Jann Turner

Q & A: JANN TURNER, WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER

Where did the idea for Paradise Stop come from?

While we were on the road making White Wedding we decided we'd really like to do a heist movie. We were kicking some ideas around and started thinking about truck heists, which one of us had recently read something about somewhere. Then we started to talk about characters for Raps and Kenny and the story flowed from there. Our movies tend to come from a whole lot of ideas and thoughts that are floating around in our heads and in our worlds.

The issues of corruption, people acting morally and how one navigates the tricky waters of right and wrong were also very much in the news and in our conversations so that also came into the film thematically.

How did you choose the location?

The story was set in a small town along the N1 North. Having written it, we needed to find a place that matched our tale, so one day we set off in Raps' car and headed up the freeway looking for truck stops and small towns. Also, the province of Limpopo is fairly close to Joburg and has the kind of wide, dusty, flat landscape and the big sky that we wanted for the film.

We got as far as Louis Trichardt. I wanted to go all the way to the border, but Raps and Kenny flatly refused as we'd really loved Mookgopong (a small town previously known as Naboomspruit), which was near the start of our trip and we decided to go back there and explore it in more detail. Mookgopong really fitted well and also fired our imaginations. We wrote another draft of the script after that first visit.

Describe the writing process. How do the three of you write together?

It's very much the same as we've always done. We meet, drink a lot of coffee, talk about movies and things we've seen or been thinking about and then I start the computer and input the ideas that are flying around. I work the keyboard and Kenny and Raps talk and improvise while I keep my head down and my fingers flying. We do this a couple of afternoons a week for a few months and we focus on a different facet of the script each time. Slowly, but surely a script emerges.

We also get inspired when we go on recces. In the case of Paradise Stop, we got a lot of ideas when we headed up the N1 looking for an ideal location. Some of the dialogue in the film comes from conversations we had in the car — like the Congolese riff about Chicken Licken. That arose from a discussion we had every day around lunchtime, when Kenneth insisted that we had to find a Chicken Licken because he wanted hot wings and chips and nothing else would do. It drove me and Raps nuts.

Other ideas come from the improvisations that Kenny and Raps launch into at the table where we sit in writing conference. It's a very intense, fairly private process. We have to go into the room and stay there until we've achieved our goal for the day and that can be quite exhilarating and also exhausting. We have a lot of arguments, but also a lot of laughs and about 80% of what we come up with gets thrown out!

Paradise Stop is a character-based film with some lively personalities. How do you create and then develop them?

We started with the world of the film, our truck stop on the N1. Next we worked on Kenny and Raps' characters and doing that generated many more characters, like their wives and children and work colleagues. Often the characters develop more once we've met the actor that we're thinking about working with. Sometimes the character develops on its own without us even deciding, like Viras, for example. Rea Rangake is a young actor and director who was doing an internship with us, which means being a dogsbody around the office and doing whatever needs to be done that day, whether it's ordering and collecting lunch or booking screenings or other arrangements. Rea is a very unusual and funny person and one day we realised that the rookie cop we'd created and given a few lines to was actually Rea. We called him Viras, and his role kept on expanding — just like a virus!

Kenny and Raps' roles are very different from what they were in White Wedding. Was this a conscious decision?
Yes, we want to give our audience something different. We want to surprise them.

You've introduced some new talent in Paradise Stop. Can you explain the casting process?

We generally don't do casting calls. We write for people we know or else — as we're writing — we'll realise that the character resembles an actor we know. Then we get in touch with them and meet with them to see if they fit. Sometimes we decide there's someone we really want to work with, like Nick Boraine, for instance. Nick's character was pretty vague until he came in and just gave us a few simple clues to who Jonny was; then it was easy to write the character and of course Nick had to play him.

When we wrote the character of Raffi, who is based on a man who works for me, we knew he had to be played by Mishak Mavuso and we were thrilled when Mishak agreed to do it. We were very lucky that so many huge talents - like Lillian Dube and Lucky Legodi and Keketso and Sonia Sedibe and Vusi Kunene — had all loved White Wedding and wanted to be a part of our new film, so they were willing to make time and agree to low rates to work with us. We also worked with amazing people who haven't had much screen exposure, but are very experienced and talented actors — people like Bonginkosi Thwala who plays Diesel. The only non-actors we worked with were the guys who play our Congolese characters. We found them through our Congolese art director who brought in a whole lot of his countrymen and we chose Alain and John, who have two of my favourite cameos in the film.

Although filled with action and comedy, Paradise Stop is also a wry look at contemporary life in SA. Can you select certain scenes that stand out in this respect and elaborate?

There are quite a few scenes in which we are commenting explicitly on aspects of contemporary life in South Africa. In the first heist, the Malawian truck driver has some dialogue that refers to the experience of being a foreigner in our country.

The scenes with Raffi, the Zimbabwean malaitsha (a transporter who ferries groceries to Zimbabwe) are also built around the struggles of many Zimbabweans who have to feed their families back home while working here in an environment that is not always easy.

The struggle that Kenny's character has over trying to look after his family and do the right thing while being drawn to petty crime is one that many South Africans will relate to. Raps' character's determination to abide by the rules despite the temptations to do otherwise is also something I think we can all understand.

Just about everyone's been in a position where you can slip a bribe to a cop to get rid of a traffic fine. But that's the wrong thing to do even if there seem to be no direct consequences. So Kenny and Raps' characters are grappling with that aspect of contemporary South African life.

Our mayor is drawn from stories we've all read about — small-time (and even big-time) politicians abusing the power of their office. The captain at our police station is just trying to do her job with very few resources — it's a common scenario.

But we don't create characters to fit a message. We are not in the business of messaging; we are in the business of storytelling and entertainment. The story is what's important and the characters must be believable and recognizable to our audience, so that's where all those scenes come from. We've tried to make everything true to what we see, experience and know.

What about the look of the film? As a director what was your vision?

Like the writing, this is something that grew out of many discussions between Raps and Kenny and me, and then our DOP Willie Nel and me. Above all, I believe that form should be determined by content and this film is a dark action comedy. That meant we needed a dusty look, slightly drained of colour in the backgrounds and landscapes. At the same time, we also needed to ensure that the colourful characters — like Kenny and his family — stood out. We kept it simple, capturing the performances and the landscapes and making sure that the film had the right feel for the story.

What do you hope audiences will get from Paradise Stop?

We hope they'll have a great night out at the movies and will leave laughing and maybe even talking about the story and the issues we've raised about corruption and how to do the right thing.