Crump

Barry Crump's iconic deer hunting yarn A Good Keen Man captured Kiwi imaginations. Published in 1960, it quickly sold 300,000 copies, and with Crump cast as an "ironic, laconic sort of super-bushman", made him a legendary literary figure. This excerpt from the award-winning documentary looks at Crump's upbringing and early success as a writer. The full 72-minute documentary covers everything from his fractured family relationships, violence, a life-changing incident on a bush camp, and discovering religion, to the ads for Toyota that reignited Crump's profile in the 80s.

I had to stop him and tell him that he wasn't writing a police report ... the only people he'd talked to that'd had a typewriter in front of him before had been policemen.

– Writer Kevin Ireland on coaching Crump, before his publication in literary magazine Mate

Key Cast & Crew

Barry Jenkin

Narrator

Michelle Bracey

Director

Colin Hogg

Writer, Interviewer

Eric De Beus

Editor

Barry Crump

Subject

Philippa Mossman

Producer