Hollywood Tales

“When Dian Fossey was still living, they (Universal Studios) had bought that book from her and offered the project to me. I read the book. It was mostly Dian’s research with the gorillas. Chapter after chapter on gorilla dung and things; there was no story. So I said, ‘Thank you very much, but no thank you.’ Subsequently, about a year after that, Fossey was murdered. And then I thought, ‘Well, what is this about? What is this? Now there was something more going on here than just a woman going up there and researching.’

“So I started asking around and made some phone calls, and someone told me in New York that they knew a saleswoman at Bergdorf Goodman who knew Dian Fossey and who twice a year sent evening gowns to Dian Fossey’s research camp. And I thought, ‘This is very interesting that this woman, who’s up there mucking around in the mud with the gorillas, orders these fancy ballgowns.’

“So after snooping around a little bit more and finding out this was a very interesting woman, aside from her involement with the gorillas, I thought, ‘There may be something to this. This is something I’m interested in.”’So I called Universal and said, ‘Remember that book you offered me, that project? I’m interested now.’”

 — Anna Hamilton Phelan, screenwriter on Gorillas in the Mist