Published in The Kansan City Kansan June 11, 1999, my weekly column focused on the co-directors of Disney’s animated ‘Tarzan’ as well as Bruce W. Smith one of the movie’s animators. I interviewed all three in Kansas City, Mo. After the interview, I asked Smith for the gorilla sketch he had drawn during a demo, and he did me one better. He drew a new one, and signed it for me. 

Since then, Chris Buck directed several Disney classics, including ‘Frozen.’ Kevin Lima has directed a number of animated movies too, including ‘102 Dalmations’ and ‘Enchanted’.

By Steve Crum

Watching his favorite cartoon show The Flintstones led to sketching and creating his own high school comic strip. That was a decade-plus ago. A vine swing to 1999, and a very grown up and gifted Bruce W. Smith is promoting Tarzan, Walt Disney’s animated version of the jungle man story. (Tarzan will be reviewed in next week’s column.)

Smith was animator of the “Kerchak” character. Kerchak, the adoptive-gorilla dad of Tarzan, is integral to the film and on-screen for a good number of sequences. Smith’s Kansas City visit earlier this week was the winding-down part of a countrywide press tour. Fellow travelers are Tarzan’s co-directors Chris Buck and Kevin Lima. (They also have a history of on-hand animating at Disney.) The three held a lively and insightful multimedia promo that included film clips, discussion, personal interviews, and an overhead projection of Smith’s live and on-the-sport drawing of the silverback gorilla, Kerchak. 

To achieve realism, Smith studied video footage taken over several months in Uganda by the Disney crew. This was a beginning step in the four year creation of the film. Since Smith’s sole character was the gorilla patriarch, he focused on the filmed gorilla leaders, including their manner of defending the family.

“The funny thing is,” Smith said, “we had no footage of any gorilla on the attack. It is actually rare that a gorilla does attack. He will bluff, beat his chest, and roar. Invariably, he will run away at that point.”

Or wait for the intruder to back off.

There was enough footage of gorillas charging and stopping to imply a full attack. Smith then added his own imagination in the full attack scenes depicted in the movie. The end product included jarring bursts of raw power—very effectively so. If it is not already clear, this Disney cartoon feature is not another Jungle Book. All the animals, except for two or for comedy added for comic relief, are National Geographic-authentic. 

Even Tarzan is realistically drawn as lean and lanky. His demeanor is often calculating; and he crouches in tree tops with penetrating eyes, steadying himself with adaptively large feet and hands. He is faithful to the ape man that author Edgar Rice Burroughs created more than 70 years ago. 

Chris Buck shared a copy of a letter that Burroughs wrote to his son in 1936. In it, Burroughs speaks fo bringing his creation in animated form to the screen. Prior to that time, numerous live action Tarzans, including Johnny Weismuller’s, had been produced. (This version marks Tarzan movie No. 48). It is interesting that Burroughs even considered an animated feature at all, since the first full length cartoon, Snow White, would not be released until a year later. 

“The cartoon must be good,” Burroughs writes. “It must approximate Disney excellence.” Now THAT is an endorsement way before its time.

Co-director Lima was part of the safari team that studied the gorillas, observing aspects of their family unit. Since gorillas have a system of responsibility, respect, and specific duties for each member, the family structure made for a built-in theme.

“The family theme of belonging,” said Lima, “is central to the Tarzan story.” In it, for those two or three readers who do not know, the baby Tarzan is found by gorillas in the jungle when his parents are killed. He is then raised by Kala (voiced by Glenn Close), who had recently lost her own child.

Yes, there is also a Jane in this version, including a “me Tarzan, you Jane” bit. There is also Tarzan surfing through the trees, a fabulous Tarzan versus hundreds of killer baboons sequence, and Rosie O’Donnell as the voice of Terk, a gorilla friend of Tarzan’s since childhood.

To tree-top it all off, a heard-only Phil Collins sings five of his original songs.