Tarzan & Bo

It's a different John and Bo Derek than you might expect. True, some things stay the same—John still has his mountain-man mane of gray hair and Bo ... well, as you can see, she's still magnificent.

But John is no longer doing all the talking and Bo seldom acts like a lost child looking to Daddy to show her the way. Instead, they appear to be a team; and while John may still be team captain, there's now a sense of partnership evident in everything they say and do.

It's apparent in the little things. Bo finishes some of John's sentences, filling in words or facts he's groping for, even correcting him when he makes a mistake. There's more give-and-take, and it's not uncommon for both of them to take turns expressing parts of the same thought, something of a tag-team (text continued on page 244) Tarzan & Bo (continued from page 147) match of conversation—first John, then Bo, then John, then Bo again—until the thought is complete.

And it's a apparent in the big things, too, such as Tarzan, the Ape Man, their Tarzan came to be—with Bo as star and producer and John as director and almost everything else—you get a more detailed picture of the Dereks as a team. In fact, it almost sounds as if it's John and Bo against the world.

The Tarzan project started as a notion in John's head called Me, Jane when he was searching for an appropriate vehicle for Bo's larger-than-life image after the success of "10." "I don't think she should portray life," John says. "I think she should portray fantasies. I mean, I think there are enough people who are doing Dog Day Afternoon and the heavy kind of shit. Why ask the audience to buy her as an actress when she does not come with those credentials?"

Unfortunately, Warner Bros. owned the rights to the Tarzan property and had plans of its own that didn't include the Dereks. But John, who fended through the jungles of Hollywood long enough as an actor to know that there's always a loophole, had their agent call MGM, which had produced many of the old Tarzan movies back in the Thirties. And, true to John's hunch, MGM had maintained the rights to remake one of the old series, Tarzan, the Ape Man, made in 1932 with Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane and Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan. Ironically, it's one of the few Tarzan films that focus on Jane. "The whole front 60 percent is the story of Jane," John says of the original. "She's a very liberated kind of lady and more than half sexy all through it."

MGM signed the deal, despite howls of protest from Warner's, and it was agreed that John would direct, an announcement that was greeted with some skepticism in Hollywood.

"I guess I come to them with a crazy tag on me, that I'm a madman, arrogant and all that kind of crap," admits John. "I guess all those things are true in perspective."

If John as director raised a few eyebrows, imagine the consternation Bo's appointment as producer caused—after all, she's a 24-year-old with minimal experience even as an actress. But with Bo's name on the marquee, MGM felt it could gamble, particularly with a film budgeted at $5,500,000, a mere pittance in today's Hollywood.

Once John and Bo arrived on location in Sri Lanka, they started making more waves. MGM had approved a staff for the Dereks to use on the film; but within days, that staff started returning—most fired by the film's producer, Bo, on the grounds they were not dedicated or able enough to meet the pair's standards.

"Everybody kept saying, 'You can't get rid of those people. My God, you're out in the middle of nowhere, halfway around the world,' " recalls John.

"Whenever we let responsibility out to someone else, we found that we should have done it ourselves," says Bo. "I know that sometimes I'd much rather stay up a little later and do something myself than have someone around you can't count on. These people came to us wanting to do the film, to be involved. But when it came time to really work, they forgot about what they'd said and deceived us. And they're never hurt, these people. That's the sad thing. They've already got their first-class round-trip ticket home. Even when you fire them and send them home, you feel you've been taken."

As key crew members—several production managers, an auditor or two, et al.—streamed back to L.A., Bo and John either filled the slots with loyalists or did the jobs themselves. Bo signed checks and accounted for every cent that was spent. John did his own camerawork and set up his own lighting. Those who didn't agree or didn't share the Dereks' penchant for working long hours found themselves out of work.

Meanwhile, MGM's top brass stuck by the Dereks. "I think they were anticipating trouble," explains John. "They had the right to take the director off the picture, but they were happy with the material comming back."

"They were fantastic," agrees Bo.

It was, however, one of Bo's decisions that caused the couple the most grief. When John first suggested the idea of Me, Jane, Bo countered with Lee (Paradise Alley) Canalito as Tarzan. John agreed and, as the deal progressed, canalito was approached to audition.

Both John and Bo liked him and, in a typical exchange, they explain why:

John: "He looked like an able man. He looked primitive."

Bo: "From certain places, he had a gorgeous face."

John: "Every once in a while, he'd look like a classic drawing."

Bo: "Like the illustrations of Tarzan."

John: "Like the great illustrations, not the comedic illustrations."

Bo: "The really old ones."

But there was a problem. "He was overweight," claims John, who extracted a promise from Canalito that he'd be in shape in time for filming.

Because Canalito had suffered an injury, MGM wanted the Dereks to at least look at other candidates. One of those, Miles O'Keeffe, stood out, and as the decision got down to the wire, John started to opt for O'Keeffe, while Bo voted for Canalito. Bo won.

"See, I'm 54 and Bo is 34," explains John. "Obiviously, she's going to be here—if all things go right—a lot, lot longer than I'm going to be here. I'm subservient to her but because it's her fucking life. She has the longevity to worry about, not I. And she's the one who allows us to be in a position to make a picture with a major studio. So I think she should be allowed to do it."

But according to the Dereks, Canalito didn't lose the necessary weight, and Bo had the difficult job of telling him.

"I spoke to Lee," recalls Bo. "And I said, 'We told you that if you weren't Tarzan when the time came, we wouldn't use you as Tarzan. We're not going to close our eyes and ignore it. We're going to do something about it.' So he knew what was coming. He just didn't believe it would really happen. He said, 'Well, maybe I should have had more time.' As soon as he said that, it wasn't difficult anymore. He had known about the film for a year and had a year to get in shape. He was a fighter—a contender for heavyweight—so he knows what shape is."

"Lee was in the best shape of his life," says Reggie Turner, his attorney. "In fact, he lost 12 pounds in Sri Lanka."

Turner refuses to say more about the incident, but gossips had a feld day when Lee was sent home and Miles O'Keeffe summoned to replace him. One report said that John fired Canalito because the actor became overnthusiastic during his sex scenes with Bo. "If the audience can be aroused to some degree, I think they should be," maintains John. "And I don't think what goes on up there is coming into our bedroom. I have a fatter ego than that, a better relationship with her than that."

Bo still refers to the hiring of Canalito as her "biggest mistake," and John's not above pointing that out. "If she hadn't lipped off, we would have gotten rid of him before we did, which would have saved us an enormous amount of money, because we wouldn't...."

Bo humbly finishes the sentence, "We wouldn't have had to pay him."

Nonetheless, both are happy with O'Keeffe, "He just has this glorious, glorious fucking body," enthuses John. "Nobody can deny his body—man, woman, dog, priest or anything. You've got to flip over this guy's body."

Both John and Bo are adamant that they'll work only as a team in the future, including their next project, The Sea Mistress, an $8,000,000 feature starring Bo as a female pirate. John will continue to direct and sometimes write, Bo will produce and star, and woe to any crew member who doesn't understand the Derek method of making movies. In fact, the only change either Derek can see is that someday Bo will step totally behind the camera and produce while John directs another actress.

"Film making interests me a lot; a lot more than acting, that's for sure," says Bo. "Like John says, I'm hot and that brings power. With my being involved in the films, if they're no good, it's my fault. I can't blame it on a producer or a studio. And that's nice."

John also sees her strengths as a producer. "Everybody says, 'Gee, she talks back to me now.' She does it because she has the credentials to talk back. She comes up with things that are for me fantastic," he says. "She's not just bouncing bosoms anymore."