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Leon Schuster speaks



We had a chat with the star ahead of the return of his much-loved character Mr. Bones.

Mr. Bones 2: Back to the Past comes seven years after the original. Why did it take so long for a follow-up?

Basically it was intense fear that I couldn’t top the first one, so I kept postponing it. I couldn’t come upon the right idea for a follow-up and then finally I decided I'm not going to do a sequel, I'm going to do a prequel set before the events of the first Mr. Bones. Now the story is set in Kuvukiland in 1879. And as soon as that story came about we could get a new cast, new characters and it was a fresh, new idea.

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In the first Mr. Bones there were a few American characters and in the new Mr. Bones we're introduced to Indian characters. Was he plan always to give Mr. Bones an international appeal?

We always try to give our stories an international appeal. Originally we wanted to shoot Mr. Bones 2 in India, but it just proved too costly. And then the producer Anant Singh said, if we can't shoot in Big Bombay in India then we can shoot in Little Bombay which is Durban! Which was a great idea. And then as soon as we started dealing with known territory, people and places we knew the script came together much easier. So I think it was a blessing in disguise that we didn’t go the Bollywood route.

So had this been a Bollywood movie could we have expected to see you dancing and singing in your loin cloths?

You know I would’ve been forced to do that! I've watched so many Bollywood movies that Anant gave me, there isn’t a Bollywood comedy that I haven’t watched and I soon sussed that these okes love their music inserts and ja, I would’ve probably had one or two big musical moments in the movie. but I don’t think, I general, South Africans will want to spend three, four minutes watching a music video instead of visual gags – and that's what I prefer to do so we really gave audiences a lot of visual stuff, much more than we did in Bones 1 and Mama Jack, with a lovely story and a little love scene at the end that could easily bring a tear to your eye.



There were reports earlier this year of one of the locations you filmed Mr. Bones 2 at (the Broederstroom Vakansie-Oord near Hartbeespoort Dam in North West) that didn’t allow non-whites.

We've filmed there before and never had that problem before, we weren’t even aware of it before. In this instance we were already five, six days into our shoot and we already built our Kuvuki village on that banks of the river before we found out about the signs that said "Whites Only". And then we went to the owener and said, "Why do allow 150 Kuvuki tribespeople on your farm but there are all these signs saying they're not allowed here" and they just said, "Ja, but you pay me." So this guy was just a racist when he doesn’t get paid but then he isn’t a racist when he gets paid. It was just a nasty incident, and we got out of there as soon as we could. We couldn’t move our location because we were already set up with 15 huts and that whole tribal feeling so we couldn’t just move to another location and rebuild. But I'm sure we won't be returning to that location while those circumstances are still applicable.

You're probably best known for your candid camera sketch movies such as Oh Shucks… it's Schuster, but you haven’t made a movie like that for some years now. Will we be seeing you pop up in your disguises again anytime soon? Should South Africans be worried?

Yes, they should be worried! Certainly I'd love to do that again. But instinctively I just knew that it was time to do another Mr. Bones movie. I don’t know why but I know that my traditional audience will say, "Come on Leon, give us those disguises, give us Abdul Rasbanjee, the German and the black traffic cop and those characters we got to know you for." And I'd love to do another one but I'm getting older and I don’t fancy getting klapped around as much as I used to in the past. And those characters are always the ones that people get the most aggressive with, these people moer me around, hey. And in the current environment with the high crime rate, people can get violent with you. In the last candid camera gag I did where (regular castmate) Alfred Nthombela and I were beggars half-naked on the street, begging people in cars for money, jussis! Those people were VERY aggressive with us! We had a few guns pointed at us. I don’t know why South Africans like to see me getting klapped around. Maybe they see it as me getting my reward for being so cheeky in my gags, I probably deserve it.



What do your movies say about South Africa and its people?

You know I don’t try to teach people moral lessons. I walk with the South African people, I'm a rugby freak and hang out with those guys and mingle with the ladies at Pick 'n Pay as much as the people at the filling station who come and pose for photographs with me and I listen to them. For me it's all about pleasing the people, not always about pleasing myself. Maybe I want to do what Jim Carrey did, make a serious movie like he did with Man on the Moon and The Truman Show. But while the South African public still enjoys what I do I'll just keep giving them what they want.

Listening to your new album Dra Die Bok, I got the sense that there was a serious rugby movie in you somewhere.

It's funny you mention that because it's something I've been thinking about for a very long time. And the danger, of course is that, looking at the international market, let's be honest about the fact that the public won't want to see my serious side, they're going to say that this isn’t Leon as we know him. Like when Jim Carrey did that movie The Majestic where he played a serious role. I thought it was a fantastic movie, he played a serious role, there was heart there was everything. But when you look at the box office performance and his audience's opinion of the movie they said, "No man, give us Dumb and Dumber, give us Ace Ventura". There's this danger you're going to lose your audience. It's not as applicable to the song "Dra die Bok", because that song came from my heart. A movie will also come from my heart but maybe there should be a mixture of the seriousness and comedy.

What do you think of Clint Eastwood's plans to make a movie about the Springboks winning the 1995 World Cup?

Hells, I wish I came up with that idea.

You could still get to play yourself in the movie.

Absolutely! Or I could play Louis Luyt! (guffaws)

Now, after so many years in the business, is there anything left for you to achieve?

Hell, there's a lot still to be achieved. I think it's any South African filmmaker's dream to make it internationally, and I think with the vast experience I've had I know that at some point I can make it happen internationally. And once I've achieved that I will sit back and say, OK now I really have achieved the ultimate. If I don’t, I will always carry on writing. I might not be the star of my movies any longer, because I don’t know how long I'll be able to the Mr. Bones type of thing which is quite physical. But I'll never stop writing. As long as I have a brain and a computer in front of me I think the ideas will still be coming. Maybe a bit slower with age but they'll still be coming.

* Mr. Bones 2: Back to the Past is now playing at cinemas countrywide.

- Shaheema Barodien

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