2) Sharlto Copley – District 9
Just after graduating in Speech and Drama from Trinity College of London, Sharlto Copley returned to his native South Africa and set up his own television production company – at age 19. Within a few years, he had become responsible for co-founding and managing Channel 69 Studios, which in 1998 became SA’s first network company licensed to create, produce and broadcast its own material. Now aged 22, and with a few more responsibilities (!!!) Copley needed a greater range of employees – namely some who could handle computer graphics design. One of the applicants here was a 16-year-old boy named Neill Blomkamp, who, despite his youth, showed a particular creative flair that struck Copley. Blomkamp was welcomed into Channel 69 Studios, and two years later – aged just 24 – Copley became South Africa’s youngest ever broadcasting executive. Although both were pursuing their own career directions with distinct promise, Blomkamp and Copley remained firm friends.
In 2007, Blomkamp won a UK Film Script-Writing competition and was finally given the opportunity to begin work on a project he had been considering for a while. This was a short film entitled Alive in Joburg, which ran for a mere 6 minutes and used the concept of extra-terrestrials (on earth) as a subtext for the theme of apartheid that was still so prevalent in South Africa at the time by presenting the material in a ‘documentary and interview’ form. Given that Copley was already a co-producer on the project, Blomkamp asked him if he wouldn’t mind also standing in as the main protagonist in front of the camera, just for the time being….
But despite the lack of available resources, and its limited running time (I’ve owned kettles that take longer to boil than that), Alive in Joburg had three crucial factors that were always destined to play in its favour. The first was the Blomkamp himself had become a very smart director. The second was that Joburg was noticed by none other than Peter Jackson, which is essentially to say that it was sprinkled with Tinkerbell’s fairy dust (although his original plan for it was to have Blomkamp direct a live action version of the video game Halo – fortunately some kind soul performed a swift intervention there). And the third was Copley himself.
Now, considering Copley’s impressive portfolio of management, co-production and over-seas company involvement (bear in mind how old he was when he set up that television company – most people at 19 are still deciding which posters to stick up on their college room walls), we can hardly call his move away from acting an error. Except for we can, and we’re going to.
Copley had always been interested in acting, and had been appearing in his own short films since the age of 12. But given that he had a particularly creative eye when it came to direction and production, he had mainly dropped acting in favour of delving further into these strengths. Fortunately, Alive in Joburg ripped him right back out again
Blomkamp and Copley were commissioned by Jackson to turn Alive in Joburg into a feature length film – this time under the title District 9 – complete with appropriate budget and marketing. They had a theme, they had a plotline, they had sets, locations and extras – they even had some of the shots. The one thing they were missing was an actor. As they auditioned hopeful after hopeful to play Wikus van de Merwe, Blomkamp and Copley could find noone who could truly convey the subtle mixture of disgusting and pitiful that was required to truly convey the character and his experience. The only people who knew how to do this were Blomkamp and Copley themselves. And Blomkamp was directing – he couldn’t play Wikus!
But Copley could. In fact, by this time Copley knew the character so well that the one other thing that they didn’t really have was now no longer needed. This was a script.
