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| ‘I wanna walk like you,
talk like you... oo-be-do’ |
Peter Elliot talks to monkeys, writes Tom
Foot, and he teaches actors how to walk and act like chimpanzees
for the movies
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Peter Elliot in his costume for the film Buddy. Below, on
set in Tarzan, the Legend of Greystoke
A radio controlled face mask that mimics expressions
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I DEFINITELY do speak chimp,” Peter Elliott says before
launching in to a display of finely tuned whoops and screeches.
From his garden in Gloucester Avenue, Primrose Hill, Mr Elliottt
– the film industry’s primary primate – says he can
communicate with the chimpanzees in London Zoo. “They do not
have a language as detailed as ours,” he explains, “but
we can tell each other if we’re happy or sad.”
Mr Elliott is no crackpot.
He has spent his working life touring the world teaching actors
how to move like monkeys in blockbuster films. He has communicated
in sign language with a Japanese chimp, hit on an Oklahoma male’s
girlfriend, suffered the occasional savage beating and overseen
or acted in 45 related films.
His fascinating career stretches from playing stage parts such as
Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest to working with Sigourney
Weaver while choreographing the Hollywood blockbuster Gorillas in
the Mist (1987) and Congo (1994). A lion and an elephant in the
Namibian jungle chased him when he starred in the film Missing Link.
His most recent film credit was choreographing aliens in A Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy (2004). “Far less dangerous,” he says.
Mr Elliottt has since chosen the quiet life, teaching animal studies
at the Central School of Speech and Drama, Swiss Cottage. Last month
he finished working with the Birmingham Stage company on an adaptation
of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book – which opened at the
Bloomsbury Theatre on Tuesday.
“I was living out of the back of a mini-bus while working as
a drunken acrobatic waiter in some theatre or other,” he recalls.
“But I got my break in 1981 when I auditioned for the part
of a chimp.”
The film was Greystoke, Tarzan, The Legend of the Apes (1984) –
a Hollywood blockbuster – but Mr Elliottt’s sensational
audition for an extra’s role would delay the film by two years.
He says: “I had always been very physical in my style. They
liked what I did so much they decided to put the whole film on hold,
so I could research some more. I ended up in Hollywood Birken Studios
with my own office aged 21.”
From there, a young Mr Elliottt travelled to Oklahoma Primate Centre
where he began a two-year project to integrate with chimps.
“Up until then people had been observing, trying to understand
their behaviour. Because the film was about integrating with the
animals, I knew that I wanted integrate them. But it’s not
easy. People think chimpanzees are soft and cuddly, but actually
they are eight to ten times stronger than the average man.”
Mr Elliottt found that out the hard way in the most unusual circumstances.
Sitting in a cage, in a chimp outfit complete with radio-controlled
device that altered the facial expressions, Mr Elliottt got a little
too close to one female. “I thought it was an infant.
Unfortunately, she was spoken for,” he says. “They are
volatile animals. The males don’t walk up to you and say ‘sorry
old chap but that’s my girlfriend.’ They teach you a lesson
physically.”
Mr Elliottt’s plight was exacerbated when a toy plane–
flying over the Primate Centre – somehow short-circuited his
radio-controlled face, sending it into a series of spasms, and clearly
annoying the chimp further.
“It was pulling ridiculous faces. God knows what that said
to him. The chimp went nuts.”
Despite these defects, and Mr Elliottt’s scars, the radio-controlled
device face a common tool for mimicking monkeys in films. Mr Elliottt
said that half of the primates nuzzling up to Sigourney Weaver in
the film Gorillas in the Mist were just people in costumes with
radio-controlled faces.
He says: “It was about 50-50 Not many people know that. She
was never actually inter-mingling with the gorillas – that
would have been too dangerous.”
Mr Elliott, who has visited Africa more than 50 times to observe
the animals, said even 21st century films like King Kong could not
do everything with technology.
He says: “They can’t just press the gorilla button. They
still do a lot of work in costumes and on movement. There aren’t
enough 40-foot people around, you see.
“In Gorillas in the Mist they didn’t spend $5 million
on costumes and then just let anyone get in them and say ‘oh,
just move about a bit’. It’s the same with Kong –
they won’t spend millions on making the image without the movement
looking genuine. It all begins with a man walking around in a studio
with a monkey suit on.”
Everyone loves The Jungle Book. Mr Elliottt was asked to help with
the animal movements and to have a hand in the artistic direction
for the forthcoming show. He ranks his work with the theatre company
as the most enjoyable.
He says: “It was such fun and I didn’t have to be mind-blowingly
accurate. In Congo we couldn’t have a tiger or a bear suddenly
bursting into song routines. I stripped the animals to their essence
– so we have a real bear standing up and walking around like
a human – it’s working anthropomorphically.”
Mr Elliottt has not quite become half man half ape, but a lifetime
observing primate behaviour has led him to some profound understanding
of the relationship between the two. While working with Washer –
the Japanese chimpanzee that can communicate with humans with sign
language – Mr Elliottt came to believe that humans are not
necessarily superior.
He says: “We are all animals. And after a life like mine you
begin to think that it’s us that are weird. I mean all of this
is not natural – it’s weird from the outside looking in.”
Mr Elliott pointed out my lack of enterprise. He says: “The
human race is where it is because of collective intelligence. What
can you make from scratch? Nothing I bet. Could you survive on your
own for a minute? Nobody is in complete control are they?”
“I certainly have a different perspective on life.”
• Jungle Book is at the Bloomsbury Theatre until January
28. Box Office 020 7388 8822. |
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