Comic Con Interview: Rick Baker On The Wolfman

By Kellvin Chavez on July 29, 2008

Over the weekend at this years Comic Con, I had a chance to sit down with special effects Make-Up guru Rick Baker.

He has a long list of films he's worked on like An American Werewolf in London, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Planet of the Apes (2001), and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Rick Baker's next project is The Wolfman, like the 1941 original that starred Lon Chaney Jr., new pic will be set in Victorian England. Benicio Del Toro will play a man who returns from America to his ancestral homeland, gets bitten by a werewolf and begins a hairy moonlight existence.

What was your reaction to it?

Baker:  It's so hard when you are working on a movie to tell what it's going to be like.  I see dailies everyday and I get really excited.  When we are filming I get really excited.  The most exciting part was when we actually filmed stuff in the gypsy camp, on location in the woods, it was 20 really cool gypsy wagons.  All these Romanian people were gypsies.  There were villagers with torches and pick forks, there was fog.  And it was like 'Fuck, we're making a Wolf Man movie!'

How has the make-up technology or the process of make-up changed over there years?  How did that affect this movie?

Baker:  The process has changed and the materials have changed a lot but not so much on this movie.  I went very old school with this.  Yak hair glued onto his face.  A rubber nose, when most of the time now we do things out of silicone.  The advantage of that is that it's translucent material, you get a nice flesh color and flesh feel.  Since the Wolf Man was dark then it's harder to lay hair on silicone.  It's pretty old school.  From rubber, acrylic teeth, and yak hair.

A lot of days now it's pretty common to hear filmmakers so 'No, we didn't really refer to the old one.' when they are making a remake.  It seems like you really have a kind of approach that you are trying to be reverent and specifically referential to the previous film.  Can you discuss that approach?

Baker:  I was just glad to hear that was the take they had on the movie as well.  I was worried.  When I first read the script it read like a CGI werewolf movie.  I can't help myself about putting my two bits in there.  'It's 'The Wolf Man' it should be a guy in make-up.  There should be fog, villagers with torches, and the poem.'  Even the meadow is pure at heart thing.  At one point that wasn't going to happen and it's like 'You gotta put that in the movie. You gotta.'  I'm a fanboy.  That stuff is what made me do what I do.  I wanted to be true to the Jack Pierce make-up but still modernize it and make it work for this movie.  I'm really happy with the way that this turned out.  It's a very old school, gothic, horror movie.

Its stays true to the mythology of the character?

Baker:  Very much so, yes.

How limited are you by the way the character has to move?  Does the movement of the character change the design?  Does it limit you in terms of some of the ways you would like to have the costume look with the make-up?

Baker:  Yeah, and we can limit that by what we do.  We actually had leg extensions that we used for some of the stuff.  We have a couple of different feet that we did.  One is very Lon Chaney Jr. where he is actually on the balls of his feet.  We actually extended the pads of his foot and extended the heel so it has much more of that dog leg joint.  The problem was that they had a lot, as you saw, of running through the woods at pretty high speeds. On this film, and almost every film I do, I do a version to fit me first.  Then I try the stuff out on myself.  That's how I learned make-up and I like it.  Then I get to be The Wolf Man before Benicio [Del Toro].  I did the make-up on myself and shot some stuff.  Part of it was to convince them that this was the way to do it.  It's some fun stuff.

How did you look?

Baker:  Much better than I do now.  I looked pretty much like Benicio only he can open his mouth wider than any normal human being.  Those pictures that were released on the Internet early on, the shot with his mouth wide open and people thought it was digitally enhanced.  That's his mouth open that wide.  It's always a problem.  The teeth are a lot bigger than what Lon Chaney had, because he had to tear up people and do some horrible things.  We needed to give him a bigger set of teeth.  What happens a lot of times when you put big canines on a monster and the guy opens his mouth, and the canines don't even open up.  Then there is no way you could really bite somebody.  Bennie could though.


Do you have much say in the movement?  I notice he has a loping feel kind of hunched over.  Do you have a say in that kind of thing?

Baker:  The real answer is no.  This film was a little funny in a lot of ways.  I think they thought I was a real pain in the ass.  I kept saying 'You got to try this.  You got to do this.'  They thought 'Just shut up and go away.  Put the make-up on and don't bother us.'  It's a collaboration and a lot of people are involved in what the final decision is.

You are an amazing Z brush artist.  Did you use Z brush to design things early on?  You say you did old school but did that ever come into play?

Baker:  I did, I used some Z brush stuff initially.  The funny thing was that the movie started with a different director.  He wasn't sure what he wanted.  Benicio wanted Lon Chaney Jr.  I had a meeting early on when we talked with all of them and I said 'I want to see Benicio.'  They were thinking they didn't know where they should be with this and what it should be.  Benicio held up the videocassette and pointed to it 'This is what it was.' I was glad to hear that but I didn't want to copy the make-up but I wanted to stay very true to it.  I did thousands of designs.  The very first was Benny as Lon Chaney Jr. Wolf Man.  Second one is what the Wolf Man is.  It took thousands, literally thousands of designs, and the director finally leaving the picture for me to go back and say 'I'm going to make this, not give the other guy a choice.  I'm going to make what I think the Wolf Man should be.  He's going to have to live with it because we're out of time now.'  This was literally two weeks before filming.  We hadn't made anything yet because nobody had made a decision.  That is one reason I made myself up as well.  7 months before we started filming I did a make-up on myself that is virtually the make-up that's on Bennie.  I shot stuff, cut it together, and said 'Look at this and tell me that this is not what the Wolf Man should be.'  It's not.  The hair, this should be hair.  So, that can be tough.

As a fanboy growing up on this stuff it's kind of a big undertaking to take on a character like the Wolfman.  Is there anything you got to do that you wanted to do?

Baker:  The one thing that I'm a little disappointed about at this point is the transformation.  We made some stuff but we didn't shoot anything.  I'm still pushing for getting more involved in that, even if it is CG.  I do CG stuff for fun myself.  I think it's a continuation of my design, I know the stuff, and I've done it.  I've seen these films.  But, again I wish I did more movies like this.  I do a lot of stuff with Eddie Murphy, do fat people, and make-ups that are really hard to do.  But I want to make monster movies.

Its seems like there is almost a swelling of filmmakers who are pushing back against CGI even though it's been heavily embraced for the last 10 years.  Do you sense that happening at all?

Baker:  A little bit, there is a back lash to it.  I embrace the technology.  It's really nice to be able to do things that we can't do.  There is a limit to what I can do with the make-up or with animatronics.  I just saw the Batman movie and it's cool that they could actually take away his face for Two Face, we couldn't have done it like that.  I don't think it's the answer to everything.  It's an amazing tool but it's only as good as the artist behind it too.  That's why you see some great CG stuff and you see some really shitty CG stuff.

'American Werewolf' is such a definitive werewolf transformation.  How do you all these years later look at doing another?  Do you reinvent it or build off it?

Baker:  That's the problem too.  One thing with the transformation in this movie, in 'Werewolf' we had naked we had a naked David Naughton, four legged hound from hell.  There was a big span between.  You had a whole body to change and change it to this four legged thing.  Here you have Benicio Del Toro, who is practically a fucking Wolf Man anyway, it's Bencio Del Toro with a little bit of hair on him.  We didn't have as far to go.  I said, to be honest, I don't know how we do this transformation.  I don't know how we make 'An American Werewolf in London' kind of change out of this slight change.  His nose isn't that much longer, his teeth a little longer.  We came up with some ideas that we threw out there but I don't know what they are going to end up doing.  Also, I don't know on this film if it should be.  In 'Werewolf' the transformation was the big showcase.  I think the showcase in here is actually the performance of the actors and make-up.


Its much more about a man who is kind of a wolf than an actual wolf.

Baker:  Yeah, he's not actually a four legged thing.  His feet do get a little dog like, the hands grow claws, and there are things we can do.  It was like how do you do it and try to make it usual.  After all the werewolf and 'The Howling' movies, then how much can you see the stretchy faces and claws busting through?

Do you see that or is it mostly implied?

Baker:  I don't know yet, we haven't done anything.

How about the future of make-up?  Do you think it will remain old school?  Is the technology jumping forward.

Baker:  It's changed a lot in the materials.  Like I said, the silicone.  We can do some very realistic things.  I can be two feet away from somebody in make-up and not even know.  When I first saw Dick Smith put on make-up, he was my idol.  I always thought he did the most realistic make up in the world.  When I actually saw him putting make-up on in person and was able to stand two feet away from it, then I could tell it was make-up.  Now it's really hard to tell.  I could put on make-up, walk through here, and nobody would know.  I could make myself look like somebody else and nobody would question it at all.  That's really changed a lot.  The computer stuff is taking over part of our work.  I think it's great when you do things that we cannot do.  What we do is an additive process.  To do the face like they did in the movie and they could cut into his face.  Or like the Harry Potter thing where they took the guy's nose off.  That was cool.

What do you think the biggest innovation in make-up is?

Baker:  I think that the biggest renovation that happened with make-up, I think it happened in the 80's, the fact that you had the people like me who were fans of make-up artists getting into the business.  They actually saw the value of make-up to a picture.  The most time I ever had and most money I ever got at that point was 'An American Werewolf In London'.  John [Landis] said to me 'What do we need to do to make this work?'  I said 'Give me some time and give me some money.'  Before that you would have 2 weeks prep and 500 bucks.  There we had 6 months and 500,000 bucks.  You can do better work.  Films started coming along where we actually had time and money.  You could make things that were better.

How has that changed your job and process?

Baker:  It hasn't changed my job in my mind anyway because I always tried to make it look real.  When I was a kid and I would put in all these little pores and do all this stuff.  I met some Hollywood people and they said "Kid you are doing too much work,, we are never going to see that shit.  I would go 'I see it.  I want it to look as good as I can make it.  I personally want to make it as real in person if you are standing this far away.  It really hasn't made that much difference.

Have you seen any of your work on Blu Ray yet?

Baker:  No, I haven't.

They are doing 'American Werewolf'.

Baker:  I'm sure I'll cringe.  The funny thing is that was the first time I had a crew to speak of really.  They were all kids.  I brought Steve Johnson out from Texas who was this kid I met at a convention, and he sent me fan mail.  Most of the crew I had were 18 years old and had never done this stuff before basically, other than just as a hobby.  I even stupidly sat down with them and had this meeting where I said 'I know it's really a shame that you guys are starting out on a film like this, with this much stuff, this much money, and this much time, because this is probably never going to happen again.  This is the first time in my life it's happened and I've been in the business for 10 years. It's really a shame to start your life out this way because this is probably the biggest thing you'll be involved with.' I was wrong.  I mean going back, I've got this big studio.  Thank you very much Stan Winston.  Stan actually did bring the make-up effects out of the garage and made it a lot more legitimate.  He was the first guy to actually have a nice workshop.  Most of us were in a garage or a crappy building with a couple of work tables.  He was really a smart businessman and played up on the fact that it's a bullshit business.  If you have a really nice looking place then people will think you are good.  I eventually got to the point where I had to play that game as well.  I've got this huge workshop where it was great when I was doing 'The Grinch'.  We had 90 people a day that we had to make appliances for, or for 'Planet of the Apes.'  We had to make 500 apes.  It's been pretty much sitting empty.  I could have a building the size of this room and do the films I've done in the last five years.  Now unfortunately I think I'm going to have to get rid of my shop and scale back down.  The films have scaled back.  CG has definitely take part of it.  My machine shop, where I used to do all the mechanics, I use that as a storage room now.  We don't use machines.

Do you intend to go into CG as well?

Baker:  I'm reaching the end of my career and I don't like the whole business aspect of it.  I like making the shit.  I do a lot of CG stuff for fun.  I do a lot of things that they do animation.  I don't know if you saw this, about 8 years ago, I did a monster mash video.  I never got a chance to finish but I got a whole band.  Did you see Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man playing the drums and the Bride?  I did pretty good recreations of those characters in CG doing the 'Monster Mash', just for fun.

What are your feelings on this Universal 'Wolfman' looks very violent.

Baker:  I had that idea years ago.  I said if I ever got a tattoo I would do a Frankenstein thing and do it up here.  I would have done it in color.


The old Universal classics are heralded for their subtlety.  What is your take on it?

Baker:  Dave Elsee did most of that stuff.  I had mixed feelings about it.  I'm not a big gore hound, but monster gore is different to me than killing a teenager in any way that you can when an unlike human does it.  I don't know how I rationalize that really, but it seems different to me.  I don't know how this film is going to come out.  I was actually surprised that they put as much of the gore stuff in here as they did.  We definitely shot some gory stuff, but whether it's going to end up in the movie, I don't know yet.  I think that is Universal's decision of whether it will be rated R or PG.  I don't mind it so much in a monster movie. I  think that for an audience today to see it then you almost have to expect a certain amount of that, you know?  It wouldn't break my heart if they tone it down some.

What else are you working on?

Baker:  Nothing.  I just finished.  I just got back from England a week ago.  I'm going to take some time off.  I've gotten to that point of my life where I don't want to be a slave to my business.  I want to do things that I want to do, so I'm waiting for something to come along that makes me want to do it.  If I don't want to do it then I will just be making my own little fun things.

What about directing?

Baker:  I think I'm the one person in Hollywood that doesn't want to.  I have seen how you can't really direct a movie.  I've seen people who are really established directors who can't do what they want to do.  I don't need the headaches.  All movies are, a committee, decision by committee, films them.  That's one of the reasons I have thousands of designs.  You've got an army of producers who have suggestions too.  'Why don't you put big monkey ears on him?'  'Because he's the Wolf Man, that's why.  That's a stupid idea.'  'Well, put big monkey ears on him and lets just see it.

Is there another classic you wanted to make?

Baker:  Frankenstein.  That more than anything is the film that really made me want to do this.  I have a Frankenstein's laboratory, pretty much recreated, and that's what I shot this live action stuff in too.

What if they offered you to direct it?

Baker:  I don't know, I don't think so.  If they said 'Here is a pile of money, you give us a film, we'll have nothing to say.'  Then I would be more interested.  I'm never going to direct..  It's sad… I won't go there.  never mind.

There are obviously really talented and interesting people doing effects, why do you think that we don't have personalities emerging like yourself?  We don't see those guys around anymore.

Baker:  I don't know. It's an interesting point.  I said to somebody the other day 'Who is going to take Stan's place?'  There is a Japanese guy that I brought over from Japan and sponsored in this country.  He is the future of make-up.  I'm so thankful that he showed up.  His name is Kazuhiro Tsuji.  I supported him for three years.  I said I would give him work for three years.  He's got the love.  A number of people got into it after Stan got famous, there were people who got into it because they wanted to be the famous make-up guy.  It wasn't so much the love for the work.  They would work for us and come in when they were supposed to, leave at 5 o'clock.  Meanwhile I'm there to midnight, two o'clock doing stuff.  Kazu was one of the guys who was working in my shop and I would look outside and see his car and my car.  Nobody else was there.  It's such a commitment.  You have to dedicate your life to it to be able to make it the way I want to make the stuff.  He's that kind of person.  But I haven't seen a lot of others coming up.  I'm afraid... I think the kids who have the interest in this stuff would be going into the CG end of it, and I think they should.  I just hope it doesn't die.

Even there, it's just so few names that stand out.

Baker:  I posted this Monster Mash thing and one guy said 'The vest on your Dracula isn't exactly like the Dracula vest.  I go 'Yeah, none of it is.  This is an old guy with a laptop who did this in a week.  It's spare time, not 150 people.  One guy texture, one guy modeler, one guy is the animator.  I did all of it.

Since the 90's has there been a werewolf transformation or design that impressed you?

Baker:  Yeah, it's a hard thing.  There have been some that I've seen I thought were cool.  Transformation wise there was nothing I jumped up and down about that much.  It's hard to do that, with 'The Howling' and 'American Werewolf' it was a time when people hadn't seen anything like that, it was dissolves.  It was something new, and there was money, and time involved.  After that it's hard to come up with something completely different.  I was glad on this film that they wanted to go man, wolf man.  Not be a dog faced thing, even if it's on a human body.  It gets funny looking when you get too much.  At one point they wanted me to try a much bigger muzzle.  I think it looks stupid.  Have you ever seen 'Boy Who Cried Werewolf'?  I thought that looked kind of stupid.  Sorry Tom Burman.

If you were given complete autonomy on designing a Frankenstein what would yours look like?

Baker:  That would be the problem.  Frankenstein's Monster is Boris Karloff to me.  It's so hard to get away from that.  The funny thing is, even though I said I'm a big fan, I don't have a sketchbook full of ideas.  I kept hoping that someday someone would come to me about a Frankenstein movie.  My fear was that I would say 'I've got these designs already, something I was really in love with.'  Then they would go 'No, no, we don't want that.  Couldn't he have a nose like a giraffe?'  When they were doing the 'Mary Shelley's Frankenstein' I was like 'I want to do this.'  I actually talked to my Lawyer and said 'Do you know anybody that knows these people, because I would really like to do it.'  but it didn't happen.  I saw the movie and I was glad.  When I heard about 'Van Helsing', I'm getting myself in trouble, I tell them I should not be allowed to speak in public… I loved the idea of that movie.  It was a cool opportunity to do werewolves and vampires, all in a movie.  I was like 'Yeah.'  Then I saw it and said 'Okay, that's the reason I didn't do that one.'  I think he does really good openings.  I thought that opening was really   I liked that black and white stuff.  I like the opening to 'The Mummy'.  Is that it?  I like these guys, they are my people.

Source:Latino Review

• 

  Comments

• No comments yet!

Submit Your Comments

Title

Comment

Your Name

Your Email