Part 51
We all seem to walk along a slippery path in life. Some slide off it more often than others. Some seemingly barely slip at all but move more slowly and rarely reach the other end of the path. Most of us have moments when a slip seems to be inevitable; but, somehow, we cling onto the path and carry on.
A case in point was when I returned to South Africa after spending some years in the television industry in Britain. I spent about a year and half with Alpha Films, one of the two film companies in Johannesburg in the early 1960s, then had the sad experience of being fired for the first time in my life, despite being one of the top scriptwriters employed by them. I found out later that the only reason for my being let go was that the owner of the company had a nephew, who incidentally had been at school with me, who decided he wanted to become a film scriptwriter. As the most recent person to join the department, I was sacrificed to make way for the nephew, who I believe lasted only about six months.
So, I went farming! That lasted a few months as both the owner of the land and I had no idea about farming other than to imagine that if one planted a crop and watered it, it would emerge in all its glory and the local market would pay us well for the crop. We had chosen the quick-growing and large species of onion, Texas Giants, that we hoped to get to market before the other farmers. Eventually, not a single onion emerged despite our enthusiasm. My friend Derek Lucas, the owner, then decided to turn the place into a pleasure resort, as the Crocodile River ran through the property; fortunately, without any crocs, as it was high up near its source on the Highveld.
Derek had a well-paid job in Johannesburg and left me to do much of the manual labor which I actually enjoyed. I built a couple of dams across the river to create some large pools with the help of two Africans who had lived on the farm all their lives. It eventually became apparent that Derek could no longer afford to keep me, supplying food and accommodation in exchange for a share in the profits which seemed to be further away than ever.
I voluntarily went into the city and was lucky to find a job as a junior copywriter with Grant Advertising, an American agency that had created the second-largest advertising agency in South Africa. I had no background in copywriting but had a good teacher in the shape of Trevor Callus, an Englishman who had grown up in the slums in the East End of London. He was a truly creative and skilled copywriter. I learned a great deal from him. He told me a story about his childhood that I shall never forget. Whether it was true or just a figment of his fertile imagination, I’ll never know.
Trevor said that his old man would give him pocket money every week and insist that Trevor put it in a place that he said would keep the money safe. So, the young boy trustingly put a few coins in a slot every week and was happy to think how his money would accumulate until he could buy something worthwhile with it.
Somehow his Dad managed to persuade him to put money away for a couple of years until, one day in mid-winter, a friend of his father paid a visit. Trevor’s father was out but the friend decided to wait. It was very cold, so the friend decided to put a few bob (about twelve pence each) into the gas meter and light the gas fire. Trevor watched horrified as the man put his money into the slot that Trevor had been told was the safe place for his pocket money. He then realized that his Dad had conned him into paying for the gas. He never saw a penny of his pocket money and left home at sixteen to make his own way in the world.
I quickly became frustrated with copywriting. There are those writers who seem to be ideally suited to this very structured and minimalist form of communication. I certainly wasn’t, so I started looking around for a way to get back onto the movie industry.
Once again, I was in luck. Friends in Durban on the East Coast told me that Lintas, which was originally the ad agency exclusively created for advertising Lever Brothers products, was looking for someone with experience in both copywriting and film commercials. I fitted the bill and got the job. In later years, Lintas opened up its client’s to non-Lever Brothers products.
I had recently acquired a wonderful car. It was a Rover Saloon 75. It was about fifteen years old but had been owned by a mechanic who kept it in pristine condition. I loaded up my possessions, as well as my current girlfriend Lilly and set off for the 400-mile trip to Durban.
I had been given the rather important-sounding title of Film Production Executive but, in reality, it meant that my time was divided between copywriting and supervising the production of 16mm educational films. These films were taken into remote country areas, where a projector was set up and the local African community was shown a film, mostly for the first time in their lives.
These films sometimes had unexpected consequences. The classic example of this was the film which demonstrated that washing one’s small child with Lifebuoy soap (a Lever Brothers product) had the beneficial effect of protecting the child from bacteria and germs. Despite the extensive showing of the film, the sales of Lifebuoy soap dropped alarmingly in the rural areas.
An extensive investigation followed, and they discovered that when a black child was soaped and dipped into water, as shown in the film, it appeared that they came out of the water looking a couple of shades darker than before! This was purely an effect created on film. In the 1960s in particular, there was a huge desire for the African public to look lighter, not darker. Skin lighteners were very fashionable, so that when it appeared that a child washed in Lifebuoy soap became darker, the rural mothers boycotted Lifebuoy soap.
This happened shortly before I joined Lintas and I was tasked with making sure that similar misinterpretations did not occur again. I found it very interesting, as I had long held that misunderstandings between white and black people were largely based on the inability of whites to understand or even care what it was that rural and generally uneducated people did not know, and then berated them for being stupid. Not having the data is no measure of stupidity but this laid the foundation for so many unwarranted racial incidents.
The beauty of having a functioning ExoBrain is that so many of the people around the world will have easy and uncomplicated access to well-researched facts on almost any subject under the sun. ExoBrain is self-educating in that any data uncovered and corroborated will be available to every other ExoBrain on Earth. This will be an incredible boon for the rural people of Africa. ExoBrain will be both affordable and informative for people who still have little access to even basic data with which they can assimilate the norms and cultures of Western society without losing their own cultural identity.
Shortly after I joined Lintas, another person was appointed who was given the same title as myself. I quickly discovered that, in fact, he knew very little about the process of filmmaking. Nevertheless, he was an amusing and interesting fellow and we quickly became quite friendly. In my next blog, I will tell the story of the unexpected consequences of that friendship.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.