Stan Winston: The Michelangelo of Monsters

And what if those thoughts recur? "Make another movie," Winston says, laughing. "Give me another monster to create. If I'm going to get down and see shit inside me like this, I'm going to put that shit on somebody else's face, like on a werewolf's or a creature's face. I don't have to go out and show how evil I am. I'm going to do it in a movie."

The faces onto which Winston has most recently been projecting his inner darkness include, of course, Tom Cruise's. Winston and his staff collaborated with writer-director Neil Jordan on creating the "look" and transformation effects for the alluring vampires in the film rendition of Anne Rice's cult classic, Interview With the Vampire. Resilient, resourceful, all-American Cruise is not, as we have heard over and over again, the guy one might first think of to play a dizzyingly seductive, ambisexual, Continental bloodsucker. The mention of that whole brouhaha makes Winston snap, "The hubbub, everything that preceded the making of this movie, was so trite, so shallow, so unknowledgeable about the film process. A book is not a movie, a movie is not a book. A movie is based on a book. When you cast a movie, you cast close to the essence of the character in the book. If someone who is cast may not be exactly the right height, but consistently has shown that he is an actor, not just a movie star, has shown it in such films as Born on the Fourth of July and A Few Good Men, has been up against Jack Nicholson and been right up there on the same level with him, then people should sit back and allow that actor to give it his best shot. Stop falling back on the idea that he's not tall enough, or on, 'I don't think he is Lestat.' There is no one Lestat, except in Anne Rice's head. Every person who reads the book has a different vision of Lestat. It was my job to assist that actor, to try and make him look like the essence of the character in the book. The essence of that character is not his height. This is not Frankenstein, not a person who was supposed to be eight feet tall. So maybe [he's] not tall in stature, but let's say tall in essence. It's up to him to act the part. If he doesn't act it, then he blew it. But it's shallow-thinking absurdity to say an actor can't act when he is known for being a good actor."

Aside from Cruise's being able to acquit himself credibly under auspicious circumstances, he is known for being a very lands-on guy who enmeshes himself in niggly details of any production, nosing into everything. Has Winston, himself no slouch in the obsessive-compulsive department, ever had an actor mess with him? "Yeah--Tom," he answers, then cracks up. "No, no--I get him. He gets me. Some would say he is a perfectionist. He demanded a lot. I respect that. Take Stan Winston out of the picture, put Joe Schmo instead of me in the mix, and Joe might say, 'Cruise fucked with me.' You know: 'I want this, I want that, I won't do this, I won't do that.' To Joe Schmo, that's fucking with you. To Stan Winston it's, 'You want that? Fine. Let's try and make that happen.' There was an enormous amount of collaboration with Tom on his 'look.' He was very concerned that he not look silly--especially with all of the crap that had been going on with the press and everything. There was a lot of collaboration from this end in wanting him to be comfortable in his look, so that his performance wouldn't be stifled by him being concerned or uncomfortable. This project was very important to him, so we worked very closely to make sure there was a lot of finesse."

Were there any particular high points in helping Cruise persuade the dubious that he is the Vampire Lestat? Winston is particularly keen on the moment when Claudia, the ravishing kiddie vampire, destroys the man who converted her into one of the undead.

"He goes from Tom Cruise's Lestat to Lestat looking like an AIDS victim-- the skin pulled and stretched over his skull--and it's quite a transformation," Winston observes. "You see, many of the movie creatures that I was most a fan of growing up were based on spectacular performances, like Spencer Tracy as Dr. Jekyll and Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. That aside, we've been seeing transformations in movies for years, but we're always aware of the effect and have gone, 'Oh, cool effect.' We've just finished this thing for Interview With the Vampire and I'm telling you for a fact that it happens right in front of your eyes. It's magic. There are no 'effects.' It's all in one shot without a cut. It isn't done by a computer, though I'm not going to say that a computer didn't assist us. It's something that you have never seen before in film history. Tom also had this 'back from the swamp' make-up that we put him in and he threw himself into the part. I absolutely love that. The man is as hard-working an actor as I've ever worked with. He doesn't phone in a single beat. It's up to Tom to create his Lestat. You'll like it or you won't, but it's a strong performance."

As strong and good as some have said? "Tom Cruise has been told by the-world that he can't play Lestat. 'What a risk to his career,' that kind of thing, right? What I do is take a lot of risks, so, again, I respect that. Just tell me something like, 'You can't build a 9,000-pound Tyrannosaurus rex robot that's going to work,' and I'm building it. There are very few actors in history that have reached a level where you go, 'My God, that's brilliant.' Jack Nicholson has had moments of absolute brilliance that are just off-the-wall and right. Robert De Niro, Rod Steiger. They've taken some of the biggest risks of all time. It's the only way brilliance can happen. I am seeing such moments of brilliance from Tom Cruise in this. Now, you can't have wall-to-wall brilliance, because that's impossible. But there are moments he hits in his creation of Lestat that I think are classic. How often do we see anything where it's not just, 'Boy, that was a really excellent performance' or 'That was a really great character'? But, in this, you go, 'Whoa! I'm feeling a little uncomfortable.' I think he's really special."

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