Winners & Losers: Shining with the Shiner

Good script, good characterisation, comic incidents comically filmed. Probably the only film ever made in New Zealand which had a laugh in every minute.

– John A Lee, in 1977 Department of Education booklet The Shiner - Shooting Script

The day The Shiner tricks a drink out of me, I'll shout the bar.

– Famous last words from The Empire Hotel publican, Robinson (Ian Watkin)

Once with the swapping, twice with the stamps and thrice with the Honourable's eye. A hat trick before you, the greatest feat of them all.

– The Shiner (Ivan Beavis) gloats on his methods, after thrice conning free alcohol from a pub

We couldn't go into too many period sets, so we stuck to the campfire and the pub. Of course, one of The Shiner's great purposes in life was to trick publicans, so we allowed him to play all his tricks on the one publican, and thus used the one set. But all of the tricks are taken from different stories.

– Directors Roger Donaldson and Ian Mune, in 1993 booklet Shining with the Shiner - Teachers' Notes and Film Script

Most of the stories of The Shiner tell of publicans tricked by the old rogue.

– John A Lee, in the introduction to his 1964 book Shiner Slattery, page 13

Each time he passed through Oamaru, the morning paper published details of his arrival and departure in the personal column.

– John A Lee, in the introduction to his 1964 book Shiner Slattery, page 12

I knew a lot of the men of the road. I walked thirty miles side by side with The Shiner in South Canterbury, so I have footed it with one of the most glamorous of our vagabonds.

– John A Lee, in the introduction to his 1944 book Shining with the Shiner, page 11