using here is akeley's. marshall johnson, and they were kind of just a glitsy movie making couple of the time. of course they did a lot of like savage movies, movies like congorilla and wild savages of the south and stuff like that. but they decided they became friends with akeley. they were a bit younger than him and he convinced them to go to africa and film and they went over there for nearly a decade making the movies and had a kind of interesting symbiotic relationship movies they were making and this is the movie is called simba, and some of the -- the american museum of natural history gave it its respect which gave them a little more respectability which i felt they didn't have. they had the box office but these didn't have the scientific credibility so we formed this relationship with akeley and the museum of natural history to film these movies and they got some underwriting for it and then the profits, 50% of the profits from our supposed to go to fund akeley's african hall, said he was actually w

but, they became friends with akeley. they were a bit younger than him and he convinced them to go to africa and film. they went over there and they moved there for nearly a decade. making these movies. they had kind of an interesting symbiotic relationship, where the movies that they were making, and this movie is called simba, and some of the american museum of natural history gave its respectful perimeter, which gives them a little more respectability which i guess they felt they didn't have. they had the box office but they didn't have the scientific credibility, and so they form this relationship with akeley and the american museum of natural history to go families movies and they got some underwriting for it. the process, 50% of the process was supposed to go to fund a akeley's african hall. so he was actually -- some of the footage, some of the lion footage is his but they had a whole fleet of eight the's cameras. >> you jay i just wanted to say i really enjoyed reading the book and a great lecture tonight. my ques

the grandiose akeley hall of african mammals. but while he lay there on his cot listening to camp sounds around him during the long days and the jungle sounds at night, he began to envision this monumental knave-like space. it engulfed his imagination. the space was dimly lit, a dark, wide hall illuminated by a series of numerous panes of glass, each the size -- curiously enough -- of a movie screen. over those three months, the overall layout revealed itself gradually until he had imagined every last detail, carefully estimating the dimensions in his mind, picturing where he would place each charmed beast inside its lair. imagining it all down to the small earth, most exquisite blade of grass. in the center of the hall, would be a frozen herd of elephants as still as bronze statues. in a way he really had to be grateful to the elephant who had nearly squashed him like a grape. i mean without all that extra time recuperating, he very well never would have had this vision. there we go. he also, of course, had to be immensely grate

enter carl akeley, world's greatest taxidermist. by now carl's boss, henry fairfield was comparing him in talent equal only to cities, that great ancient greek sculptor had reserved images of the gods in party on. as statutes was his job in a nutshell was to take the last snapshot of the dawn of creation in all its splendor before it was snuffed out. but this is a somewhat elastic philosophy. was he charged in effect with making time capsules of a vanishing world? yes. did he love the animals he was killing? i truly think he did, yes. i know he did. but the full scale of this ultimate time capsule would only come to akeley after you taken that beating by the elephant back on mount kenya. it was while he was confined to his tent healing from his wounds that he first began to have these feverish visions of what would become, after several more harrowing expeditions, and three decades, the grandiose akeley all of african mammals. but while he laid on his cock listening to camp sounds around him during the long days, the jungle sound th

like, for instance akeley had a couple of patents for dentist the equipment. [laughter] but the reading of the correspondence, and also the -- rochester, he grew up in rochester at the university of rochester and found a lot of personal correspondence that enabled me to just kind of get into his head really. he comes across very humorous sometimes put other kinds piece just liked he is really funny. i wish mickey had written more. she wrote for jongh gold portraits, and her second one was called j.t. jr., the biography of an african monkey. [laughter] very good book. i wish she had written more. .. >> have you ever come across somebody in your writing that you have not been able to sympathize with because of their actions? this guy, did he do anything that you personally can't justify it to yourself? in your looking at this guy. >> many things that i found reprehensible, absolutely. again, you know, the things that i was drawn to, that i found most compelling in terms of him being a character. he was very paradoxical. so, yes. you know, he was engaged in this