Hughes, whose previous screen credits include Harriet the Spy and the 1999 Sandra Bullock comedy Forces of Nature, visited Johannesburg last weekend for the premiere of Stander. Her genuine relief when I expressed my appreciation for the integrity of her film spoke volumes.
“Really?” she exclaimed delightedly, spontaneously clapping her hands. “It matters so much to me what South African audiences think of this movie. We have had a great reception at the two North American festival screenings that we’ve had so far, but my real acid test will be the reaction of South Africans.”
Much of the success of the movie can be credited to a remarkable performance by the lead, Thomas Jane (Deep Blue Sea). “He’s the real deal,” says Hughes. “He’s a true actor.” But, having met her, it is clear that the driving creative force that powered the entire project is Hughes herself.
Hughes admits that the original script portrayed the gang as a “much more thuggish bunch of low-lifes”. It was only when she arrived in South Africa to start her first-hand research, she explains, that the complexity of the story became clear to her.
Hughes credits her largely South African crew with bringing the story to life for her. “When we took on the various crew department heads, who were almost all local, and they brought their personal experience to bear, that’s really where the tone of the movie was born.”
Hughes herself, with what she calls her “obsession with detail”, interviewed scores of people who knew Stander, and spent hours in conversation with Alan Heyl, the only surviving member of the Stander Gang, who is still serving his prison sentence in Krugersdorp.
“Alan spent years — many long, long hours — shut in a cell with André Stander. And in those late-night conversations, André exposed so many things to him that people just don’t know, that I don’t even think his family would know. So Alan was our greatest first-hand resource, not only for insight into what made Stander tick, but for incredible detail. His attention to detail is what defines Alan Heyl — which is what made him a good bank robber!” she jokes.
“I spent hours going back with more and more questions — ‘what did André say here, what did he think of this, what happened then’ — stuff that is absolutely invaluable to a writer, and to an actor, for that matter.
“Cor van Deventer [Stander’s friend, who eventually turned him in] was a great resource for the earlier part of Stander’s life, and I met other friends and colleagues who told me many different stories and aspects of the man that I couldn’t even work into the story. But what became apparent was that everybody’s take on this man was radically different. I battled to reconcile all of the stories I had heard, to try and define which of these various personalities was the real André Stander, until I realised that he was all of them, that he was the ultimate chameleon.”
But the biggest single challenge facing the foreign cast was undoubtedly the notoriously difficult South African accent.
“The biggest problem is that there isn’t just one South Africa accent — there are many. It’s not clearly defined, like ‘London Cockney’. If it was a radically different accent, it would be easier, but it’s so subtle — there are just inflections and vowel shifts that can make it or break it. And invariably the first thing people would say to us foreigners when we arrived would be ‘you’re not going to do that horrible, thick, parody South African accent, are you?’ So we were nervous, of course, because we wanted to get it right. Thomas spent hours and hours with his dialect coach on location in the Arctic, on another project, before he even arrived here. Even then, it was difficult, because he had actually learned a dialect that turned out not to be right for André Stander, which only became clear once he arrived here. I know that there are bits in the film where we didn’t get it exactly right, but it’s not possible!” she laughs. “We tried really hard.”
Deborah Kara Unger, the gorgeous Canadian actress who plays Bekkie Stander, had her own tales of accent-misadventures to share. “I worked with two wonderful ladies here on location,” she recounted, “who were really, really hard on me, for which I’m grateful. And then, months later, when I had to do my looping [additional dialogue recording in studio], in Los Angeles, I had a terrible cold and I was all alone, so far away from my coaches, and I had to do it all by myself! It wasn’t as good as the work we managed to do on set, in South Africa, and I kept wishing that the final product reflected more of the work that we had captured here, because we worked so hard! And I was proud of the work we had done.”
Unger is in love with South Africa — it is written all over her face. And she hadn’t even seen much of the country yet. “I was here on location for a about a month and I spent all of it in Johannesburg. I love this city,” she confessed conspiratorially, with a low thrill in her voice. But she is clearly itching to see more of the country and joked about the prospect of her “new best friend”, a Johannesburg dentist who attended to a small dental emergency on Friday evening, writing her a doctor’s note so she could skip out on work on Monday and “go on safari”.
South Africa is the first territory to release Stander. Hughes reports that the film received an enthusiastic response at the recent Toronto International Film Festival and that the film had now been sold into every major territory. “The company handling it in the States, Newmarket, are incredible specialist distributors, experienced in breaking small movies and keeping them on circuit for long runs so that word-of-mouth can build,” she reports. “They were responsible for the success of movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Memento and Whale Rider in the States, so I think we’re in good hands!”
Stander opens on South African screens today (October 10)