THE WHOLE WORLD IS GOING APE

By Bruce Westbrook

From The Houston Chronicle, 08.17.2000

"Get your stinking paws off me, you damned, dirty ape!" That's not quite on the level of "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." But it's among the memorable lines Charlton Heston had as an astronaut stranded on a planet of talking apes in 1968's Planet of the Apes. Question: Will Mark Wahlberg get to say something along the same lines? The Perfect Storm star won the lead role for a new Apes picture, tentatively titled The Visitor. Shooting will start in October, with Tim Burton directing as his follow-up to Sleepy Hollow.

Budgeted at $100 million, the film will open July 4, 2001. Austin-based William Broyles wrote the screenplay about a spacefaring human for whom the tables of dominance are turned. But Broyles is "under a gag order" about his script. "It's top secret," said Broyles, founding editor of Texas Monthly and co-writer--with Houstonian Al Reinert--of the film Apollo 13. He did say the new film won't be a remake of the original. "It's plausibly connected to the old series," Broyles said, "but doesn't share any characters with it." After Burton was signed, Broyles worked with him on revisions "for a long time." Now other changes may be made without him. "The writers' carousel has begun," Broyles said.

In the meantime, some top actors have been cast. Helena Bonham Carter, an Oscar nominee for The Wings of the Dove and star of Fight Club, will play an ape with whom Wahlberg has a relationship. Just how far it goes remains to be seen, but it's rumored that human and ape mate in an early draft. Michael Clarke Duncan, fresh from his Oscar nomination in The Green Mile, will play a sympathetic ape. Tim Roth, an Oscar nominee for Rob Roy and a star of Pulp Fiction, will be a villainous ape general. Roth had to choose between monkeying around and playing Professor Snape in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone; the two films' schedules will overlap. Also rumored for a part is Paul Reubens, a Burton favorite from Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Batman Returns and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Five-time Oscar winner Rick Baker (Men in Black) will handle the ape makeup.

Burton says he is "reimagining" the Apes project, exploring its themes in "a different way." His mission is not only to reinvent the Apes saga but also to rekindle its "franchise" status for Twentieth Century Fox. In doing so, Burton should benefit not only from advanced special effects but may adhere more closely to the far different source novel by French writer Pierre Boulle than the first film did. You can learn more about such origins in Behind the Planet of the Apes, a two-hour documentary hosted by Apes star Roddy McDowall, made shortly before McDowell's death in 1998. It's available as part of a six-disc DVD set featuring all five of the original Apes films, new this week for $99.98. Behind the Planet of the Apes was part of an earlier VHS boxed set, but it isn't part of a reissued VHS set, which is also due this week. That set has only the five films, for $49.98. The DVD set also includes trailers, photo galleries, cast pages, Web links and restored, digitally mastered, THX-certified versions of the films. Only the first movie will be sold separately--and only on VHS, for $14.98.

The '68 film was a hit and won Oscar nominations for costume design and Jerry Goldsmith's original score. John Chambers got an honorary Oscar for makeup, now an annual category. Planet of the Apes' four sequels were 1970's Beneath the Planet of the Apes, 1971's Escape From the Planet of the Apes, 1972's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and 1973's Battle for the Planet of the Apes. As you might surmise by their almost yearly release, quality and inspiration wound down. Still, Fox wasn't finished. After the fifth film, a live-action "Planet of the Apes" TV series ran for half a season in 1974 on CBS. The next year, an animated "Return to Planet of the Apes" ran for one season on NBC. Merchandising also fueled the Apes boom, with toys, comics and other products. Many manufacturers will get their paws on next year's movie, too. Until then, you can get your paws on the new tapes or discs to explore a world where apes rule--and drive humans bananas.