Josh Ponte, the Africa Technical Advisor for the new blockbuster The Legend of Tarzan, has recalled his time spent living with a group of orphan gorillas with our Sinead Brennan.
Ponte took part in the Gorilla Reintroduction Program in Gabon which saw the group of orphaned gorillas studied as they were reintroduced to life in the rainforest.
"It's difficult to explain that first day when you walk into the forest and 16 gorillas walk up to you, and the first thing they do is, they grab your hand first and foremost to sniff it to find out if you're a fellow or a woman. Then the women all sit around and bat their eyelids at you and the men run off into the forest. It was incredible as an experience," Ponte said.
Sharing one story in particular that has stayed with him from the experience, Ponte remembered one young gorilla who injured herself falling out of a tree, and then came to live with him in his hut until she was better.
"There are too many stories but one of them fell out of a tree one day when we went across the river to be with them and she hurt herself quite badly. She spent the best part of a couple of months in my hut with me getting better," he said. "Those are stories that I still carry very close to my heart."
Alexander Skarsgard and Samuel L. Jackson in The Legend of Tarzan
Having spent 15 years living in Gabon, when Warner Bros. was looking at locations to film The Legend of Tarzan, Ponte's details were passed along by two very different avenues; a location scout from England and the Gabonese ambassador to America.
Speaking about showcasing the stunning Gabonese landscapes to the director David Yates he said, "I was in the position where I could get access to a helicopter, so I grabbed the scout and stuck him in the helicopter and we put him up above the rainforest.
"When those images went back to David Yates, it certainly piqued his interest because within a moment he was down himself and he spent four days in a helicopter with his nose glued to the window, seeing the film kind of render in front of him."
Ponte's extensive knowledge of late 19th century Africa lead to Yates bringing him onto the production to advise on culture, music and the art department. He also worked in a management role when the shoots in Gabon were taking place.
Bringing the world in which he is so familiar to life for the film was full of compromises because "it's neither a documentary nor is it a piece based in this day and age."
"There were really odd compromises for me, one was that David Yates asked me for a savannah landscape near the forest, and in Gabon we have these beautiful rolling savannahs but they're really odd looking, so when David went there he said, 'The audience are never gonna buy this' despite the fact those savannahs are the real thing beside the central African rainforest, he said 'They'll think we've CGI'd it' basically," he laughed.
"So there were odd compromises that needed to be made. Even the forest itself, to be in it is very claustrophobic, and David needed these long shots so compromises had to be made and compromises had to be made from a narrative point of view – this is a huge, entertaining film and that was the point."
Check out our interview with Josh Ponte below!
