Jamie Uys conceived the premise of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" 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." Uys chose a Coca-Cola bottle as the object that the San people would discover and covet in "The Gods Must Be Crazy" 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."