Jamie Uys conceived the premise of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" (1980) while making the 1974 documentary film" Animals Are Beautiful People". The documentary was filmed partially on the Kalahari Desert, where Uys first encountered the San people and "fell in love with them."
"After I made ['Animals Are Beautiful People'], I went back to the Kalahari very often to visit the Bushmen. The more I visited, the more I discovered this thing about them: they don't have a sense of property. They don't know about ownership. If I put my jacket down, one of them would put it on. They share everything. Where they are, there is nothing you can own. It seems so different from the rest of us, who will kill one another over a diamond, because of its scarcity value."
Uys chose a Coca-Cola bottle as the object that the San people would discover and covet in the film because he felt that the bottle was representative of "our plastic society," and because it "is a beautiful thing, if you've never seen glass before."
After writing the script, Uys reportedly spent three months traversing the Kalahari Desert with an interpreter, searching for a San person to play the role of Xi in the film. Visiting areas of the desert inhabited by the San, Uys took photographs of individuals he felt he might cast, and then "marked the longitude and latitude, so we could find them again."
Uys decided to cast Namibian San farmer Nǃxau as Xi, and later recalled that "At first [Nǃxau] didn't understand, because they have no word for work. Then the interpreter asked, 'Would you like to come with us for some days?'" N!xua agreed and flew with Uys by airplane to Windhoek, Namibia, which served as a base for the film's production. Uys stated that "The airplane didn't impress him at all. He thinks we are magicians, so he believes we can do anything. Nothing impressed him." In his hotel room, N!xau agreed to use the toilet, but slept on the floor rather than on the provided bed.
According to Uys, N!xau would be flown back to his home in the Kalahari Desert every three or four weeks to prevent him from suffering from culture shock. During his time in urban areas, N!xua learned to smoke and acquired an affinity for liquor and sake. Uys said that he paid N!xua $300 for his first 10 days of work, but that the money was reportedly blown away by wind. N!xua was then compensated with 12 head of cattle.
