You Wont Believe What Happens When Tarzan Voice Over Plays for a White Baby

Twenty years ago this month, the last Disney Renaissance movie of the 1990s opened in theaters. The story of the film, based on the iconic literary works of the same name by Edgar Rice Burroughs, was simple: a human boy is raised in the jungle by a pack of apes. That boy’s name? Tarzan!

Delivered a heartfelt, fun, eye-popping, and earwig-y adaptation of Burroughs’s creation, exploring powerful themes of family, acceptance, greed, love, and belonging. While it wasn’t the first

Movie—and in the years since, we’ve seen it certainly wasn’t the last—the project was able to distinguish itself with the aid of newly-emerging technology, a top notch voice cast, and the invaluable involvement of a rock god.

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In an effort to celebrate the project hitting the big 2-0 this month, I tracked down three key members of the film’s production: screenwriter Tab Murphy (

), and cast member Wayne Knight (voice of Tantor). Together, these individuals helped me piece together the making and legacy of a true Disney classic, one that marked a major step forward in computer-generated animation.

Our story starts not in 1999, but during the mid-Reagan Era (aka the 1980s) when Tab Murphy was trying to get a vehicle for Eddie Murphy off the ground at Paramount Pictures. One of his first jobs was writing for Jeffrey Katzenberg (an executive at Paramount around the same time) and when Katzenberg became chairman of Walt Disney Studios, Tab started on a journey toward a prolific career in animation.

The Jungle Warrior (the Tarzan Trilogy): Briggs, Andy: 9781453271087: Amazon.com: Books

TAB MURPHY: When he and [Michael] Eisner shifted over to Disney and Jeffrey became the president of animation and Eisner became the president of Disney, Jeffrey wanted to bring a live-action kind of template to development of the animated features in that division. He really wanted to have writer-driven scripts and so, I just happened to be one of the guys he reached out to and said, Hey, come over and see what we’re working on. At that time, the true Renaissance of Disney animation hadn’t really gotten underway.

Not thinking much of the animation medium back then, Murphy wasn’t too eager to pen scripts for what he considered to be cartoons. For instance, he has “the dubious distinction of having turned down Toy Story, ” but doesn’t treat himself too harshly over the decision. After all, Pixar wasn’t such a huge name when he was pitched the gig. Moreover, the job would have forced him to pick up and move away from Los Angeles for about two years. Instead, Tab’s first Disney writing job was for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a book he’d been a fan of since childhood. When the movie adaptation opened in the summer of 1996 to critical and box office success, he got another call from Katzenberg.

.’ Initially, they were going to do it as a direct-to-video release. He said, ‘Yeah, it’s not as sexy as a feature, but it’s a cool story, we’re gonna do it, I’d love for you to be a part of it.’

Tarzan Of The Apes: A Tarzan Novel: 9780345319777: Burroughs, Edgar Rice: Books

, which again, to know my childhood, is to know that I was just a nut over Johnny Weissmuller and they would show

Movies every Saturday afternoon when I was growing up. Again, great thematics, great story of an outsider. In this case, Tarzan growing up with apes and having to re-acclimate to a world that he [didn’t know], but in some ways felt a part of.

And so, Murphy began writing a treatment that stuck closely to the source material: Tarzan—having been raised by apes until adulthood—meets humans for the first time, leaves the island, goes to England, and becomes Lord Greystoke. Unlike his experience on Hunchback, Tab did not hear back on his idea right away, which worried him slightly. Little did he know that the theatrical division was trying to wrest the movie away from the direct-to-video department.

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MURPHY: And lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened, it shifted over and became a feature film instead of direct-to-DVD film, so I think by the time that I actually wrote either the revision of my treatment or the first draft of the script, we were entrenched in the feature division and it was full steam ahead on that front …

Then the significant change between my initial treatment and the first draft of the script was that it was decided early on and I think smartly, that Tarzan shouldn’t leave the island … It always felt like two different movies the minute he set foot in England. … The real goal in the story was his relationships with the apes and that these outsiders come onto the island and his relationship with Jane develops and causes him to second guess everything he ever knew. [We also wanted] Clayton and some nefarious plan afoot [to poach the gorillas].

This last shift in the story perfectly suited Tab, as he had helped write the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, in which Sigourney Weaver (Alien, Ghostbusters) played Dian Fossey. However, he would not stay on the project until the very end, because when Hunchback directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale became available again, they wanted to get the creative team (which included producer Don Hahn) back together again. That would eventually lead to 2001’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire, but not before Murphy left a solid foundation for Tarzan. Some of his ideas included: baby Tarzan and his parents being shipwrecked near the jungle and Jane being chased by the horde of angry baboons.

The Project Gutenberg Ebook Of The Beasts Of Tarzan, By Edgar Rice Burroughs

MURPHY: I think I only did a couple treatments, very detailed treatments, and then I did a draft of the script. I may have done a rewrite, but then Bob Tzudiker and Noni White, who had done a lot of work on

, came aboard and [saw the script through to the end]. I was like, ‘Oh, great, these guys are awesome.’ I feel like I laid a pretty solid foundation out for them to take over and they went on and the whole team built this amazing magical cathedral that became the movie.

I had written a scene in my early draft [where] Jane, prior to meeting Tarzan, went into the jungle to draw some stuff and this little monkey is causing her some problems and that scene is still in the movie. In my scene, she’s like ‘shoo shoo, get away!’ [and] she’s pulling a little prank on him. [Then] she looks up and sees the mother staring angrily down at her. [And Jane says], ‘I’m sorry sorry, I didn’t mean it. He’s such a nice little boy’ and she backs out and the scene’s over.

Tarzan, The Ape Man (1981)

In my script, that’s the scene I wrote. So when I go [to see] the movie and I see that that scene is simply a jumping off place for what became the coolest [sequence]—all the baboons chasing after Tarzan and her.

I was just like, ‘Wow, ’ and that’s the great thing about working with artists and imaginative and creative people—they can take a decent solid idea, but in their minds, that’s just the beginning of something, not the end. They turned it into this great sequence and visually, just arresting and funny and exciting and I’m on the credits as a writer, so they make me look brilliant, man [

With a script in place, it was then time to cast the film, which nabbed some major voice talent in the form of Tony Goldwyn (Tarzan), Minnie Driver (Jane), Glenn Close (Kala), Rosie O’Donnell (Terk), Lance Henriksen (Kerchak), and last, but not least, Wayne Knight. Knight, perhaps best known for his turns as Newman on Seinfeld and Dennis Nedry in Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, nabbed the part of Tantor, the hypochondriac red elephant, who is also one of Tarzan’s best jungle pals.

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WAYNE KNIGHT: That period of time was when I was in play or people recall me, know me, wanna use me. I’m not sure that I did the voice that I did for Tantor to get the part. I had done

With Disney, so they had a familiarity with me. When thinking of an elephantine actor of the day, there I was! [

When you’re walking down the street, people don’t go THERE GOES TANTOR THE ELEPHANT! I mean some people do, but I usually run from those people.

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To get the voice of the character just right, Knight turned to an unlikely inspiration from South California’s old school radio scene. More importantly, joining Tarzan gave him the opportunity to voice a creature that he’s admired for decades. Taking up the distinguished post of “the anxiety-ridden elephant that needs therapy” allowed for more comedic relief that cut through the more serious elements of the movie.

KNIGHT: Very strangely, I used to listen to the radio on Saturdays and there was on TABC in Los Angeles, a food critic named Merrill Shindler. And I found that Merrill had a voice very similar to the Tantor voice. He would always talk about going to this BBQ place, the Hogly Wogly. I had the Hogly Wogly stuck in my head as a voice to do, of what I wanted to do with

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