Spud

Comedy

“Spud”, the groundbreaking bestselling novel by John Van de Ruit, is being adapted into a feature film. South Africa’s record-breaking novel is a coming-of-age comedy, following a group of boys through their year at a boarding school, set against the backdrop of a country coming of age. Starring John Cleese (Fish Called Wanda, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, 007)

Logline

It’s South Africa in 1990. Two major events are about to happen: The release of Nelson Mandela and, more importantly, Spud Milton’s first year at an elite boys only private boarding school.

Synopsis

John Milton, a.k.a. Spud, is a small boy from an ordinary background who wins a scholarship to an elite private school in South Africa.

It’s 1990 and Spud’s Dad is not reacting well to the news that Nelson Mandela is going to be released from prison. He thinks the country will be taken over by the Communists. Spud is an only child who is cursed with parents from well beyond the lunatic fringe, and a senile granny.

At his new school full of rich kids, Spud is surrounded by boys with nicknames like Gecko, Rambo, Rain Man and Mad Dog, and he has his hands full trying to adapt to his new home. He also has to outwit Pike and Devries, two of the older boys who do all they can to get Spud, the scholar and outsider, expelled.

Spud is also taking his first tentative steps along the path to manhood. (The path it seems could be rather a long one). He decides that the only way for him to be accepted and to survive the bullying in this crazy new world is through fame and women. So he auditions for the school play *Oliver!* and gets the lead role. He also throws himself into his emerging love life with Mermaid and the femme fatale Amanda.

Through all his adventures, Spud is advised by his eccentric, alcoholic English teacher The Guv, who introduces him to great literature and, despite his own failing marriage, offers relationship advice; his unlikely, sickly friend Gecko - the one boy who is more of an outsider than himself - and his new hero, Luthuli, the head of house.

Armed with only his wits and his diary, Spud takes us from illegal night swimming to the red-hot furnace of the cricket pitch, from ghostbusting to a catastrophic family vacation. He also invites us into the mind of a boy struggling to come to terms with a strange new world, a boy whose eyes are being opened to love and its perils, the value of true friendship and the complete insanity of life..