As Legend of Tarzan Opens, Greystoke Director Hugh Hudson Looks Back on his 1984 take on Tarzan

Hollywood Reporter |

The Secrets Behind That Other Tarzan Movie — The One That Earned a Dog a Screenwriting Oscar Nomination

Writer Robert Towne so hated the finished ‘Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes’ that he put his dog’s name on the credits. As the new ‘The Legend of Tarzan’ opens, director Hugh Hudson looks back at his 1984 epic.

In the early 1980s, rumors began to spread about an unfinished screenplay that soon reached mythic proportions. Few people had seen it in the days before the internet made even the most inflammable material available for public consumption, but it was said to be 170 pages long and — astonishingly — had no ending.

The screenplay had a one-word title, Greystoke, but everyone knew that this was the story of Tarzan, lord of the apes, adapted from the 1914 novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was the masterwork of Robert Towne, who had already created such classics as 1973’s The Last Detail, 1974’s Chinatown and 1975’s Shampoo.

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