Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 14, 1994 TAG: 9401140145
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MIKE MAYO CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
For Charles Maina, the engaging newcomer in Walt Disney's "The Air Up There," the answer is an emphatic yes. On screen he plays an innocent African tribesman. In person, he's a soft-spoken and tall (6 foot, 7 inches), with strong facial features, huge hands and definite ideas about what he's doing with his life.
Washington, D.C., was the second stop on his first publicity tour. He didn't have automatic answers to familiar questions. Instead, he seemed to be simply himself - a young man who's making the most of his opportunities, but is still worried about his upcoming final exams and knows that his best chances for a prosperous future lie in college, not Hollywood.
"Acting is a sideline," he said, "I've got to get an education first." He'd like to go to college in this country and might play basketball if he could find the right scholarship. But he's really more interested in learning "something to do with computers that would be applicable back home." Like many Kenyans, he has taken a year off after graduation to work and get ready for his comprehensive exams.
In the film, which opened last week in Roanoke, he's Saleh, a prince of the fictional Winabi tribe, who's discovered by an assistant college basketball coach played by Kevin Bacon. It's a formula sports picture, the kind that has been so successful for the Disney studio in recent years. Despite a number of flaws, this one is likely to be just as popular mostly because of Maina. On screen, he's a charming, likeable character. It's an artless, seemingly natural performance - just what you might expect from a young man with no real training.
His full name is Charles Gitonga Maina Ngatia (pronounced Git-TONG-a My-EE-nah En-GAHT-ia). He comes from a small town that's a four-hour drive from Nairobi, Kenya. His father is a telecommunications worker; his mother is a nurse at a government hospital. Two years ago, when the filmmakers began searching for the right person to play this basketball "phenom," Maina was a 19-year-old high school student.
A friend told him about auditions for tall guys who could play basketball, no acting experience necessary. (The closest thing to that he had was some drum playing.) So he went in and played around with a ball in front of the camera. The casting director asked him to come back a week later, and then again.
Finally, the studio people had him read some lines of dialogue. He admitted that he didn't do well with that, and when he'd finished, they asked if he was comfortable with what he'd done. He said no, but the camera captured something.
Charles Maina was on his way to the movies.
Both the filmmaking process and competitive basketball were new to him. Almost all of the film was made on location in rural Kenya and South Africa with a semi-nomadic tribe, the Samburu, playing the Winabe. The world of the Samburu was almost as exotic to Maina as it is to American audiences.
"They're the original people," he said. "We were true to the background and to them. Everything they wore was authentic to their culture. "
Until he started work on the film, his experience with basketball had been limited to watching cassettes of the NBA on "the telly" and participating in the Nairobi slam dunk competition. Bob McAdoo, NBA All-star and basketball consultant for the film, showed him much more. The physical contact of the American game was new to him, and he said that McAdoo taught him "eye-rim concentration, visualization of shots under pressure. It's just you and the rim and nothing else."
But if the basketball and culture shock were easy to handle, other parts of the business of moviemaking were more difficult.
Maina really didn't understand how features are put together from short bits of film, and so he found it hard to do repeated takes of scenes where he thought that he'd done his job. But the hardest part concerned his make-up, particularly his hair.
To play a Winabi prince, he covered his hair with a mixture of ochre clay and baby oil that formed a thick red shell. It's authentic, but "You feel itchy and you can't scratch. In those three months [of filming] I washed my hair about twice."
But, he admitted, that was better than the real thing: "The Samburu use cow fat."
by CNB