Jacobus Johannes Uys ( ; 30 May 1921 – 29 January 1996), better known as Jamie Uys, was a South African film director, best known for directing the 1980 comedy film The Gods Must Be Crazy and its 1989 sequel The Gods Must Be Crazy II. Uys also directed the 1974 documentary film Animals Are Beautiful People.
Early life
Before his foray into film, Uys was a mathematics teacher in his hometown of Boksburg.
He then married Hettie, a fellow mathematics teacher, and the couple started farming and opening trading posts along the Palala River.
He was later appointed local magistrate and Justice of the Peace. In an interview, he stated, "Every Tuesday I crossed the wildest country and swam through rivers to get to the police post where I could hold court".
Career
During his career he directed 24 films and owned a company with South African film producer Tommie Meyer.
He made his debut as a film director in 1951 with the Afrikaans-language film Daar doer in die bosveld.
Animals Are Beautiful People is about the plant and animal life in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, especially desert creatures. A highlight of the film includes a scene with elephants, warthogs, baboons, ostriches and other animals staggering around after eating rotten, fermented marula fruit. Uys claimed to have made the animals intoxicated on fermented marula fruits, however this later proved to be a lie, with the film crew having soaked the fruits in alcohol, prior to the scene being filmed.
His most financially successful and best-known film is The Gods Must Be Crazy, a comedy first released in 1980.
The film features a San hunter/gatherer named N!xau in the lead role. The story starts with a Coca-Cola bottle that was thrown out of an airplane, fell into the Kalahari Desert and was found by a San tribe. As this was the only "modern" object in their world, it led to fights before it was decided that the bottle had to be returned to the Gods, who must have sent it in the first place. The character played by N!xau is given the task to return it.
The movie generated extensive word-of-mouth success in Europe, Japan and North America, with the movie rights later being sold to 45 countries.