Film
936: District 9
Trivia: As
part of the marketing campaign in North America and the United Kingdom, posters
were put up in major cities on bus stops, the sides of buildings, etc.
designating areas that were restricted for humans only, with a number to call
(866.666.6001 in the US, 0207 148 7468 in the UK) in order to report
non-humans. The title of the film was generally not included, although the URL
address for the film's official website was.
The film
was inspired by director Neill Blomkamp's
childhood in South Africa during apartheid.
Star Sharlto Copley had not acted before and had no intention
of pursuing an acting career. He stumbled into the leading role as Neill Blomkamp placed him on-camera during the short film.
The
mutilated animal carcasses in the background of many scenes were real and with
only a few exceptions, were already in the real slums and shacks used for the
filming.
All the
shacks in District 9 were actual shacks that exists in a section of
Johannesburg which were to be evacuated and the residents moved to better
government housing, paralleling the events in the film. Also paralleling, the
residents had not actually been moved out before filming began. The only shack
that was created solely for filming was Christopher Johnson's shack.
Around
six different endings were created during filming.
Sharlto Copley ad-libbed all his lines during the
"documentary" sequences.
In South
Africa, the last name "van der Merwe" really is a fairly common
surname (it, like many Afrikaans names, comes from the Dutch), but it would
also be recognizable to most South Africans as the common name in a whole genre
of jokes about stupid, bumbling, oblivious, or incompetent Afrikaaners. The
fact that the Wikus van der Merwe character is (at least at the beginning of
the film) an ineffectual, catastrophically clueless bureaucrat is immediately
communicated by the screenwriters' decision to give him that particular name.
The
language used by the aliens (clicking sounds) was created by rubbing a pumpkin.
The
first documentary-style film to be nominated for Best Picture.


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