GOING APE

By Amy Barrett

From The New York Times, 12.24.2000

It's easy to forget that we're primates -- which is why Hollywood directors hire coaches to help actors when they're making movies like Gorillas in the Mist, Congo and now Planet of the Apes, currently being shot in Los Angeles for a summer release. Tim Burton, who is remaking the 1968 science-fiction classic about a future in which evolved apes rule the world and humans struggle for survival, hired two such experts to make sure Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Roth and others authentically mimic the behavior of chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. Here Terry Notary, the film's movement coach, and John Alexander, a consultant who worked with Notary before filming began, offer some insight into channeling the beast within.

ZEN AND THE ART OF APING IT

To act like a big ape, Alexander suggests working from the outside in: "If you can get the movement, the thought will come with it," he says. Notary prefers getting the frame of mind right first. "Humans are so distracted," he says. "Apes just focus. If they are eating a grape, they are into it. And when they are done, they go onto something else 100 percent. That's living moment to moment. Finding your inner ape is really, truly living."

SCHOOL IS FOR CHIMPS

For a month and a half before shooting started, the Planet of the Apes actors attended what they called ape school on a Los Angeles sound stage outfitted with ropes, boxes, mirrors, play weapons and toys. Each day began with an hourlong yogalike stretch. Then they breathed from the center of their bodies. After that, they moved into "first ape position" (think ballet dancer): relaxed knees, weight transferred to the outsides of the feet for a bowed shape, head and hips pushed forward, shoulders dropped and arms slightly rounded, but relaxed and independent. ("These are appendages with a mind of their own," Notary observes.) >From this stance the actors took their first ape steps. The trick is to keep your upper body still and let the legs move straight from the hips while the feet stay flat. Smaller steps give the illusion of shorter ape legs. Of course, not all apes are the same. Chimps are hunched over and move quickly. Gorillas stand upright, heavily. ("I tell them to feel like they are pulling a tow boat behind them as they are walking," Notary says.) And orangutans are slower and graceful.

GET ME MAKE UP!

Simian body movement is all the more important for those, like the Planet of the Apes cast, encased in costumes and prosthetics and heavy makeup, because facial expressions are somewhat muted. This can be a boon for would-be apes. Notary says of the actors' costumes: "It's like dunking your head under water in the tub. And you can just kind of exit your body. I think it helps people find their inner apes." When they do, they should remember that apes are often more emotionally volatile than humans. That's why the actors' exercises at ape school included switching immediately from one emotion to another -- from, say, happiness to anger.