Share
Clip description
Johnny Spitieri (David Wenham) is giving evidence before the Criminal Intelligence Commission, inquiring into the corrupt dealings of a Gold Coast accountant, Warren Halliwell. Spitieri confuses the QC, Mr Dent (Jonathan Biggins), and then demands to know who’s paying his bus fare.
Curator’s notes
An extraordinary demonstration of David Wenham’s ability to extract maximum comedy without turning his character into a complete caricature. Johnny isn’t as dumb as he looks, but he knows they all think he is, so he decides to take them for a long ride, during which he extorts $40 in the middle of a court hearing. In other scenes, Johnny is a pitiful wreck of a human being, so destroyed by heroin that we feel only pity. In this scene, he becomes the mastermind, controlling the hearing with a craftiness so convincing it’s invisible to these men. Once again, there’s an undercurrent of class-consciousness in the scene that Johnny exploits, when he demands that his concerns about the bus fare be taken seriously.
