About this project

News article http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20090719-LIFE-307199982
Alternate Teaser http://www.youtube.com/watch...

He was born Steven Sipek into the Nazi and then Communist controlled part of Yugoslavia that is the modern day Croatia. Given up for adoption at birth and finding the courage at the age of 17 to attempt and succeed in escaping from his harsh confines, Steve bounced around Europe and North America until he landed in Canada, seeking his fame and fortune. He competed and won the Mr. Canada body building championship

Throughout his hard and amazing life, he had one arena of escapism in which he always found peace - and that was in the movies of his hero Tarzan, most famously played by his hero Johnny Weismuller. Spurred on by the prospect of emulating him, he became an actor under the name Steve Hawkes. His film career started off unassumingly, moving here and there, working dead end jobs as he continued on his path towards breaking into the film industry. Despite his meager beginnings, he began to be noticed for his good looks and chiseled frame, which lead to him being in several soft core pornographic films which then lead him to fulfill a life long dream when he was given the opportunity to play the iconic role of Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan

Having come so far from his modest beginnings, he was truly living in a dream world. He was well received in his first attempt to portray Tarzan in TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN GROTTO. The movie was a success, with the numerous accolades he received from Tarzan fans everywhere (including high praise from Johnny Weismuller, the premenient Tarzan in the canon of the King of the Jungle) and thus undertook his second turn as Tarzan in TARZAN AND THE BROWN PRINCE.

This is where the story turns in the most horrific way possible. His time in the spotlight was cruelly and abruptly ended when he was horribly burned in the production of his second Tarzan film when the set caught fire due to a special effects mishap. In a scene where he was tied down by the natives who had captured him and a loyal lion was to save him from his binds, a poorly planned pyrotechnic effect caused the entire set to catch on fire. His body was burned horribly on over eighty percent of his body, but his life was saved when he was pulled out of the fire by the lion.

Because the film crew had mostly fled for safety and left him to die, he turned his back on the film world (and for the most part, humanity) and dedicated his life to taking care of mistreated lions and tigers and other wildcats. He's gone on to live amongst them in his big cat kingdom in Loxahatchee, FL for the past thirty five years .

This is a very moving story of a man who has fought his entire life to repay the act of that lion who saved his life. People are not his preferred species, having long been forsaken as they have constantly tried to change who he is and what he stands for. He lives side by side with these animals in a caged mansion and shares his house, and his life with them as though they're family.

He has owned over 102 wild animals that were formerly mistreated or neglected and loves them like his own children, even to the point of being estranged from his own son for the past six years because of his professed love of his animals.

Steve's favorite and dearest tiger, Bobo, brought Steve back into the world's eyes in 2004 when the cat was let out by a jealous ex-lover of Steve's. The animal was cornered and killed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission; this began Steve's new crusade to bring about justice for his beloved Tiger. Five days later, Steve's house was burned to the ground in a electrical fire, adding another crushing chapter to his life. Despite the threat to his own life, he saved all of his animals from harm during the fire at great risk to his own safety, facing the flames that changed his life thirty years prior.

Steve's main agenda is still to find justice for what happened to Bobo four years ago. He's committed to the pursuit of the truth, despite his case being labeled as "impossible" by numerous lawyers in Florida. He stands alone to seek the justice that has eluded him and continues to fight the Sisyphean obstacles that have faced him since he was a small boy in Croatia.

He is Tarzan and still answers to it proudly. This all works with the thematic crux of the story we are going for: the attempt to take Tarzan out of the jungle, and the attempt to civilize him. He is in this world but not of it. It would be easy to chronicle this odd man in a sardonic and joking manner but the story is too true and honest and brave for that. This story is true and so is everything behind it...it needs to be told fairly...it just needs to be told.

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Project By

Peter Dawson Barr and Timothy G. Fife

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