Being a mime in the movie business usually entails getting punched in the face, but Dan Richter managed to parlay his trapped-in-an-invisible-box skills into a key role in “one of the most influential and important sequences in film history.” No, not the tennis scene from Blow-Up; you’ll remember Richter for hooting, beating his chest and – most famously – throwing a bone in the air.
Not only did Richter play “Moonwatcher,” the ape-man who invents weapons of mass destruction in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, he also choreographed the “Dawn of Man” sequence that opens the picture. “It so happened I was teaching private classes in mime in London at the time,” Richter told our man Bilge Ebiri at New York magazine’s Vulture blog. “Anyway, I was asked if I would go out and let Stanley pick my brain. I said, "If you give me twenty minutes, a stage, leotards, and some towels, I can show you how to do it." So he hired me to choreograph it, and eventually talked me into playing the part of Moonwatcher as well.”
Most of us probably assumed notorious control freak Kubrick trained his own apes for the film or even built a set of mecha-monkeys in his basement, but in fact Richter conducted his own little Full Metal Jacket boot camp for his fellow ape-men. And although he didn’t design the makeup – that was Stuart Freeborn’s work – he’s still a little miffed that Planet of the Apes wound up with the Oscar for Best Makeup. “It was so below what we were doing! Also, I'll tell you something else: We had stuff stolen. I can't say it was Planet of the Apes, but they were the only other movie shooting at the same time and same place we were. Stanley and I even had someone steal a mask and some ape hands right out from under our noses on the backlot, where someone had hid in a drainage ditch.”
If only the damn dirty apes had kept their stinkin’ paws on, that never would have happened.