary Sweet as Chicka
There are traps everywhere but will Spit’s rat cunning help him deftly avoid them?
Queensland shoot
Spit was shot in Queensland and looks it, with Chicka’s old creek-side Queenslander in a suburb that looks like Deagon, a sad old six-pack of units on the Gold Coast and lush green cane fields.
Former Gold Coast criminal lawyer, Chris Nyst, wrote the scripts for Gettin Square and Spit. His characters are so authentic, you can’t help wondering how many of them are based on the real Gold Coast criminal underworld.
Physical comedy
While there are serious themes of crime, punishment and personal tragedy, Wenham plays Spit for laughs and aces the physical comedy.
Some comics make you laugh with a single gesture (think Rampaging Roy Slaven raising a sardonic eyebrow).
The way Wenham embodies Spit makes him one of the great Australian physical comics of our times. The perfectly timed way stoned Spit falls off a chair in the courtroom, his losing battles with a luggage carousel and an escalator, how he runs from thugs in thongs and his sweet, private indulgence in the flossing dance all cracked me up.
His uniform of thongs and skinny stonewash jeans goes well with the greasy mullet, bad posture and permanent cold sore. It’s a pretty gross look and testament to Wenham’s talent that you can still love him and be invested in how his life will turn out.
There’s a bangin’ soundtrack with bands like Amyl and the Sniffers, rapper Genesis Owusu, Frenzal Rhomb and The Vernons thanks to Triple J music content head, Ollie Wards who was music supervisor on SPIT.
Spit was directed by Jonathan Teplitzky (Getting Square, The Railway Man, Churchill, Burning Man) and produced by Greg Duffy, Trish Lake, Felicity McVay, and David Wenham.
Watch the trailer.
In these times of endless superhero, horror and sugary romance films where the same story is told over and over, Spit offers an original story, told with style and wit.
In cinemas until the end of March.
