“I’ll fucking kill you all”: The 2001 role Paul Giamatti would murder his agents if he didn’t get
While it might be understandable that actors get a bit frustrated with their management now and then, given they tend to take between ten and 20 per cent of any salary for a movie, threatening them with actual physical harm like Paul Giamatti once did might be taking things slightly too far.
Especially when you consider that the reason the Sideways star got so upset with his representatives was that they had the temerity to question whether or not he wanted to dress up like a monkey.
The stand-off came back at the start of the century when Giamatti was approached by Tim Burton to be part of his talent-packed reboot of Planet of the Apes, the classic simian sci-fi originally made famous by Charlton Heston back in 1968.
Although at that point Giamatti was yet to star in his award-winning wine-themed comedy, he was seen as a real talent in Hollywood, having appeared in movies like Saving Private Ryan, Jim Carrey’s Man on the Moon and My Best Friend’s Wedding with Julia Roberts.
And the call to monkey around in Burton’s movie couldn’t have been more appreciated, as Giamatti revealed to GQ, saying, “I was obsessed with the Planet of the Apes movies as a kid. And so the notion that I could be in one of those was mind-blowing to me. I didn’t audition for that. Tim Burton came to me with that, ’cause I guess he was like, ‘You look like a monkey, so I’ll have you do this’. It was one of the funnest things I’ve ever done.”
Giamatti’s agents weren’t quite so sure, though, advising him that he might not get any credit if nobody could actually tell who he was, a suggestion that went down about as well as a knackered lift, with Giamatti recalling, “I was covered head to toe, shoulders in a fat suit, and my feet. My agents were like, ‘Don’t you think you should play a human so they can see your face?’ And I was like, ‘If you tell them I wanna play a human in this, I’ll fucking kill you all’. I was like, ‘I’m gonna play an ape’.”
You can almost see his management backing away slowly, saying things like ‘OK, OK, you can be a monkey, just relax’. Whether or not you could tell it was him in the film didn’t seem to matter too much to audiences when the film came out, as the new Planet of the Apes trebled its budget at the box office to the tune of $300million, and although critics weren’t too fussed, people were very impressed by the special effects at play with the legendary seven-time Oscar winning Rick Baker in charge of the ape make up.
Despite having to sit in a chair for more than two hours a day, having prosthetics and a fat suit put on, Giamatti said he loved every part of the experience, wanting to stay as a monkey for as long as possible.
Sadly, any chance he could repeat the fun was put to bed when a possible sequel was cancelled by the studio; Burton didn’t want to make another one, although Giamatti was still keen, believing it would be good to see the apes driving cars and wearing sunglasses. Probably wise they scrapped it then.
