Trouble Is My Business (Veber, 2008)
Apologies in advance to subscribers from outside New Zealand but this is going to be mainly of interest to local readers.
In this morning’s essential guide to the morning’s news, The Spinoff’s Bulletin, the lead story was Deputy Prime Minister, and Associate Minister of Education, David Seymour’s efforts to persuade local mayors to do something about the truancy crisis that he, himself, has beaten up since the election but failed to do anything about:
Behind the back-and-forth is a complex picture of school attendance. The government has set a target for 80% of students to attend school more than 90% of the time by 2030. At present, just 58.1% of students meet that bar – up from 53% in 2023, but still well below pre-Covid levels.
This measure of “regular attendance” is widely used, yet controversial, as it makes no distinction between justified absences (such as illness or bereavement) and truancy. Last year Papatoetoe High principal Vaughan Couillault told The Spinoff it was a “binary” statistic that failed to reflect context. “It covers people in hospital, it covers funerals, it covers everything.” Daily all-of-school attendance rates – typically over 80% – offer a more nuanced view, but don’t feature as prominently in headlines.
I was reminded of one of my favourite New Zealand documentaries, Juliette Veber’s Trouble Is My Business, about a heroic deputy principal who makes it his job to try and solve these problems one by one in his own underprivileged high school.
Deputy Principals are the enforcers of a school, prowling the corridors on the lookout for youngsters who aren’t where they are supposed to be, but Gary Peach takes it a few steps further by prowling the streets of the Mangere neighbourhood, looking for kids who should be at school.
So far, so strict, but he doesn’t then take the punitive approach to these kids or their parents – Seymour in 2025 is talking about fining families $50 a day for every absence – Peach tries to work with these kids to establish why school isn’t working for them and then looks for solutions. It’s gruelling, one-at-a-time, work, but rewarding for everyone when it pays off.
I reviewed the film for the Capital Times:
Finally, for those who sensibly jump straight to the end, the best film of the entire month of May (and easily best documentary and New Zealand film of the year so far): Trouble Is My Business. Following Aorere College Deputy Head Gary Peach as he heroically tries to keep all his kids in class and on track, this film moved and inspired me more than anything I’ve seen in ages. If we had a half decent television service this would be playing in prime time. Instead you have to seek it out at your local fleapit, but it’s worth it: if you don’t see Trouble Is My Business there’ll be something missing from your life. As Peachy says all the way through the film: Trust me.
Also reviewed in that Capital Times column in June 2009: I Love You, Man (“… another in the endless parade of cash-ins on the formula literally coined by Judd Apatow with 40-year-old Virgin and Knocked Up); Paul Blart: Mall Cop (similar only from Adam Sandler); Noël Coward adaptation Easy Virtue; Alan Rickman in wine comedy Bottle Shock; Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck in the big screen adaptation of the BBC thriller State of Play (co-written by Tony Gilroy whose Star Wars series Andor has a season two that we are looking forward to); tidy British thriller The Escapist which introduced the world to Rupert (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) Wyatt; Charlie Kaufman’s “wondrously bendy” Synecdoche, New York; and informative documentary In Search of Beethoven.
They were big weeks in those days.
Where to watch Trouble Is My Business
Aotearoa: Digital rental from NZ Film On Demand. Also available on DVD from Aro Street Video (and possibly from good public libraries) if that’s still how you roll.
Rest of the world: Not currently available
