FILM NEWS

Dancing with wolves

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 10:48

Leon van Nierop

Leon van Nierop’s Wolwedans in die Skemer is an epic journey of adaptation from a hugely successful radio play in 1979 to a book in 1983, a TV series in 1985 and now a film that will be adapted into a book again after the film is complete.

The Wolwedans in die Skemer (Wolves Dance in the Twighlight) journey began when Springbok Radio called up Leon van Nierop decades ago and asked him to write a radio show.

Says Van Nierop: “They gave me free rein and I decided that a horror / noir had not been done on South African radio before. Essentially Wolwedans in die Skemer is a ‘whodunnit’ and is about the sins of the father that are visited on the children. The story takes place in a hotel and the protagonist, Jan, marries the owner of the hotel.

“However, Jan marries her for the wrong reasons. They have two daughters and it is an extremely unhappy household. The background story is about a receptionist who comes to the hotel to apply for the position but sees a wolf in the road and has an accident on the way. She loses her memory but slowly starts to remember that she came to the hotel for a reason and the mystery unravels.”

According to Van Nierop, everyone who read the screenplay did so in one sitting. “When I gave it to Danie Bester and Henk Pretorius of The Film Factory, they immediately came on board. I remember Danie saying it was the darkest thing he had ever read.”

The film is directed by Jozua Malherbe who was assistant director on the acclaimed Roepman. Van Nierop believes he will do a fantastic job. “We all sat for many hours going over the script and making changes. I also recall being asked if Wolwedans had been influenced by the cult horror classic, The Shining, but I wrote it before that film came out. One of my influences was Daphne Du Maurier’s novel Rebecca – a horror story that takes place in a house.”

Terror junkies

Van Nierop’s aim was to create a place of terror. “People love to be terrified in films and radio plays. We had a staggering listenership with the radio play, starting with 150 000 listeners and going up to one million very quickly. Kids would run home from school to listen to the next episode.
“There would be three plot points in each episode to maintain the pace and the mystery. All in all I wrote 700 episodes and that was all done on my old typewriter which will be featured in the film, a kind of homage to the story and journey. The film is the adaptation of the first episodes from 1979 to 1981.”
He believes that the success of Wolwedans can be ascribed to the strong story and well defined characters. “When I wrote the radio show I went to the lowveld to record all the sounds, thunderstorms, crickets, people walking in the forest and so on and this gave the show a really authentic atmosphere. The radio series also combined horror, comedy and murder and people just loved that.”

Adaptation

The film script was written over a period of one month in December 2010. “It came about in the strangest way,” notes Van Nierop. “I was staying at a luxury hotel and decided to take a night stroll. I saw a sign saying: ‘Private do not enter’. As soon as I see something like that I just have to do the opposite. I entered the garden and in front of me was a wolf, with those shining eyes. It was tame and as the owners called it, it walked away. But that was a sign for me to write the screenplay.”

One of Van Nierop’s biggest challenges was to make sure that all the secrets in the story were kept intact until the big reveal at the end.

“The radio play was written in 1979 when technology like mobile phones, Google and Facebook did not exist. These days if someone needs to find out something they use technology,” he comments.

Casa do Sol in Mpumalanga is the main location for the six-week shoot. The film will be completed by the end of the year, for release in 2012.

Wolwedans the book will be released next year and Van Nierop says he will start to write the book soon.

“It has been a long but rewarding journey from adaptation to adaptation. The thing about adapting a work for a different medium is that it is a reinvention and that is what makes it so worthwhile. I have found it difficult to release my identification with the radio show characters and see the new actors in the film. However, the cast is fantastic,” concludes Van Nierop.

SCREENAFRICA Print Magazine – November 2011 (view here)

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