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[narrator] What is the power of makeup?
For me... it's everything.
[uplifting music]
[Vincent] It's magic.
It's to fool your audience into believing
that what they're seeing is 100% reality.
[Alec] The power of makeup is the power of transformation.
If you're the wearer of the makeup, it sort of gives you permission
to be a different character.
[Greg] Makeup effects and makeup allows actors
to tap into different parts of their personality.
[Ve] Whether it's a zombie, or a princess,
or a Frankenstein monster,
it's what enables an actor to actually emote.
[dramatic music]
[John] Want to hear something scary?
Makeup and hair are the most dangerous people on a set
because they get the actors first thing in the morning
and they're right in their face.
I've seen hairdressers and makeup people just fuck movies.
So you always want to be on their good side.
[Leonard] Good makeup helps create a good character.
Characters are what make a movie interesting.
If the makeup is ineffectual,
it's going to destroy the whole movie.
[Michael] It has the power to heal, it has the power to inspire,
and it also inspires and creates imagination
to be able to tell stories.
[narrator] Makeup has given artists
and filmmakers incredible freedom.
But all that innovation and invention can be traced back to a moment in time
when one film proved nothing was impossible.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] Makeup in film has existed
since the turn of the 20th century.
Early artists were actors who experimented on themselves.
The successful ones were then asked
to work on other actors.
One of the first breakout artists was Cecil Holland.
An early attempt at creating a simian makeup
was Holland's work on The Lost World.
To me, Cecil Holland was the genesis of it all, the beginning of,
maybe even the first makeup effects person.
[narrator] Meanwhile, at Universal Studios,
the horror genre began to thrive,
and with it rose the fame of actor
and self-taught makeup artist, Lon Chaney Sr.
[Guillermo] To me, it all begins with him.
There is a bridge between theatrical makeup
and movie makeup.
He starts it.
He did makeups that no one else had ever attempted
and some of them became, you know, legendary.
[Vincent] Watching the original Hunchback with Lon Chaney,
that was one of those moments where I thought that's,
that is something that I would love to try and emulate.
[Bill] My favorite Lon Chaney makeup
was The Phantom of the Opera.
I thought that was just the most amazing
transformation I've ever seen.
[narrator] Known as the man of 1,000 faces,
Chaney propelled the horror genre to new heights.
But his untimely death in 1930 created a void
in the makeup world that was quickly filled
by another actor turned makeup artist, Jack Pierce.
If he had done nothing but create Frankenstein's monster,
Jack Pierce would have a place in, uh, you know, the movie pantheon
of heroes and legends.
That makeup is so indelible, it's so recognizable,
it's been so much imitated.
There have been so many inferior knockoffs of it,
but he did it.
As he did The Wolf Man, another extraordinary piece
of makeup that didn't have today's technology behind it,
just a lot of hard work and a lot of imagination.
[Guillermo] Whether he's enhancing the mouth of Conrad Veidt
in The Man Who Laughs, or doing The Monkey Talks,
which is a beautiful precedent to Planet of the Apes,
in a way, the key comes from studying the face of the actor.
And saying, "Okay, What do I need to build,
what do I need to take down?"
I remember seeing the episode of This Is Your Life with Boris Karloff,
and Jack Pierce had come out, and he's there with the bolt and all.
It was the first time I heard Jack Pierce's voice,
and it was similar to what I thought his voice would be,
you know, kind of like this scrappy guy.
It's wonderful to see you.
The best makeup man in the world.
-Thank you. -I owe him a lot.
First person that I idolized was Jack Pierce,
'cause he's the Frankenstein's monster,
The Wolf Man, The Mummy. Classic universal horror films.
And those were the films that really inspired me to want to do this.
[narrator] As time progressed,
makeup became more sophisticated
but the quality of films began to deteriorate.
In the years following World War II, science fiction became a popular genre
and there were some notable films
like The Day the Earth Stood Still
and The Thing from Another World.
Very few serious filmmakers had really approached
science fiction, and there were a couple of attempts in the 50s
to make some expensive science fiction pictures
that didn't really make enough money.
After a little while, those films got cheaper,
and tackier, and really became B-movies and kiddie fodder.
[announcer] Nobody will believe theInvasion of the Saucer Men.
[dramatic music]
[light bell music]
[narrator] In the early 1960s,
20th Century Fox producer, Arthur P. Jacobs, was searching
for a project that would astound audiences around the globe.
Planète des singes, orMonkey Planet,
was originally published in France in January 1963.
Natalie Trundy who was then Arthur P. Jacobs' girlfriend,
had read the book and suggested it to Arthur.
[narrator] By June of 1964,
the book had been translated into English
and published in America.
[Scott] What a book, right? This whole thing where
apes have taken over society
and humans have devolved into being sort of a lower form
of life than the apes, was sort of ahead of its time.
[narrator] Richard Zanuck, the head of 20th Century Fox,
helps Arthur Jacobs obtain the option for Boulle's novel.
Jacobs hires Rod Serling ofTwilight Zone fame
to write a treatment titledPlanet of the Apes,
in hopes of turning it into a full motion picture screenplay.
[man] I was a man, a man from Earth,
[voiceover] a reasoning creature who made it a habit
to discover a logical explanation
and not a beast hunted down by highly developed apes.
[Richard] Rod Serling, he was a genius.
They didn't give you the script.
You sat down in a meeting...
and they'd start to tell you a little about...
So by the time they were done,
they really had you hooked.
[dramatic music]
Planet of the Apesis just
the biggest sheet cake version
of a Twilight Zone episode you can find.
[narrator] Serling was busy rewriting the screenplay.
He later claimed to have written over 40 drafts.
[voiceover] Somewhere in the universe,
there has to be something better than man.
Rod Serling highlighted a lot of the, uh, contradictions
of our society, in many cases, uh, the nihilism of our society.
And the original script was actually very different
from the final version of the script,
which was then worked on by Michael Wilson.
[narrator] Zanuck and the Fox board calculate a budget
of $2 million, a risky bet
given Fox's financial situation at the time.
The problem, I think, intrinsically was
that it was such new groundbreaking motion picture-wise,
the studio was very, very uneasy with it.
And the only one that really had faith in the whole thing
was Richard Zanuck.
20th Century Fox was not in good shape financially.
It's been blamed on Cleopatra and apparently unfairly blamed on Cleopatrain many cases.
They used it as an overall excuse
for some bad decision making.
[narrator] The screenplay eventually wound up
in the hands of one of Hollywood's biggest stars,
Charlton Heston.
I think that this film would not have happened
had, uh, Charlton not wanted to do it.
[Leonard] He was just the right actor for that part.
His physicality was ideal
and he had the gravitas to match the physicality.
[Lou] It was his project.
He helped greenlight it, so it was very close to him.
[narrator] Charlton Heston recommended
director, Franklin J. Schaffner,
who he was currently working with onThe Warlord.
With a trimmed budget,
commitments from Heston and Schaffner,
and Edward G. Robinson coming on board
to portray the orangutan, Dr. Zaius,
Jacobs convinced Fox to greenlight a 10 minute screen test
in March 1966.
[Tom] Ben Nye was the department head of makeup
at 20th Century Fox, and he was getting ready to retire
but he agreed to do a screen test.
Good evening, Mr. Thomas.
Everything fine, I hope.
Considering I've been kept in a cage for six weeks, I'm fine, yes.
[Joe] Prior to this, when you saw a gorilla in a movie,
it was either played by a guy in a gorilla suit or it was played by a monkey.
But the approach here was a little different because the idea was
that these ape characters were being played by recognizable actors,
and so there needed to be a way to allow them to emote.
When you see, uh, original ones and, uh, do the makeup test,
it's not there.
[Alessandro] Even though that's nowhere close
to what the makeup actually wound up being,
the scene was effective.
No one was laughing, everyone took it seriously,
and the project was, uh, I think, much more tangible
as something that could resonate dramatically
with an audience.
[Tom] But Ben Nye decided to retire
rather than take on this huge project.
[narrator] Though the screen test proved it was possible
to portray talking simians in a serious manner,
it would take nothing short of brilliance
to getPlanet of the Apes out of pre-production.
[camera clicks]
[narrator] John Chambers was born on September 12th, 1922,
in the South Side of Chicago.
[Tom] John Chambers was the son of two Irish immigrants.
They grew up in a very rough neighborhood,
where John found it necessary to defend his sister
and his younger brother all the time.
[narrator] During World War II, Chambers trained as a dental technician,
but his artistry led him to a career creating facial restoration prosthetics
for wounded servicemen at the VA.
But it's important that he comes from knowing the human face.
It's important that he is reconstructing the human face.
[narrator] Infatuated with the entertainment industry,
Chambers wrote a letter to NBC Television Studios,
asking for a job in the makeup department.
So he drives to Hollywood
and then finds out that his letter of acceptance arrived
the day that he left Chicago.
[narrator] Chambers quickly established a name for himself
and was sought after for many of the most popular television shows of his day.
Johnny was outrageously unique.
There was nobody like him.
He was jovial, laughing all the time.
But when it came to the makeup,
all of a sudden he got real serious.
[Fred] He was stern in a way that it was humorous, [laughs]
because when he put his foot down,
it was always something, "Wow, this guy's got some cashews."
[Michael] He had almost a virtual monopoly
on most of the prosthetic work that was happening in Hollywood.
They needed something that was in foam latex,
they went to John.
[narrator] From his garage studio,
Chambers created some of the most iconic makeups
of the 1960s.
He was a teacher, probably more than anything else.
He thoroughly and totally enjoyed what he did.
John made a tremendous impact on a whole lot of people
but none more than me.
[soft instrumental music]
[narrator] Tom Burman was born on Thanksgiving Day, 1940,
at Santa Monica General Hospital.
His father, Ellis, met his mother, Dorothy,
while attending the Chicago Art Institute.
After sculpting bronzes of prominent Nebraskans,
Ellis was commissioned to create several monument statues
in Lincoln and Omaha for the WPA.
When my father finished the monuments
he was making in Nebraska, he packed up the whole family
and drove to Hollywood, where he got a job at the studios
working in the city department.
And he ended up getting his own room in the prop shop,
where he specialized in latex, plastic,
breakaways, and all kinds of neat stuff.
Now, your father, Ellis Sr., I mean, he was like a pioneer
-in making rubber pieces, right? -Well, he did.
He ran the actual foam latex pieces
at Universal Studio for The Wolf Man.
My dad became personal friends
with some of the big Hollywood actors at Universal back then,
like Claude Rains, Abbott and Costello, and Lon Chaney Jr.
And sometimes they would come and have a drink at our house.
I didn't pay much attention to that, I was too young.
But one day he takes me to the set,
and there was a makeup man on the set who called me over to him,
and he put a little cut, a little makeup cut on my arm, which is pretty cool.
And, um, he said, "What are you doing here?"
And I said, "I'm with my dad."
And he looked at my dad and he said, "Wow."
He said, "If you're half as talented as he is,
someday you should think about becoming a makeup artist."
His name was Jack Pierce.
[light violin music]
[narrator] After a number of years at Universal,
Ellis opened his own prop shop.
Growing up in my family, we all worked for my father,
just like a lot of the big makeup families worked together.
[narrator] Hollywood's makeup industry had become a family-dominated business,
with names like Don, Philips, and Westmore.
My father, who was the oldest, Monty Sr.
um, was Rudolph Valentino's personal makeup artist.
Perc became the head of Warner Brothers,
Ern became the head of RKO,
Bud took over Universal,
Wally took over Paramount.
Frank never really took over a studio,
but he was very close with Cecil B. DeMille
and did The Ten Commandments.
There was a wonderful story about the, the makeup family
of the Westmore brothers in Hollywood.
So, I contacted the house of Westmore.
I was able to talk to Perc Westmore,
said, "Why don't you come over?"
And for the next three, four, five months,
I was sitting as a subject.
My father called me at work.
He told me that he was working at Don Paul Studios
and he had a job sculpting up a "King Kong" gorilla.
And come to find out, John Chambers was in partnership
with Don Paul's.
While I was there, I found out that there was a, um, an apprenticeship opening
at 20th Century Fox and, uh, John said, "I'll call for you."
And he did. He got me an appointment with Ben Nye,
the department head of makeup.
I went in to see him, nice man,
and he gave me some really lousy news.
He told me there are over 90 applicants for the job
and one of them was his own son.
And I thought, "Oh, God," here I was, this close.
And I went home and I was so disheartened,
and, and, um, I didn't think I'd ever get into makeup.
And that night I got a telephone call.
It's Ben Nye and he says,
"You want to come in tomorrow morning
and start your apprenticeship."
Six months later, I'm in Ben Nye's office,
cleaning up his makeup station, which I often did,
and Ben comes in with Richard Hamilton,
who was their assistant department head,
and Dick Smith, their lab man.
And they looked very forlorn.
And Ben Nye is saying, "I didn't think they were going to go through with this project."
And Dick is saying, "We did everything they wanted, didn't we, Ben?"
And Richard saying, "No, they don't look good
and they're, and they're too stiff.
And, uh, they want to bring in Bud Westmore."
And he said, "Because he did the movie
The List of Adrian Messenger."
Now my ears are really perked up
because I knew that John did that work.
I had seen the photographs at his house.
I finally just kind of spoke up
and I said, "John Chambers did it."
So Ben Nye says, "We'll give him a call,
see if he'd like to come in and pick up a script."
So I called him and John told me, "So I'm busy right now.
I'm making Spock's ears for Star Trek.
And I said, "Well, they want Bud Westmore."
And I know he didn't like him.
He goes, [growls], he growls.
They wanted Bud Westmore,
from what I had heard from Tommy.
And he was listening just as a new apprentice, apprentice.
And he's the one that was responsible for telling them
to get me, I was available.
The following day, he drives up,
pulls up with his little Buick, gets out of the car.
He's waving at me as I'm coming out of the makeup department.
And he says, "It's you and me, Tommy."
And he holds out this script and I read the title.
Planet of the Apes.
[narrator] In the heart of 20th Century Fox Studios
was the makeup lab, where John Chambers
and Tom Burman were tasked with creating the simians
forPlanet of the Apes.
So, our very first day, John and I were standing
in the lab, which was 33 years old and pretty dingy place,
but in the middle of the room there was this, uh, two foot by four foot marble top table.
And we were making lists of things he needed.
So then John turns around, looks at me and he said,
"Tommy... Let's clean this shithouse out."
I started going through all the boxes, through the shelves, and underneath the tables,
and I started pulling out all this stuff.
And you could see at first, John was kind of being selective,
"Oh, maybe we could use this." And then after a while, I see him overwhelmed.
He goes, "You know what? Throw it all out. Get rid of it."
I literally cleaned out 33 years of old makeup stuff.
It was loaded with all personal objects
and I needed a laboratory to work, you know.
[narrator] While Chambers and Burman feverishly worked
on the makeup designs, it came time to cast the actors
who would populate thePlanet of the Apes.
[Lou] My agent said, "I've got an interview
for Planet of the Apes."
Never heard of it before.
Sounded like a B movie.
So I went to 20th Century Fox.
It was really just an interview with Franklin Schaffner.
We didn't even talk about the movie.
I went home.
Hours later, my agent called
and said, um... "What did you tell him?"
And I said, "What do you mean? What...
Is he mad at me?
What--" You know.
And she said, "No, you got the film."
I got the film, I didn't audition.
[Alessandro] With an actor like Kim Hunter,
who had an Academy Award and was very distinguished actor,
Roddy McDowall as well,
asking them to be buried behind makeup
was something of great concern to them in the beginning.
When the town heard that there was going to be
a major motion picture called Planet of the Apes,
they were interested.
And then when they heard that Charlton Heston
was going to be in it, they sat up.
Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston?
This must be quite a film.
But when they heard Roddy McDowall was going to be in it,
everyone was really impressed.
It gave the film class.
[narrator] As the cast began to take shape,
the producers turned back to the 1966 test reel
for their first choice to play Dr. Zaius.
[Tom] Somebody knocked on the door, so I opened the door and it's Edward G. Robinson.
He tells Johnny, he says, "Well, I have a goatee
and a mustache, and I won't shave that off.
And I'm not going to wear that appliance.
I'm claustrophobic, I can't wear it all day."
And John goes, "Oh, yeah, okay, Eddie.
Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, that's good, yeah.
Well, we'll work on that." And so, "Okay, thank you, John."
And he leaves and John goes, "He's out of the picture."
[laughs] I thought, "Wow, what power this makeup artist has."
John Chambers was a brilliant artist, so talented.
But he had one hell of a temper.
My eloquence in adjectives go pretty far.
Let me ask you about Chambers.
Was he always two fisted and rough, or?
He was a real tough character. He was a--
For instance, on Planet of the Apes,
Arthur Jacobson and Mort Abrahams would come by,
and they were going to, uh, see our progress.
John was doing mock-ups on their heads in clay,
and painting them, and putting hair on them.
And, uh, I asked him if he-- If it would be okay
if I sculpted a gorilla, and he said, "Yeah, Tommy,
you do it in the back room back there
where nobody's going to see it."
'Cause I didn't know what I was doing.
And so I was sculpting this gorilla,
and Arthur Jacobson and Mort Abrahams came by,
and they said, "Is John here?" And I ran up, I was an apprentice,
and I brought John back, and they were looking
at his sculptures of mock-ups he did.
And they were saying, "You know, difficulty is,
we're going to have to take one of these faces
and put it on a really top actress.
I don't think anybody's going to want to wear this."
Mort Abrahams walks in the back room and he sees this gorilla.
Now the gorilla I had sculpted was not very good
but it was kind of humanoid... humanoid ape.
And he comes back, and he looks at this, and he says,
-"Arthur, come out in here and take a look at this." -Oh, my God.
-And John looks at me and I knew [gasps], you know. Oh, boy. -[laughs]
-'Cause he's Irish and he just turned kind of red. -Yeah, red.
And so, they said, "John, come out here, take a look at this. Take a look, what is this?"
He said, "Don't worry about-- that's a background mask and we're working on it.
It's not even close to being ready. Come on back here."
"No, John, what we like about this is
it's kind of like an evolutionary ape.
It's a little more human."
And so I'm feeling pride that they're enjoying it,
but I look beyond that and I see John just turning red.
He's going purple, I mean.
And they said, "Well, next week we'd like to come back
and take a look at your progress.
But give it some of that, a little bit of that."
And John's, "Okay, yeah, yeah.
I'll do that, yeah, okay, uh-huh, yeah."
So, they walk out the door and he goes, "Huh, huh?
You and your big greasy fucking thumb."
-[laughs] -He said, "You know what you are?"
He said, "You're a fucking lunch bucket.
You're a lunch bucket. You're going to have that lunch bucket glued
to your hand all your life."
-Oh, my God. -He walks back, picks up the gorilla,
smashes it on the floor.
And he says, "Get out, get out!"
For three days he'd come up the makeup department,
he would check to see what I was doing.
He wanted to catch me doing something. He was still burning inside.
-He was trying to find something I was-- -I'm quarter Irish, so I know.
Yeah, so I kind of hid out from him for the most part.
One day, I'm eating my lunch and he catches me. "You're eating your lunch early."
I said, "Well, Ben Nye told me to go to lunch early
because I came in early." He said, "Yeah?"
And I had drawn a picture of myself crucified on the wall.
And I had a little caption that said, "I can laugh when things aren't funny."
He took a look at that picture and he goes, just. [laughs]
And he laughs and so hard, it's like a release for him.
The tears are running down his face.
He laughed, he goes, "Okay, okay. Get back in the lab."
And we never spoke about it again.
-Again. -Never again.
[eerie music]
[narrator] With Edward G. Robinson out,
the role of the orangutan, the protector of the faith,
went to classically trained Shakespearean actor,
Maurice Evans.
Maurice was the actors' actor, you know?
He reeked of authority.
Maurice Evans was probably the only actor on record
who enjoyed getting into the makeup.
[narrator] With a growing number of chimpanzees,
orangutans, and gorillas being cast,
an equally large crew of artists would be needed
to apply the makeups.
I happened to have a knack of looking at a person
when I meet 'em, and God gave me a gift.
I can read 'em right to the teeth.
Good or bad, you know.
And I don't let 'em know which way,
but I found out I could find the people that had the salt.
At that time, I was working on the third season
of Lost in Space.
Then they took Ben Nye, he took me off the show
and then I started with John.
I got the job on Apes because I was, what you would call
a staff, I guess, in those days over at Fox. So they sent me up.
And so, on the plane going up, I was sitting with a young lady and her mother.
And we got to talking,
and realized I had made her up on a
little test pilot that they were going to do.
Anyway, when we get up there, she went to the department
and said, "I'd like that fellow to do my makeup."
So I did her makeup while I was up there.
The girl was Linda Harrison.
[Tom] John Chambers designed the makeups
to be like paint by numbers
because he wanted to maintain a continuity,
a consistency of uniformity.
He did not want makeup artists coming in
and putting their own signature on the makeups.
I took green young men
that I saw a certain talent in what they produced
in other parts of makeup,
and I said, "This guy's an artist."
I'd never had any experience working with prosthetics.
Planet of the Apes was the first one.
Prosthetics was not my thing.
I had never done prosthetics.
[Maurice] We had two to three weeks of rehearsal
where we were putting these appliances on.
[Darrell] Well, we had a couple of journeymen makeup artists
in the trailers with us who would go up and down,
and give us pointers, and tell us what to do,
or what not to do, or you're doing too much,
or doing too little.
[Maurice] It was kept as simple as possible.
We had a full face appliance that had to be prepped,
which meant we had to clear out the eye area
and the mouth area, and we had to learn how
to feather out the edges on the piece.
[John Chambers] All these people that, that worked with me,
that-- They made that picture as it was.
I had Tommy Burman, he was apprentice.
He was a man with his two sons and a wife,
and they were having a rough time keeping bread on the table
at that time, when he was so young.
[Tom] As an apprentice makeup artist at Fox,
they paid me $90 a week
and I had no complaints about that.
But when they found out that I was working seven days a week, 16 hours a day,
the amount that I was contributing to the making of these apes,
they decided to bump me up to, uh, journeyman wages.
I told him, "I'm going to put you down as a lab man."
You know, put him into journeyman salary and I carried him through it.
He was one of, one of the best people I'd chosen.
Before that, I'd never had $100 to my name.
Now I am well-paid, and John and I are ready to go.
[narrator] After years of struggle, misfires,
and challenges,Planet of the Apes was finally ready
to move into production.
[dramatic swells]
[film whirring]
[crew chattering]
[Dan] The studio didn't have great faith in it,
so they were really wrenched down
as far as the money is concerned
and as far as the amount of days.
[Lou] The first day of our shoot, everyone was very worried.
You could hear all the scuttlebutt and everything.
This has got to work or we're all in trouble.
We spent $6 million to be the joke of the town.
[Dan] Schaffner, to his credit,
when people were coming from all sides saying,
"Well, why don't you drop this scene and do it this way?
It's cheaper and easier."
He resisted.
[John Chambers] I respected him.
He came from television.
My start was in television,
and we talked the same language.
I says, "What I need from you is your authority
to stop a shot and say we have to take it over
on account of something I saw."
And I says, "Can I stop camera?"
He said, "Yeah."
[Tom] Working in the lab, it was a struggle every day
to keep up with production.
And we were working around the clock.
We couldn't have worked any more hours.
In those first couple months, it was really tough.
[John Chambers] The guys were working hard, you know,
and I came in at two at night,
and I found the guy asleep on the chair, you know.
The chair, he was so fatigued.
Oh, man, you know, we worked.
Not just five days, but Saturday and Sunday, you know.
One time I asked, "Am I going to get some help?"
And they says, "Nope." I said,
"Well, What do you want me to do, put a broom up my rear
and sweep the floors as well?"
[Ken] John Chambers was on location and he was leaving
to go back to the studio.
And he knew how hard I'd been working.
And he said, you know, he says, "You've been really busting your butt.
You take off tomorrow. You sleep late, you just stay home."
Four in the morning, pounding on the door.
"Get up and get dressed, you're going on the set!"
I said, "Well, John told me I could have the day off."
"No, no, no.
He's not here and we are."
[Lou] Our call was 2:30 for seven o'clock on the set.
They stumbled, and were slow, and everything,
but it was in the middle of the night.
It was rough.
[Darrell] We worked, and worked, and worked
to get those edges covered.
And then we laid hair over 'em.
We had to work with straight human Asian hair,
black, which is the hardest thing to work with
that I've ever found.
[Lou] Tom spent a lot of his day in the lab
with Werner and Fern Langdon.
And if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have makeup.
I created an assembly line.
I had 'em working through the night, a shift.
Putting rubber in the oven eleven o'clock at night,
taking it out in the morning.
You know, no one ever did this before, see?
[Dan] I think on Roddy McDowall at one time,
we were down to one mask ahead the next day's work.
If the running the oven went bad,
which they do many times...
the following day we're screwed.
[Tom] Working the lab long hours was bad enough,
but then having to go to the set and work there
was completely exhausting. But every day was a thrill.
Getting up in the morning was a thrill. The whole day was a thrill
because I knew I was working on something special.
We had a lot of little problems
that we resolved by working together on it.
It was great, it was like a club.
[Dan] People excelled, absolutely excelled.
Every time they turned around,
it was another huge obstacle.
Just this constant push, push, push.
Probably the greatest effort I've ever seen
in the motion picture industry.
[Maurice] The actors had to eat.
The actors that were in all of the makeup.
One of the gorillas was supposed to be driving a wagon.
It looked fine but as soon as he took the reins,
and he snapped 'em, and he yelled real loud,
he opened his mouth real big,
the whole front part of the bottom piece broke loose.
I look down in there and I see peas. Like, peas that you eat.
[narrator] From that point on, they served milkshakes at lunch, anything with a straw.
We were at the bottom of the Colorado River
and base camp was way up on top.
And we moved everything down with us
and they forgot straws.
Well, that doesn't mean too much to the average person
but for Kim, Roddy, Maurice, and me...
we couldn't, we couldn't drink.
So, Heston says, "You don't have any straws?
Where are the straws?"
"They're back at the base camp."
He ran back to the base camp and brought straws back for us.
So, you know, that-- just to let you know
what a, what a great common guy he was.
Kim Hunter was the queen of the set. [chuckles]
She was articulate and, like Roddy, just a super actor.
[Maurice] Maurice Evans, who played an orangutan, played chess,
and I played chess. We found ourselves sitting outside, Fox back lot,
and the two of us were looking at each other
just like, this is normal everyday thing.
[Dan] I remember my superior, Doc. Murman,
he said, "Well, we'll go to the dailies,
we got to watch this piece of junk again today,
you know, 15 minutes of this." He says--
You know. I said, "Well, don't underestimate
what an ape can do, you know?" [chuckles]
[narrator] To ensure the locations would be
as groundbreaking as the makeups,
production designer, Bill Creber, created Ape City,
shot on Fox Ranch in Malibu Canyon.
I always loved Ape City because everything was rounded
and had these soft curves to them
that, that looked primitive but functional.
[narrator] For the final beach scene, filmed in Malibu,
the makeups and heavy costumes had to be worn
in 100 degree heat.
[Lou] I think it was, uh, Charlton Heston's idea
to helicopter us all in.
So we all met at 20th Century Fox, there's a helipad there,
and we were helicoptered to the actual set.
Then we had our makeup started.
[Tom] You knew they weren't comfortable. We tried to keep everybody
as comfortable as we could, but it wasn't easy.
When we finally wrapped Planet of the Apes,
it was, I... I guess it was bittersweet
because, you know, you'd been-- I'd been so involved for eight months
without a day off.
It totally consumed my life.
All of a sudden, I didn't have to get up at 3:15.
I wouldn't be seeing all of my friends that I worked with,
and I'd made a lot of friends on that show.
And it was a very strange feeling
because I wanted to continue doing that,
continue doing just what I was doing,
what I'd been doing for eight months.
[Darrell] When they said, "that's a wrap" for the last time...
[laughs]
I left there, I thought, "I don't ever want
to do another appliance as long as I live."
[Maurice] Planet of the Apes was a real team effort
because all of us were brand new at applying this amount
of appliance work on a daily basis.
But when you look at what is going to end up on the screen,
the worst makeup job is going to represent everybody.
The best makeup job is also going to represent everybody.
[narrator] Filming of Planet of the Apes wrapped
on August 10th, 1967.
It was now in the hands of the post-production team,
including Jerry Goldsmith, who was composing the iconic score.
John told me, he said, "It's going to have a rough screening. You want to go and see it?"
And I think Wes Don, the other apprentice and I,
"Yeah, let's go see it."
I was devastated 'cause I never saw a movie
without color correction, without music,
you know, with just temp music, missing scenes.
And I came back and John said, "What do you think, Tommy? Eh?
Eh? What do you think?" And I'm terrified of telling him I think it's one of
the worst things I've ever seen.
The actors looked great but the rest of the movie looked terrible.
[narrator] Planet of the Apes also required
considerable ADR, or dubbing,
due to the muffled voices of the actors in makeup.
[Lou] Doing the looping, Franklin would give direction,
and then he had a golf cup and he'd putt.
And then, "Okay, go ahead, Lou." [laughs]
[Tom] So, Danny Striepeke gives me a gorilla mask
and tells me to take it over to the scoring stage.
When I get there, Jerry's in the middle of scoring the film,
and I was just blown away
because I never heard anything like it.
And Jerry wanted to wear the mask for inspiration
while he conducted his orchestra.
It's a very unusual score. I mean, that was another thing about Jerry was
that he loved to take chances. And he would use orchestrations and combinations of approaches
that ordinarily wouldn't probably be considered by most people.
[uplifting music]
[Dan] It all coalesced.
That doesn't happen very often.
To bring all those divergent talents together
into one, I call it a column of creativity.
[tense music]
[narrator] Planet of the Apes was completed
near the end of 1967 and slated for a March 1968 release.
[John Chambers] The biggest fear we had was, will they laugh
or accept the apes?
But I thought if they laughed,
this was going to be a Mickey Mouse.
20th Century Fox had a lot riding on this movie.
And the rumor around the lot was
that if this thing was a flop
that they would be in tremendous jeopardy.
[Charlton] Hundreds of technicians and the largest number of
makeup artists ever assembled
assisted the producers, the writers,
the director, and the cast.
[Ed] I didn't really think it was going to be that big, no.
But I know it'd been tried before and it was a flop.
[announcer]Planet of the Apes,
beyond your wildest dreams.
I was fortunate enough to get a ticket
from 20th Century Fox to go see their premiere opening.
I sat dead center in the theater.
And once I saw that gorilla come up in the corn field,
that big zoom shot, I went, "Oh, my God."
The reveal of the gorillas
is still absolutely extraordinary sequence.
You see the sticks, and you see the people running,
and the astronauts are like, "What's up?" You know.
[Richard] Starting to get really into the movie
and then as you realize, wait a minute,
I'm, I'm relating to these-- They're apes.
You didn't even think about it.
Charlton Heston looked more animated than the apes did.
Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!
As soon as we saw the apes,
I, I was-- I just stared and stared,
trying to figure out, how did they do that?
[Guillermo] It's hard for people to imagine now
what a massive mind-destroying thing it was
to see apes talk.
It blew me away. Because all of a sudden, you're seeing chimpanzees,
and you're seeing orangutans, and you're seeing gorillas.
[Scott] But I think what people still to this day talk about
is that amazing ending where he's home, all the time.
That stunned people, that shocking ending.
And they play it without any music.
All you hear is the ocean lapping up on the shore.
And he's just screaming his guts out.
And then you get a point of view shot which pulls back
and you see the Statue of Liberty in ruins,
blown to pieces, and rusted, and decrepit.
It's so devastating because the symbol is not accidental.
It's liberty, it's everything that was good about the world,
that is destroyed.
It said everything I believed in.
Um...
We were living in an era...
where we were still afraid of the bomb.
Of course we are now, today,
but it was very prevalent then.
And this script said, you know, you idiots.
You keep fooling around and you're going to blow everything up.
[solemn music]
[Tom] I was so moved and so, um,
proud to have worked on this film.
It was like the highlight of my life
to be able to sit and watch something that I had
given so much of my, uh, time and effort,
trying to make my part the best I could.
[narrator] Just three months into what was already shaping up
to be the most tumultuous year of the 20th century,
Planet of the Apes premiered on March 27th, 1968.
Everything about a movie is who you are,
how old you are, who you're with the first time you see it.
And when you ask people for one of their favorite movies
or something, not only can they tell you about the movie,
but you say, "Where'd you see it?"
They'll tell you the theater.
My mom dropped us off, it was a little theater in Santa Ana.
Um, [clears throat] we ran out to the car and said,
"We want to see it again!"
[Maurice] When Planet of the Apescame out,
that's all people talked about.
[Darrell] It was pretty intense.
I mean, they lined up to see this movie.
[Lou] You really don't know what to think
of a film called Planet of the Apes.
You don't think it's going to tackle such important things.
[Leonard] It was the kind of film everybody wanted to see,
that everybody buzzed about.
It was a film that made an impression.
How could it not?
There was something magical, funny, whimsical, poignant.
[Steve] The worldwide nerve that it struck,
besides the story, which is incredible,
and there's so many subtexts to it as well,
the makeups were pretty outstanding.
[Michael] As everyone in this industry is going to tell you,
Planet of the Apeswas a complete game changer
where the makeup was such an integral part
of telling of that story. If the makeup didn't work, the film wouldn't have worked.
It would've looked silly.
In the makeup world, it was revolutionary
as sound coming to film.
[Tom] Thinking back to day one
when John Chambers pulled up in his car,
waved at me getting out,
and he said, "It's you and me, Tommy," holding the script,
and it was Planet of the Apes.
And he says, "I'm going to win the Academy Award."
And I thought, "Come on,
the Academy doesn't even give awards for makeup."
[presenter] This year, a board of governors at the Academy
has voted a special award for makeup.
Would John Chambers please come out here
and get his award?
[audience applauds]
Mr. Chambers is responsible for making monkeys
out of Roddy McDowall, Maurice Evans, and Kim Hunter
for Planet of the Apes.
[audience applauds]
And quite brilliantly, too.
Will one of the friends of Oscar back there
please bring Mr. Chambers his award?
-[John chuckles] -[audience gasps]
[audience applauds]
That's what I call a terrific makeup job.
[audience laughs]
-How can I follow an act like that? -[audience laughs]
May I thank the Board of Governors for this wonderful honor.
May I thank Mr. Zanuck, Mr. Jacobs,
and Ben Nye and Dan Striepeke,
who share this award with me, I say.
But most of all, all those wonderful makeup men
and hairstylists that worked so hard
to make this picture a success.
From all of us to all of you,
God bless you and thank you so much.
[audience applauds]
[slow jazz music]
[Tom] John Chambers wanted to acknowledge
all the makeup artists that worked for him,
so he went to a jeweler, and he got this jeweler
to make these little gold and silver ape heads.
The gold ones went to the makeup artists
who did the principal actors.
This was a gift from, uh, John Chambers
to all of us who started and finished on the movie.
And I've treasured this over the years.
This was John's way of sharing his Academy Award
with all of us.
[narrator] With Planet of the Apes a financial and critical hit,
and having proved that nothing was impossible,
a new generation of makeup artists were inspired to join the craft.
[Rick] The first time I even heard about Planet of the Apes,
actually, my parents had a subscription to Life Magazine.
They had a picture of Maurice Evans in the makeup.
I turned the page and saw this amazing orangutan,
this guy, you know, "What the hell is this?"
It was so cool.
[upbeat jazz music]
[Tom Woodruff] I remember learning about Planet of the Apes
in the Famous Monsters of Filmland.
It was just such an amazing thing
to see that process in a, in a magazine,
the step by step process.
I knew then that I was thinking, I have to get into that.
And that's when I started playing around.
The first makeup was Planet of the Apesmakeup, you know.
It was so much fun doing.
It has this ability to intrigue every makeup artist.
I don't know one makeup artist that's been like, "Please, Planet of the Apes."
It just left this permanent mark,
uh, uh, that I really wanted to be part of,
and, and it was the only thing that, that I ever wanted to do since I was a kid.
My first ever movie was a Super 8
with my Planet of the Apes,uh, figures.
I think the studio, Fox was really, uh, surprised,
taken aback by just how many people,
uh, fell in love with this movie.
[Dan] Tremendous, tremendous reception to the film.
And particularly Fox, when they started seeing the coffers fill up.
And the studio went, "Sequel, sequel," you know, right away.
The pressure on us was to come up with something
as groundbreaking, and as unusual, and original,
like the very first Planet of the Apes.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] Production of Beneath was difficult
due to Charlton Heston only being willing to work one week
and Fox battling producer Richard Zanuck,
eventually leading to his firing from the studio.
[Tom] The script for Beneath the Planet of the Apescalled
for humans to live under the surface of the Earth.
These humans were mutations.
[John] When John Chambers set up his makeup lab, I would go over there,
and, and there-- originally it was just John, and Mr. Burman, and Verner.
And I would go over and hang out there 'cause it was so cool.
You know, I'm a Famous Monsters of Filmlandkid.
So to be with-- they had all this stuff.
And in that movie are mutants.
I watched all the prototypes
and there were a couple that were so gross.
There was one that had teeth coming, like,
I mean, really malformed, and was so grotesque,
it literally made you sick.
I think we came up with half a dozen or so different sculptures
of different, uh, mutated people.
And what I noticed was... We were-- In the script,
they were supposed to be able to take their normal faces
and peel them off to reveal that they were mutated.
Well, I kept looking at these heads that we were doing,
and these heads were so distorted
you'd never be able to put a face over it.
Somebody saw the book, Gray's Anatomy.
It had an illustration of a guy in there
with all the veins, and muscles, and everything showing.
And went, "Oh, that's it."
Because that we could put a thin skin on
and make it look like the person underneath,
so when they pulled it off,
it would marry to it beautifully.
Beneath the Planet of the Apesturned out
to be a very successful sequel.
And if Fox was surprised by the success of the original,
I think they were even more surprised
by the success of the sequel.
So there was an immediate need to keep the story going.
[narrator] At the end ofBeneath,
the Earth is destroyed,
seemingly ending the Planet of the Apes franchise.
[low rumble]
By sending apes back in time,
a whole new world of opportunities was opened.
[Joe] The cleverest of the follow up pictures
is Escape from the Planet of the Apes,
which is a time travel picture
in which the apes go back to 1973
and are harbingers of what's going to happen in the future.
And of course, there are, uh...
people who want to stop them from breeding
and make sure that that world
of apes conquering man never happens.
Uh, and it's a really cleverly plotted movie,
and it's my favorite in the series,
just because it's so much fun.
It has an ending that could have only...
happened in the 70s,
where... well, "How do you want to end it?"
"Let's shoot a baby."
"Okay." [chuckles]
Planet of the Apesis the first major franchise
outside of James Bond that was successful in its sequels.
I ran out to every single one of 'em.
My favorite is Conquest of the Planet of the Apes,
which, to my knowledge, was shot
on the Century City, uh, grounds
after 20th Century Fox had sold their back lot.
I was at the University of California Irvine,
I was a premed student.
Um, I looked out the window one day,
and I was in my chemistry lab, and I saw a film crew on the set,
and apes running all over our campus.
And it was Conquest for the Planet of the Apes.
And so, I told my lab partner, "Hey, finish up here.
I'm going to go pay a visit."
And I met J. Lee Thompson on the set,
had lunch with him, and then six months later
I was Cornelius on Battle for the Planet of the Apes.
[John] I knew J. Lee Thompson,
and Lee said to me, "I'm doing another Apes movie."
And I said, "Oh, good, you know."
And he said, "Why don't you be in it?"
I said, "I'd love to be in it."
He said, "Okay."
So, I'm mostly cut out of it.
I'm a face on the cutting room floor in that movie
although I get pretty big billing right in the main title. [chuckles]
But, uh, I played a human slave to Roddy McDowall.
No cracks.
But I got a lot of shit for it, you know,
especially from Roddy.
[Bobby] The role of Cornelius wasn't really going
to be that significant until they realized
that they had, you know, a sentimental storyline.
After a few days of watching Roddy work up close,
I noticed that his makeup was more expressive,
more pliable than many of the other characters.
And so, I asked my makeup artist, Jimmy Phillips,
how it was that Roddy could do this little nose wiggle thing
that was unique.
And he said, "Well, that's a secret."
And I said, "I know, but I'm his son.
I should be able to do the same thing that he does."
And he said, "Well, if you can get Roddy to tell you the story of how that gets done,
I'll do it for you." And so, I was brand new in the industry,
a little intimidated, but I went to Roddy
and said, "Look, Mr. McDowall, I'm playing your son.
I should have a characteristic similar to yours.
Would you agree?" And he said, "Yeah, what do you got?"
I said, "How do you do the nose thing?"
And he said, "Tell Jimmy to hollow out the inside
of the appliance." The following day, I got on a scene,
he was in the shot, and I did the little nose wiggle,
and it was well-received.
They still had other ideas for how to expand the Apes universe,
and they brought Planet of the Apesto television.
When they did that, they, first of all, managed the biggest crew,
which was to keep Roddy McDowall as part of the cast,
as a brand new character, Galen,
a chimpanzee on the run
because he helped two marooned astronauts.
[Dan] I was involved in the TV series
and, uh, we tried to adhere, within budget constraints,
to what was done in the original pictures.
In fact, we probably had to do, on a percentage basis,
more appliances than masks
because of the TV medium being so close.
Danny Striepeke called me up...
and he said, uh, "Fred, I want you to do the Planet of the Apes.
We're doing a TV series."
I says, "Really?"
He says, "Yeah, you're going to do Roddy."
I started working on Roddy and it was just heaven on earth.
[Darrell] Roddy McDowall, when they called a wrap,
he would say, "Are you sure?"
They'd say, "Yes, that's a wrap,"
and he would go. [mimicking tearing]
And tear the whole thing off in one piece.
The physical challenges of production,
I think, just was impossible to do on a weekly basis.
[narrator] Despite its popularity, thePlanet of the Apes TV series
is canceled after just one season.
An animated series follows but also only lasts a year.
This would be the last Apes project produced by Fox
for over 25 years.
[TV static]
[Tom] John called me and asked me if I wanted
to, uh, go into partnership with him
to open the very first independent makeup studio.
He said I could also bring my brother with me.
We were going to be doing motion picture and television work,
but that was only our cover.
It was our job to help the CIA create quick change disguises.
John stayed with them all the way up till the 1980s.
We all knew that he was working on something secretive.
[tense music]
[crowd shouting]
There were six people when the Iranian embassy was overrun
that had gotten away.
John Chambers and Bob Sidell created a fake movie
just to get these people out of Iran.
[narrator] The details of John Chambers and the CIA's involvement in
the Canadian caper remained classified until 1997.
The full extent of their mission wouldn't be revealed
until 2012, whenArgo premiered to critical acclaim,
winning the Academy Award for Best Picture.
[audience applauds]
[Tom] John, one day, came in and he was real grumpy,
and he looked torn, he looked beaten,
he looked downtrodden. I said, "What's wrong?"
And he said, "Well, I've been diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease,
which is lymphoma or cancer, blood cancer,
and I need you guys to buy, buy me out."
Well, my brother and I had to scrape every dollar we had
to be able to buy him out.
We found out later that the whole Hodgkin's Disease
was something he just made up
because he wanted us to buy him out.
[curious music]
[narrator] The first film produced after Chambers' exit wasPhantom of the Paradise.
Despite having no involvement, John Chambers was given full credit for the production
due to his status as an Academy Award winner.
After we bought John Chambers out,
it was tough finding work.
We didn't have any contacts.
And my brother and I really couldn't afford
to keep two families going on what we were making,
so we decided to flip a coin to see who was going to take over the studio.
I won.
And I did several things
and started getting the reputation,
things started to work real well.
And then John Chambers calls me to ask me
if I would like to, uh, work with him
on The Island of Dr. Moreau.
You know, his ego got out of check,
he was overbearing, harassing people.
He was really miserable, it was tough on everybody.
Even Danny Striepeke, who had been his friend since NBC,
and he didn't speak to him again.
And I didn't speak to him for years.
[narrator] After changing the name to Burman Studios,
Tom and his team began working
on some of the greatest films of the 1970s and 80s.
It's guys like Tommy who had the creative juices
in their hands and in their brains that create these pieces.
We were in survival, and we just did anything and everything we could.
Anything that came past us, we grabbed onto it.
[Michael] Tommy's a talent, he comes from a talented family.
His brother, his dad.
You always expected quality.
[narrator] By the late 1970s, Burman Studios was one of the top names
in the makeup business. At this point, Tom Burman had partnered
with makeup effects artist, Stan Winston.
We just hit it off right on day one.
There was something about Stan
that was tremendously inspiring.
[Matt] Tom Burman and my father, Stan Winston,
were kindred spirits.
Two incredibly creative, incredibly goofy individuals
who happened to love monsters and monster makeup.
[Tom] By the end of the 1970s, I decided to push for a title I had been using
called special makeup effects. Nobody else used it, the union didn't like it,
John Chambers didn't like it, but I didn't find anything that described what I did
any better than that title.
So I started using the title,
along with Stan Winston was the only other one who backed me up.
I also pushed really hard to create a category for makeup at the Academy
because they were very resistant, but you could see everywhere that makeup was,
uh, was very prominent in so many films.
[audience applauds]
[narrator] The first annual Academy Award for Makeup
was presented in 1982.
Because of the importance ofPlanet of the Apes on the art form,
Kim Hunter was chosen to present the award
with horror icon, Vincent Price.
The winner is Rick Baker
for An American Werewolf in London.
[audience applauds]
In California there were only three guys.
I mean, there was Rick Baker, Stan Winston, and Tom Burman.
And they were doing everything and innovating.
[Mike] Tom is a mainstay of our industry.
He is a creative force that everybody recognizes,
everybody knows the Burman name.
He is one of the main people in our industry
who gives us material to look at
and to draw inspiration from.
[Tom] One of my favorite directors to work for was Richard Donner.
We did, um, Goonies,we did Scrooged, Lethal Weapon.
[Richard] Making a movie is a bitch.
You run into all kinds of trials and tribulations.
Forgetting all that, they delivered the best, the Burmans.
They were just a pleasure to be with.
Going into the 80s were some really interesting years
and that's when I met you, 1980.
And we did, um, Cat People together, remember?
I do remember and it was very magical.
And you, you allowed me the freedom
to help you design Nastassia Kinski's transformation,
and our journey began.
Yeah, I wanted a feminine approach,
not a real masculine heavy approach.
That's why I was delighted to have you there and we've, um--
We've been collaborating ever since.
Yeah, we've been collaborating ever since.
You always know where we're going
-and I'm a detail fanatic, so. -You are, you are.
She loves to get those little tiny edges, and the little parts and pieces.
And, uh, you know, we do our dance around somebody as we--
-It's very magical because we just sort of-- -Yeah.
When an actor's in our chair,
we just sort of know how we work.
And, you know, you always know where we're going
and then I am obsessive about making sure
all the details are perfect.
And it's a blissful marriage, partnership, and journey.
It's been, been great.
I'm giving you a kiss.
[lips smacking]
[narrator] In 1988, on the 20th anniversary
of its original release, Fox began discussing a remake ofPlanet of the Apes.
But the film would spend over a decade in development hell
before director, Tim Burton, joined the project.
I need to take a sabbatical,
I need to get away for a while.
I get a call from Tim Burton
saying, "I'm going to do a Planet of the Apesremake,
I'd like to talk to you about doing it."
And I was like, "Oh, shit." You know?
[narrator] Rick Baker and Stan Winston vied
for the highly coveted position of makeup designer.
My dad wanted so badly to put his stamp on the franchise.
And he lobbied for it hard,
and he and I got our life cast done,
and they sculpted these incredible ape makeups.
Dad was an elderly chimp, I was a young chimp.
It was a dream for me to be able to perform with my dad,
but I know it was a dream for him
because he came out to Los Angeles to be an actor.
And here was his opportunity to act again.
[narrator] Despite Stan Winston's effort,
Rick Baker was selected to create makeups
for this new vision of Planet of the Apes.
I was very pleased with the makeups that we did,
and was pleased at the amount of makeups that we did,
and the quality of them.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] Released in 2001,
Planet of the Apes opened to mixed reviews.
And despite being a commercial success,
it was unable to match the original.
The big films started going more to the larger studios
like Stan Winston's, or Rick Baker's, or Greg Cannom's.
And, uh, Barry and I started to do a segue into television.
We, we didn't want to leave home
because we had a brand new baby, Max,
and, um, it was perfect for us.
We did things like The Tracey Ullman Showwhere
we only had to work one day a week, we could prep all week.
And we did things like Chicago Hope,
and we did the pilot for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, CSI.
And we eventually wound up doing Nip/Tuck,
and we decided at that time,
we wanted to bring motion picture quality to television.
Greer Shephard, Ryan Murphy's producer, came to us
and said that the studio greenlit Nip/Tuck
because of the work we did.
There's always a range of people
that can make something delicate or expressive.
You know, uh, and I think that, uh, Tom could run the gamut
and make something that was so naturalistic
that nobody knows it's makeup.
I feel that Tom took a, a different approach
to a lot of things than other makeup artists would.
[Ve] They did so many fantastic things for TV
and I'm sure it was like, you know, hellacious,
because TV has such quick turnaround.
So, he really made it possible for that to happen on TV.
The Burmans did an amazing job.
I think that really laid the way for a lot of shows.
[narrator] Throughout his career, Tom Burman has been not only an inspiration
but also a mentor to makeup artists.
I'd been looking for someone to, um, teach what I knew.
I mean, it's not like we didn't have people
through the years, a lot of people.
Vince was insatiable and he wanted to learn everything.
I decided to retire.
Vincent came here at that time.
It was easy just to hand it over to him.
[Vincent] The day that Burman Studios became B2FX was,
it was kind of an emotional day for me,
because I joke and I often say
that it was almost like moving back into your parents' house
after you moved out.
I've always wanted to open up my own studio.
Taking these steps into making that happen
just came full circle into me renting the space and being here.
It was, it was... it was such an amazing feeling.
[narrator] Despite makeup finding a place
in the hearts of a new generation of artists,
the industry began to shift towards digital effects.
Ever since I can remember, there are these naysayers
about the future of the motion picture business,
especially makeup because of the digital era.
And, uh, I don't see it.
I see makeup's just going to keep growing
and it's going to keep changing.
But there's a lot of fear around that.
I said, "You know, eventually they're not going to need makeup artists."
He says, "What do you mean? Oh, you're full of crap."
I think they're going to go CGI route.
I see, basically the end...
of makeup as we know it today.
[narrator] Bolstered by the success of digital studios, such as Weta and ILM,
Fox greenlights a new Planet of the Apes film. This time, it's a reboot.
The new Planet of the Apes, what we did is that we made all the apes digital this time.
And, you know, one of the funny things is that when we were doing the first one,
a lot of my friends from Los Angeles, you know, heard that we were gonna be doing it
and he said, "Oh, fantastic. You're finally gonna get to work on a Planet of the Apesfilm.
So, what kind of prosthetics are you gonna use and everything?"
I thought, "Actually, no prosthetics this time. It's all going to be digital."
[Michael] But it's a completely different approach,
completely different, really, type of film.
[Rick] I wanted to hate the Planet of the Apes
that they did when they did it with all computers,
but I was actually pretty blown away by what they did.
[narrator] By 2018, three, all digital
Planet of the Apes films had been released
and grossed over $2 billion at the box office.
Entertainment is evolving faster than we can imagine.
And digital technology is the vein
through which that life blood is going to flow.
There's no-- We can bang our heads against the wall
and say, "No, there'll always be prosthetic makeups.
We know it's better to blend the two."
We can bang our heads and we can do whatever we want,
but it's coming.
[Greg] I love CGI, I'm all for it.
If I do an age makeup, trying to do it every day,
you're going to make mistakes, little things.
I think a lot of people are so afraid of CGI, and things taking over,
and the makeup effects world being this dying art form
that will, you know, just go down.
I just don't see any of that happening.
I see it as busy as it has ever been right now.
[Tom] Artists like Vincent are our future
because he appreciates the past.
Most makeup artists that I know, they always refer back to the originals, the classics,
which Planet of the Apesof course is.
Tom, this is the first time we've talked in 48 years.
-Wow. -And I'm still mad at you.
Yeah, should be, you should be.
-Yeah, it seems like yesterday. -[Lou] I know.
[Tom] Part of me, just seems like I can go back
and visit that moment, and get all excited all over again.
[Vincent] When the conversation first came up of putting Lou Wagner
back into a Planet of the Apeslook,
that was a very exciting phone call.
It's a once in a lifetime opportunity
to be able to take somebody from that film,
this many years later, and transform him into a,
what really got me, is into his character now.
[dramatic music]
Seeing Lou in his old age ape makeup after 50 years
brought back a lot of memories of John and our falling out.
Those years when I tried to contact him and couldn't,
didn't know where he was.
And then I heard he had a stroke
and he was in the Motion Picture Home.
I was fortunate to meet John Chambers.
Kind of felt like he was in the witness relocation program, from my perspective,
for a while. It was like he disappeared, and he was completely off the radar.
And then I heard that he was at the Motion Picture Home.
[Scott] I said, "What if we do a party for John?"
Because it's been, at that time, 30 years
since he worked on Planet of the Apes.
And I'll bring in people he worked with,
but he'll also meet people he's never met before,
people who were influenced by what he did in those movies in terms of their makeup.
[crowd] Surprise!
-[crowd applauds] -[John Chambers laughing]
-Oh boy. When an Irishman hasn't got words to say anything... -[crowd laughs]
[Scott] And it just so happened that it was the day before his 75th birthday.
♪ Happy birthday to you
[Scott] He was pretty impressed that we had all those people there,
because it was a lot of his friends,
and colleagues, and peers.
You sparked the imagination of an army of kids
who are now the eminent and renowned of your field.
I'm afraid that you have to settle for the reality
that you are an icon.
[all applauding]
Dr. Zira, I believe Chambers would like a kiss.
[all laughing]
[all applauding]
[Michael] You probably couldn't predict this, but there was a great thing that happened
for our industry that day, is there were a lot of folks
who hadn't seen each other in a long time.
And maybe some old grudges were left behind that day.
I think it was a good healing time,
I think, for the industry.
[calm music]
[Tom] After Scott Essman called me
and told me that they were throwing a 75th birthday party
for John Chambers, I was a little ambivalent about going
because I had a lot of unfinished business with John.
We had kind of separated in a way
that I hadn't spoken to him for years.
I had tried to get in touch with him many times.
I never got an answer.
So, I went.
But to see him in a wheelchair...
was pretty moving for me.
All of a sudden... I, I saw him in a whole other light.
He didn't have that bombastic presence any longer.
You, you could see that he'd had a stroke,
and you could see that one side of him was somewhat paralyzed.
And it was, um... I kind of stayed in the back,
and watched everybody as, as they congratulated him,
and people filed by and they shook his hand,
and they got their picture taken with him.
And, uh...
It was-- after, after a while, he, he looked over and he saw me.
And, uh...
he...
he called me to his side.
And...
And he said...
"You're the one I'm most proud of, Tommy."
And...
and we looked into each other's eyes
and both of us had tears.
And it was over.
The anguish, the past... it was gone, finished.
[narrator] John Chambers died in August of 2001,
at the age of 78.
Johnny. Hm.
[sniffling]
[whispers] Just a minute.
I loved him like a brother.
And at times, I got so damn mad at him,
I could've killed him.
[Tom] He was like a father to me.
He was my teacher, he taught me about life, he taught me about people,
he taught me the skills that I needed, the entrepreneurial skills I needed to be on my own.
He made a huge difference in my world.
[light jazzy music]
[horn honking]
[Tom] The one thing we never expected
when we were working on Planet of the Apes
was the huge fanbase.
-[uplifting music] -Hello!
I'm still shocked and surprised
that there are such avid... fans.
If you're a fan of Planet of the Apes,
you're a dyed in the wool fan.
[Scott] If you go to conventions like Monsterpalooza,
you always see Planet of the Apescharacters.
And the fans don't spare any expense.
They have the shoes with the, the ape paw print,
and they have the, the full head to toe costume,
mostly they make themselves.
I've been a fan ever since I was a child.
When I hear the opening music, it's just like I'm, you know, 11 years old again.
We pretty much did everything ourselves, I mean down to making our own shoes, our own costumes,
doing our own makeup.
This is why I love, uh, science fiction
and horror movies so much.
It's all Planet of the Apes.
If the Planet of the Apes franchise didn't have
an absolutely committed and dedicated fanbase,
it wouldn't have sustained itself for the 50 years that it has.
Um, Star Trekhas been around nearly as long, uh, Star Warsfans,
they're all extremely dedicated
to that particular franchise.
And the Apes fans, I find, are enormously... intelligent.
[narrator] Original memorabilia from thePlanet of the Apes franchise,
including prosthetics, costumes, and props,
have become relics among collectors.
[Joe] Collecting film artifacts
and television artifacts has grown exponentially.
I've been very fortunate because I've saved a big chunk of the history of Hollywood, right?
In my career, I've probably handled almost everything
that survived from Planet of the Apes,
to whether it's the Lawgiver, the bleeding Lawgiver.
I've had every costume of every principal actor,
you know, makeup heads, background apes, prosthetics.
I don't think there's something we haven't had.
[solemn music]
[Alessandro] The 50th anniversary exhibit that we have here on display at
the School of Cinematic Arts is an attempt to really bring together
as many facets of the Planet of the Apesuniverse, really,
as we can, to show and celebrate the original films,
alongside the amazing achievements
of the contemporary films.
[Howard] I think the work that Tom and John did
on Planet of the Apeswas absolutely a turning point
in film history.
When people say they don't have influences, they're lying.
Because everything you see influences you.
And I know that I took something from Planet of the Apes.
It's a very successful tale well-told.
[dramatic music]
[Richard] It's that world of fantasy.
It seems to hold an audience for generations to come.
[Maurice] If I'm ever asked what some of my favorite projects are,
I would always come up with the very first one
that almost everybody in the world knows about.
It was the original Planet of the Apes.
[Lou] It was singularly the best film
I was lucky enough to do.
It's the proudest I am in my 50 year career.
I hope that 50 years from now that people will look upon our sequence of films
with the same amount of respect and...
nostalgia.
I'm honored that people love the movies I've worked on,
and I've worked on hundreds.
But when I look back, the greatest moment
in my career was John and I standing
at that marble top table making apes.
[dramatic music]
[uplifting music]
[solemn music]
[dramatic music]