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Monkey
See, Monkey Do
Both make-up artists went on to many other successes. In 1977 alone, audiences saw Freeborn’s extraterrestrial shaggy-dog Chewbacca in Star Wars, and Chambers’ various man-beasts in The Island of Dr. Moreau. But the largest mark made with movie monkeys in the decades that followed, no doubt belongs to Rick Baker. After serving an apprenticeship as lab assistant to make-up effects great Dick Smith, Baker went on to devise a wide variety of strikingly innovative make-up effects, sometimes even using himself as the subject, as was the case with the 1976 De Laurentiis’ King Kong remake. While Baker’s efforts included old-age make-ups and monsters, primates became a specialty — a fact aptly demonstrated with Greystoke (1984), Harry and the Hendersons (1987) and Gorillas in the Mist (1988). By combining traditional prosthetic appliances with animatronics, Baker managed to simultaneously embrace the rich heritage of make-up effects while availing himself of nascent technological advances. But when first approached about a new Planet of the Apes (late ‘93 through early ‘94, when Oliver Stone became involved in producing the project), Baker was adamant about a “make-up only” approach to realizing simian-kind. “We knew from experience that realistic-looking gorillas could be created through the use of animatronics, but I thought it was the wrong approach,” declares Baker. “Part of the charm of the original film was that the performances came from actors in make-ups. From another perspective, it would have been a real pain-in-the-ass to shoot this kind of film using countless off-screen puppeteers to control each face remotely. We’d have had more people behind the camera than in front of it.” In committing to a make-up approach for realizing the simian characters, Baker acknowledges that he found the original Chambers make-ups “really cool. In particular, the way Maurice Evans [as orangutan Dr. Zaius] looked was quite striking to me when I first saw the movie. But this time out, I did want to include more of the real aspects of monkeys to our creatures. I also wanted these characters to be capable of showing more expression than they had in the original. So even before working up any appliances, I came up with a set of dentures that suggested an ape-like countenance. This pushed the design from the inside out, in effect shaping the actor underneath to better fit with a prosthetic. The make-up involved multiple appliances — very much like the Chambers’ version in that sense, though not quite so stylized. I did a quick test on myself, and within a couple days, had something that really seemed to be the way to go.” But even with the successful proof-of-concept, the Apes project wound up passing through various other hands during its lengthy development. Baker did not become reinvolved until Tim Burton signed to direct in March 2000. While Baker carried over his methodologies for realizing the apes from earlier efforts, there was a time when the various creatures’ visages remained up in the air. “When Tim told me that the action wasn’t taking place on Earth, that gave me the idea that we need not remain bound to the idea of apes as we know them on our world,” Baker explains. “So we took the designs in various directions, exploring other forms that exist in the primate kingdom. Since we needed to narrow the focus for the sake of clarity, that whole concept went away once we saw a script and realized the chimpanzee/orangutan/ gorilla hierarchy. Even so, we did wind up creating a few apes with somewhat different looks. I gave David Warner’s chimp character white hair, which came out of the thought of doing a character in the vein of Snowflake, the only known white gorilla in our world.” Baker had always been troubled by the lack of differentiation among background apes in the original film.“It looked like there was really only one design sculpted and used for all chimps, with a second design for orangutans and a third for the gorillas,” reports Baker, “and these were reused throughout. Even as a kid, I thought there should have been more variety rather than the cookie-cutter kind of thing. I put a lot of effort into making all of ours look a little different, with plenty of facial variations for these three ape types.” But quite deliberately, the make-up artist elected to keep a rather limited color palette for each type of ape. “In life, chimps can range in hue from pinks and fleshtones all the way to black,” remarks Baker, “and I first thought we could take advantage of that range to further differentiate the various characters. But then we realized that chimps painted black could possibly be mistaken for gorillas, so we decided that while the gorillas remained black, the orangutans all wound up in shades of gray, while the chimps kept mostly to flesh-colors, sometimes with brown variations.” The darker-hued gorillas caused Baker some concern when he viewed them in footage for the first time. “Some of the faces just weren’t showing up,” Baker admits. “Sometimes they were registering as black face-shaped holes in the film. A lot of work had gone into those sculptures, and I wanted that detail to be visible, but when I mentioned to Tim that I intended to lighten them up a little, he said, ‘Don’t … they should be dark and you shouldn’t see them so well.’ So what can you do? I wasn’t in total agreement with him on that, but I guess they show up well enough to make the necessary story points.” As one old saying goes, eyes are the windows to the soul, and Baker’s ape protagonists had to rely almost entirely upon the unadorned peepers of human actors beneath the make-up. “Almost nobody wore contact lenses,” Baker relates. “I really wanted all the characters in lenses, but the word from Fox was ‘Absolutely not.’ I don’t know what the rationale was, except that there can be complications when dealing with people who have sensitive eyes. This could have been a bad thing — with the impression of a person beneath the make-up coming through too strongly — but in the end, I think it works. We do have a few blue-eyed gorillas, but they actually look pretty interesting.” Baker’s Cinovation facility wound up producing a year’s worth of work in just a few pressure-intensive months, with lab facilities running full out to generate the materials. While foam latex has for many decades been the material of choice for prosthetic make-up work, recent advances with new materials (especially silicone appliances) have offered artists a wider range of options. But Baker elected to keep the Apes project entirely in the realm of latex, explaining that, “We had such a short prep time, and so enormous an amount of work to do, that I didn’t want to use anything that would be experimental to even the slightest degree. We’ve used silicones and gelatin for a while now, so to a large degree they are known entities. But since we’d be shooting in the desert, there couldn’t be any risk that someone’s face might melt off. I grew up sticking rubber pieces on faces, so I know sort of instinctively just how far I can build these things up while still letting the appliance remain flexible. I’ve done so many apes that I can just about sculpt these forms in my sleep.” Even though the many jungle scenes were captured on an L.A. Center Studios soundstage, Burton wound up shooting many sequences on location, including a stretch at the Trona Pinnacles. Though not as ubiquitous as Southern California’s Vasquez Rocks/Bronson Canyon area, these jagged peaks have represented extraterrestrial landscapes before — during Lost in Space’s run on CBS and in Star Trek V - The Final Frontier. But the dusty atmosphere and extreme dry heat did little to make the apes lose face. “There was virtually no difference in the way we applied the make-ups, whether we were on stage or on location,” Baker volunteers. “Fortunately, the glues we have developed are quite tenacious, and able to keep appliances in place through all sorts of stresses. Production set up an enormous camp in the middle of the desert, so there were nice make-up trailers that were like those portable schoolroom buildings, though some of the background guys wound up being done in tents.” Make-up application work would begin at 3:30 a.m. daily, running a full four hours before shooting could begin. These efforts focused on hundreds of foreground, midground and background ape characters, plus numerous humans needing to appear suitably scruffy and somewhat bedraggled. “There were three separate teams,” Baker explains. “Number One team handled our principal characters, the ones that utilized sculpted, prosthetic multi-piece appliances custom made for individual actors. The Number Twos dealt with a number of foam latex masks that weren’t sculpted with particular individuals in mind, but still allowed for mouth movement, so they could be seen fairly close up. Make-up was used to blend these performers’ features with those of the masks. Then there were the Number Threes, which were slip [latex] rubber masks, our ‘Halloween’ masks, if you will, used principally in the background.” Baker discovered that some of his early design efforts were no longer applicable as a result of late casting choices. “The physiognomy of each individual performer affects the outcome of a make-up in many subtle ways,” says Baker, “and this means that an awful lot of a character’s look comes from the way appliances are made to fit to a specific actor’s face. We often found ourselves just a couple weeks away from filming still not knowing who our principals would be, which was scary. You always want some lead time, since it takes awhile to generate good appliances that work well; we didn’t want to have to be stuck using the first piece out of the mold for the run of the show.” Ape antagonist Thade proved among the most successful meld of make-up and performer, with actor Tim Roth — whose hawk-like visage runs counter to the sort of profile one normally casts for a button-nosed monkey — undergoing a two hour-plus daily masking, but still delivering a strong performance. “Tim had green eyes that just kind of jump out at you, which helped give him a unique look,” Baker remarks. “He also worked very well with the make-up, often sitting in front of a mirror and trying things out. Right away, he got a handle on his character, and told us we didn’t need to do too much, so we wound up with ‘less-is-more’ for the expression in his face; there weren’t many broad strokes involved there, and he just filled it all in.” A lengthier development process was needed for Ari, the human-sympathetic chimpanzee played by Helena Bonham Carter. “From day one on this show, I told Tim Burton that the female apes would be the most difficult designs to make into workable sculptures, and also the most likely to fail,” reveals Baker. “On the original film, Kim Hunter’s Zira had a stylized look that worked largely off the actress’ eyes, which wasn’t a bad approach in my mind. Tim wanted Ari to appear attractive to a male human. I said that would be tough because female chimps are just as ugly as the male of the species. I also expressed my other concern that humanizing her look too much would cause the character to start looking like a freak, and a freakish-looking human could seem more horrifying or unappealing than a chimp. “We started testing looks prior to Helena’s being cast, using my runner here in the shop, and I have to say those first couple of tries turned out to be pretty major failures in my mind. It took quite awhile for her look to emerge, and then, even after we locked into something that would work for Tim and work on Helena, it still turned into a very time-consuming application each day. Her make-up took about four hours, because in addition to the basic ape make-up, there was a beauty make-up on top.” Ari’s hairstyle became an equally troublesome fashion statement, with Baker’s team trying its hand at many chimp coiffures. “It got really tight time-wise,” he continues, “before Tim asked, kind of sheepishly, if it would be okay to bring in a hairstylist from New York who did high-fashion work, in order to work out these issues. That’s how her look was finalized, with a guy named Luigi devising an approach that we could then begin to manufacture.” No remake or re-imagining of Planet of the Apes would feel complete without at least a friendly nod back at the original, and director Tim Burton paid up homage by employing Charlton Heston, who played astronaut Taylor in the first two Apes features. This time out, the veteran actor, who had rarely hidden his countenance beneath much in the way of make-up beyond the occasional false nose and hair work, saw how the other half lived with his portrayal of an aged and dying ape. “Heston had been quoted as saying he’d never undergo a big make-up application like this,” Baker states, “but it turned out to be just a one-day gig for him. He didn’t have the really torturous day-after-day-after-day that others had to deal with, so there weren’t many issues — outside of his not wanting to wear the dentures, that is!” • |
In
certain circles, 1968 might well have been regarded as the Year of the
Monkey. That year’s visual highlights included special make-up effect
breakthroughs by Stuart Freeborn for the ape-men seen in “The Dawn of
Man” segment of 2001- A Space Odyssey and John Chambers’ Oscar-winning
chimp, orangutan and gorilla work on the original Planet of the Apes.
One oft-repeated story has screenwriter/novelist Arthur C. Clarke
complaining that 2001 was not cited for Freeborn’s make-ups (greatly
aided by Charles Parker) because Academy judges never realized that
the space epic used actors in make-up for its primordial segments. Instead,
they believed that director Stanley Kubrick had elicited performances
from actual simians — in truth, only a couple of live baby monkeys ever
turned up on screen.