Gorillas in the Mist (1988) is the story of famed naturalist Dian Fossey's ultimately fatal struggle to protect wild Rwandan gorillas from poachers. The film was directed by Michael Apted from a screenplay by Anna Hamilton Phelan, based on an article by Harold T.P Hayes, the work of Dian Fossey, and a story Phelan had written with Tab Murphy. Sigourney Weaver was chosen to play Fossey, with her love interest played by Bryan Brown. Also in the cast were Julie Harris and John Omirah Miluwi.
In 1985, Universal and producer Arne Glimcher had purchased the rights to Fossey's 1983 memoir Gorillas in the Mist . Universal wasn't the only studio interested - Warner Bros. had their own Fossey film in pre-production, based on an article by Harold Hayes for Life magazine. Rather than battle it out, the two studios decided on a co-production, with the screenplay based on both sources. In December 1985, Glimcher traveled to Rwanda to meet with Fossey in preparation for the film. Just hours before they were to meet, Dian Fossey was murdered in her bedroom.
With a very modest $12 million budget, filming took place in various location in Africa, as well as two months in Rwanda at Fossey's Karisoke Research Centre, which was 12,000 feet above sea level. Base camp had to be established at 8,500 feet, so everyone had to hike 4,000 feet each day with their gear through the brush and cold. They could only shoot with the gorillas for one hour a day because of government restrictions on the number of humans who could be with the gorillas at a time. As a result, there were only five people with Weaver during those shots. Other scenes were done with stuntmen wearing gorilla suits created by legendary makeup artist Rick Baker, who had worked on Michael Jackson's Thriller video, as well as many major motion pictures.
Karisoke was a tough location shoot; in those days there was no phone service or mail, so producer Terence Clegg had to hire 400 Rwandans to bring mail and packages up the mountain. Because lions still roamed the area, park rangers with rifles were constantly on patrol.
When the film was released in the fall of 1988, Roger Ebert lauded Weaver's performance, writing "It is impossible to imagine a more appropriate choice for the role," but, like many other critics, including Hal Hanson of The Washington Post, Ebert felt that the film "tells us what Dian Fossey accomplished and what happened to her, but doesn't tell us who she was, and at the end that's what we want to know."
Although the film was nominated for five Academy Awards - Best Actress for Weaver, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for Anna Hamilton Phelan and Tab Murphy, Best Sound for Andy Nelson and his crew, Best Film Editing for Stuart Baird and Best Music, Original Score for Maurice Jarre, Gorillas in the Mist didn't win a single Oscar. Weaver and Jarre would go on to win Golden Globes in their respective categories.
Sigourney Weaver was so moved by her experience while making this film that she started an "adopt-a-gorilla" campaign to fund research at the Karisoke Research Centre and to fund patrols to stop gorilla poaching. She called it "The Digit Fund," after the gorilla that was killed by poachers in 1977, made famous by Dian Fossey. She and producer Arnold Glimcher "adopted" Maggie, one of the gorillas used in the film. In 2008, twenty years after filming Gorillas in the Mist , Sigourney Weaver returned to Karisoke with a BBC documentary crew. She found that many of the gorillas had survived, and the population had risen to around 700. Sadly, many of the Rwandans she had worked with had been killed or had disappeared and were presumed dead after the genocide in 1994. As for the murder of Dian Fossey, a Rwandan court tried and convicted her assistant Wayne McGuire in absentia for the killing. McGuire, however, had returned to the United States, and because there was no extradition treaty with Rwanda, McGuire has never served his sentence.
SOURCES:
Ebert, Roger "Gorillas in the Mist Buries Weaver's Character in the Jungle" Moscow-Pullman Daily News 13 Oct 88
The Internet Movie Database
''Mist' Actress Starts Adopt-A-Gorilla'" Ocala Star-Banner 28 Oct 88
http://news.moviefone.com/2013/09/21/gorillas-in-the-mist-sigourney-weaver/
By Lorraine LoBianco
