STRUGGLING with a title for their latest candid camera film, a producer pointed out that “pay back the money” was the phrase on everyone’s lips. Hence, Leon Schuster’s latest film is called Oh Schucks! Pay Back the Money!
But don’t go expecting something political: “It’s not like I catch out Julius Malema. I tried five times. But, he’s just impossible to reach. He’s such a flamboyant character in his red beret, I would have loved to catch him out,” said Leon Schuster ruefully in a telephone interview.
Schuster has been making candid camera movies since 1986, when he made You Must be Joking, quickly followed by You Must Be Joking 2 the next year. He is consistently one of the few local filmmakers who cleans up at the box office, with his last one, Schucks! Your Country Needs You (2013), grossing more than R26 million from its theatrical release alone. Before that, Schuks Tshabalala’s Survival Guide to South Africa (2010) grossed R37m.
Schuster thinks candid camera films remain popular because South Africans look to movies for escapism: “I don’t think our people are that interested in art movies. The movie can be as brilliant as it can be, but our audiences go to the movie house for laughter and action. I don’t think they want heavy movies about farmers being murdered. With all respect to those filmmakers, the people don’t want to be reminded. If they’re reminded about something bad, they want to laugh about it, not cry.
undefined“So, that’s what I try to do; make them feel better about an uneasy and difficult situation they can’t get away from. I take the situation and make it a bit lighter. The best form of comedy is when you can identify with what is happening. The reason I do it is they identify with the situation, they know it well.
His ninth candid camera film, Oh Schucks! Pay Back the Money!, is centred on a narrative, with candid camera gags helping to further the plot. As Schucks, Schuster has lost the Currie Cup and in lieu of paying a fine is instructed to create a documentary that puts South Africa in a positive light. Two bad guys – Savage (Gerrit Schoonhoven) and Bossie (Ivan Lucas) – pop up as clueless crooks in a nod to a previous film, Sweet and Short.
While Schuster is the first to point out that his works don’t necessarily have a message, this latest one has, in his own words: “Don’t look for k*k if it’s not necessary. There is no tolerance from people, that’s gone out the window.”
Schuster feels that the way South Africans respond to getting set up for gags has “changed dramatically” over the years: “In You Must Be Joking and the first Oh Schucks movie, people were much more relaxed and not so intense and worried. They didn’t get upset so easily.
“I think with the time we’re living in, with the bad economy, loadshedding, corruption and all these elements that are part of our daily lives, people are much less patient with somebody invading their space.
“There are moments I had to cut out of the film, when people pointed a gun at me and said: ‘Get the hell away from me’. In the ’80s, people didn’t carry guns around as much as now.”
It isn’t just that people are more suspicious. Schuster admits his 64-year-old body cannot duck as fast as he used to: “I was on wobbly legs throughout the shoot. How I did it, I don’t know.”
While he says this is the end of his candid camera days, Schuster knows he cannot stay away from film-making altogether. He has an idea for a feature film and would like to do something that observes children’s responses to various situations. But, something like that would take a lot of research, and his feature film idea needs a lot of financial backing.
“I can’t sit on my backside doing nothing, though. I could make another cd, or maybe write my lifestory. But, I could never get away from movies, I love it so much. The challenge of a movie is one of the biggest you can face in your life. So few movies really work well with the public.
“I don’t want to say I am the best at it, but I can read the psyche of the nation reasonably well. I take a serious matter and make light of it. I infuriate people there and then, but when I reveal myself I have a licence after all these candid camera movies that I have made, and then people shake their heads and say: ‘Ek het jou amper gebliksem.’”
Schuster admits to a sneaky suspicion that after all these years, “people really want to see me get klapped”.
“I think one day my headstone will read: ‘Leon couldn’t take that last klap’.”