The media is going bananas today (WHACKETY SCHMACKETY) with the news that Cheetah, the chimp who starred opposite Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan the Ape Man, died this week at the age of 80. Not only did he outlive both his co-stars (Weissmuller died in 1984 at 79, and Maureen O’Sullivan, who played Jane, and who died in 1998 at 87), but chimps normally don’t live past 50, making Cheetah some kind of chimp George Burns. If that were the end of the story, it’d be quite simple. But these chimp stories never are.

It seems “this is the chimp from Tarzan” is a popular claim among chimp owners (and to be fair, there were likely multiple chimps used in the film), and an impostor was outed a few years ago.

Another Cheeta – this time with no “h” at the end of his name – was exposed as a fake in 2008 by Washington Post journalist RD Rosen, who had been asked to write a biography of him. In later years, the fake Cheeta had found himself marketed as a painter of “ape-stract art”, with several canvases exhibited at London’s National Gallery. However, with a little investigation, Rosen discovered that the cigar-smoking, paint-daubing impostor was in fact born in 1960 or 1961 and had never been in a Tarzan film.

I like the idea that this journalist made it his mission to out this CHIMPOSTOR for the fraud it was. He’d probably be sitting in his crappy motel room, watching yet another human-interest story on local TV, with this fraud Cheeta finger painting and living it up, while RD Rosen gritted his teeth and crushed a pencil in his fist. This son of a bitch had to be stopped, but no one would believe him, not even his gruff-but-fatherly editor. “GIVE IT UP, ROSEN! YA GOT NO EVIDENCE!” But RD Rosen never let a few banana peels slip him up on his way to THE TRUTH.

As for the recently-departed Cheetah, here’s what we know about him:

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Covering entertainment news, we hear all too much about no-talent amateurs who just coast through the business winning jobs based on looks or nepotism.  People like that lazy hack Meryl Streep.  What we don’t hear nearly enough about are those young go-getters who aren’t afraid to go out there and grab life by the junk.  People like the young South African you see here, and his campaign to get cast in Stephen Sommers’ Tarzan movie.  Here’s part of the letter he wrote to movie writer David Poland accompanying the above picture:

I’m a highly self motivated 22- year old bodybuilder and actor. I’m a huge TARZAN fan ( the walls of my room mostly consists out of Tarzan posters and movie stars) and I live and breathe movies…which is why my dream is to one day move to America/USA and become an actor (movie star) there… as California is the film/entertainment capital of the world.

Honestly I dont have that much film experience (I’ve been working with an Israeli fim company to do a comercial shot at Mosselbay, South Africa/ I’ve done some stage acting as well) but I believe that THE WILL TO WIN IS MORE CRUCIAL THAN THE SKILL TO WIN… [OOH WHA-AA AA-AAH!  -Ed.] and anything that I dont know by now I’m willing to learn very fast… It would be an honour to be part of this new TARZAN movie thats now in production by STEPHEN SOMMERS at WARNER BROS.

My personality is very open. I’m an extrovert and an outgoing kind of person.I worked a few years at a local gym where you are constantly working with people which is awesome.

I’m an outdoor type of guy, and like to do a lot of challenging things such as: horse riding/ canoeing /target shooting/ hunting/ swimming/ working out/ mountain climbing/ cycling and anything that is physiqly demanding.

REGARDS
DEWET DU TOIT

Well there you have it.  The ball is in your court, Stephen Sommers.  I imagine hiring this guy would be a relief after doing all those movies with Brendan Fraser. I have it on good authority that that guy couldn’t canoe for sh-t.

Stephen Sommers is the awful director they let handle the GI Joe movie, which will probably end up something like Saving Private Ryan as done by Jerry Bruckheimer.  Meanwhile, Sommers’ next project is apparently going to be a Tarzan movie.  I think.  If you can make any sense of the following description, you’re either brilliant, or some kind of retard whisperer.

The action-adventure icon will trash his loincloth and throw on a pair of khakis for the next big screen take.

Director Stephen Sommers (The Mummy) and screenwriter Stuart Beattie (Australia) are ditching the boy-raised-by-apes origin story for a 1930′s-set romp with a hefty helping of romance: Think Pirates of the Caribbean with buffed-and-tanned actors flying through the jungle and sprinting up trees, parkour-style. [EW]

Hmm, let’s try to break this down: Tarzan won’t be raised by apes. ERGO, he will be wearing KHAKIS, not A LOINCLOTH.  But don’t worry, he will still be BUFF AND TAN and FLYING THROUGH THE JUNGLE, because… uh… ROMANCE.  And it will also be like PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, but also with PARKOUR – which of course is the sport of urban free running… So somehow, you subtract URBAN from PARKOUR and add PIRATES and you get this: uh… TARZAN.  Either that, or you get a headache and the overwhelming desire to throw poop at someone.

When it was first discussed two years ago, the Tarzan project had Guillermo Del Toro and Master and Commander writer John Collee attached.  Now that Del Toro is busy with The Hobbit, they’ve signed up (ugh) Stephen Sommers, to direct a script by Stu Beattie.

With the first two “Mummy” movies, “The Scorpion King” and “Van Helsing,” Sommers, who is repped by WMA, has become a connoisseur of the big-budget, effects-driven spectacle. He recently finished shooting the summer 2009 Paramount tentpole, “G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra,” which Beattie came in to write for him.  [THR]

A connoisseur?  Have they actually seen any of those movies?  He’s not so much an appreciator of effects movies as he is a maker of really shitty ones.  Stephen Sommers is a film connoisseur like Thunderbird is a wine connoisseur.

Additional Stephen Sommers facts, via IMDB: Industrial Light & Magic jokingly created the “Stephen Sommers Scale” to measure the extent of digital effects used in a given movie scene. The four parts of the scale, from lowest to highest, are “What The Shot Needs”, “What The Computers Can Handle”, “Oh My God, The Computers Are About To Crash”, and finally “What Stephen Wants”.