MM: Funky Monkey sounded like a really good idea at the time, especially because it was a Warner Brothers picture. I happened to be in France working with Merchant Ivory on Le Divorce, which was not a very good movie. I was only part of that production because I wanted to make a film based on an Aldous Huxley book called Jacob’s Hands, and if I’d star in Le Divorce to help sell it, then Ismael would help me get the rights to Jacob’s Hands. So there I was in France, in this beautiful little hotel in Paris. Suddenly, this guy calls me up and goes, “Are you doing the picture or not?” I said, “Who is this?” And he responded, “I sent you a script. I need to know today.” And the script slides under the door at that moment! They were shooting Funky Monkey in the South of France, which was supposed to be a substitute for San Diego. Now that should have me suspicious. But Warner Brothers was doing the movie, and they were calling me because Carey Elwes had just dropped out of the movie. It was about a guy who’s teaching chimpanzees martial arts and then discovers the real reason behind it is because they’re making an army of chimpanzees to go fight wars for American soldiers! The story was just so retarded, so crazy that I thought this could be a really fun children’s movie. And then disaster ensued. The director was fired and the producer took over directing the film. The chimpanzees were supposed to come from America, but the French government wouldn’t let them in so they brought a chimpanzee from a circus — an old female who was much too angry and ornery to be working on a film set. She proceeded to bite me and then almost pull my arm out of its socket! Their response was to fire the chimpanzee and the trainer, and put a little angry French man in a monkey suit, which looked more like a dwarf gorilla. Imagine this smoking alcoholic inside of this little gorilla suit in the South of France during the summer. It was a disaster. Warner Brothers finally looked at the dailies and realized what was going on, so they hired another director to come in and rewrite and re-shoot the film, this time finally in San Diego. All of this is a long way of me telling you that I have never gone to work on a film that didn’t start with the best of intentions. Then it all falls apart.
DS: In that way, this play is another story where an actor with good intentions goes and gets involved with animals, then things go horribly wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment