The Making of Planet of the Apes: A Comprehensive Fiftieth Anniversary History with Exclusive Never-Before-Seen Photographs

For the past three days, I’ve been reading John W. Rindler‘s “The Making of the Planet of the Apes,” and I just put it down. I purchased this large table book which is 334 pages long back at the beginning of the summer, and it’s sat on my coffee table, untouched for no less than several months. Back then it went for about $34.00, plus tax, but Amazon now has it as part of its Black Friday sales, and it’s reduced even further down to $24.00. It has a lot of beautiful pictures, and I thought it probably was just a fluff piece, but I wanted to see the photographs and drawings in high resolution and in color. After all, I had read several other books on The Planet of the Apes, and I figured I had learned about as much as I was going to learn from these books, and viewing the films innumerable times since I was in high school, but sometimes I am a bit of a completionist, and I love almost everything about POTA. This book turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It was no fluff piece with just pretty pictures, although there are many amazing pictures in it, but it delved into virtually all aspects that went into the making of the Planet of the Apes, with an excellent forward by Charleston Heston’s son, Frazier, who his parents brought all over the world and to all their father’s shootings, along with his sister. I would highly recommend it if you are into learning more about all aspects that film, and its writer moves the details along with a fairly good prose style. Here are a few pictures that I clicked off while reading it, but there are certainly many others that are equally or even more amazing that I just didn’t have the time to photograph. If there are any drawbacks to the book, it is that it’s so heavy. As I’ve said before, it comes in at 304 pages, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but its dimensions are 11.4 x 1.2 x 10.8 inches, and it weighs in at a good 2.31 pounds. You really need two solid hands to hold onto if you want to read it on your lap, and forget holding a drink or eating if you’re going to read it that way. About half the time I read it on my couch or I took it over to the the island in my dining room, carefully laying it down and getting the proper light to read it and enjoy all the high quality color reprints. This book probably taught me more about all the elements that went into conceptualization of the book with all the various different elements and all the different people, and personalities that went into the book, from Pier Boulle, to the producers, writers, and actors. It was hideously complex to assemble and adapt and it is not hyperbole to say that the end result is nothing short of a minor miracle. Hundreds of people went into making the film, but I have to really thank Arthur P. Jacobs for his tireless devotion and dedicating literally many years!, and never giving up. Without him this film would never have been made.  There were a few surprises as to who added contributions and tweaked the script in important ways that would have made for a dramatically different drama and many changed scenes than the classic we’ve now all come to love and wish to talk about here. The script actually took a lot of work to polish, and rewrite multiple times. From Rod Sterling’s serious Science Fiction take, to Wilson’s rewriting all the dialogue with elements of sardonic humor, and commentary on history, politics, literary allusions, and the Inquisition/Mccarthy Red Scare allusions (he was a blacklisted writer), to another writer adding further changes to the camera scenes and dialogue, to even some actors and other people tweaking it whom I won’t divulge. The very last lines and iconic Statue scenes almost never existed. Taylor’s final lines weren’t in the script! Since it’s on sale you might want to check it out and add it to your collection, or give it as a gift.  The pictures are in black and white and mostly in color, with drawings, sketches, artwork, photographs, and the author draws from Fox’s archives, the Heston’s estate, and many other sources, some of which I’d read before, but with many, many details and interviews that I didn’t previously know.  If you get it, I think you’ll enjoy it. Go Ape! 

As someone who worked at 20th Century-Fox from 1989-2015, and who was also their unofficial historian to boot, I have to say that J.W. Rinzler's MAKING OF THE PLANET APES is one of the best "making of" movie books I have ever read. It takes the reader from the origins of the Pierre Boulle novel all the way through producer Arthur Jacobs vision of making the movie, and director Franklin Schaffner's excellent execution of it. Every detail, every artist conception drawing, production blueprints, make-up tests... production scene construction, stage and location filming... it's all here in one engrossing book that's fully illustrated with behind-the-scenes and candid photos that I've never seen before. Having known and worked with people who were employed on the original, and certainly the very BEST ape movie ever, I can only think that this book does them great credit, and provides a wonderful memento for their families and friends. The B&W and color stills are beautifully reproduced and laid out in the best possible way, and the exhaustive research and the most trivial details of the movie's production are sure to be a wonderful surprise for any fan. The original 1968 PLANET OF THE APES movie is iconic and special for a number of reasons... The fact that it was very original and unique... The fact that it was so innovative and ground breaking in both it's make-up design and music scoring... The fact that every penny spent is right up there on the screen, completed on schedule with a tight budget... And the fact of it's perfect script, casting and directing. They certainly don't make movies like that anymore, and you don't get fabulous books like this one coming along too often either!

Extremely detailed, well-researched, informative and entertaining account of the making of the first "Planet of the Apes" film. This book takes a deep dive into all the day-to-day minutiae of making of the first film. I've read multiple books about the first film series as I have been a lifelong fan since first watching all 5 of them on the big screen in a second-run movie theater in 1974 when I was a kid and this is the very best book of the lot. It's a handsome, large, hard-cover book with tons of cool early concept sketches, illustrations and behind-the-scenes photos that are sure to please fans of the film. Absolutely essential for POTA fans.

“Planet of the Apes” was a mind-blowing movie to me as a kid. Little did I realize then, that it would open my young mind to worldly ideas and encourage me to question the status quo. Storytelling at its finest allows us to experience layered themes. And here, in subsequent viewings, more concepts became apparent: anthropocentrism, rights of sentient beings, truth and suppression-of-truth, and even scientific verification of time dilation. And I’m SO THANKFUL I got to experience the movie raw and untainted by those awful-spoiler-video-covers!! Now about the book: The best work is done by passionate people! Just read this book’s foreward and introduction. No mercenaries here. From cover to cover (literally! check out the bookcover underneath the book jacket) is a treasure trove of verifiable accounts, exquisite pre-production art, and candid behind-the-scenes photos. “The Making of Planet of the Apes” is THE definitive homage to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1968 film. Thank you, J.W. Rinzler, Fraser Heston, and everyone involved in the making of this book; and especially the crew and cast of “Planet of the Apes”.

This book isn't quite as meaty as his efforts for Star Wars but is still quite good. I took one star off of this as the Kindle version has some very, very poor quality graphics, isolated almost entirely to the movie posters for non-Planet of the Apes films that were done by people related to the movie. I have no idea where they found these but I could find better quality versions of a lot of them quite easily just using the internet. They are blurry when you look at them and if you try to expand them they are just worse. The photo quality for almost all of the PotA material is fine. I've read another book that covers the entire history of the original series and it had some nice stories that I was surprised to not see iterations of here, sadly that book is long out of print and not available as a kindle book. This one will be a good product for delivering the same story for just the first film. Maybe the graphics in the physical book are better, I prefer the Kindle for these because the other books are just too darn big for comfortable and easy reading, you almost need to get the coffee table book version for the pictures and the kindle version for the ease of reading.

Great book, full of details on how movie ideas get pitched in Hollywood. Harder than your might think. Really cool behind the scenes pictures. This book gives some idea of just how huge this film was to those of us too young to remember, or not born at the time. Good details, great for any fan of the original POTA.

Technical details aside, the stories of the makeup and script debates are so interesting. As one of my favorite films, this book has inspired me to watch it again and buy some more memorabilia! Long live Roddy and all, and the industry creation of Chambers' technique. Thanks Rinzler

For the money, this book is a bargain for movie lovers who rank the original Planet of the Apes high on their list. It is a large book full of mostly color photographs of the behind-the-scenes process that went into the making of a classic, as well as new insights into that process and never-before-published facts and trivia. I was actually surprised at how affordable the book was in view of its high quality.

Very nice book, lots of beautiful pictures and informations. It really worth the price.

Pour moi, ce film restera toujours gravé en ma mémoire, puisqu’il y a dans ce livre des images et des histoires auxquelles on ne savait Durant le tournage. Je le suggère tout les fan

Firstly as a preface I have to admit I am a Planet of the Apes fan...And was very excited when I learnt that this book had been published. I was not disappointed with the finished publication. So often Making Of books are just part of the publicity material for a movie's release. Perhaps in part because this book and it's author have hindsight and use of material from a movie released decades ago this book is pretty much the epitome of making of books. It deals with the whole studio production process from script to casting to pre-production design and then the actual production and post production of Planet Of The Apes. There is a wealth of material including preproduction paintings, costume tests, makeup tests and casting photos. In addition an absolute mountain of on set photos, stills and behind the candid photos are displayed. All this material, over 300 pages of it does contribute to a heavy hard cover coffee table book. I recommend The Making of Planet of the Apes to not just genre fans but also anyone interested in the film making process, especially by the Hollywood studios in the mid-20th century.

Ótimo making of de um dos melhores e mais influentes filmes de ficção científica dos anos 1960: O Planeta dos Macacos (1968). As fotos de bastidores são absolutamente incríveis e raras.

Heel mooie uitgebreide uitgave,een boek dat deze filmclassic gewoon verdient,prachtige fotos en heel veel info over de film,gedrukt op mooi papier en stevig gebonden,een aanrader voor elke POTA fan. Absoluut het mooiste boek over planet of the apes dat tot ooit te koop is geweest.