Dundas Street: one of the stars of a new movie that is in the pipeline

The movie promises to make cult hit Scarfies – also based on Dunedin students – look like Mary Poppins.

It will be familiar territory for students who ran amok during last weekend’s unofficial Undie 500 flare-up.

Kiwi writer Carl Shuker is adapting the screenplay from his savage novel The Lazy Boys, which chronicles Otago University first-year student Richey Sauer’s degeneration.

Sauer’s booze and drug-fuelled decline trawls familiar scenes – a rugby match at Carisbrook, riots, a hall of residence party, his filthy Dundas Street flat and even an awkward pub conversation with famous scarfie Marc Ellis.

It’s expected to be filmed in Dunedin and has $14,000 seed funding from the New Zealand Film Commission.
Producer Michael Wrenn says Brendan Donovan – who did The Insider’s Guide to Happiness – will direct the movie.

“It is presently our intention to film in Dunedin,” Wrenn says.

He wouldn’t elaborate: “It’s a little premature to discuss the detail.”

However, it already has Dunedinites such as Mayor Peter Chin and former long-time Otago student Mark Baxter on the edge of their seats anticipating its take on scarfie life.

Chin says that, as with “all these movies, reality takes a back seat to box office”.

“How accurate it may be of anything I’m not prepared to comment.”

He’s not too concerned about it colouring views of the city’s lynchpin student population.

“These things become cult-type things.

“When you think of the influence Scarfies has had, is that really an accurate portrayal of Otago University? It depends on who you talk to.”

He believes Dunedin’s student culture is improving and labels hotspots such as the Undie 500 shenanigans “a blip”.

“The majority [of students] have basically made it quite obvious that that kind of culture is not welcome.”

Baxter, the Otago Polytechnic Students Association services officer – who spent the entire 90s studying at Otago University – says whether the movie exacerbates unsavoury aspects of scarfie life depends on how it’s done.

“It will add to [Otago University’s] legend status and that does contribute to students turning up and going,

‘Oh, legend, the Otago thing’.”

Ultimately, Baxter says it sounds like a “grand cautionary tale”.

“When people do stupid stuff, they do it because it’s cool and fun. If you want to run any campaign to change that behaviour you have to communicate on that level.

“Rather than saying, ‘Naughty, naughty – [couch] fires are bad’, having a movie that is cool and gritty and puts the fires in their context and shows that maybe someone can get burned would potentially have more impact.”

On the flipside, Baxter says huge amounts of people thought cult movie hit Trainspotting glorified heroin use.

“If there’re people who can take that message out of that, then I suppose it is glorifying it for those few idiots.”

Dunedin-based David Eggleton, who reviewed The Lazy Boys for Listener magazine, says Shuker’s “brilliant” novel taps into a student radicalism that is more hedonistic than political.

“He sort of put his finger on something that’s kind of noticeable about the student population – the me-generation out to enjoy themselves.”