Installment #1: The Birth of a No. 1 Movie
Any conversation about the critically-acclaimed movie and television series, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, must begin with the exuberance, heart, and work of Alexander McCall-Smith.
“Sandy” grew up in Southern Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe, and had spent good deal of time in southern Africa. As an adult he would often go back and in fact, he was key in helping to start the University of Botswana’s Law School. On one of his trips years ago, he watched an industrious African woman running after a chicken. He marvelled at her enterprise. And so born was our Mma Ratmoswe.
As a serial novelist, Alexander McCall-Smith has written fourteen No. 1 Ladies’ novels, five other multi-novel series, and several stand-alone novels and articles. His humor delights audiences world-wide.
“If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.” ― Alexander McCall Smith, The Right Attitude to Rain
Check out McCall-Smith’s Facebook page where he writes delightful entries and posts photos in and around his daily life – whereever he is in the world. His facebook page is extraordinary, full of grace and heart, and it is guaranteed to set your day on a happy course.
Beloved readers of the No. 1 Ladies series of novels know that Mma Ramotswe is a “traditionally built” woman from Botswana, Africa. She starts a detective agency, specializing in missing husbands, wayward daughters, con men, and impostors. The books focus on her detective agency as well as her courtship with a local Gaborone mechanic, LJB Matekoni and her friendship with her assistant, Grace Makutsi.
But how did the book make it to the screen?
Enter Cinechicks’ Amy J. Moore 
While in her capacity as CEO of New Africa Media Films, the film division of black empowerment conglomerate, New Africa Media, Ltd, Moore found the book and optioned it, before it was widely published (and several years before it would appear and be published in the United States.) She remembered reading it one crisp winter afternoon in August of 2000 at her home in Johannesburg, South Africa. She could not pull herself away from this small novel that would one day garner legions of fans. She read it in a single afternoon never pausing to stand up or to check what was in the refrigerator (as we often do when we’re reading a less engaging book).
As the sun began to sink, causing the winter air to grow bitterly chilly and the causing the African dogs to start their nightly barking, she read the lines on page 234 where JLB Matekoni sums up his feelings for Mma Ramotswe. Moore decided on the spot to make a movie.
“He looked at her in the darkness, at this woman who was everything to him — mother, Africa, wisdom, understanding, good things to eat, pumpkins, chicken, the smell of sweet cattle breath, the white sky across the endless, endless bush, and the giraffe that cried, giving its tears for the women to daub on their baskets; O Botswana, my country, my place.”
– Alexander McCall-Smith, No. 1 Ladies, the infamous page 234
Moore remembers the moment vividly. She had already had a long-standing love affair with Botswana. But this book, and the decision to make a movie on the spot, would begin a nine-year journey for her — from the time that she optioned the book, took it to Anthony Minghella and secured his commitment, initiated the shooting in Botswana against the odds, through the machinations of production, the death of her partners Minghella and Sydney Pollack to the series’ eventual release on HBO in March, 2009. The books made her believe, “that leading a good life is possible; that being a good person is possible; that being a good neighbor is possible; that truth can exist alongside beauty.” Moore said, “I thought, this African book can teach the Western world a lot.”
Despite the fact that McCall-Smith often claims that Amy got Anthony Minghella a copy of the book by throwing it over his fence and into his garden, she had met Minghella five months earlier while living in London. Minghella and Moore were introduced by their mutual friend, director/actress Joan Chen. Joan had been staying with Moore while she worked on the music for her film, Autumn in New York, with composer Gabriel Yared. Amy and Joan had been together at Abby Road Studios while the music was being recorded for the film. Afterwards, they had run into Minghella on a street corner in Hampstead near to his house. Little did they know that their futures would converge in a partnership. He invited Amy and Joan back to his house for some Jasmine tea. At the time, Moore was about to embark for her job as CEO of NAM Films, relocating to South Africa. In his kitchen, Minghella promised to shoot something in Africa someday for her.
She believed Minghella to be true to his word. She believed him unequivocally, and often says that’s why the movie was made. A film-maker must believe in her projects without a shadow of a doubt. She had absolutely no doubt that he would shoot something and at the time quipped, “how’s Tuesday? What are you doing on Tuesday?” Because of her belief, she sent the Oscar-winning director, Anthony Minghella, the then-unknown novel, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novel with a simple note, “this is what I want you to shoot in Africa. This is what I want you to do. Come join us.”
She sealed the deal in whatever way she could think of. She went to Romania to be on set of his movie, Cold Mountain. She asked Minghella to do an interview for Screen Africa that would be copied on the back of McCall-Smith’s book jackets and in the press. She wanted the world to know that Minghella was committed to Africa.
It would be several years before Anthony’s schedule would free up, but Amy was dogged that he direct No. 1. Having hitch-hiked around Botswana after college and having been a frequent visitor to the dusty African country, she was determined to make this movie for the people of Botswana, the Batswana. ”There is no better spirit, than the spirit of Botswana,” she says.
She took Minghella on his first trip to southern Africa – and then on his second and his third. Together, they navigated the research and content for the adaptation of No. 1 Ladies from book to screen. Minghella would write in the mornings while Moore collected a show-and-tell for him over lunch. In the afternoons, she would introduce him to a colorful array of people, many of those characters that one finds in the book. At the time Minghella said to a colleague, “I don’t know how she does it. I don’t know how she finds these people.” Of course, it was the genius of the screenwriting team of Anthony Minghella and Richard Curtis that created many wonderful screen moments.
As Moore showed off her beloved Botswana to Minghella, she was beginning unwittingly to set up her campaign – something wholly unproven and daring – to shoot the movie in its country of origin, The Republic of Botswana. That’s the next place her doggedness would take them as she became the catalyst for setting up the movie, and for having it shot in Botswana.
But first, stay tune for our next installment: ”Finding Mma Ramotswe …”
