Talk:Manis (orangutan)

Dead?

It's hard to find reliable and consistent information, but the impression I was left with is that Eastwood has continued to visit Manis over the years and that it's C.J., who took over the role for the sequel (because Manis was seen as having grown too large) who was killed by his trainer. Given the confusion I've seen, though, I can't rule out the possibility of it being the other way around. If this is the case, we may have Manis credited for the wrong movie. -- Strangelv (talk) 02:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Biography tag

According to the Wikiproject Biography project page: "The Biography WikiProject concerns the creation, development, and organization of Wikipedia's articles about persons (including but not limited to biographies). It includes only articles about individual persons, not about an organization or group or association, unless a substantial section of the article is a biography of a person related to that organization or group. **It includes biographies of only real humans; thus, the project does not cover other animals or fictitious persons (such as pseudonyms) or fictional characters**." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography [emphasis mine]

Therefore I don't think that this talk page should have a biography tag. Other similar articles (J. Fred Muggs for example) do not have a biography tag either.--FeanorStar7 08:40, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Confusion

Someone edited this article a while ago in order to cast doubt on the claims made in the PETA documentary and the LA Times article, claiming that they offered "no evidence". In fact, the source, referred to by the LA Times article (I haven't seen the documentary), is a book by Jane Goodall and Dale Peterson, entitled Visions of Caliban, see pages 145–46. Some of the reporting of this in the LA Times was confused, however, mixing up what the book actually claims, perhaps partly because the book itself mis-titles the second film as Every Which Way You Can instead of Any Which Way You Can. The claims in the book actually concern the orangutan used in the second film, not the one that is the subject of this article. Anyway, I have corrected the article, but no doubt a reference to the book needs to be added, but I don't know how to do that, so I'm leaving a note here. 175.32.221.98 (talk) 03:06, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Here is the quotation from the book by Goodall and Peterson, which makes clear (the incorrect use of title notwithstanding) that all of the claims concern Buddha and not Manis, from pages 145 to 146 of Visions of Caliban:

The orangutan who played Clyde alongside Clint Eastwood's Philo Beddoe in the original beat-em-up fantasy, Every Which Way But Loose (1978), may be one of the organutans currently laboring under significant discipline in a nightclub slapstick comedy act in Las Vegas. The orangutan who played Clyde alongside Beddoe in the 1981 sequel, Every Which Way You Can, was apparently clubbed to death at the end of that movie.

This might explain why the starring orangutan is not identified in the credits for Every Which Way You Can, except to note that he or she was supplied by Gentle Jungle, a Hollywood purveyor of live exotic animals for entertainment. In fact, the orangutan was originally named Ichibad and then renamed Buddha before he finally became Clyde. According to one observer, Buddha was trained at Gentle Jungle with the encouragement of a can of mace and a pipe wrapped in a newspaper. According to another observer – Kenneth DeCroo, assistant animal trainer on the set – Buddha's head trainer, Boone Narr, thrashed this young male the day before filming began, to make him more docile. "He made [Buddha] sit and started making him do part of his tricks." But when the orangutan became momentarily inattentive, Narr "beat" him with a cane and then an ax handle. Buddha was "protecting himself with his arms...moving and rolling in a circle." That was before the filming began. According to a third observer, Robert Porec, a trainer formerly with Gentle Jungle, near the end of the filming of Every Which Way You Can, in May of 1980, the orangutan was caught stealing doughnuts on the set and had otherwise been "a discipline problem." He was brought back to Gentle Jungle and led into a barn by his trainers, who carried with them a three-and-a-half-foot ax handle informally known as "the Buddha club." "For the next twenty minutes," Porec stated, "I could hear a great deal of hitting and pounding. I could hear Buddha vocalising, a low grunt. It appeared that a fight was going on. I was later told that Buddha fought back." Buddha may have fought back, but he didn't have an ax handle; he was injured badly enough that for the next several days the orangutan refused to emerge from a steel drum inside his cage. In early August, Buddha was found dead in his cage, blood seeping out of his mouth; an autopsy was said to indicate cerebral hemorrhage. The movie had just been completed, and so, not to disturb that particular stuff of dreams, another orangutan named Dallas, renamed Clyde, Jr., or C.J., was hauled out to promote the film.

Hope that helps. 175.32.221.98 (talk) 03:25, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Note, however, that makeup effects artist William Munns doubts the claims of Peterson and Goodall: http://www.coolasscinema.com/2015/03/an-interview-with-makeup-effects-artist.html 175.32.221.98 (talk) 04:52, 7 April 2021 (UTC)