Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, London, Los Angeles. Seven days, seven cities. A regular week if you’re up for an Oscar. When I join the queue of journalists who are lining up to question the director of what is possibly this year’s Best Foreign Film, I’m offered two possible time slots a week away. Both are cancelled at the last minute.
Gavin Hood is a very busy man. Ever since Tsotsi cleaned up at the Edinburgh Festival, and Miramax put in its first offer (which producer Peter Fudakowski incidentally turned down, waiting until the film’s Toronto award to usher in a mini bidding war), it’s been Big Time. A long way up for the man who dropped a career in law to act bit parts in schlocks such as Curse 3: Blood Sacrifice and Kickboxer 5. When I finally talk to Hood, it’s 10.30am in LA on February 23, the day before Tsotsi is due to launch in the United States.
“I’m a little overwhelmed, actually. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Edinburgh was 45 days ago. Since then it’s been like Groundhog Day: same day, different city. The first interview starts at 5.30am, 7.30am if you’re lucky. Yesterday I did 30 interviews in eight hours. In the evenings, there’s usually a screening session followed by dinner with the local theatre owners — unlike South Africa, lots of theatres in the US are independently owned, and the only way a little movie like Tsotsi comes into play is word-of-mouth and through local newspapers and stations.”
Journalists are “weighted”, Hood tells me. Some get seven minutes — “soundbite time” — others 15, 20, 30 minutes max. “We have 30, so this is quite relaxed.” The idea that he’s not even a quarter of the way through his day and churning through journalists like a sausage machine unnerves me, but I’m grateful we have been allocated the maximum. “Listen,” says Hood, “I wanted to talk to South Africa.”
Hood arrived in LA in 2001 armed with a 35mm short, The Storekeeper, and A Reasonable Man, his first feature, and hooked up with agent Michael Sugar, then working out of his apartment. A tale about a Zulu herdboy who kills a child because he believes it is an evil spirit, A Reasonable Man is based on an actual court case Hood came across while studying law. Writing, directing, acting and producing it taught Hood some hard lessons.
“Financially, it was a real struggle to make: 70% of the money came from a French company, the rest from South Africa. Finally, the film just managed to break even.” Prior to this, Hood had staved off a US producer who wanted him to Americanise the script — which had won a Diane Thomas Screenwriting Award — by replacing the black characters with Native Indians and the witchdoctor with a shaman. Once the film had been made, Hood admitted that turning this early offer down was due to “a certain amount of naivety. If I had known how difficult it was going to be to raise the finance, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have said yes.”
But the gamble paid off. Five years after producer Peter Fudakowski saw the film at Cannes, he contacted Hood. Fudakowski was interested in purchasing the rights to Tsotsi, Athol Fugard’s 1980 novel, and as Hood was South African, he thought he might the right man to write the screenplay.
A few months later, Hood delivered a first draft that was, Fudakowski said in a later interview, “astoundingly good. My wife is my script editor and she had never seen a first draft as well written as this.” On this basis, Fudakowski set about purchasing the rights, then raising 50% of the production budget through South Africa’s Industrial Development Corporation. The remainder Fudakowski funded with money from his company, UK Film and Television. For Hood, it was the break he had been waiting for.
“This business is like going to Vegas — even with a great story, a good script and the talent to make it, it’s a gamble. Without it, you’re wasting your money. There are only a limited number of screens in the world and most of them are showing the same films. Tsotsi felt like an opportunity to make something really special, maybe my last real chance.”
What if Tsotsi doesn’t win? “The movie is only due to be released in countries such as Holland and Germany after the Oscars, so the schedule carries on. But finally it will stop. And I’ll have time to look at what to do next. After A Reasonable Man, I got, say, a couple of scripts a month, now I’m getting seven or more a day. So I have readers to sift through them. Michael and I used to be in the business of begging, now we’re in the business of saying no.
“I love universal stories that transcend their origins. That’s why I loved Tsotsi. It’s a universal coming-of-age story that transcends race. I’m proud that it comes from South Africa, but it is not issue-driven, it is character-driven. African-Americans have told me that it’s great to see a movie that is about people who happen to be black, rather than a movie about black people.”
It is an opportune moment to ask him about the recent Mail & Guardian article in which the movie was critiqued by four “hoodlums”.
“I cannot tell you how pissed off that piece made me. There have been other bad reviews, but this one hit a raw nerve. The ‘sharp’ gangsters those guys missed are in the movie, they just aren’t the lead, and that’s what made them uncomfortable. One of them said, ‘Money is neither clean nor dirty, it’s just money.’ How is that any different from the gangster Fela [played by kwaito star Zola] who can only define ‘decency’ as ‘making a decent fucking living’? I spent three years making educational dramas in the townships. I met these guys and most of the ones working for the rich gangsters are just kids, wearing a mask of some sort. Some are real aggressive; some, like Tsotsi, are just silent. This movie is about peeling back the mask, to find the ‘decent’ kid underneath.”
Two days later, I finally get to see Tsotsi. It is the noon show at Canal Walk. I am amazed that this is the only screen in the Western Cape showing South Africa’s Big Hope, that there are a grand total of five people in the cinema.
By the time the lights come up, my face is wet with tears. I am so proud and more than just a little sad. Sad for the suffering we force each other to bear. And sad that there are some who question the belief that inside a hard man there may lurk a soft and broken child.
Hood once said that films are an advert for their country as they reflect its society. Thank God for the likes of Hood, and Fugard, who show us as capable of redemption, no matter how abused, or abusive, our past.