Word: makeups
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...Stan Winston was of that small, brilliant, edifyingly demented breed of special-effects makeup men. Not visual effects, you understand: these folks don't sit at computers and play with pixels, a technique that requires an actor to stand in front of a green screen and mime fear. They are old-fashioned craftsmen, using spirit gum and other medieval (and modern) applications to devise prostheses so horrid, so hand-made, they'd scare anyone on the set. In a tradition stretching back to silent-film star Lon Chaney, the SPFX makeup men, in essence, build scary masks. They make horror...
...Before Winston, there were two masters of horror makeup who names are so ordinary, they could be scrawled in a motel register by a teen seeking furtive sex: Jack Pierce and Dick Smith. Pierce, during his time at Universal Pictures in the 30s and 40s, created the studio's entire monster menagerie: Boris Karloff's Frankenstein and the Mummy, Bela Lugosi's Dracula, Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolf Man, Claude Rains' Phantom of the Opera...
...Baker is the one FX makeup artist to snag more Oscars than Winston did: six, to his four. But he's had competition from his one-time apprentice Rob Bottin, who designed John Carpenter's threatening Thing, the original RoboCop and the twisted uggies in Total Recall. And a tip of the skull to Tom Savini, "the Godfather of Gore" who's made every known body part, and a few that should have remained unknown, drip, crack or explode in his six fright films with George A. Romero...
...Botttin and Savini had FX makeup in their blood from childhood. They were of the generation inspired by the trail-blazing work of Winston and his tiny band of predecessors. Winston came to Hollywood in 1968, long before the lovingly detailed rendering of the grotesque had become fashionable. Back then, most films were photographs of people talking, and action movies were photographs of people fighting. Young Stan arrived in town hoping for work as an actor. With no jobs coming, he joined the Makeup department at Disney. The studio had its live-action and animated films, but it had also...
...Emmys: for the gremlin-like creatures in the TV movie Gargoyles and (shared with Baker) for the old-age makeup worn by Cicely Tyson in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Moving into feature films, he forged productive relationships with directors as imaginative as he: Burton, Steven Spielberg for Jurassic Park and A.I. and James Cameron on Aliens and The Terminator, T2 and the Universal Studios park attraction, T2: 3D, an amazing blend of film, FX and live action that Winston co-directed...