I CALL John Barker in Joburg, where he is on the marketing trail for Spud 3: Learning to Fly.
He’s just attended the premiere in Sandton and is finishing interviews before he embarks on a trip to LA to work on Spud distribution and other projects like Umbrella Man and the Lolly Jackson feature he wants to make.
Based in Joburg, where the TV work is (like Isibaya), Barker says he regularly travels down to work in Cape Town.
Spud 3 was shot on the Sacs’ school campus which stands in for the Durban boarding school, Michaelhouse, where John van der Ruit’s books are set.The film releases next week and Barker thinks it’ll be popular on iTunes because of actors Troye Sivan (Spud) and Casper Lee’s (Garlic, from Malawi) online profiles.
“You should’ve seen Saturday night, the girls were screaming. It felt like thousands of girls screaming on Sandton Square. There were paramedics on hand. Girls were hyperventilating. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Barker says, with a hint of incredulity in his voice.
Barker is hoping they can arrange Australian and even US distribution, though that is still uncertain at this stage.
“You’d think with John Cleese in your movie you might do well in the UK, but that is no guarantee of distribution,” he said.
Barker was brought on board as Spud director after Donovan Marsh directed the first two films, which isn’t that unusual on a film franchise: “They wanted a bit more comedy and I’ve done a lot of comedy. For this particular way of shooting I brought in Willie Nel who is a fantastic cinematographer and he really pushed the 2:35 aspect ratio. The reasoning behind that is there are usually so many kids in the frame so the aspect ratio has to fit them all. It makes it look so much more cinematic.
“We wanted to focus on Spud finding himself in a group of boys at that age where there is a lot of competition for who is the leader.
“What was great for me was the challenge of making a cooler Spud, so now for the first time he takes on Rambo, and he’s falling in love with girls.
“So that was the focus for the film, which was a departure from the book, but I guess it helps when the guy who wrote the book is also the guy writing your screenplay.”
Barker describes the script of Spud 3 as “definitely collaborative”.
“It’s like that with John (van der Ruit). He’s easy-going and very open to suggestions. I know that John Cleese had some things he wanted to rework so they came up with nice character beats and arcs for The Gov which he liked.
“Between (producer) Ross Garland, John van der Ruit and John Cleese, we bounced the screenplay around until we were all happy with it and went ahead.
“The third book and film mirror young John Milton doing some growing up, though on the physical side Sivan certainly looks like the spud of the Crazy Eight lot, seeing as how all his friends have shot past him.
“It worked out perfectly that he’s turned out to look like Spud. We have to shoot the next one soon and I think 4 will concentrate on the end of the year and leaving school, as opposed to being in it.”