Daniel Dercksen shares a few thought with writer-director and producer Johan Heyns, and screenwriter Johann Potgieter.

DIRECTOR JOHAN HEYNS

Tell me about HOND SE DINGES, how did it happen?
After 'Tough Luck', Frank Opperman and I promised each other that one day; one day, we'd make a movie that is different.
Living in Lichtenburg as a kid with all the stories of diamonds, fortunes lost and found, left it's mark. A story started to take shape in my head. I battled with the script and could not get it right. Called in Johann Potgieter, it got better. But not quite right yet. After not looking at the script for almost a year, it came me. The obvious flaws; and some answers. I think.

How will you describe HOND SE DINGES - in your own words?
Hopefully a different look at what makes people tick.  What happens when people think they've been cheated out of their 'rightful' inheritance? Or a womaniser catches his wife with her neighbour in 'their' bed.  Take the piss out of our inalienable right to throw the first stone.

Did you draw on any other films/ experiences for inspiration?
My Father had a drive-in in the sixties. Jamie Uys. Elvis. Steve McQueen. Lancaster. Loren. Peck. Heston. But I'd say Zorba. Funny Bones. A Fish called Wanda. The Coen Brothers. Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrells. Jackie Chan. Batman. (With Nicholson) All kinds and everything.

Tell me about the dog in the film?
I seem to have a thing for animals in (my) movies.  The original script had a parrot in it. In Tough Luck we had a pig. A cute little thing. By the time we shot the movie, it had become this fat squeeling monster. But this one. This Son of the unknown mother. Gap. Pernans. More than we expected. Quite brilliant. And he will get  even better.

The film is in Afrikaans with English subtitles, opening it up to a larger audiences?
So Ster Kinekor tells me. I hope so. But I believe that we, living here, have enough Afrikaans in us to follow this movie. 

You have an exciting dream cast?
The best. In the middle are the two beautiful young stars, Ivan Botha and Tinarie van Wyk Loots. Telling the story. And then Marcel van Heerden and Frank Opperman and Nicola Hanekom. No fear. No holding back. All of them. Support from outstanding Louw Venter, Tessa Denton, Matt Stern. And some of the bit parts, Andre Stoltz, Sandra Ferreira.

Was it a difficult film to make?
Not really. The cast bought into the insanity without hesitation. Buster Reynolds (DP) and Tiny Laubscher (Editor) were there all the time. And Christa Schamberger's casting was the best. Once we agreed on how, we just kept going. Making the same movie.

What can audiences expect from the film?
Hopefully more than they expect. Some heart. Passion. Insanity.  I think there will be people identifying with it.

Have you always wanted to be a filmmaker, where did it start?
I always wanted to be a farmer. Then I came across this film thing. Got seduced. Got lost along the way. So farming has had to wait.

Your views on the film industry in South Africa?
There's hope. And the reason is Digital and DTI. More people can express themselves. Jerusalema is higher on my list than Tsotsi. But in it lies a problem. Too many people can express themselves. But I like what I see.  A slowly awakening 'South African' awareness. Someone once said if you want to be more universal go more provincial. And we have some provinces.
I don't have a problem with the Boormans and Eastwoods making movies here. We can only learn from them. Only problem is these guys pay Dollars and limits local producers' acces to good crew.

How difficult is it to get your film to the big screen (particularly an Afrikaans film)?
Irony is that "Afrikaans" has a market. Is a market. In South Africa. The disributors will invariably get their money back and even make some. You have to be rather bad if Ster or Nu Metro won't give you a release.

Any tips for newcomers?
You have to be lucky. It's not easy. Respect the industry and what it takes to make a movie. Learn a craft. Not everyone can be a director. Persist. Dreaming is good. But learning is better. And half good is no good. Be ready when you get lucky. Don't fuck it up.

Any comments you would like to share?
Moviemaking comes fucking close to sex. I think I've said more than I intended to.

JOHANN POTGIETER

Born and raised in small towns on the edges of semi-deserts (Postmasburg, Hartswater, Vredendal). Head boy of the Vredendal Hoërskool in 1968; downhill from there. Briefly pretended to be a sociology lecturer; journalist at The Cape Argus (should have stayed there). Full-time freelance screenwriter since 1984. Lives at Robertson in the Boland; father to Sebastian Potgieter.
Worked on various television series and feature films (all produced and directed by others, some of them complete strangers), like Hoekie vir Eensames, Halfmanspunt, Boetie op Manoeuvres (which was supposed to be Boetie op Awol), Vyfster II, Vyfster: Die Slot, Windprints, Agent Orange, Halfmanspunt, The Gospel According to Matthew, The Game, The Long Run, Known Gods, and so on.

Tell me about HOND SE DINGES, how did it happen?
Hond se Dinges happened because of two related factors.
(a) After a long career as producer Johan Heyns finally got tired of having others doing the "creative" work on his films (writing, directing, and so on) and - a few years ago - started writing a mad, anarchic story in the tradition of the old, wilder Afrikaans movies. There was a lifetime's worth of wry observation of the charm and madness of the volk, some of it gleaned as a child in his father's drive-in cinemas, some as a small-town attorney, some as rugby administrator, the bulk of it as a film and television producer. At the outset - certainly the first draft I saw, two or three years ago - it had a more personal undercurrent, even blacker comedy than what survives now. The idea then still was that someone else would direct it.
(b) Then - September 2007 - he was shot by an intruder in his home, shot to be killed. (See http://www.mg.co.za/article/2007-09-26-film-producer-shot-twice-in-bryanston.) And when - after lengthy stays in hospitals and several surgical interventions - he was more or less back on his feet and peeing properly again, he'd made some startling decisions. He rewrote the whole thing once more, and announced that he would now be directing it himself. In a way, I think, he had to be shot before he set out to finally do what he should have done in his twenties, which is to make a movie from the bottom up, putting himself on the line, rather than hiring others to do the messy stuff like writing and directing. Can you imagine who and what he would have been as a filmmaker by now if he'd started doing all this in his twenties?

How will you describe HOND SE DINGES - in your own words?
HOND is an old-fashioned, anarchic romp, a totally relaxed happening, something that - in Werner Herzog's famous words - has nothing to do with "art and academicism" but derives from the country fair. In the Afrikaans sense, a mix between a basaar, a skoudans, and a piss-up and an evening in a drive-in, celebrating the long-suppressed wildness of ordinary South Africans, set to a mix of boeremusiek and contemporary Afrikaans rock 'n roll.

Did you draw on any other films/experiences for inspiration?
I was just a side-kick at one stage of the process, but I'd say the principal inspiration for Heyns came from being gatvol with the suits and ties and missing the lost world of drive-ins and the sorts of movies one saw there. But also not really missing the movies, more missing the event of being there, the picnic on the car bonnet, sort of thing. I think HOND should be seen in packs, in bioscopes, more than in the pristine privacy of lounges with DVD players. That privacy, the bad habit of watching movies alone, is a big part of what's gone wrong with the movies. Many people have lost the sense of  being a member of a live, breathing, laughing audience.

Tell me about the dog in the film?
Heyns's department. I'm just amazed at what the dog does (particularly when he watches the fornication). Clearly there's more to fox terriers than meets the eye. Hopefully HOND does for fox terriers what Jock of the Bushveld did for whatever kind of dog that was again.

The film is in Afrikaans with English subtitles, opening it up to a larger audiences?
The experiences and memories and the anger that HOND springs from are not limited to Afrikaans speakers, or white people, or drive-in rats, so it makes sense to me to make it accessible also to people who don't dream in Afrikaans.

How did the casting influence the screenplay?
Insofar as a screenplay is only completed in the editing, of course the actors always play in huge part in bringing it to completion. Frank Opperman was always Rommel, also when he was co-writing. Who else could Rommel have been? And - to take one further example - what Nicola Hanekom makes of Rooi Sarie (the village prostitute) is just breathtaking when you compare it to what was on paper before she took over the character and gave it life. But this is what the great actors always do, and I think one of Heyns's strenths as a director is in letting this happen.

Was it a difficult screenplay to write?
No (but, again, I was just a minor player).

Did you follow any particular process in writing the screenplay?
No. Is there such a thing, a particular process? This one maybe had a few more hangovers in it than usual.

What can audiences expect from the film?
"The audience itself doesn't know WHAT it wants … until it gets it." I forget who said that. Maybe the audience can expect to have a party, unless they go in expecting a stimulating and illuminating intellectual experience.

Your views on the film industry in South Africa?
What "film industry in South Africa" …? Ask me in five years, because something seems to be happening. I think we need ten, twenty small, cheap features a year, to rekindle the habit (like Darrel Roodt's MEISIE and HOND, at opposite ends of the spectrum). The big, quasi-Hollywood numbers don't help, because the scale is wrong, and they alienate us even further from our own real circumstances. I don't want to work in "international" cinema but in indigenous cinema. I think it was Manie van Rensburg who said "we must celebrate our poverty." We are poor people, and we should make movies the way poor people would make them, by hook or by crook. Maybe the times are improving now.

How difficult is it to get your screenplay to the big screen (particularly an Afrikaans film)?
Practically impossible, depending on what it's about. See the previous response.

Any tips for newcomers?
You can't do only the WRITING, not here. You have to write-and-produce, say, (no matter how small the movie) because otherwise it's like refusing to take real responsibility for what you're writing. Otherwise: think carefully … there are more sensible ways of earning a living. Playing the lotto, for example, should supply you with a more predictable income.

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