Jonathan Rinzler - The Making of Planet of the Apes

Contents

Between takes, the star of Planet of the Apes, Charlton Heston, reads industry paper Variety with a gorilla extra on location at the Fox Ranch, where Apetown was constructed, summer 1967.

Taylor (Heston) observes one of the planets primitive humans climbing the bars of the exercise yard built on the grounds of Fox Ranch.

To the people of the United States of America,

who in the late nineteenth century offered sanctuary to my

paternal great-grandparents and, a half century later, to my

maternal grandparents, all of whom were fleeing the racist

and oppressive policies of broken nations.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she

With silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

E MMA L AZARUS 1883

A concept illustration by Don Peters of the spaceship after landing on what its occupants believe to be alien ground, based on an early Rod Serling script for Planet of the Apes, circa 1964.

Courtesy of the Arthur P. Jacobs Collection, Coll. 023, Department of Archives and Special Collections, William H. Hannon Library, Loyola Marymount University.

Director Franklin Schaffner explains what he wants gorilla actors to do while posing with the corpses of humans they have hunted down, on location at Fox Ranch.

Emma Lazarus wrote The New Colossus to raise funds through an auction of art and literary works for the construction of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. In 1903, after her death, the poem was engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the pedestals lower level.

I have often thought I won the parent lottery. My parents, Charlton and Lydiaboth of them greatest-generation midwesternerstook my sister, Holly, and me to visit movie sets, monuments, and museums all over the world, from London to Cairo, Rome to Chilpancingo, Paris to Machu Picchu, and yet still took time to read us bedtime stories like Treasure Island and Alice in Wonderland.

I also had the good fortune to work with my father both in front of and behind the camera. On the first occasion, I preceded him onscreen in a leaky basket as the Infant Moses in The Ten Commandments, though I never quite forgave him for taking first billing.

As an adult, I had the pleasure of directing him in several films (perhaps not surprisingly, Treasure Island was the first). I found out, to my delight, that he was as easy to get along with as an actor as he was as a father. But my fondest memory of good times with my dad on a movie set was in the summer of 1967, the Summer of the Apes.

* * *

The Bell Jet Ranger set down at dawn on the tarmac at the fire station across from our Coldwater Canyon home, with the iconic whine and whump-whump-whump of the blades churning overhead. Crouching, my father and I jogged out to the machine through the intoxicating smell of avgas, climbed aboard, and strapped in.

The pilot lifted off and nosed down the canyon, rising giddily over the bony spine of the Santa Monica Mountains. Twenty minutes later, we plummeted into Malibu Canyon, landed beside a small, strange village on a lake, and stepped into an alien world lost to time, thousands of years in the future.

It was, of course, the Fox Ranch set for Apetown, as my dad and production called it, in his latest film, Planet of the Apes. I was about thirteen, and watching movies being made was still my favorite pastime. Although I grew up on movie sets, neither I, nor anyone else for that matter, had seen anything like the exterior sets for Planet of the Apes.

First there was the twisted, Gaudi-like architecture, with weird arches, spiraling staircases, and giddy walkways on which an ape would be quite happy (but a human a bit dizzy). A huge, domed fight-cage, where my fathers character, Taylor, would defeat another human in hand-to-hand combat with some nifty karate moves, loomed in the distance.

Then there were the apes! Gorillas on horseback armed with rifles, polite chimpanzees, and snooty orangutans walking upright, and all speaking English. You could even sit down and eat lunch with them. It was almost impossible not to believe they were actual apes, the makeups were so good.

There was also a tribe of partially clothed humans, eating melons and being netted, whipped, and caged by the gorillas. Not to mention the absolutely gorgeous Linda Harrison stuffed into a delightfully threadbare coconut-fiber bikini, with whom Ialong with millions of other teenage boys around the worldwould soon fall in love. When I met her, it turned out she was as charming and easygoing as she was talented. Ill never forget the anguished look in her eyes when her mate Taylor was taken from her and tortured with a fire hose by a sadistic gorilla in the medical experiment cells.

One of my favorite scenes, in which my father croaks out what became his most iconic of lines after being recaptured in a net, was shot on the set at Fox Ranch. Dad was doubled by his longtime stunt man, Joe Canutt, for the stunt, in which four gorillas leap off one side of a high catwalk and hoist Taylor aloft in his net on the other side. The stunt worked perfectly: Joe was caught, dragged, and duly hoisted in the net. But instead of Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape! Joe said, Turn me around, my ass is toward the camera!

Needless to say, they replaced that line with a close-up of my father and the now famous one-liner. Dads hoarse voice, by the way, was not just acting: He had been suffering from a nasty chest cold, probably from swimming in the frigid waters of Lake Powell and being pummeled with fire hoses for the last seven or eight weeks.

Charlton Heston as Taylor poses for a publicity shot next to the ape Lawgiver statue at Fox Ranch.

Dad was a committed journal writer and also a sketch artist of some talent. He was rarely seen without either his sketchbook or his journal, just as my mother, Lydia, was rarely seen without her camera. His Apes journals, some of which are reprinted herein, show his commitment to the project and his obsession with starting and finishing each days work on time.

As his journals reveal, Dad often put in twelve-hour days on the set, plus an hour back at the Fox lot watching dailies, then spent his evenings as president of the Screen Actors Guild negotiating the SAG contract. Im amazed he was able to show up on time each day, or frankly, that he was still standing after months of this grueling schedule.