Movie Stars

In Kenya most commercial video libraries survive on bootleg tapes. The proprietor gets a copy of the latest release and tapes it for his own video library which he then hires out. Some video libraries are very efficient having good copies a day or two after the movie is released in the US. Of course you can always find a same day release but the copy will be so dodgy you might as well watch a bunch of penguins break dancing.

One consequence of this system is that there is always some space left on the video tape after the movie has ended. Most video libraries fill this space with cartoons, sitcoms, or perhaps another movie (well it’s usually half a movie because the tape final runs out). In fact part of the excitement in borrowing a film is that you never know what you’re going to get at the end of the tape.

A few weeks after finally finishing high school a group of us borrowed a copy of that classic movie, Juice. When the movie finished we settled back to watch whatever else was on the tape. What happened next was scary. The face of our school headmaster filled the screen. We could not believe our eyes and ears. It was like a nightmare. We had just spent many years trying to escape the clutches of the man and there he was looking straight at us.That voice which had haunted us during our time in school was back in our own home.

He was introducing a school play, Treasure Island, which we had performed almost 3 years previously. Suddenly there we were in fake bandanas swinging across the stage, our massive sword fights, giving our version of a horde of drunken pirates. What are the odds eh? That we would have picked a specific copy of a specific film from a specific video library that would have our acting in it? How the hell did a copy of a very old school play end up being the filler on a video library tape anyway? Did all the copies of Juice in Nairobi have us at the end? We sat there in shock for a few minutes not quite believing what we were seeing. Then started laughing, movie stars already and not yet 18!