I was watching The Gods Must ...
Question: I was watching The Gods Must Be Crazy and wonder whether you know the location of "the end of the Earth," where the Bushman throws the Coke bottle at the end of the movie. My only guess is that it's somewhere in Africa.
Answer: South African filmmaker Jamie Uys' surprise hit The Gods Must Be Crazy (1981), a comedy in which a discarded Coca-Cola bottle profoundly disrupts the lives of a community of Bushmen, was shot on location in the Kalahari desert. The Kalahari proper covers most of Botswana and extends into the northern end of South Africa and the eastern portion of Namibia; the larger semidesert sand basin of which it's a part stretches into Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The "End of the World" is where the land meets the water, so the place where Xixo (N!xau), the Bushman who takes it upon himself to dispose of the object that has sown dissension among his peaceful people, must be somewhere along the Atlantic coast of Namibia or South Africa; I think Namibia is the better bet. The engaging N!xau, a Khoisan Bushman (or more formally, San tribesman) born in Nambia's remote Tsumkwe region, was crucial to the film's success; though he wasn't a professional actor, he had charismatic charm that lit up every scene in which he was featured. N!xau (the exclamation point stands in for the clicking sound characteristic of the Ungwatsi language) also appeared in the sequel The Gods Must Be Crazy II (1990) and a couple of other films, but spent most of his life living a traditional San existence. He died in 2003, aged approximately 59.
