I GENERALLY don't want to be in any club that includes Pamela Anderson, which is part of the reason I'm often skeptical about PETA causes.
That said, I was horrified when I saw the latest documentary from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, about great apes in film and TV. The video was narrated by Anjelica Huston, who recently sent it to all the studios, along with a letter asking them to stop using the animals.
We're talking primarily chimps, who have appeared in commercials and movies such as "Project X," "The Wizard of Oz," "Evan Almighty," "Planet of the Apes" and, of course, Clyde the kiss-blowing orangutan in "Every Which Way but Loose."
According to "Visions of Caliban: On Chimpanzees and People" by famed primatologist Jane Goodall and Dale Peterson, the original "Clyde" was trained with a can of mace and a pipe wrapped in newspaper. He was viciously beaten the day before filming started to make him more docile. Near the end of filming the sequel "Any Which Way You Can," the orangutan was caught stealing doughnuts on the set, brought back to the training facility and beaten for 20 minutes with a 3 1/2 -foot ax handle. He died soon after of a cerebral hemorrhage.
You'd think that 30 years would improve the lot of chimps. In some cases it has, as filmmakers like Peter Jackson are opting for animatronic apes or actors in ape suits. At least two high-profile trainers have been pressured out of the chimp business in the last few years by lawsuits or protesters. Yet some persist. This summer "Speed Racer" became one of the only films in recent history to earn an "unacceptable" rating from the American Humane Assn., the group that monitors the use of animals in films.
Now there are certainly moviegoers who will argue it was they who were mistreated by the Wachowski brothers' candy-colored box-office bomb, but at least consumers weren't physically manhandled. According to the AHA website, two chimps were used to portray the character of Chim-Chim (who performed such feats as driving a golf cart in the movie), and a trainer hit a chimp during a training session in front of a representative of the AHA. (Warner Bros declined to comment.)
According to PETA spokesman Lisa Lange, the organization had written to producer Joel Silver asking that the studio refrain from using a real chimp in the film, but had received a letter back from Warner Bros. stating, "We respect your viewpoint, but we also respect the vision of the filmmaker and decided to use live animals."
