An Interview with Michael Hackenberger
The Bowmanville Zoo is no run-of-the-mill ordinary zoo. There is an intimate family-like atmosphere, which envelops the visitor in a unique feeling of being a part of the proceedings and not simply a spectator. As soon as one meets Michael Hackenberger, the co-owner/director of the Bowmanville Zoo, the reasons for the existence of this type of environment become crystal clear. Michael is a man who is obviously dedicated and committed to making his zoo the very best it can be. As Michael explains, "Bowmanville Zoo is North America's oldest private zoo. It was started in 1919 and it was originally a sort of a cabin park plus there was always a zoo attached. My partner and I - my partner and friend's name is Al Nagy - we bought the facility in 1987. And prior to that, I'd been doing a bit - actually quite a bit of trained animal work and we brought that aspect with us to the zoo. Realistically, running a zoo is a crummy way to make a buck. You can't make enough money to operate at the level we want to operate in terms of caring for animals, etc. So we've become very aggressive in the television and feature game. Essentially, it supports the zoo."
The Bowmanville Zoo has a special claim to fame. It is the home of two rather illustrious lions, the animal stars of the movie, THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS. As Michael leads the way to Bongo and Caesar's enclosure, he passes by several other notable zoo inhabitants who all warmly greet him in turn. In particular, a breathtaking white Bengal tiger purrs in welcome so Michael casually presents his hand for the tiger to enthusiastically lick. He describes the circumstances under which he first gained custody of these two lions: "Bongo and Caesar were over at Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bailey Circus. And they were at the time eight months old and they were being developed for an act where they were riding on the back of Belgian horses. They decided...the Ringling Show decided to bring in some acts from Europe and so they didn't need them and the veterinarian, Richard Houck, was a really good friend of mine and he knew I was looking for some good lions. So Ringling donated the lions to Bowmanville Zoo." On reaching Bongo and Caesar's run, it is amazing to see two adult male five hundred pound lions housed together in the same area and to see them being so affectionate with each other. This is indeed a rare scenario. "The only ones in captivity," says Michael.
Since the film called for several scenes involving two adult male lions being in close proximity to each other, this stipulation made Bongo and Caesar ideal candidates to become "the ghost" and "the darkness". However, this was by no means the only reason they were selected. Michael outlines the thinking behind this decision: "The animal coordinator who put this together initially was Hubert Welles. Hubert went and looked at probably four or five hundred lions worldwide and he picked the six best lions he thought could do the movie. He went to Moscow and looked at the Moscow Circus lions. He went everywhere and the two lions at Bowmanville, Bongo and Caesar - for what they do, which is contact work, safe work, also very athletic work - jumping, running, etc., they're the best for that. And they're gorgeous animals. They're the finest working lions in the world. They really are. And even now they're getting a little bit older, you know, fourteen, but they're doing fine. In captivity they'll go twenty years."
Six lions were cast for the movie - two from France, two from Hollywood and the two Canadian lions from the Bowmanville Zoo. As shooting progressed, it became evident to the filmmakers that it was easiest to use Bongo and Caesar for the majority of the scenes. "Any time you see two lions together, it's always Bongo and Caesar. The charges - that was Bongo. All the scenes of the lion in the grass - that was Bongo. Up the tree - that was Bongo. The night scenes in the tent - a lot of those were Caesar. So these two lions did the majority of the work. Actually one of the lions from California was sent home. He just wasn't safe enough so the movie was shot with five lions actually," states Michael. In explanation as to why the decision was made to utilize Bongo and Caesar whenever possible, Michael elaborates, "They're safe. They're easy. And that's not to say anything against the French lions. For what they were - i.e., aggressive, over-the-top lions, they were great. But it was a real pain in the butt to shoot them because of the way they were. If they could use Bongo and Caesar, they did." The exceptions to this were any scenes that called for very aggressive, ferocious behavior on the part of the lions. "We had specific lions to act ferocious so Bongo and Caesar didn't have to be ferocious," explains Michael. This left Bongo and Caesar free to be able to perform the more docile, intricate tasks required of them for more close-up work with the film's star, Val Kilmer.
Although some effects were achieved through the use of blue screen technology, there were still numerous occasions, which called for a lion to actually be in a scene with Val. As Michael describes, "Virtually everything you saw was real lion action. Where it was tweaked was where we shot a lot of it on green screen or blue screen where you would digitize out the image and subsequently put it onto a plate. That was done for peoople's safety but also just to enhance the action. Because the thing about these lions was that they were maneaters and so you needed sort of an over-the-top performance from them. Again everything you saw - it happened. Val being chased by a lion was a blue screen. Val was in there first and then he left (so that Bongo could be filmed separately and then added later through the wonders of the blue screen.) However, there were lots of shots where Val was in the shot with the lions. For example, all of the scenes where a lion is jumping over Val, that is really Val and that is really Bongo."
As you might imagine, the preparations involved for a movie of the scope of THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS were lengthy and painstaking. Bongo and Caesar were going to be expected to exhibit an amazing and varied array of new and difficult behaviors which necessitated a tremendous amount of training. As Michael describes it, "There were a number of new behaviors we had to put on them. We had to put all-out runs - charges - on them. Bongo had to learn to crawl on his belly. They had to come to marks, had to do A to B's, had to respond to buzzers so there was a wide array of different things they had to pick up. We started preparation here in Bowmanville in June and that took us up to September and then September/October, part of October, we were prepping in Africa prior to filming. And it was...this is the most demanding lion film ever made so they needed that time to prep." One of the most difficult of the new behaviors expected of Bongo was crawling. Lions do not normally crawl under any circumstances. Michael outlines how this task was ultimately achieved: "It took a long time. You put a board up that he can't knock up and you put him on one side and you don't let him jump over and you put a piece of meat on the other side. And then you get him ducking under the board. And then, once you get his rear end down, then...Okay, good boy, good boy. And then you can start, you know, doing a bit of a crawl."
Once the training was well underway, then came the complicated arrangements for transporting Bongo and Caesar to Africa for the filming. Michael details, "To take the lions to Africa was a very big deal. We had to do a number of veterinary procedures in terms of immobilizations. There was the issue of...lions are a threatened species under the Convention of International Trade of Endangered Species so we had to get those permits and then in terms of the flying, there had to be all the specifications for the caging, etc. so they were comfortable. So yeah, it was very laborious. The production dealt with most of the shipping arrangements and we took care of the permitting arrangements."
Getting the lions there was only half the battle. Secure housing for them while in Africa was, of course, a necessity. Michael describes the measures taken: "What we had for the lions were big shipping containers with outside runs that were inside these bomas that they'd used for capturing elephants in and it really worked out very well for us. The filming and where the lions were held was called the Songimvelo Game Reserve which was in South Africa, just north of Swaziland, south of a town called Badplaas and we arrived in September and we eventually came home in February so we were over there for a long, long haul. The early part was just preparation for the lions over in Africa and there was a lot to do on that level." And what was it like to have six adult male lions living in such close proximity to each other? Says Michael, "Male lions demarcate their territory largely by roaring and so when we had six male lions all within a half a mile of each other, they all thought they were the owners. It made the more aggressive lions more aggressive and it made the less dominant lions more fearful and that was really something it took a long time to work through. As an example, Bongo was fine but the other lion in the movie, Caesar - he was very subdued by the other males and it took almost around six weeks to bring him out of his shell where he was comfortable with it."
All the lion trainers made the decision to stay close to their feline charges for the duration of the making of this film, which entailed their staying on the reserve. The entire rest of the crew and the cast, with one notable exception, opted to stay at a near-by resort. "In terms of living arrangements, we also stayed on the game reserve. They had a game lodge in the reserve which was around five kilometers away. Otherwise, we would have had to stay at a resort that was around fifty kilometers away and we were just uncomfortable being that far from the lions. It's a game lodge so...I mean...we were staying in tents but the tents had wooden floors. They had a shower. They were air-conditioned. And the reason for the air conditioning was that we did a lot of night work so then you get the day off to sleep and you get into those tents and you know...forty, fifty degrees inside those tents and there's no way you can sleep. So at the lodge, it was essentially all the lion trainers plus Val," states Michael. It was Val Kilmer's personal decision to remain on the reserve with the trainers. "Val's a bit of a method actor," Michael offers. "And as such, he wanted to immerse himself in the African experience so towards that end, it was Val and us staying at the lodge. So we saw a lot of him. Val was very interested in Africa period and African lions are a big part of Africa so we spent a lot of time talking about it and he had a very good friend who's a South African, Bowen, who came and visited very regularly and Bowen was fascinated with the lions. Bowen is very much a bushman, very much so, and he just found it really neat to be able to get this close to a lion without being eaten."
As one might suspect, working with lions on a film set requires that certain hard, fast rules be set up. Michael explains, "The basic rule is never forget he's a lion. Bongo is just a wonderful, wonderful animal. They can lull you into a sense of false security. So you always have to remember he's a lion. I've got to keep reminding the crew because the crew - cast and crew - they have an agenda...they're here to make a movie. The quickest and most efficient way they can do it, off they go. And so they see how good Bongo is...they start to take liberties and that's where it can reach up and bite you in the bum. That's your job as the animal coordinator: to say, 'Okay guys, you're being a little bit sloppy here. Let's just wait the thirty seconds it takes to clear the lion off set before you go start moving your lights around or doing a camera move or whatever. Give the lions some room...yada...yada...yada...yada.'"
In spite of all the precautions and the fact that these lions were exceptionally well trained, they're still real lions and so little glitches occasionally arose. As Michael relates, "We had one where Caesar - he came out of the cage. And to contain them, we put up hot wires (electrified cattle fence). And he was working in a hot wire and he accidentally brushed it and it startled him and he went over the fence. And that day they were shooting probably three thousand extras for some of the big scenes and boy, it was like we were Moses and they were the Red Sea! They went for the hills. I'll be honest with you - it was a hard movie to make. It was a hard movie to make because we were there in the rainy season. The set kept washing away. Initially, they built a bridge so it was easy to get to set but the bridge washed out and we had to go an extra twenty kilometers around to get to set. We were okay because we were always on the reserve but this is all the camera crew. It became pretty arduous. It really did. Any time you're on location like that - you know, South Africa is the most developed country in Africa. There's no doubt about it. But still, you're out in the bush and it's primitive and you run into all sorts of problems, you know - machinery breaking down or you can't get the right lens or....It was what it was."
Flooding was not the only problem to plague the filmmakers. Michael details one of the other hardships: "Everyone got sick. You have this tick bite fever. You get bit by ticks and you get this horrible little protozoan parasite. It knocks you down for at least three days and there was just all sorts of things like that in Africa. Now we weren't in the malaria area so that was okay. We weren't in the Tse Tse fly area so that was okay. But that tick bite sickness - it laid out...there were times we were working with a third of a crew. No one escaped it. The ticks live out in the high grass and that's where we were constantly filming. And when you walk through, you would just see a cloud of ticks coming up where people were walking so it's unavoidable."
Annoying as the bad weather conditions and bouts of illness were, they paled in comparison with the casualties that occurred during the time frame of the movie shoot. Michael confirms that there were "no accidents or injuries with the lions. The lions were fine. But there were around five people killed during the making of this movie. One guy drowned in the river - one of the extras. Three people hit cattle while driving cars. Over in South Africa, where we were, it's very much a third world and there were cattle all over the roads. I mean - you hit a cow going at seventy to eighty kilometers an hour; you're going to die. And it happened to a bunch of drivers. It was a big pain in the butt - those cattle on the road - a really big problem. Luckily we weren't exposed to it too much because we lived right on the reserve and there were no cattle on the reserve per se."
One might wonder, given the nature of this film, just how much actual physical contact cast members had with the lions. Michael explains, "By its very nature, the script didn't call for a lot of contact. Val had a bunch of publicity shots taken with Bongo. But they didn't use them because it was counter to what the film was about. It was about man-eating lions. But Val did want to try this dream sequence and for that, the lion had to lick his hand. So we spent a day or so getting those shots. He was actually touching Bongo. This scene was Val's idea. It didn't end up in the movie unfortunately. All the time, the best stuff ends up on the editing room floor. It could have been very cool. Other people had different ideas so it didn't happen." As for how this hand-licking scene was achieved, Michael elaborates, "To get the licking, we had to have Val feeding the lions pieces of meat out of his hand. And when you feed them a piece of meat out of your hand, the one thing you can't do is pull your hand away because then they'll snap at it. So the best thing you can do is just shove your hand right into his mouth and he'll lick it off, no problem. So the first time we did it, I had my hand behind Val's and held it in there and just more than anything, it was making him comfortable with the lions. But it didn't take long at all. Val's a professional. He puts his head down and goes. Ultimately, he was Patterson and he was trying to kill these lions so all this added to the strength of the story for him.
"He's very professional. I mean, he's done this a lot. He loves Africa and it was just a real pleasure working with him. What struck me about Val on a personal level is the deep commitment he has to Africa and its people. From what I saw making the movie and I know he's done a number of documentaries on Africa and the problems - Africa has lots of problems. Val's involved with bringing those problems to a western perspective and seeing if there's resources to help those problems. So he's deeply committed to Africa and its people. It's nice to see that level of caring. He doesn't have to do this so it's pretty good."
THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS puts quite a bit of emphasis on the possibility of the Tsavo lions being demons. Michael has a slightly different viewpoint on this subject: "It's very unusual for wild lions to do what they did. This was a very notable case in history of these maneaters. They killed and ate a lot of people - around one hundred and twenty. I'm surprised more people aren't killed by big cats in Africa or Asia because humans are pretty easy prey. A zebra is far better equipped to defend itself than a human being and so you would think that we would be easy prey but no. There was an opportunity because they were building the railroad. There's a high number of human beings there. There's a high density of prey items for lack of a better word. The lions figured out how to kill people and they just stuck with it. But supernatural? No. You've got to Hollywoodize a movie to get funding because investors believe you need all this conflict and all this over-the-top stuff to make a movie work and that was the reason that was introduced."
Working on this film was a wonderful experience for Michael for a variety of reasons but doing this movie also opened a number of windows of opportunity for him in the feature film industry. Michael explains, "We developed very good friendships with a lot of the trainers over there. It worked well. What it did for us - it was known in the industry as a tough movie to make and that opened a lot of doors for us in terms of animal action. We developed a reputation of being able to get the job done and that's very important in the feature film business. There's just so much money involved so to be sitting around waiting for a lion to climb a tree or whatever and the clock's ticking and you're not getting any film. That just doesn't work so as a result of that one, the reputation got out that the Bowmanville Zoo can, with the species that we work with, which are big cats, elephants, camels, horses, zebras - we have a good reputation for being able to provide the on-screen animal talent that they need reliably. Reliably and with also a high level of ethics and animal welfare and over-all safety."
Since completing work on THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS, Bongo and Caesar's cinematic careers have certainly skyrocketed. "They've done the features, RUDE, GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE, WE ARE CIRCUS, EDISON TWINS, P.T. BARNUM, and BAIT plus the documentary, THE THREAD RUNS THROUGH. Television-wise, they've done ANIMORPHS and LITTLE MAN." Michael continues, "They all run in together but Bongo's done around fifteen to twenty television programs and then commercials are another fifteen to twenty. As an example, this summer, he was up at Canada's Wonderland, the big Paramount theme park in Toronto for the summer doing an animal actors show. They get animals to do what they do on film. So he's covered a lot of territory. He's been developed for this on every level. This in no way stresses him. When we don't work him, he tends to get upset. He likes the attention, he really does."
"This was Bongo and Caesar's first time in Africa and it was great," concludes Michael. "We had a wonderful time. We took them for long walks. We let them loose and let them chase zebras. They didn't catch any. It was a lot of fun. It was a great experience. Any time you get on location - sure, there's a lot of inconvenience and a lot of time and trouble but filming lions in Africa? It doesn't get better."
For more information on Bongo, Caesar and the Bowmanville Zoo, check out their website
All photos of Michael Hackenberger with Bongo and/or Caesar are used with permission of Mr. Hackenberger owner/trainer at the Bowmanville Zoo. We thank Mr. Hackenberger for his time and resources in making this article possible.