Welcome to Benoniwood!
30 September 2005
Crazy Monkey began as an attempt by four stunt-happy friends from Benoni, east of Johannesburg, to get onto music channel MTV. Now Crazy Monkey The Movie: Straight Outta Benoni is on at cinemas across South Africa.
The video inserts that the four friends shot originally aired as station idents between videos on MTV, showing the "Benoni massive" engaged in stunts such as wheeling a "fast-moving" shopping trolley through an empty car park and running with scissors.
Their counter-cultural message has won adherents across the globe. MTV has celebrated Crazy Monkey weekends in the UK, Canada and Scandinavia. A Canadian wrestler has even changed his stage name to Trevor Clarence.
Clarence, one of Crazy Monkey's creators, is a now respected advertising director for terraplane films, and was nominated for two Loerie awards in 2004. South Africans will probably be most familiar with his Emergency advert for Cell C.
His mother says this is one funny movie.
He took time out from advertising to direct Straight Outta Benoni with friends Brendan Jack, Brett Goldin and Gavin Williams. All filming was on location in "Benoniwood" - once the home of actress Charlize Theron - a town Clarence calls "the Los Angeles of the East Rand".
The movie tells the story of Brendan and Gavin, two guys from Benoni who are comfortable with fame and adulation - although they've yet to achieve either.
They lose their day-old jobs in the advertising industry the day before their 10-year high school reunion, and suddenly the pressure is on ...
All they have to do is get their band signed to a label, get cast in an American movie, avoid being arrested by a deluded cop, entertain a rowdy kids party, produce world-class marketing ideas, outsmart their nemesis, woo a starlet, get their picture in the newspaper and beat all the odds stacked against them ...
They've got twenty-four hours to achieve overnight success, and nothing can stop them ... except maybe themselves.
Besides the original Crazy Monkey posse, the film also draws on the acting talents of Colin Moss, Danny K, Tanit Phoenix - and Springbok rugby player Schalk Burger Jnr.
The movie was produced by Ronnie Apteker and Tendeka Matatu and executive produced by Joel Phiri and Jeremy Nathan of IMG Films.
Apteker founded the company Internet Solutions in 1994. In 2002 he produced the Hollywood film "Purpose", about an IT billionaire defending his company from a hostile takeover, and is the producer of a number of South African films currently in production.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
