This Guy Isn’t Just Winging It

David Attenborough’s body language betrays the fact he’s on a constant mission to explain. Scrunched up on his living-room sofa, legs crossed, he leans forward eagerly, making a point in an earnest, almost imploring voice. One arm is half-extended, his thumb is pressed against his index finger, and he makes sharp downward thrusts with his hand for emphasis.

A naturalist might conclude that here was a good example of a human animal exhibiting communicating behavior. In fact, it’s simply what Attenborough has been doing in front of TV cameras for years. He is arguably the world’s best-known presenter of natural history programming--a man whose international career began in 1979 with his renowned series “Life on Earth.” The British Broadcasting Corp. finances his programs, and its Natural History Unit (based in Bristol, 100 miles west of London) provides producers, camera crews and all-round expertise. In the U.S., PBS co-produces by contributing funds to the budget. Attenborough’s nature programs--also include “The Living Planet” (1984), “The Trials of Life” (1990), “Life in the Freezer” (1993), “The Private Life of Plants” (1995) and “Attenborough in Paradise” (1996)--are something of a global phenomenon. “Life on Earth” was watched by a staggering 500 million people worldwide; its successors, while not quite emulating that figure, have drawn huge audiences.

These are large-scale, logistically complex productions. His new “The Life of Birds,” which covers all aspects of bird life across the globe, is a 10-part series of 50-minute programs that will begin airing in the Los Angeles area on KCET-TV July 20. It took three years to make and employed 48 cameramen and -women in 42 countries. In all, 200 miles of film were shot. As presenter, Attenborough traveled 256,000 miles to where the action was, the equivalent of 10 times around the world. “The Life of Birds,” with dazzling photography that is the hallmark of his programs, won rave reviews when it aired in Britain last year. Audiences were hooked by the array of multicolored birds from all corners of the Earth, paraded in their natural habitats.

That does not surprise Attenborough: “There are fanatics who are quite crazy about birds, but in the middle of the spectrum a lot of people are interested in them. They’re the one type of wild creature that everyone sees, unless they’re in jail.”

BBC executives needed persuading, though Attenborough’s instinct for compelling nature series has hitherto been faultless. “There was skepticism,” he recalls. “I was told birds aren’t furry or cuddly, you can’t pat them. . . . Might 10 episodes not be boring? What would they be about? I said, ‘Well, we’d do one program entirely on the egg.’ They said, ‘The egg? You must be joking!’ ” Here’s where Attenborough’s zeal to explain triumphs.

“Some aspects of birds could be boring. But with our coherent approach, we’re making an unspoken contract [with viewers]. We say, start looking at these programs, which take a slab of the natural world, and stick with us, kid. At the end, you’ll find no main aspects of a bird’s life which have not been considered. You may start out thinking an egg is boring, but you’ll find it’s not.”

He says all this with such conviction, it’s impossible not to be swept along by his enthusiasm. This gift has made him one of Britain’s favorite broadcasters--indeed, one of the best-loved figures in the nation’s public life. He has been on its TV screens since 1954, when he presented a BBC nature program called “Zoo Quest,” and even allowing for a long break as a senior BBC administrator, his is the first and only name anyone mentions in connection with TV nature series. Profiles of Attenborough inevitably mention his boyish good looks, his floppy, wayward blond hair and his earnestness. He is 72 now, but all those attributes remain. His on-screen delivery is mimicked affectionately by impersonators, who tend to portray him tip-toeing stealthily around some rock to spy on wild life, while commentating in an intense whisper.

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These days he lives alone in a large, airy house in this affluent suburb, nestled on the banks of the Thames west of London. His wife, Jane, to whom he was married for almost 50 years, died in 1997 after a brain hemorrhage that occurred while he was in New Zealand, filming “The Life of Birds.” His older brother, film director Richard, also lives in Richmond, a few minutes’ walk away.

The very nature of natural history programs has changed radically since he started: “In 1954, we had wind-up clockwork cameras, insensitive black-and-white film, no way of linking sound and pictures. Now we have increasingly sensitive film stock, long lenses, electronic cameras developed by the military which can see in the dark. We can morph animals on a screen into any circumstance.” All of which, one might think, could make the role of an old-style presenter among animals or birds in these remote locations almost redundant. Not so, says Attenborough. “Because the camera can do anything, it can look like trickery. You wonder if you’re really seeing what you’re seeing. But if you can find [a narrator] who has been doing it long enough, and who people trust, well, if he says something is so, you believe it’s so.”

For this reason, he absolutely refuses to sponsor products in TV commercials: “Once people hear you saying very sincerely that this product is the best, and they know you’ve been paid to say so, they’re less likely to believe what you have to say about the natural world.” He also has reservations about celebrities fronting nature series. “Getting an actor to voice-over words that someone else has written seems a complete waste of time. Not that all those programs are bad. I saw Richard Dreyfuss in the Galapagos Islands, and he’s an intelligent guy who reacted with honesty to what he saw. You had a sense whether the creatures he encountered were creepy or dangerous or boring.”

Still, Attenborough is by common consent head and shoulders above any rivals in his field. Not that he has always enjoyed such universal respect. “When I set out to do ‘Life on Earth’ 25 years ago, CBS bought a share as co-producers. We started the three-year project, but 18 months in there was a change of empire, and a new boss said, ‘We don’t want this.’ We gave it to them, but they were appalled and pretty much wrote it off. Two years later, when I was doing the next series, ‘Living Planet,’ the BBC said, ‘Would you sign a piece of paper saying you don’t mind if someone else voices your program?’ I said, ‘Of course I mind.’ They said, ‘It will inhibit sales.’ The story was Robert Redford was going to re-voice it, because no one in Tallahassee or wherever would understand how I spoke. Then PBS picked it up for not much money. And to everyone’s surprise, it turned out Tallahassee and other places could understand me.

“So for the first time I was seen on American TV screens. It was an extraordinary piece of luck. [My programs were] regarded by the waning networks as, who cares? Now the whole climate has changed and, with the advent of cable--National Geographic, Discovery Channel, whatever--there’s a huge appetite for it.” They have also coincided with an increasing worldwide awareness of environmental issues, including endangered species, which may have helped their popularity.

“I’d like to believe natural history films have had some affect in raising awareness of environmental problems and a feeling that the natural world is worth keeping,” Attenborough says.

“But there are other factors. Vast numbers of the population everywhere have migrated into cities. They sit there in slums, and they lose touch with nature. Then there have been eco-disasters, which have made people stop and think.”

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For him, making the programs is its own reward--a good thing, as each series takes three years to make. He suggests a topic to the BBC and writes a 30- to 40-page script for each episode, finding a coherent thesis for each program that fits into the bigger picture of the series. “Every time I appear on screen is rationed and carefully plotted,” he says. “There has to be a good reason why this person suddenly peeks from behind a boulder and gets in between you and the birds.” Filming schedules are arranged by the BBC’s Natural History Unit seasonally and geographically, with Attenborough flying from crew to crew as necessity demands. Thus, on screen, he can start a sentence standing on a rock in Argentina and complete it in the jungles of Zambia. “It’s a bit flash,” he says of this device. “But it’s fun to do. It also gives you the idea that the whole globe is at TV’s disposal.”

The bits you don’t see on “The Life of Birds” involve waiting. Crews set up cameras and wait patiently for the birds to do what needs to be photographed. They usually comply in the end, but not always.

The payoff for him comes in moments he describes in tones of pure bliss. “Kiwis are nocturnal birds and extremely shy,” he says, warming to his subject. “Even five years ago, people would say you can only film them in a zoo. Mike Salisbury, our producer, discovered there was a remote region in New Zealand where they came out in the evening. So we took a camera out in the evening on Stewart Island. The bird goes along a tide line of rotting seaweed looking for sand hoppers to eat. They have poor vision, but an excellent sense of smell. So we sat on this stinking seaweed and they came right up to us. They couldn’t see us, and the smell disguised us. We could see them with our starlight camera. I sat there and eventually shone a torch on them. That was thrilling.

“Another marvelous moment was a bird I’ve yearned to see for 50 years: the Vogelkop gardener bower bird, which lives on the far western tip of New Guinea. The male bower bird builds extraordinary constructions like art galleries, and he displays his treasures to attract females. The female goes around, looks, thinks ‘That boy’s really got something,’ and says: ‘Let’s do it, kid.’

“The Vogelkop builds a hut so big you can crawl into it. Inside it makes neat piles of glittering beetle wing-covers, red berries, orange fruit and shells.” Attenborough’s crew bought an inflatable human-sized doll from a sex shop, put a shirt and pants on it, and left it outside the bird’s hut. “It took a couple of days before the birds got accustomed to it. Then I had a long march into the mountains to where they were. On the morning concerned they took away the latex doll, and I came along.”

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He relates these tales with real glee. He calls the Natural History Unit “one of the last BBC preserves of public-service broadcasting. They’re a terrific bunch of guys. They almost can’t understand why anyone pays them to do this for a living, because this is exactly what they want to do.” One senses the same applies to Attenborough himself. This may be why he tired of being desk-bound. In 1965 he became controller of the BBC’s new channel, BBC2: “Those were glory days--a blank sheet of paper, no programs, the sense you could do what you wanted.”

But once the channel was established he found himself more and more in meetings dealing with unions, budgets and administrative detail. He stepped down in 1972 and returned to program-making. And now his position as the dean of nature series is unassailable. He has a credibility and a gravitas bestowed by an adult lifetime in television and a knowledge of the natural world that supersedes mere enthusiasm.

“There are many, many people who know more about birds than me. But the great joy of doing all these [series] is that you discover things. We showed so many things in that series, it would be a rare ornithologist who knew everything that we were able to show. He’d know specific things far better. But that panoramic view of bird behavior,” and David Attenborough leans forward intently, stressing his point, “not a lot of people would know all that.” *