"The Gods Must Be Crazy" Star, Actor & Bushman, N!xau, dead at 59

Associated Press ^ | 7-5-2003 | AP

[zarf]

This guy looked like a black version of my cousin or the spitting image of the lead singer in Kool and the Gang

[Boiler Plate]

The landrover up the tree was priceless. It cracks my up just thinking about it.

[AnnaZ]

!!!

 

I just mentioned this blast from the past when we had Steyn!

 

This movie was big stuff when I was in university in Ottawa. It played at a theater downtown for years and I think my dad and I saw it there at least three times.

 

RIP

[HairOfTheDog]

Oh! - This was SUCH a FUNNY movie!

[jennyp]

I guess my favorite scene is when a (baboon?) steals the Coke bottle, and he tries to explain to him that the Coke bottle will only give him bad luck.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

In spite of the libs, this movie became an international success beyond the producers' wildest dreams. I hope the libs got so mad about this that they couldn't see straight.

[eddie willers]

Let it be noted that N!xau was a better actor than Keanu Reeves.

Still is.

[Lockbar]

I loved that movie. I was laughing so hard I was crying when he was steering the jeep backwards while sitting on the hood. He was a good guy, too bad he is gone. RIP

[okimhere]

Alas, the sequel was a stinker

Like everyone here, I laughed myself silly watching this movie. And looked forward eagerly to the second one. I agree...a stinker.

It was amazing that the movie makers got such a realistic performance from that non-worldly little Bushman. I'm going right now and pull the video off the shelf.....we all need a good laugh session. (I liked the "R!P" post. Ditto!)

[Tijeras_Slim]

BUM!P for a funny movie.

The banana grove shoot out is a prefect take on 3rd world "armies".

[skinkinthegrass]

Let it be noted that N!xau was a better actor than Keanu Reeves.

Are you starting a List?...Actor & Bushman, N!xau, dead at 59...R.I.P, N!xau...:)

[absinthe]

It played for well over a year at the theatre near the Larkspur Ferry in Marin County, California (near where Clint Eastwood said "Go Ahead, Make my Day").

The theatre actually had a one-year anniversity party.

Still one of my favorite movies.

[Who dat?]

[printed in SF Chronicle]

Bushman who shot to stardom in ``The Gods Must Be Crazy'' dies

N!xau, the diminutive bushman catapulted from the remote sandswept reaches of the Kalahari Desert to international stardom in the film "The Gods Must Be Crazy" has died, police officials said Saturday.

He was estimated to have been about 59, although he himself said he did not know his exact age.

Police in the remote area of Tsumkwe in the Namibian part of the Kalahari where N!xau lived confirmed his recent death, but did not have any details of how or when he died. His name is a usual transliteration of his tribal language, which uses clicking noises that have no letter in English.

He had suffered from tuberculosis in the past.

The "Gods Must Be Crazy" became a worldwide hit and a top grossing foreign film after its release in 1980. Audiences swooned over his portrayal of an earnest bushman with a sheepish smile whose discovery of a Coca-Cola bottle sets off a comedy of errors.

N!xau starred in several sequels before returning to the familiarity of life as a herdsman raising cattle and vegetables in the Namibian bush.

When he was discovered by the South African director of the film, Jamie Uys, he had only had minimal exposure to modern life.

According to a 2000 story in The Namibian newspaper, he had only seen three white people in his life before being cast, and had never seen a settlement larger than the village huts of his San people.

The San are the indigenous hunter-gatherer people of southern Africa. Today they number about 100,000 and mostly live in the Kalahari.

Not knowing the value of paper money, he let his first wages, $300, blow away.

By the time of "The Gods Must Be Crazy II," he had learned the value of money, demanding several hundred thousand dollars before agreeing to be recast in the film.

He said the money was needed to build a cinderblock home with electricity and a water pump for his family, according to the Internet Movie Database Web site.

Director Uys dismissed criticism that it was cruel to take N!xau out of his home environment. He said he was born to act.

"All Bushmen are natural actors. I suppose it's because they don't have television, and they spend their evenings telling stories and acting them out. And they don't have any hangups or inhibitions at all," Uys said in a 1990 interview with The Associated Press.

After the sequel, N!xau's career took a zany twist with his appearance in several Hong Kong action films and the Chinese film, "The Gods Must be Funny."

In one of the films, the spirit of Bruce Lee takes over N!xau's character.

After his film career petered out, N!xau returned home to a newly built brick house. He tended his cattle and raised corn and pumpkins.

For a while he had a car. But he had to employ a driver because he had never learned to drive, The Namibian said.

[Slyfox]

GMBC is THE movie we HAVE to take with us when we make long trips in the van.

[stands2reason]

Let it be noted that N!xau was a better actor than Keanu Reeves.

You know KR had to have slept with all the right people....

[weegee]

A sad passing.

There was a sequel to the Gods Must Be Crazy must not too many people are aware that there was a third, unofficial "Gods Must Be Crazy" film.

There is a Hong Kong movie titled Crazy Safari

There is a Chinese subgenre of movie known as the hopping vampire film (it is a zombie like corpse that will follow a bell around by hopping). Some asians are flying back a hopping vampire to HK when it falls from their plane in the bushland.

N!xau finds it/him. There is also a subplot with poachers.

The most bizarre sequence has a chinese "wizard" who was travelling with the body channel the spirit of Bruce Lee (who is seen onscreen) into N!xau. N!xau then uses Bruce Lee's kung fu moves to defeat some opponents!

[stands2reason]

Still is.

LOL!!!

[weegee]

Here's a synopsis/review I found online for Crazy Safari:

http://www.und.ac.za/und/ccms/amp/reviews/crazysafari.htm

Crazy Safari

1991
96 minutes
Produced by Charles and Jimmy Heung
Directed by Billy Chan



The story of how a Chinese hopping vampire arrives in the Kalahari among N!Xau and the Bushmen, it is the Chinese sequel to The gods must be crazy and The gods must be crazy II.

TOPICS: San-Bushman culture, Chinese culture, folklore.

CRITIQUE: This Chinese sequel to the Gods must be crazy films combines the usual Jamie Uys African-based humour and slapstick with Chinese vampire horror/comedy films in the vein of Mr Vampire. The way in which the vampire is depicted as an almost-friendly, amusing creature shows the way in which the vampire in Hong Kong films has moved from being scary to humorous. Familiarity has led to affection. The portrayal of the Bushmen is typical of Uys, in that they are seen as traditional, naïve, unsophisticated and completely uninfluenced by the outside world and modernity.

The story of Crazy Safari begins at an auction in London. According to Chinese folklore, a man’s soul cannot rest until it is returned to its ancestral burial ground. The Wise One (Lam Ching-Ying) and his nephew Sam (Sam Christopher Chan) are at the auction to bid for Sam’s grandfather, who is a vampire because he was not returned to China and buried. It is necessary to have a monk with special powers to revive the mummy and take it home. The auctioneer explains the differences between Chinese vampires and European ones. Chinese vampires do not respond to holy crosses or sunlight. They can only be controlled by yellow pieces of paper inscribed with ancient Chinese scriptures. This talisman is used to control Chinese vampires, as well as the sound of a ringing bell towards which they hop. The monk revives the mummy, this defeating the other bidder, and leads it out with a bell. After the auction, The Wise One and the Ancestor are separated. The Ancestor attacks three would-be muggers (who happen to be black) who pull the yellow paper off his face, as this makes him become violent.

They travel to Hong Kong by aeroplane, but run out of fuel while flying over Africa (the compass - apparently invented by the Chinese - didn’t work). The Wise One sends the pilot leaping from the plane with a rucksack on his back, then he and Sam throw the Ancestor out of the plane with a parachute before jumping out themselves. The hopping vampire lands among N!Xau and the Bushmen. N!Xau has just found three beautiful ladies tied up with thongs and set them free. The importance the Bushman places on freedom is a significant theme in these films. The women were slaves belonging to the ‘heavy people’. They are slave traders: a group of Zulu warriors led by a British woman. The Zulus throw spears at the Ancestor, which has no effect on him. N!Xau takes the yellow paper off the vampire’s face, so that he can see. He turns violent and attacks the ‘heavy people’, frightening them all away. This makes the Bushmen believe that the Ancestor was sent by the gods to be their saviour from their enemies. The Bushmen soon learn how to operate the vampire and his yellow paper, and he becomes part of the tribe. They also come to the decision that Coke cans are not the evil objects they believed them to be in Gods I, as they fell from the sky (to lighten the plane) and knocked out some of their enemies.

The Wise One and Sam land some distance away from N!Xau’s village, and have to deal with being chased by lion and rhino, and ride an ostrich around in search of the Ancestor. The film copies the scene from Gods I where the rhino stamps out the fire. When they eventually reach the village and begin to interact with the tribe, The Wise One is seen as a hero because he manages to catch a snake (in the process of trying to find a bathroom). He also tries to teach N!Xau Kung Fu.

Culturally, the Zulus and the Bushmen, with their violent behaviour and strange primitive ways, are both depicted as the Other. The Chinese are portrayed - in spite of their interesting beliefs about ancestors and vampires - as normal and modern. N!Xau’s encounter with the truck - ‘the heavy people’s machine’ - as he is scared by the hooter and tries to drive it backwards - shows the reaction of the Other to civilisation. He also likes to put his hand on people’s hearts as a greeting, and cannot understand why women are so upset by this. Because the film was directed from a Chinese point of view, it shows the Chinese culture as standard and African cultures as weird and incomprehensible, which the Bushman’s failure to understand ‘civilisation’ is meant to be entertaining and amusing.

After a while The Wise One and Sam seem to become worried about finding the Ancestor, and cast a spell involving a tiny figure of the vampire to bring him to them. They eventually succeed in drawing the vampire towards them, despite the Bushmen’s attempts to hold him back and retain him as their saviour. There is a confrontation between the Chinese and the Bushmen as to who owns the vampire. The Chinese finally win as The Wise One places his own blood on the yellow paper, which incites the hopping vampire to try and kill N!Xau.

As they are departing, with N!Xau showing them the way, the Bushman realises that he needs to return home as his village is under threat. They all turn back to help. The British woman and her troops, as well as threatening to kill the children of the tribe, have brought a Zulu Shaman, who comes with his own zombie. Yet the Ancestor and N!Xau (possessed via Taoist magic with the spirit of Bruce Lee) save the day. At the end, while they are waiting to be fetched by a helicopter, The Wise One gives the Ancestor’s clothes to N!Xau, and the Chinese vampire goes home dressed as a traditional Bushman. A degree of intermeshing of cultures occurs as a result of their encounter. As they fly off, we see N!Xau, dressed in the Ancestor’s robes, leading a tribe of hopping Bushmen towards the vampire model they have made.

Reviewed by Vanessa Dodd, Graduate Programme in Cultural and Media Studies, University of Natal, Durban. 11 May 2001.