THIS one is for real, swears Costa Botes, the director of hoax documentary Forgotten Silver, about his latest, Candyman, The Rise and Fall of Mr Jelly Belly. Candyman received a standing ovation at world-renowned documentary festival Hot Docs in Toronto.  Capital Times learns more …

WELLINGTON film maker  Cosa Botes  hopes he won’t always be known as the guy who tricked New Zealand. “Forgotten Silver was well-meant, and after 15 minutes you were meant to realise it was a joke,” he says. “It will probably be what they write on my epitaph, but I don’t want it to be – I keep trying to find another film.” perhaps Botes has just found it in Candyman.
The inspiration for this movie, Real life Willy Wonka David Klein, says if he was any happier, he’d be “in a mental institution or six-feet under”.
Klein’s enthusiasm is hard to understand. He created the most successful candy product in the world – a business that now turns over $120 million – and then he gave it away.
He calls himself “one of the world’s best kept secrets”, and most people refuse to believe that this man, known for going barefoot, invented the gourmet jellybean Jelly Belly.
Thanks to Costa Botes who followed Klein’s story in California, the secret is now out, and the resulting documentary, Candyman, The Rise and Fall of Mr Jelly Belly, is screening at the New Zealand International Film Festival.
Botes worked with Klein’s son Bert during filming for Lord of The Rings.
“All I was told was that Bert’s dad invented Jelly Belly, but he didn’t want to talk about it,” says Botes. “Fast forward to much later, and [Bert] emailed me and said ‘check out my Dad’s blog’,  and straight away I saw a film. [Klein] had done that legendary thing of discovering lightning in a bottle.
It’s hard for us to get it here, but this product came along and completely revolutionised the [confectionery] business. In the States, candy was a low-cost product and it was monotonal, and then along came Jelly Belly, and it was fun – you could mix and match the beans. It was the perfect product for the disco era.”  It was 1976 when Klein had his Jelly Belly epiphany. He wanted to create a sweet that was colourful, looked good, and tasted better. The tiny beans, which originally came in eight flavours (now there are 50), were the answer. Jelly Bellys flavours seemed outrageous (for jelly beans) when they came out – dr pepper, chocolate pudding, and strawberry daiquiri for example.
Klein approached family-operated Herman Goelitz Candy Company, headed by Herman Rowland, to manufacture Jelly Belly.
The candy took off to monumental heights. After being endorsed by US President Ronald Reagan as his fix to quit smoking, sales doubled to $16.4 million that year.
The President  also made sure they were the first jellybeans in outer space, and sent them on the 1983 Challenger shuttle as a surprise for the astronauts.
The beans were so popular stores would literally take home boxes of money each day, just from beans sales, and there was a one-year waiting list to buy them.
“Stores started opening just because they could get hold of Jelly Belly’s. David created a lot of wealth for a lot of people,” says Botes.
One person Klein didn’t create much wealth for was himself. He gave away much of what he had, and even swapped half of his share in the business in exchange for a shop to be run by a down-on-his-luck family member.
Klein’s unconditional generosity was his greatest flaw, and in Botes’ documentary, son Bert comments that the high Klein gets from helping people is “an addiction”.
This generosity made him a target for many.
But none were as cutthroat as manufacturer Herman Rowland, who convinced Klein to hand over all Jelly Belly rights to him.
Klein’s cut was $20,000 a month for 20 years between him and his business partner. The 20 years ended in 2000, bringing Klein’s takings to a measly $2.4million altogether.
But even sadder is that this sweet creator was forgotten.
“If you go to the [Jelly Belly] website and go to company history, they call me a candy distributor or a truck driver or something. They totally took me out of my place in the industry. I stopped telling people I invented Jelly Bellys because nobody believed me,” says Klein. “We originally had a verbal agreement at the beginning, and if [Herman Goelitz Candy Company] had kept to that, I would have received $200million more over the years. Picture all the people I could have helped with that,”
And no doubt he would have helped many.
Botes says Klein just can’t help himself.
“He walks into a room and meets a total stranger, and within 10 minutes he’s telling them how to reorganise their business. I started to realise that what he was saying was very good advice, [but] his weakness is that he’s compelled to give everything away.”
Klein has created a variety of other weird and wonderful lollies over the years, and is now focusing on the latest – Sandy Candy – sand art that you can eat.
“Our daughter Roxanne came up with that idea about 14 years ago. At the time, she said, ‘Dad, I have a chance to register it as an Internet site’, and I told her the Internet was a passing phase – it shows you have to be open to new ideas,” Klein laughs.
Candyman, The Rise and Fall of Mr Jelly Belly, 6pm, Paramount Theatre, July 19.