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"In ape school, we didn't really teach us about sex. But the apes are portrayed as sensual creatures," says Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa, who plays the servant gorilla Krull in the new flick.

"The apes are very sensual creatures," he says. "They touch each other when they talk. They are intuitive, instinctual, and they are very affectionate with their children."

It took Tagawa and the other screen simians two months of training to learn to walk and talk in their monkey suits. They'd arrive at the sets before dawn and spent about four hours just putting on makeup.

"Even if they wanted to, it would be really hard for two apes to get sexual," he says. "It was hard enough just eating lunch under all that makeup. I was getting a lot of my nourishment through squeeze bottles and straws. A love scene would be a real challenge under those conditions."

The Weird News Roundup

Councilman Elvis

Elvis is alive and well and he's won a seat on the Phillips, Wis., City Council. The former music store owner changed his name from Gary Caron and moved to town two years ago. He ran for mayor last year as a write-in candidate and got 147 votes, touring the area in a spangled Elvis outfit. In a recent election he got 42 votes, one more than his opponent. "I'm doing it for the people," he says. In a related story, Kenny Kramer, the real-life inspiration for the Seinfeld character, is seeking the Libertarian Party nomination for mayor of New York. His motto is: "Kramer for mayor … This time I'm not kidding."

Queen Jailed

Did Her Majesty make off with an Avis rental car? Philadelphia prosecutors tell The Associated Press that Valerie Harvey is claiming she is the queen of the Moors, and therefore has diplomatic immunity from theft charges. They have no record of her royal status, even though she says the Moors were in Philly long before there was a United States. For now, she is queen of her jail cell.

Faux Julia Loses Oscar

Don't mess with Oscar. A few days before Julia Roberts won an Academy Award for Best Actress, the folks at the Hollywood Wax Museum put an imitation Oscar in her hands. The folks at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were none too pleased. They fired off a cease-and-desist letter, and the plastic statuette was removed. The Oscar is trademarked, and intellectual property lawyers are pretty strict about how its used. Fake Julia will have to get by with her toothy smile.