Mime apes
Struggling to find performers who could authentically play prehistoric apes, Kubrick hired professional mime Dan Richter to choreograph the Dawn of Man sequence, and eventually cast him as the lead ape, Moon-Watcher.
Richter recruited 20 additional mimes and began months of intensive training.
He later explained: “I spent a lot of time at the zoo, watched Jane Goodall’s footage over and over [and] met with anthropologists.
“My goal was to drop this group of 20 man-apes in a parking lot and they would just look right.”
The result remains one of the most realistic portrayals of early hominids ever filmed.
