AFS Selects: PROJECT NIM

I knew I’d be in for an emotional roller coaster ride right from the beginning of James Marsh’s brilliant documentary when two-week-old Nim is taken from his mother. Shot with a tranquilizer gun, Carolyn tries valiantly to hold on to her infant son before lapsing into semi-consciousness. Wealthy, adventurous Stephanie LaFarge is handed the baby chimp, who screams and screams and yet clings to the human who will be his surrogate mother for the next few years, far from the Institute for Primate Studies in Oklahoma. It is November 1973 and Nim is about to begin a 26-year adventure, replete with his own emotional ups and downs.

Columbia psychology professor Herbert Terrace, a protégé of behaviorist B.F. Skinner, was officially in charge of Nim, whom he wanted to test for language acquisition: “If they could be taught to articulate what they are thinking about, the incredible expansion of human communication would possibly give us some insight into how language evolved.” He agreed that trying to teach primates to speak in recognizable human language was futile, but perhaps they could learn to communicate through American sign language. Instead of keeping him in a lab, Terrace initially believed that raising Nim within a human family would be the best way to educate the chimp. That is why Stephanie LaFarge, one of his more mature students, was involved from the very beginning, so that Nim would see her as his mother.

LaFarge had three children of her own, with puppeteer Ralph Lee, and added four more kids to the mix upon marrying poet/playwright W.E.R. LaFarge. Nim would be joining this family of nine in a brownstone on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. In the documentary Stephanie is obviously a very warm, loving, easy-going, laissez-faire mom, fully in synch with the urban educated hippie zeitgeist of the time. This may have been Nim’s happiest time. Indeed, what youngster wouldn’t prefer a no-rules environment full of hugs, good food, comfort, a pleasant German shepherd, and lots of loving kids? Interviewed for the documentary, Stephanie’s daughter Jenny Lee remembers instantly falling in love with Nim, whom she saw as “amazing, sweet, little, and needy.” However, even though he was still little, Nim felt very competitive with the adult male in the house, W.E.R., and almost immediately started competing with him for Stephanie’s attention, which she admits she willingly gave. Nim: 1, W.E.R.: 0.

When watching the film the first time I completely missed (or unconsciously refused to hear) Stephanie’s calm statement that for the first few months she breast-fed the baby chimp. “It seemed  completely natural,” she says. In her mind she was following the guidelines of treating him like a human being. But she admits to not being prepared “for the wild animal in him and the drive.” By the age of three months Nim was getting around – all over the house, climbing, swinging, checking out everything he could get to.

Dr. Terrace felt certain that Nim would learn signs, but he was hoping to discover that Nim could understand grammatical structure and create real human-like sentences rather than just throwing signs up in the air in random order. Without any real training, the LaFarge family learned some signs and began teaching Nim, who was a great student of signs free of “traditional English” syntax. When he signs “eat, me, Nim, hug,” I was filled with excitement at his breakthrough. From  then on it seems that it will be just a matter of building up his vocabulary and then moving on to sentence structure.

In the social sphere however, things were not so good, especially as Nim began purposely infuriating W.E.R. Nim had become an expert at reading faces and moods. He would kiss Jenny’s tears away, but would then go into his “father’s” study and pull all the books off the shelves. Stephanie seemed to actually enjoy seeing how apoplectic her husband would become in the face of Nim’s deliberate attacks on his sense of order. Even Herb Terrace couldn’t get Nim to behave during his visits and, in fact, got bitten, as had W.E.R. In complete synch with the new wave of feminism, Stephanie says that Nim was “bringing out in me freedom to defy expectation and authority.” Nim’s presence was deeply affecting the LaFarge family.

Dr. Terrace finally decided that it was time to make some changes. Intelligent, vivacious Laura-Ann Petitto applied to be a research assistant in Terrace’s lab. She obviously  understood that the project was basically testing the “nature vs. nurture” debate of the time. Noam Chomsky, an expert in linguistics (among other things) believed that what we consider true language (use, creation, and order) is solely in the domain of humans. Herb Terrace was hoping to prove otherwise and had fired a large salvo in the battle over language by dubbing his subject primate “Nim Chimpsky.” Herb put Laura in charge of Nim’s orderly education.

Petitto was horrified at what she considered the chaos of the LaFarge household, with Nim enjoying riding on the back of motorcycles, speeding in cars, drinking alcohol, and smoking joints. Please reread that sentence and remember that we are discussing a chimpanzee, not a teenaged human. Laura found no notebooks, no journals chronicling Nim’s progress. Obviously he had learned to sign, but there was no information, other than anecdotal, about the order in which he learned signs, how he put signs together, any signs he created, and improvement and speed of learning. In short, traditional science had fallen by the wayside in the home.

Laura suggested and Herb finally agreed that Nim could really only learn in a controlled environment, a windowless room at Columbia. Soon Laura felt that they were witnessing an exponential growth in learning by Nim. When reminded of this period today, Stephanie LaFarge reveals that she came to believe that words stand in the way of closeness. For her (and perhaps by extension, Nim) words became the enemy. She even came to the conclusion that with language skills, Nim became less than his unique self. Inevitably the two women, Stephanie and the younger Laura, would begin fighting over the proper way to raise Nim and teach him. It became a Greek tragedy of sorts. With Dr. Terrace on her side, Laura would eventually win that battle. Nim was removed from the LaFarge household and taken to the Delafield Estate in Riverdale, New York, a large mansion owned by Columbia University. It was September 1975 and Nim was almost 2-years-old.

Laura could see that Nim was happy to have so much space in which to play. He began to roam the property with his human companions. They were really not afraid that he’d run away, since much of the outside world scared him. But some of the world had begun to hear about Nim and wanted to know more. He appeared on the cover of New York magazine, along with an article, “First Message from the Planet of the Apes.”

Bill Tynan became another of Nim’s teachers. Together, he and Laura prepared daily lesson plans, with goals, methods, and steps. Not only did they continue adding signs to his vocabulary, but they taught him everyday activities like dressing himself. The entire project seemed to be moving along much more smoothly and scientifically now.

But at the same time Nim was growing bigger and stronger. Tynan says that he had gone from being a huggable toy to a robust, young chimpanzee, increasingly dangerous with his eye teeth still intact inside a powerful jaw. Tynan adds, “If you didn’t assert dominance, you would be in trouble.”

Laura in particular began having problems with Nim. Sudden actions on her part would make him nervous and ready for attack. She would see the hair go up on his arms and he would make his barking sounds, sometimes resulting in his lunging and biting. After each new bite, increasingly painful, she would sign, “I’m mad at you,” and he would often respond with “I’m sorry.”

Another new teacher came into the project – Joyce Butler. At the moment of her initiation trial of receiving a bite from Nim, she bit him right back on the ear. He never bit her again. Even with such aggressive behavior, he seemed to still need lots of hugs. He was also remarkably loving and gentle with a kitten that he often asked for. The images of Nim holding and stroking the kitty are so sweet, but fairly well erased once we see him beginning to try to hump the poor little thing. But that comes later. Let’s just concentrate on how sweet he was with the kitten at the beginning.

After the end of a brief relationship with Herb Terrace (mirroring his earlier affair with Stephanie LaFarge), Laura felt that she needed to get away but didn’t want to leave Nim and the project. Those two desires were incompatible and once Herb saw that Bill and Joyce could continue the research, he willingly let Laura go. However, Nim was not so pleased with her departure and began pounding her head against the pavement. Understandably he had abandonment/separation issues. This experience helped Laura accept giving up the entire package of humans and chimp. Today she says, “You can’t give human nurturing to an animal that could kill you.”

Renee Falitz, a trained interpreter for the deaf, came onboard as a Project Nim teacher after Laura’s departure. Nim bit her, too, but always “apologized.” When they were hanging out in the yard or elsewhere on the estate grounds, they “talked” a lot. But these anecdotes were not enough for Herb’s scientific research, which needed to be quantified rather than narrated in touching little stories. So, he continued insisting that the real education of Nim could only take place in the room at Columbia.

Most of the lab assistants hated the tiny, windowless classroom as much as Nim did. Getting his attention was more difficult there than back home. Exasperated and acting just like a clever 3^rd grader, Nim began signing “dirty,” which signified “bathroom break.” Out of the door, down the hall would go teacher and student, both overjoyed to be out of the cube.

Inevitably, even though he had no other chimps around, Nim was discovering sexual excitement and release. Soon he was trying to hump virtually everything, not just the kitten, but a rock, a stuffed doll, and the humans. Concentration on lessons became almost impossible, as any 8^th grade teacher will testify. His bites were also becoming deeper and more painful, probably, though no one says it in the film, because of sexual frustration.

Finally the situation became unmanageable. Nin bit Renee on the face, right through her cheek. No stitches could be inserted because of infection fears. Herb Terrace had his own fears stemming from the worst bite yet – lawsuits, public scrutiny, and cutting off of funds. When Renee returned from the hospital, Nim barked and reached for the exact same spot on her face. She quickly backed away and realized that she had no choice but to leave.

Herb Terrace had come to the conclusion that he would have to shut down the project. He explains that it is nearly impossible to keep a chimpanzee in such an environment after five years. They don’t know their own strength (or perhaps they very well do). He felt that Nim had progressed a lot, but that now he and his assistants needed to organize and interpret the mounds of data collected and try to answer the big question: Can a chimp consistently sign a sentence in correct word order?

Joyce, the ear-biter who had been bitten only once by Nim, was angry that the project was being terminated – at least the data gathering stage. When she heard that Nim was being sent back to the Oklahoma facility where he was born, she decided to go along to make his (and probably her own) transition easier. When she got there, Joyce was very disturbed by the sight of cages full of chimps. This was going to be an alien environment for Nim, who had never seen a chimp after being taken from his mother. Even Dr. Terrace says that the place was more primitive than he remembered from 1973.

According to one of the employees at the Institute of Primate Studies, Alyce Moore, it was also a dangerous place. All the workers carried cattle prods. There was an electric fence around the periphery. There had some several murders and two “suicides” among the primate population. Bob Ingersoll, a research student at IPS, says the facility was dark and dank. This is beginning to sound like a prison, and in many ways it was.

Still, you eventually work with whatever you’ve got. Ingersoll learned of Nim’s prior life and decided that he was going to become Nim’s new friend. He would sign “play” and take Nim out of the cage and they would roam the surrounding countryside, seemingly as happy as Nim had been for some time. Bob didn’t take any food along, determined that they would have to forage for it. Wild berries became a special treat. Ingersoll quickly realized that Nim had his own unique personality, so it’s not ridiculous to see how they could truly become friends.

A year after sending Nim back to Oklahoma, Herb Terrace showed up with a TV crew to revisit Nim. When Nim saw Herb, he immediately and happily rushed over to the professor…and began humping him. Soon thereafter Terrace appeared on a TV show to pitch his new book and discuss Project Nim. The subtitle of the book was “A full report on the most extensive experiment yet undertaken to determine whether animals can be taught to use language the way humans do.” During the course of the interview Terrace reveals that after examining the data, he began to think that Nim was simply a brilliant beggar, one who worked his teachers and got what he wanted. He was most disappointed in the fact that Nim failed grammar. In short, he was not using language the way humans do. In that sense, the project proved a negative. Noam Chomsky: 1. Nim Chimpsky (and Herb Terrace): 0.

However, this TV appearance seems to have freed Ingersoll, who says that he no longer cared about the language study. He admitted that Nim might not have had sentences or grammar, but there’s no question there was communication going on. The chimp “talked” about the trees, the berries that he found, and asked Bob to share a joint by signing, “Stone smoke now.” For Ingersoll, this was the best time of his life, better even than a Grateful Dead Concert or “hanging out with Jerry” [Garcia]. Nim even had a lady friend, Lillian, and “took up” painting.

But then May 1982 brought the darkest of times. Struggling for funding, the Institute for Primate Studies sold some of its chimp colony to the New York University Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates, which tested candidate vaccines for Hepatitis B & C (and eventually HIV/AIDS). Nim was among those sold to LEMSIP.

The scenes  inside this medical research lab are absolutely the most disturbing of the entire film. Dr. James Mahoney, who had traveled to Oklahoma to pick out the most useful/usable of the primates, is very straightforward in saying that there is no way to carry out humane research on animals. He was in charge of choosing which animal would be right for a particular vaccine study, but indicates today that he hated that responsibility, proven by his later rescue exploits.

Nim and others who had learned sign language valiantly try to communicate with their new masters, but only slowly did the lab employees learn the signs themselves. It is a chilling exercise in futility on the part of the chimps.

Bob Ingersoll from the Oklahoma facility kept calling Dr. Mahoney with pleas on behalf of Nim. Herb Terrace said that there was nothing he could do since Nim belonged to LEMSIP. It became obvious that among those who had cared for Nim, the only one still trying to intercede on his behalf was Ingersoll.

Next step: the press. Ingersoll relayed information to various journalists, resulting in an article about Nim’s plight in the Boston Globe, which caught the eye of Henry Herrmann, an attorney. He realized that this could be a very interesting, timely case of animal cruelty, in which he felt he could prove the illegality of raising a chimp strictly within a human family and then selling him for medical experiments. He came to the conclusion that he had to treat Nim like a human client and issued a writ of habeas corpus, which would require Nim’s presence in the courtroom, where he could “speak” for himself. Fearing an avalanche of media attention, the head of LEMSIP told Dr. Mahoney to release Nim.

Of course they couldn’t just open the doors and wish Nim well, with a cheap suit and some walking shoes. Someone would have to buy him and provide a place for the ten-year-old chimp to live. Bob Ingersoll didn’t have the funds or the facility, but then Cleveland Amory strode into the picture. Earlier known for such relatively snobby books as Who Killed Society? and The Proper Bostonians, Amory had long been involved in animal rights organizations. He wrote a check for $7500 and Nim suddenly had a new home.

Of sorts. When I saw the image of the cage, albeit multi-roomed, where Nim was put, my heart sank again. At the time of Nim’s rescue, Amory’s Black Beauty Ranch  was set up strictly for equines, such as horses, mules, donkeys. No one at BBR knew anything about primates. No one knew how to sign. There was no way for Nim to be let out to play and roam freely over the grounds. He was in a kind of solitary confinement, able to look out through his bars and see people, other animals, and the countryside, but locked up nonetheless. After destroying two television sets by hurling them against the bars, he was given no more canned companionship. Several times he succeeded in escaping his prison, but instead of heading for the trees, as a wild animal would do, he ran into the director’s house and got on the beds. Even though he also threw a chair through a window and (unfortunately) flung a yapping dog against the wall, it is obvious where he wanted to be – with people. Certainly this was a far better situation than being subjected to medical research, but this very sociable animal was lonely and bored.

Ever Nim’s champion, Bob Ingersoll spent several years visiting the ranch and complaining to Cleveland Amory about Nim’s situation, to such a point that Amory threatened to have Ingersoll arrested if he came to the ranch again with his demands. Another visitor to the ranch, where “animals are to be looked after, not looked at,” was Stephanie LaFarge, Nim’s first human “mother.” This was not destined to be a warm, welcoming reunion. Despite warning signs from Nim himself, Stephanie entered the cage anyway and was grabbed by the ankle and dragged back and forth across the floor. Who knows for sure what he was thinking, but perhaps in Nim’s mind this was the first person to “abandon him.” But just as suddenly, he let go of her and walked away. Stephanie very generously feels today that he needed to “put her in her place” without really hurting her. She adds, “We did so much damage by removing him.” His whole life had been a series of removals.

Twelve years after Nim’s rescue from the medical lab, Black Beauty Ranch got a new director, Chris Burn. Ingersoll was allowed to return to visit Nim. The scenes of Ingersoll and Nim reuniting are incredibly heart-warming. Nim immediately signs “play” and Bob complies happily. Ingersoll realized that he had a new ally, not just for Nim, but for other primates. Together they set out to save various chimps from medical labs and bring them to Black Beauty Ranch. In the meantime, NYU had ordered the closing of LEMSIP. Dr. James Mahoney, who originally took the shipment of chimps from Oklahoma to the medical lab, becomes an unexpected ally in saving the lives of about a hundred primates, around 60 of which move to the BBR. His efforts were chronicled in a National Geographic documentary, Chimp Rescue.

Within a relatively short time Nim is surrounded by other chimps and makes friends with two of them, Mitch and Lulu. As Ingersoll sighs, “Things were as good as could be expected. Not perfect, but pretty damn good.” In the most telling statement of the film, Dr. James Mahoney says that chimps are wonderful and that the vast majority are forgiving. A large number of humans who came into contact with Nim probably prayed that Nim would forgive them. Some would never find out, because the amazing chimp with a spectacular life of sorrows and joys died in 2000 at the age of 26.

Despite how I might sound in this review, I really can’t be sanctimonious about Nim and the people around him. For much of my life I have generally accepted the need for medical research on animals, so that humans might benefit. But this documentary has made me reevaluate. Starting with the very first scene of PROJECT NIM, I felt uncomfortable about humans taking a baby animal from its mother in order to further “knowledge.” The rest of the film makes it clear that we have sorely misinterpreted the biblical reference to humans having “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” We have simply gone too far in the name of science. If one has any uncertainty about the limits of justice for animals, I think this film will run an eraser over those questions. Nim could only sign a range of words which served him well, but through this powerful documentary he has become an articulate and convincing spokesperson for all animals (and for us, if we just listen). We could prove we hear his message if we truly extend our belief in ethical treatment beyond “our own kind.”

The director of PROJECT NIM, James Marsh, had already impressed audiences with his spectacular MAN ON A WIRE , which won the Best Feature Documentary Oscar in 2009. Moving easily between documentaries and narrative features, he directed THE KING in Austin (2005)  and one of the powerful films in the Red Riding trilogy (2009).

In a very enlightening letter written especially for the Violet Crown Cinema showing of PROJECT NIM, James Marsh writes: “Notwithstanding the dedicated scientific study of Nim, in the course of the film we often discover that Nim studies and understands us better than we understand him. And how many of the characteristics that we recognize in Nim reflect part of our own genetic endowment? Our murderous aggression, our social hierarchies, our need for hedonistic diversion and sensation – are these hard wired in our species as well?” We have a lot to learn from Nim and from Marsh’s fine
documentary, PROJECT NIM.

This is a very important film and I hope it is seen by many people in Austin, a perfect place for a film about animal rights. The Oscar voters have put PROJECT NIM on the short list of 15 docs considered for potential nominees for next year’s Academy Awards.

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