David Watts isn’t in the movie Gorillas in the Mist. But if they ever make a sequel, here’s how the first scene might look:
Watts says that he quit running Karisoke for the same reasons most people wouldn’t want to go there in the first place. “As much as I care about the future of gorillas, human beings are social animals too. I’m not sure that kind of long-term isolation is a good idea. After all, I missed going to movies on Friday nights.”
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Watts was a 26-year-old grad student at the University of Chicago when he first met Fossey. After returning from studying capuchin monkeys in Panama, he heard about a research opening with Fossey in Rwanda. “I wrote Dian,” recalls Watts, “and she wrote back, ‘If you can pay your way, it’s OK with me.’”
“She especially mistreated Rwandans,” says Watts. “That’s why I quit [in August of 1985]. I couldn’t stand to see her insult these people any longer.”
“I thought this big Hollywood company would show up with some crazy man trying to direct gorillas,” says Watts. “I was dreading the entire ordeal. But my fears weren’t warranted.”
Watts expects to hear any day now whether he’ll get to return to Karisoke. He says that he misses Rwandan friends and the gorillas, and even his own recipe for vegetable goulash he dubs “the Karisoke grunge.” In the meantime, Watts is catching as many movies as he can. He knows what he’ll be missing when he’s back in Karisoke.
