Filmmakers take serious risks during the making of Wonder Boy For President
|||Theresa Smith
Shot over a five-year period, Wonder Boy for President is a local political satire, not a genre often explored in this country.
“We want to blur the line between fiction and non-fiction, it’s something we have been working on for a while,” explained director John Barker. “It’s all so serious out there, we’ve forgotten how to laugh at ourselves.”
But wanting to do something because you think the industry needs it, and making it happen are two vastly different things.
“There was this guy who was supposed to be Wonder Boy, because we didn’t want a well-known face, we wanted it to be believable that the character was an unknown,” said co-producer and main actor, Kagiso Lediga, who ended up playing Wonder Boy because the original actor pulled out at the last minute.
“The plus on that was that they thought that I was there endorsing the ANC so they would open doors. The handshakes – they would line up,’ Lediga remembers.
“We were shooting a month ago because of the lawyers telling us to shoot that scene,” Barker explains the long shooting period. He is referencing the ending which tries to mitigate a preceding scene that is dark… very dark indeed.
“There was no money and eventually for the first Mangaung trip it was just five of us. We had no money,” Barker remembers.
Back in 2012, they didn’t even know what they would call the film and attended the conference simply as filmmakers.
They shot footage of real politicians addressing the crowds, knowing they would want to eventually use it, which they did.
After that conference they created a very nice trailer which is on YouTube, but despite the professional look, they still couldn’t get financial backers to come on board, so they ended up doing it slowly on no budget because they were doing it themselves.
“I think it is a risk thing, plus the fact that it was retro-scripted, that it was improv,” Barker said.
“I think with any artistic endeavour, it rests in the artist’s mind. So we expect people to see the vision, but most likely we have to make the thing first and people only want to come when it is made,” Lediga weighed in.
“Exactly” Barker laughed. “Then it’s too late. It’s true, most artists, when they sell something like this, they already have a script, but we only had the teaser.”
At the time they knew they wanted to do a political satire and they created the Wonder Boy character, but the EFF hadn’t even put in an appearance in 2012.
“We had the basic idea that the ANC Youth League didn’t have a great leader because Julius had just left. Now they regret losing Julius… and we just take it a step further in the film,” said Barker.
By the time they shot at the Wits Hall they were upfront about making a mockumentary called Wonder Boy for President which turned out to be a serendipitous move on their part: “We decided to be bold and tell them exactly what we were doing because there was a sense we would get into sh*t if we didn’t. The lawyers said it was the best thing we did: ‘The fact that you made that decision means the film can actually be released. If you didn’t have that they could come after you’. If you lied and took it out of context… because we’re playing with what they’re saying,” he said.