Welcome to the Monkey House - Cable From The Planet of the Apes
Let us bear witness to the destruction of our species with this report from the set of Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
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By Jordan Hoffman April 14, 2011 |
| 3 | It's Bananas In Here |
I’m tucked away in the corner of a science laboratory, in the middle of a grand, multi-million dollar rebuke to elementary school teachers. I’m watching a group of men and women earning, no doubt, a sizable wage, stomping around in tight gray spandex pretending to be apes. Without question each of these performers received a stint in detention for “horseplay” as a child; this must be the sweetest vindication.
I’m on the set of Caesar: Rise of the Apes, a movie whose recent title change to Rise of the Planet of the Apes makes the crew cap I received even more of a collectable (see below), and I’m having a ball for more than watch-grownups-make-monkey-faces reasons. The Apes franchise has long been one of my favorites. One hazy dormroom rant of mine - “forget the grandfather paradox and embrace the teleological elements!” - was an oft-quoted example of just how easily one could adapt the Apes films for just about any interpretation.
Now that the Tim Burton remake has receded (it wasn’t all bad, but it sure as hell wasn’t good) I’m ready to get on board with another version of Man vs. Simian in a survivalist sci-fi setting.
From snooping around the art room and piecing together what the producers told us, ROTPOTA exists outside of the causal loop that comes from the original films (which are riddled with inconsistencies anyway, as co-writer/co-producer Rick Jaffa agrees) but will still present a situation where, at the end, one will realizing “Oh my God, I’m watching Planet of the Apes.”
Me in my collectable hat. Weird Sal looks on.
The film takes place in the not-too-distant future (a wall calendar in a kitchen set said August 2016) and James Franco is a scientist working on a cure for Alzheimer’s. As his father (played by John Lithgow) slowly succumbs to the disease, a test chimp (named Caesar) gains intelligence. Eventually, we’ll see a battle on the Golden Gate Bridge meant to resemble the conclusion of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.
During this time period there is also a launch of a very Icarus-looking spaceship, but it is hard to say right now if this is pertinent to the plot or if it is cinema’s most design-heavy Easter egg.
While on set I was able to yap with James Franco and performance capture stars Andy Serkis and Terry Notary. I also got a chance to soak up time in the art room and a handful of different sets and locations. Press on to take the tour – no bananas required!
| 2 | Ape City, USA |
Within one of the bigger stages of the aptly named Mammoth Studios in Vancouver, British Columbia is The Ape Room.
With a giant craggy tree in the center and surrounded with faded murals of natural splendor, The Ape Room looks exactly like the type of place well-meaning scientists put test animals. There’s an anteroom with metal cages that, for some reason, we are allowed to walk on top of.
Have you seen the average size of an online movie journalist? The only reason I go up there is because I figure that when it inevitably collapses 20th Century Fox has some deep pockets for a personal injury suit.
If you look at the rock hills around the edges of the room, it sort of resembles “Ape City” from the original 1968 Planet of the Apes. (See above pic.) Despite chimpanzee’s mammalian nature, it is just one of many eggs in the production design meant to keep fans happy.
Most of the Apes’ have names that are references to the earlier friends. One is called Bright Eyes (Dr. Zira’s nickname for Charlton Heston), the largest Gorilla is Maurice (the legendary Dr. Zaius was played by Maurice Evans) the smallest chimp (played by a dwarf actress) is named Cornelia, a nod to Roddy McDowall’s Cornelius. And, of course, the titular Caesar is a reference to this guy you may have seen on a T-Shirt.
Simians of the world, unite!
Caesar will appear on screen as a collaboration between the performance capture of Andy Serkis and the computer dorks at WETA. Serkis, who played a 25 foot baboon in Peter Jackson’s King Kong, says playing “a chimpanzee who is reared by human beings and has also inherited genetic intelligence” is vastly different. His research included watching tons of videos and scrutinizing the nuances of chimps.
He and fellow performance capture artist Terry Notary are quick to point out the key word in their job description is performance. “You can put dots on an ape and let him run wild in a studio and you’d get some great motion – but this is about performance. It’s about making acting choices about where your character is at any step of the journey. Caesar is a beautifully written character with a big arc, and I get to play him from the age of 3 up until this very innocent chimp reared by human beings becomes a Che Guevara character leading a revolution.”
Later in the day, we enter a rehearsal “volume” where the be-spandexed ones (with different colored tape markers for gorillas, orangutans and chimps) practice moves that are instantly rendered into sixth-generation gaming graphics on local monitors. They had these nifty looking extendo-arms attached, to help give them a more simian reach. Awesome.
This is all to ready themselves for later, when we watch them all go ape (sorry) at the Gen Sys labs during what appears to be a breakout scene.
| 1 | James Franco: Damned Dirty Dreamboat |
How dreamy is James Franco? When most actors usually retreat to their trailers between takes to snort crystal meth off the bosom of high priced Scientologist call girls, Franco goes a different route. He lays down in the grass and reads Act One, the autobiography of famed Broadway musical director Moss Hart. Say it with me ladies, ahhhhhhhhhh.
We're in the parking lot of the British Columbia Institiute of Technology Aerospace Campus, a building that looks just as futuristic as it sounds This is doubling as the offices of Gen Sys, where Franco works as a scientist. (An earlier production design photo showed he kept some secret "smart medicine" formula in his fridge next to the A1 Sauce.)
We watch him, co-star Freida Pinto and Andy Serkis drive in, say some doomed things, and drive away. It needs to be shot multiple times, once with Serkis and once without (so the WETA-created ape can be added) and the moving camera is hooked up to a fancy computer to ensure it isn't a millimeter off. One of the production assistants fly in a mocked-up ape head periodically so the camera can adjust.
This extra mile for the sake of special effects was actually a big draw for the well-loved polymath that is James Franco. He tells us, "I have watched every single minute of the extra features on all the Lord of the Rings and King Kong DVDs. Just from watching that I kind of had an understanding of how it worked, and I though it would be a new and interesting acting experience."
The subject matter didn't hurt, either. "I loved the movie Koko: A Talking Gorilla directed by Barbet Schroeder. They actually shot in my hometown at Palo Alto, and I remember something of the way that that woman dealt with her gorilla kind of came back to me, so I started dealing with [Andy Serkis and Caesar] that way."
After the parking lot sequence, we go inside of Gen Sys's lobby. Alas, the company wasn't shooting in the hangar full of BCIT's odd looking small planes, but the large and buoyantly lit lobby. We watch Franco and his thin, gray sports jacket walk in and out of an elevator multiple times, looking very determined and carrying a briefcase. After a while one of my colleagues points out that the coffee bar is called Nova's, another easter egg to the original picture.
Who would think that from within such a well-designed structure benign scientists would accidentaly kick-off the downfall of their own race?
Rise of the Planet of the Apes will be in theaters August 5, 2011.
Here's the trailer one more time.
