General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Goodbye Pork Pie

Goodbye Pork Pie is a 1981 New Zealand comedy chase road movie directed by Geoff Murphy, in which two men and a hitchhiker drive a small yellow Mini from Kaitaia in the far north to Invercargill in the south, pursued by police for most of the way. It was the first box-office hit of the new wave of New Zealand films made in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the first New Zealand film to gross over $1 million at the local box office, and the first New Zealand feature to screen at the Cannes Film Festival.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	Waitangi Day, 6 February 1981, New Zealand²
Director and writers	Directed by Geoff Murphy; written by Geoff Murphy and Ian Mune³
Budget	Made for less than $500,000, relying on local talent, resources, and goodwill, including New Zealand Railways⁴
Box office	First New Zealand film to gross over $1 million at the local box office; the first to recover its costs from the domestic market alone¹^•⁵
Audience	Seen by half a million New Zealanders on release; the NZ Herald gives 600,000, about 20 percent of the population¹^•²
International	First New Zealand feature to screen at Cannes; sold to 26 countries overseas¹
Remake	Remade in 2017 as Pork Pie, directed by Matt Murphy, Geoff Murphy's son; the first remake of a New Zealand film since Rewi's Last Stand in 1940⁶^•¹

Spoilers

Plot and production

Gerry (Kelly Johnson), a young and restless unemployed man from an isolated town in the far north of New Zealand, acquires a small yellow Mini and heads south looking for excitement. On the road he meets John (Tony Barry), a middle-aged man whose wife has left him and who wants to reach Wellington, and the pair pick up the hitchhiker Shirl (Claire Oberman). Trailed by police, the trio, who become known as the Blondini Gang, drive the length of the country toward Invercargill, and their escapades grow to front-page proportions. Hard up, they sell off pieces of the car to finance the journey.³^•⁷

The film was produced by Pork Pie Productions and AMA Productions with funding from the New Zealand Film Commission, the government agency formed in 1978 to assist with creating and promoting New Zealand cinema. Pork Pie was one of the Commission's first major projects.³^•⁸ Alun Bollinger was the director of photography, Michael Horton the editor, and John Charles the composer; Bruno Lawrence, Ian Watkin, and Marshall Napier appear in supporting roles, and the eccentric Christchurch identity The Wizard makes a cameo appearance.³

Stunts and reception at home. The film's hair-raising driving, including a sequence in which the yellow Mini boards a moving train near Wellington, was performed with stunt driver Petre Zivkovic credited.³^•⁷ The Southland Times slated the film's "flagrant breaking of speed restrictions and examples of dangerous driving"; most other reviewers loved it for the same reason.⁴ Geoff Murphy, the director and co-writer, later described the film's audience as sharply divided by age: "Among people under thirty there was an almost universal reaction - they loved it. People between thirty and forty were mixed, but people over that all hated it. Some even wanted to know if they could stop it being made."⁹

Commercial and cultural significance

Goodbye Pork Pie was released on Waitangi Day, 6 February 1981, and became an unprecedented domestic success. It was the first New Zealand film to gross over $1 million at the local box office, and a case study of the industry records $1.5 million across two New Zealand releases.²^•¹^•¹⁰ Until Footrot Flats: A Dog's Tale in 1987, it remained commercially the most successful New Zealand film, drawing very large audiences of mostly young people.⁹ ACMI's collection notes that it was the first New Zealand film to recover its costs from the domestic market alone, and that its popularity changed New Zealanders' reluctance to watch locally made movies.⁵

Overseas, the film was presented at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival, the first New Zealand feature to screen there, and sold widely; the New Zealand Film Commission's timeline records sales to 26 countries, while an industry case study records sales to almost 20 countries after the Cannes presentation.¹^•¹⁰ Variety described it as "Easy Rider meets the Keystone Cops".¹ It also became the first New Zealand feature after Roger Donaldson's Sleeping Dogs (1977) to attract significant local audiences and a United States theatrical release, where The Samuel Goldwyn Company distributed it in 1984.⁸^•¹¹

The film's release set the scene for a revival of New Zealand feature-film making, and it is considered to represent the coming-of-age of New Zealand cinema, proving local filmmakers could produce distinctly New Zealand content.¹^•⁸ The yellow Mini remains a recognized emblem in New Zealand, and the film even received its own stamp in a 1996 issue celebrating New Zealand movies.¹²^•²

The 2017 remake

Goodbye Pork Pie is the first New Zealand film since Rewi's Last Stand in 1940 to be remade. Pork Pie, a modern reimagining released in 2017, was written and directed by Matt Murphy, one of Geoff Murphy's sons, who had worked as a lighting assistant on the original at fifteen, earning $50 a week in 1979. The remake stars Dean O'Gorman as Jon, James Rolleston as Luke, and Ashleigh Cummings as Keira, and follows a stolen yellow Mini Cooper from Auckland toward Wellington. In its first five days in New Zealand cinemas it was the fourth highest grossing film in local release.¹^•⁶^•¹³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Action comedies › Action comedies, 1970s to 1990s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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