During the past year I have been writing a book - DIDN'T YOU USED TO BE...WHAT'S HIS NAME? - an anecdotal story of my life.  Many of you know me as Tarzan, King Arthur, Duke Shannon on Wagon Train, the surfer on Gilligan's Island, or The Gorton's Fisherman! I have been an actor for forty-five years and had the privilege of working with many of the biggest names in Hollywood.

Come along with me as my  journey begins with my Indiana roots and takes me to Hollywood. Share the joy of playing basketball for Coach John Wooden; swim in the Pacific Ocean with Kate Hepburn; and party with Peter Sellers.  I've gone from chimps as Tarzan to shrimp as The Gorton's Fisherman.

Meet my family and friends, share my joys and sorrows, absorb my passion for fitness, and experience the trials and tribulations of acting.  It's all there and more; plus over 100 photographs of the famous and not-so-famous!

You can order an autographed copy of my book now.  Shipping will begin in three weeks.  Send a check or money order (payable to: TO HEALTH WITH YOU PUBLISHERS) for $34.95 per book plus $6.00 shipping and handling (Nevada residents at 7.5% tax) to:
                               TO HEALTH WITH YOU PUBLISHERS
                               8550 W Charleston Blvd.  #102-374
                               Las Vegas, NV 89117

Thanks! Denny Miller (AKA What's his name) 

 
Tarzana, California
Relocate-America Real Estate Feature
Tarzana is one of the oldest communities in the San Fernando Valley.  During the 1930's Tarzana was known as the "Heart of Ventura Boulevard".  A small grocery store, a drug store and a few small other stores were grouped together on Ventura Boulevard, surrounded by acres of beautiful farms.

Today, Tarzana's 45,000 residents enjoy living in what is called "The Home of Tarzan".  It has now become one of Los Angeles "Bedroom Communities".  Instead of farms, modern Tarzana consists mainly of single-family homes, and a few apartment houses, located north of Ventura Boulevard.  Residents continue to take pleasure in gracious living and a tranquil atmosphere established by their predecessors.

Surrounded by picturesque valley mountains, cool breezes and warm sunshine, Tarzana is accessible to many different facilities.  Within minutes you have the conveniences of major freeways, the 101 Freeway runs east and west across the San Fernando Valley.  The 405 Freeway will take you into Long Beach and the 10 Freeway which runs through downtown Los Angeles, Santa Monica beaches and along the scenic view of the Pacific Coast Highway.  Near the stretch of Ventura Boulevard many of the residents enjoy the many conveniences of the shopping malls and super markets, not to mention the many different varieties of cultural restaurants and cafes.

Tarzana has an excellent school system, great parks, medical centers and up to date libraries, churches and movie theaters.  Tarzana is the pride of the San Fernando Valley.  So, if you're looking for spacious living, and that homey family atmosphere, Tarzana is the place for you.  Why wait?  Come and visit, and see for yourself.

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THE NATION: Thailand's independent daily newspaper
Royal recollections
Sat, June 19, 2004
The life, times and vastly different residences of Rama VII are on view in a photo exhibit, ‘At Home with King Prajadhipok’
Royal-watchers have a rare chance now through August to delve into the often grand, often moving lives of Their Majesties King Prajadhipok and Queen Rambai Barni.The King Prajadhipok Museum is exhibiting old and uncommon photos of the seven residences occupied by Rama VII – the last absolute monarch of Siam – in “At Home with King Prajadhipok”, until August 31.
Sukhothai Palace on Samsen Road, a place of great warmth and tranquillity, was where the newlyweds first lived following their wedding in 1918.Here Rambai Barni, still a princess at the time, loved tending to and arranging flowers, and the palace’s garden was dubbed the most beautiful in Bangkok.
A lot of the King’s free time was devoted to storytelling, a source of immense delight for the children under his care. Among his favourite tales were Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Tarzan” stories, with their endearing appeal about the relationship between man and nature. It wasn’t uncommon for the monarch to insert his own morals and occasional twists to enlighten and amuse his young listeners.

Mercado: Mayor Tarzan drinks his beer
Papanga Sun-Star: June 26, 2004

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REAGAN THE AMERICAN DREAMER
An excerpt from the Ronald Reagan Tribute in NINEMSN Bulletin
"Confronted by a chaotic childhood, Reagan sought refuge in a world of legendary exploits. This is not uncommon in the boyhoods of Great Men. Winston Churchill, long and painfully ignored by his parents, constructed an elaborate imaginary life as he grew up. The future British prime minister collected thousands of toy soldiers and devoured stories of great English military heroes; the young Reagan voraciously read Edgar Rice Burroughs's tales of adventure in outer space."

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OPAR ORIGINS?
Satellite images 'show Atlantis'
A scientist says he may have found remains of the lost city of Atlantis.
We have in the photos concentric rings just as Plato described
Dr Rainer Kuehne, University of Wuppertal
"Satellite photos of southern Spain reveal features on the ground appearing to match descriptions made by Greek scholar Plato of the fabled utopia. Dr Rainer Kuehne thinks the "island" of Atlantis simply referred to a region of the southern Spanish coast destroyed by a flood between 800 BC and 500 BC. The research has been reported as an ongoing project in the online edition of the journal Antiquity. . . . "

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Emerald Isle 'is Atlantis' 
The Sun (London, UK), by Staff  Original Article
August 6, 2004
The mythical lost city of Atlantis is actually the island of Ireland, according to a new book. Swedish geologist Ulf Erlingsson reckons the Emerald Isle matches the description of the lost city given by Greek philosopher Plato. /break/ ''Just like Atlantis, Ireland is 300 miles long, 200 miles wide, and widest over the middle. They both feature a central plain that is open to the sea, but fringed by mountains. No other island on earth even comes close to this description.'' 

Son of legendary Tarzan actor unveils plaque in his memory in Romania
Dragos Bota ~ Canadian Press ~  June 5, 2004

TIMISOARA, Romania (AP) - Tarzan now has something to thump his chest over in Transylvania. 

A plaque in memory of the late Johnny Weissmuller, an American acting and swimming legend who played the famous lord of the apes in the 1930s and 1940s, was unveiled Saturday by his son in this city where Weissmuller was born 100 years ago. The actor's son, John Scott Weissmuller, 63, presented the plaque, which reads: "This is the house where the Olympic swimming champion and great actor Johnny Weissmuller was born on June 2, 1904." But the marker, placed outside a small green German-style house in the area where Weissmuller was born, has already sparked debate. 

Sorin Fortiu, a former journalist who researched Weissmuller's life, said it's not the house where Weissmuller was born. Authorities said they chose the house because of its appropriate German style. "The important thing is that we are marking the place where the house was  .n. . the original house was demolished many years ago," said Dan Radoslav, the city's official architect. 

Few people know that Weissmuller, best known for his role as Tarzan, was born in Timisoara, 500 kilometres northwest of the capital, Bucharest. Weissmuller had claimed he was born in Windber, Pa., - an assertion his son has said might have been made to ensure a place on the U.S. Olympic swimming team. In Timisoara, local officials are now reclaiming their famous son. 

Weissmuller, an ethnic German, was born in the village of Freidorf, which is now a neighbourhood in Timisoara. The family emigrated to the United States when he was six months old. John Scott Weissmuller, Weissmuller's only son with his third wife, Beryl Scott, will be named an honorary citizen of Timisoara. He planned to launch a new book, Tarzan, My Father, during the trip. On Sunday, he will open a local running and swimming competition named for his father. The son brought his father's medals and a T-shirt which Weissmuller wore in a competition. 

Weissmuller is considered to be the United States' best swimmer in the first half of the last century. He set numerous records, won five gold medals in the 1924 and 1928 Olympics and is a member of the Olympic and U.S. swimming halls of fame. His films included Tarzan the Ape Man,Tarzan Finds A Son! and Tarzan and the Amazons. Later in his career, he appeared in Cannibal Attack, Jungle Moon Men and Won Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood. 

He died in Acapulco, Mexico, after a series of strokes in 1984. 

© The Canadian Press 2004

 
Tarzan Introduction from Turner Classic Movies 

Tarzan, the fictional British lord who was raised by apes to become a brawny jungle hero, was introduced in a story by novelist Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1913 and first appeared on film in 1918. His story has been told in endless variations ever since. Arguably, however, the ape man's Golden Age was the series of movies made by MGM in the 1930s and '40s featuring Olympic swimming champ Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan and Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane.

Weissmuller, with his splendid physique and underdeveloped voice (except for those yells), seemed just right as the loin-clothed Tarzan, and O'Sullivan brought a delicacy to Jane that helped keep the couple's underdressed jungle adventures from seeming crass. Their first film together, Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), generally follows the Burroughs original in relating how Jane travels to darkest Africa with her great-white-hunter father (C. Aubrey Smith). After being kidnapped by Tarzan, she learns to love her uncivilized captor and decides to remain permanently in the jungle. 

The second entry in the series, Tarzan and His Mate (1934), is considered by many the best of the Weissmuller/O'Sullivan Tarzan films. Like the first, it is aimed at adults and celebrates the sensual side of the unmarried couple's relationship, complete with a sexy skinny-dipping scene. The plot of this one revolves around a nasty ivory hunger (Paul Cavanagh) who, much to Tarzan's displeasure, wants to plunder an elephant graveyard.

By the time of Tarzan Escapes! (1936), the film industry's Production Code dictated that Tarzan and Jane wear less revealing clothing and assume the characteristics of a married couple. This film, which involves a plot by a British hunter to kidnap Tarzan and put him on display in England, marks a change of direction in that it is designed as family fare.

In Tarzan Finds a Son (1939), Johnny Sheffield joins the family unit as Boy, who is found as an infant in a plane crash and raised by Tarzan and Jane. The original plan was to kill off Jane at the end of this film, but Burroughs objected and O'Sullivan returned to play Jane in two more entries in the series, Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942) and Tarzan's Secret Treasure (1941). Weissmuller appeared in yet another half-dozen Tarzan films for RKO before turning to another character, Jungle Jim.

Our tribute includes the world television premiere of Tarzan: Silver Screen King of the Jungle (2004), a new, feature-length documentary about Tarzan on the screen, featuring interviews with Maureen O'Sullivan and Johnny Weissmuller, Jr., as well as several noted film historians and Tarzan experts.

The movies in TCM's tribute to Tarzan are Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), Tarzan and His Mate (1934), Tarzan Escapes! (1936), Tarzan Finds a Son (1939) and the documentary Tarzan: Silver Screen King of the Jungle (2004).

by Roger Fristoe 

TCM Film Descriptions at:
Introduction
Tarzan, The Ape Man
Tarzan: Silver Screen King of the Jungle
Tarzan and His Mate
Tarzan Escapes
Tarzan Finds a Son

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Digitally OBSESSED! DVD Review
A good review on the new Warner Boxed Set of Weissmuller/O'Sullivan Tarzans
Excerpt:
"The highlight of the special features is the new full-length documentary, Tarzan: Silver Screen King of the Jungle (01h:19m:54s), which was co-produced by Turner Classic Movies. Film historians Rudy Behlmer and Robert Osborne are interviewed, as are Johnny Weissmuller, Jr., Burroughs historian Scott Tracey Griffin, and Maureen O'Sullivan (though hers is not new to this documentary). . . . "   "Thanks to Warner Bros., the best collection of Tarzan adventures ever to grace the screen is now available to own in an appetizing boxed set."

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More Reviews:
DVD Talk
Tarzan and Jane on the Trail to the Suburbs: New York Times Review
Amazon: Purchase and Review
Tarzan collection violent, sexy: London Free Press (Canada)
An early %!@$* Christmas gift for movie lovers: Winnipeg Sun
Harry Knowle's Ain't It Cool News THE TARZAN COLLECTION (TARZAN THE APE MAN / TARZAN AND HIS MATE / TARZAN ESCAPES / TARZAN FINDS A SON / TARZAN AND THE SECRET TREASURE / TARZAN’S NEW YORK ADVENTURE) 
UNGAWA THIS SET NOW! I’ve just gotten finished watching all 6 of the original MGM Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan and GOD I LOVE THESE MOVIES. My nephew just watched TARZAN FINDS A SON and TARZAN’S NEW YORK ADVENTURE, and he’s in the other room trying to laugh like Cheetah and keeps pointing at his Granpa and shouting, “UNGAWA!” Ahhh, great! Weissmuller babysat me when I was a little boy and I remember him as being a great storyteller and I’ve had a lifelong affinity with his films and the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs as a result. This set is the jewel of the June releases. In addition to getting the 6 best Weissmuller TARZAN films, you get a great documentary which reveals things like… One of the original Cheetahs is still alive in Florida at the age of 71!!! It also features some great footage of Maureen O’Sullivan and Johnny Weismuller Jr telling stories about the days of loin cloths and censor bureaus! Also – you have got to see Jimmy Durante in the short subject SCHNARZAN THE CONQUEROR… Jimmy Durante in a loin cloth is high up there in my unimaginable things, but lightning strike me if I didn’t laugh till I hurt. TARZAN AND HIS MATE is my favorite, but man… I’d love to see the long lost Bat sequence out of TARZAN ESCAPES! The nude underwater swimming sequence with Jane is just gorgeous, as is every scene of her in that gorgeous two piece loin cloth… and for my money, she looks way better than Raquel Welch in ONE MILLION YEARS B.C.! There’s something more sensual, honest and real about Maureen. Plus the animal training is superb and the matte paintings of the escarpment are truly gorgeous. It diverges from Burroughs’ books tremendously, but what many of you don’t know… is that was a stipulation from Burroughs. He didn’t want them adapting any of his stories. As a result, they invented Cheetah and the Elephant Graveyard storyline. Jane had a last name change and it became more of a romantic realm than anything. One of the great Hollywood Series ever made. For my money, it’s definitely the best Six Film Series made! 

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New York Times Review
Tarzan and Jane on the Trail to the Suburbs
By Dave Kehr
Published: June 27, 2004

N 1932, Irving Thalberg cast the former Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan and the willowy Irish beauty Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane in "Tarzan the Ape Man," and one of Hollywood's most memorable screen couples was born. 

There would be five more Weissmuller-O'Sullivan films before MGM terminated the series in 1942 (at which point Weissmuller took the franchise to RKO, continuing solo). All six are now available in a handsome DVD boxed set from Warner Home Video, and watching them straight through tells a compelling story, though not necessarily the one presented by their maddeningly repetitive plots.

Beneath the abbreviated jungle drag, here is an ideal American couple gradually growing up, discovering their bodies and the joys of sensuality in a back-lot jungle that still manages to evoke the innocence of Eden. But these lustful young lovers of the first two films soon evolve into a far more conventional middle-class couple, a transformation forced both by the strict censorship of the Production Code, adopted by Hollywood in 1934, and the return to materialist values that the early years of the Depression had profoundly discouraged. The back-to-nature proto-hippies of the first two films become the model American homeowners who would populate the booming suburbs of the postwar years.

It isn't Tarzan who changes — he remains an amiable, dim-witted hunk, with improbably Brylcreemed hair and a vocabulary that seldom gets beyond his all-purpose exhortation, "Ungawa!"— but rather Jane and Jane's attitude toward her primitive lover. In the first film, directed by W. S. Van Dyke, Jane is a feisty young woman who surprises her explorer father (C. Aubrey Smith) by dropping in on his base camp, somewhere in central Africa. Jane is proud of her budding womanhood (she displays herself in a slip to her embarrassed father in a creepy, vaguely incestuous scene) and at first seems interested in her father's lieutenant, a great white hunter played by MGM's resident society fop, Neil Hamilton.

But when she first sees Tarzan, making his dramatic entrance 33 minutes into the film, she realizes what she's been missing: he's a strong, silent type who sweeps Jane away into his nest, where he starts picking off her clothes in a way that strikingly anticipates King Kong's inspection of Fay Wray in "King Kong" (1933). "Let me go, you brute!" protests Jane, but she's soon overwhelmed by his manly beauty (Weissmuller's only previous screen experience had been playing Adonis in a Florenz Ziegfeld musical revue movie, "Glorifying the American Girl") and succumbs to his charms in the sort of fade-out that 1930's audiences knew perfectly well how to read.

But it is Tarzan's boyish innocence that attracts her as much as his mighty pecs. "I love saying things to a man who doesn't understand," Jane sighs. He's both her lover and her child, a tower of masculinity who needs a woman to take care of him.

"Tarzan and His Mate," credited to MGM's chief art director, Cedric Gibbons (who was in fact replaced after three weeks of shooting by the MGM stalwart Jack Conway and the second unit director James McKay), had been filmed before the Production Code went into effect and released afterward, in 1934, with much of its graphic violence and still-startling nudity removed. A print of the original cut found in the MGM archives is the version used here (which accounts for its somewhat raggedy shape, as compared to the excellent transfers of the other films). In its uncensored form, it's an amazingly frank, sexy frolic: shy, adolescent lovers in the first film, Tarzan and Jane are now frisky newlyweds, going for an underwater swim in the buff (the Olympic swimmer Josephine McKim stood in for O'Sullivan) that is as open an expression of sexual pleasure as anything in American cinema.

But by the time of "Tarzan Escapes!" (1936), Jane has converted their tiny jungle nest into something resembling a split-level tree house. "I designed the kitchen myself," she tells a visitor from the outside world, "with hot and cold running water and all the conveniences," including an elephant-powered elevator. The couple that seemed so bohemian, living blissfully beyond society in the first two films, are now struggling homeowners. Jane stands cooking in the kitchen (using Flintstones-style utensils craftily fashioned from sticks and stones), while Tarzan heads off for work each morning (gathering food, but still) with the grim determination of a seasoned commuter. Jane's sexy, two-piece costume in the first films has given way to a demure dress that ends just above the knees; Tarzan's loincloth has expanded to cover more of his posterior; and youthful impetuousness is about to give way to adult responsibilities.

The title "Tarzan Finds a Son!" (1939) says a lot about the evolution of censorship in the 1930's — the young couple of "Tarzan and His Mate" would have had no trouble making one of their own. Boy (Johnny Sheffield) literally drops out of the sky, the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed his aristocratic parents. There is little question now who is the center of Jane's universe, and the erotic underwater ballet, a staple of the series, now becomes a family outing, with Boy joining his adoptive parents for a healthy morning swim.

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"We live above and beyond maps, in a world of our own," says Jane in "Tarzan's Secret Treasure" (1941), but the outside world is encroaching, as represented by the Anglo visitors who drop by with increasing frequency. In "Secret Treasure," it is a film crew that passes through, suggesting that the end is very near for the happy family's isolation. Cheetah, Tarzan's lovable chimpanzee companion, has now become a sort of comic maid, helping Jane wash the dishes and operating the rope and pulley fan system that Tarzan has constructed to cool their arboreal retreat. A social system is definitely imposing itself on this little corner of unspoiled nature, and Jane seems more and more like a suburban matron, presiding over her little patch of upstate paradise.

In "Tarzan's New York Adventure" (1942), the couple are finally forced to leave their jungle home, traveling to New York in search of Boy, who has been kidnapped by an unscrupulous circus promoter. Weissmuller tucks his thickening waistline into a boxy double-breasted suit, and Jane once again gets to look sharp in the latest fashions. But their visit duplicates that of many staunch suburbanites — they find the city loud and dirty, and are eager to get back to the peace and calm of the jungle.

Two years after Van Dyke introduced Weissmuller and O'Sullivan in "Tarzan the Ape Man," he created another memorable couple for MGM — Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) in the 1934 movie "The Thin Man." The urbane, alcoholic sleuths of "The Thin Man" at first could not seem further removed from the clean-living Tarzan family ("Whiskey bad!" sniffs Tarzan, though Cheetah has been known to take a slug or two).

But the two families are in fact inverted images of each other. They come from wildly divergent origins, but eventually succumb to the same middle-class temptations (Nora leads Nick out of his San Francisco apartment into a single house with a big back yard) and acquire the same grown-up responsibilities. Not only do Nick and Nora reproduce, in the sixth film of the series, "Song of the Thin Man" (1947), but so does Asta, their faithful animal companion. Like the "Thin Man" series, the Weissmuller-O'Sullivan Tarzan films end on a queasy, ambiguous note, full of optimism for the future but haunted by the suspicion that something wonderful has been lost. 

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See all these films featured in ERBzine:
Go to our Silver Screen Directory

Tarzan in Disney Big-Top Musical? From JimHillMedia.com
What's next from Disney Theatrical?
How about an environmental musical based on Disney's animated version of "Tarzan"? 
And what's an environmental musical? The idea behind this experimental staging of the show is that the legend of Tarzan (featuring Phil Collins' Academy Award winning songs & score) would be played out all around the theatre-goers. With a set that's made up of huge trees that jut right up out of the auditorium floor, which (in theory) would allow cast members to move about the theater by swinging on vines. Right over the audience's head. 

Disney Theatrical envisions Crowley's (director/designer for Disney Theatricals) proposed stage version of "Tarzan" as their opportunity to break into Cirque de Soleil's niche. market. An extravaganza that they could stage in the round in an enormous circus tent that they'd be able to truck from town to town. Which would allow the Mouse to take their new stage version of "Tarzan" to parts of the country that typical Broadway shows don't usually reach. Which (potentially) would allow Mickey to tap into virtually untapped markets. 

TARZAN PRESLEY  by Nigel Cox

NEW ZEALAND HERALD ONLINE
31.05.2004 - Reviewed by DAVID LARSEN
That thunder you hear is the drumming of 100,000 feet, racing to the nearest book store to pick up one of the most  interesting novels of the year. You should join them. But first join me: we need a moment's stupefied gaping. This book should not exist. I can't believe it does.

Granted, any novel is a staggeringly unlikely artefact — there are an infinity of possible novels, and a tiny fraction of them actually get written. But this one? "Raised by gorillas in the wild jungles of New Zealand, scarred in battles with vicious giant weta, seduced by a beautiful young scientist, discovered by Memphis record producer Sam Phillips and adored by millions, the dirt-to-dreams life story of Tarzan Presley is as legendary as his 30 number one hits."

In the film industry, this is the kind of brilliant high concept that would convince producers they were on to something very marketable. Tarzan! Elvis! Hey, what if they were really the same person? And what if this person faked his death and wrote a memoir in old age? So that all the myths about Elvis being still alive were, you know, really true! Only it would be Tarzan!

The film would be a disaster, and my job as a reviewer would be to sound as witty as possible while saying so. Whereas Nigel Cox's fourth novel has me jumping up and down excitedly because I can't believe how good it is. To take such an unlikely, attention-getting idea and develop it into such an intelligent book — it's like seeing someone suddenly make a successful film of Lord of the Rings in Miramar. Go back in time a decade and tell people about it, and you'd be laughed right back into the present.

Cox breaks his story into three sections, each of which presents challenges quite capable of sinking the novel. The first third is the tale of a little boy raised by gorillas in the wilds of the Wairarapa, circa 1935. Cox could have treated the outrageous idea that gorillas should be roaming the New Zealand bush as a sort of magic realist game, so silly that we'd simply have to laugh and swallow it. Instead he treats the gorillas, and Tarzan's life with them, the way the very best science fiction writers might: he builds them into hard reality by giving us lots of convincing detail, so that very soon we know how these gorillas live and smell, how the world looks to them and to the strange hairless ape they've adopted. Of course there are gorillas in New Zealand, how could we have doubted? Oh, and also cow-sized weta.

Having written a much more believable and thought-provoking account of a human raised by gorillas than Edgar Rice Burroughs ever managed, Cox then has his Kiwi Tarzan discovered, taken to America, adopted into the Presley family, and almost destroyed by mega-stardom. 
The logic of the transition is impeccable, which is just one sign that Cox is in the demigod league. You know he's doing something deeply artificial right in front of you— grafting one legend on to another — and you can't see the stage machinery or hear the gears grinding. It all makes perfect sense.

That isn't to say it feels comfortable. Tarzan's slow morph from ape man to bloated, drug-raddled singer is a heart-breaking study of innocence betrayed. It also feels painfully arbitrary. By this I don't mean that Cox fails to establish Tarzan credibly in his new, over-civilised role, but that Tarzan enters the human world almost as a tabula rasa, crackling with potential. What kind of understanding of humanity will this boy be capable of? What will he see in us, and in himself, that we aren't capable of seeing, because we're too used to ourselves? This is a character who could become anything. Watching all those possibilities dwindle down to the charade of the Vegas years is saddening.

By making Tarzan live every detail of Elvis' adult life, Cox turns him into an explanatory metaphor, a new way of thinking about a very strange career. The third part of the novel is where Tarzan re-emerges as an independent character, old enough and experienced enough now to see all the wrong turns that led to Vegas, and determined to see what kind of life he can make for himself once he's escaped his fame. We're off the map here, past re-workings of Burroughs and re-tellings of the Elvis story, and Cox quietly gives the culmination of Tarzan's life its own proper form. It's neither sensational nor predictable; you read it and think, "Yes. That rings true."

This whole book rings true. It's superbly written and utterly original. You'll never look at a weta quite the same way again. David Larsen is an Auckland reviewer VUP, $29.95

Published June 3, 2004 ~ isbn 0 86473 4808 ~ 464 pages
$29.95
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
PO Box 600 ~ Wellington, New Zealand
www.vuw.ac.nz/vup
email: victoria-press@vuw.ac.nz
Phone: 04 463 6531 ~ fax 04 463 6581

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Christmas Giving Made Easy
The New Zealand Herald ~ December 13, 2004
Nigel Cox’s Tarzan Presley (VUP, $29.95) got David Larsen excited. There is a boy (Tarzan) raised by gorillas in the Wairarapa (Tarzan), then adopted by the Presley family. You have to read it, Larsen said so: "That thunder you hear is the drumming of 100,000 feet, racing to the nearest book store to pick up one of the most interesting novels of the year. You should join them."

Coen brothers to make TARZAN?
CinemaEye
Are the Coen Brothers planning a TARZAN movie? It seems very odd, but the British tabloid The Daily Star seems to think so. They even think Hugh Jackman would be a good choice for the role based on all the vine swinging and wall climbing he does in the execrable VAN HELSING.
"And why hasn't year old Hugh Jackman put his hand up to play debonaire James Bond, a role he seems unashamedely tailor-made for? He has his sights on a slightly more underdressed hero, Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle. 

Set to be written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, the new Tarzan would be set in the modern day, where the former King of the Jungle moves to the City, and appoints himelf a new savior to those in despair. A studio source say Jackman has already expressed interest in the film. "Not only is he in the right phyiscal shape for the role, but he's got the acting chops to really pull this off"

May 19, 2004 - IGN FilmForce has confirmed that Robert Rodriguez is no longer the director of Paramount's A Princess of Mars (a.k.a. John Carter of Mars). We were tipped off earlier today that he wasn't going to be directing and that his decision was final. Rodriguez's reps at ICM have confirmed that the Spy Kids filmmaker has indeed departed the Paramount/Alphaville project. Rodriguez's recent decision to resign from the Directors Guild of America had placed his ability to helm the big-screen adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic sci-fi novel in jeopardy. As a DGA signatory, Paramount was not allowed to hire a non-union director. Just last month, however, Rodriguez advised Entertainment Weekly, "I can still do that movie because I was assigned to it before I left the DGA. I'll occupy that island of misfit directors like Quentin Tarantino and George Lucas."Sources also advised us that Paramount approached Hellboy director Guillermo Del Toro to replace Rodriguez but he turned them down three times. A Princess of Mars is slated to go into production next year. Mark Protosevich penned the screenplay.

DGA rules dictate that there be only one director assigned to direct a motion picture at any given time, although the guild occasionally grants a waiver to that policy. On Thursday, a DGA spokesman said, "The guild regrets Mr. Rodriguez's resignation, however, we stand firmly behind the principle of one director-one film." . . .

Rodriguez, who partly financed "El Mariachi" by volunteering himself for medical experiments, has always been comfortable making films by the seat of his pants, even though he has built studios in Austin grand enough to accommodate both "Sin City" and the pic he'll direct right after, the $100 million Paramount sci-fi blockbuster "A Princess Of Mars." . . .

WASHINGTON, March 22 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court Monday let stand a ruling that left the copyright of art in the "Tarzan" books with the estate of the author, not the artist. The artist, Burne Hogarth entered into an agreement with the estate of the author, Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., in 1970 to create pictorial versions of "Tarzan and the Apes" and stories from the "Jungle Tales of Tarzan." Because the work was completed before the 1978 Copyright Act, the case was governed by the 1909 Copyright Act In 2000, Hogarth's estate and family filed suit against ERB Inc., asking a federal judge to assign them the copyright to the artwork. Hogarth was an independent contractor, not an ERB Inc. employee, they argued. Hogarth assigned his copyright renewal right to ERB Inc., they conceded, but died before that renewal came about -- leaving the renewal right to his family, his estate contended. A federal judge and a federal appeals court ruled for ERB Inc., and the Supreme Court denied review Monday without comment.

Par, Helmer Explore 'Mars'
 Rodriguez plans Burroughs adaptation
Posted: Mon., Mar. 1, 2004, 10:00pm PT
By DAVE MCNARY, MICHAEL FLEMING

Paramount Pictures has signed Robert Rodriguez to helm sci-fi adventure-actioner "A Princess of Mars," with an eye to developing a tentpole franchise for the studio.

Par-based Alphaville Prods., partnered with Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios, plans to begin shooting early next year. Pic is based on the first book in Edgar Rice Burroughs' 11-volume "John Carter of Mars" series. Producers will be Alphaville toppers Sean Daniel and Jim Jacks with Rodriguez and producing partner Elizabeth Avellan.

Scripted by Mark Protosevich ("The Cell"), the film may be called "A Princess of Mars" or "John Carter of Mars." Cast has not yet been set.

The "John Carter" series is replete with time travel, fantastical creatures both friendly and ferocious, epic battles, rescues, escapes and romantic derring-do. Budget will top $100 million due to extensive CGI with the goal of matching the scale and scope of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

"After 'Lord of the Rings,' this is probably the last well known fantasy classic yet to be made, and that's because it wasn't possible until technology caught up," Rodriguez said. The film's otherworldly visuals will greatly tax the technological abilities of his production facility in Austin, where the film will be made. That, too, was a major attraction for Rodriguez.

"I will get an opportunity to expand my Texas operation much the way Peter Jackson did in New Zealand," Rodriguez added. "I've got an infrastructure now with stages and a special effects company, but this is such a big movie everything will be taken to the next level."

Rodriguez, who's repped by ICM, will prep "Mars" while he shoots "Sin City" for Dimension on those stages.

Alphaville carries strong credentials in the fantasy f/x arena, having produced U's successful trio of "The Mummy," "The Mummy Returns" and "The Scorpion King." The three films generated a combined worldwide gross over $1 billion.

Deal for "A Princess of Mars" is a departure from Paramount's usual risk-averse strategy, particularly in light of last year's middling perf from high-priced adventure pic "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life." In recent months, Par's also shaken up its exec team and signed high-profile deals with Adam Sandler for "The Longest Yard" and Charlize Theron for "Aeon Flux."

Par has been pursuing Rodriguez in recent weeks, with studio topper Sherry Lansing winging to Austin to meet with the helmer of the "Spy Kids" series and the trilogy of "El Mariachi," "Desperado" and "Once Upon a Time in Mexico."

"We are working off one of the great fantasy/adventure stories of all time," Jacks said. "It's very challenging because the 'Star Wars' and 'Lord of the Rings' films have set the bar so high."

"A Princess of Mars" is the first adventure of American Civil War veteran John Carter, triggered when he retreats to a cave to avoid capture by Apache Indians. He is transported via a time portal to the planet of Barsoom, which he believes is Mars, and is taken prisoner by 12-foot-tall Green Men.

The first three volumes in the Mars series by Burroughs originally appeared between 1912 and 1914. Jacks credited Protosevich with excising the "creaky" aspects of Burroughs' storytelling from the script.

Though Burroughs is best known for penning "Tarzan of the Apes," the English writer's first book was "A Princess of Mars." At Alphaville's urging, Par obtained the rights to the series two years ago from the Burroughs estate for $300,000 against $2 million following a bidding war with Columbia.

Jacks said shooting "A Princess of Mars" would require extensive prep over the next 10 months. Shooting and post-production will be based at Rodriguez's studios in Austin.

Alphaville's other priority projects at Par include a pair of thrillers -- "The Book of Skulls," to be directed by William Friedkin, and a remake of "Pet Sematary." Michelle Manning, who ankled recently as co-prexy of the motion picture group to an exclusive producing deal with the studio, is working with Alphaville on "The Book of Skulls."
 

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