Monkey status: There is a monkey featured in this film
With more than 30 films over 50 years, nobody has a more wide-reaching or storied career behind the camera than Stephen Spielberg. And while it saw little love at this year’s Oscars, his latest outing The Fabelmans was perhaps his most personal and self-reflective picture yet.
The film follows a relatively prosaic and suburban set of events for a director who has taken us to as exotic and varied locales as dinosaur-infested tropical islands, war-ravaged mid-century Europe and dystopic visions of a future yet to pass.
It’s essentially a retelling of the man himself’s early years. His budding love affair with the camera and his grappling with an eccentric mother and a stern, driven father. His own personal manifest destiny, moving westward throughout his youth and butting up against anti-semitism in high school as he came to terms with his dream of being a film-maker.
But while there’s plenty of pathos and scene-chewing to go around in The Fabelmans, it certainly doesn’t sound like much of a monkey movie on paper.
So it was to our reporters’ glee that Michelle Williams’ depiction of Spielberg’s mother shows the audience the depths of her raging disquiet and loosening grip on the day-to-day by having her go out and buy a monkey.
Bennie the monkey is played by Crystal the Capuchin, one of the most famous non-human primates on the planet. Crystal’s career spans over almost 25 years, beginning with an appearance as a baby in 1997’s George of the Jungle.
We’ve covered her appearances in films like American Pie and The Hangover: Part 2, and her appearances in the Night at the Museum series and on Community will surely see her appear again.
The Fabelmans was perhaps her star turn. Like stars Brendan Fraser and Ke Huy Quan, who leapt from the ghetto of nostalgia and low culture into the Oscar winners lounge this year, Crystal has shown us that there’s more than just a knack for comedies and family films in this monkey’s wheelhouse.
And although Spielberg is no stranger to monkey actors in his stable – look no further than Raiders of the Lost Ark – it appears that like much of the film, this monkey was taken directly from his early life.
Spielberg told The Hollywood Reporter that his mother, Leah Adler, actually did bring home a monkey at some point in his childhood, which he says he and his siblings were scare of.
Perhaps that planted the seed for the villainous turn the Raiders monkey takes.
Spielberg wasn’t the only auteur on set with a history with monkeys.
Cult director David Lynch shows up behind an eyepatch in a scene-stealing moment as a late-career John Ford.
Lynch had previously appeared alongside a capuchin named Jack in the 2017 short film You Don’t Know Jack, where he interviewed the monkey on suspicion of murder.
Is there a monkey in it? 