Stan Winston: The Michelangelo of Monsters

Neil Jordan, like many of the directors with whom Winston tends to work, is also a formidable, galvanizing force on a set. How well did they gel? "Neil Jordan's a person who thinks thoughts oftentimes so beyond the thoughts I'm thinking that I like connecting with him. When I can. It's like osmosis. I need to get into the mind of the director and, hopefully, make a connection. After all, that's who I'm working for. On this movie, we were integrated in the design, the look of the vampires. I would say about the work we did for this film, or any film, that there is a certain amount of 'Stan Winston' in everything that comes out of this studio. But there should never be a signature of 'Stan Winston' on anything. The signature should be that of the director, of that character and of the particular actor. In the end, this is not an uplifting film. This is not Mary Poppins, not Jurassic Park. This is a pretty unsettling story. [Jordan's] movie is not Anne Rice's novel, it's the essence of the novel. And if Anne Rice has a problem with that, I have a problem with Anne Rice."

Winston has trafficked with such high-powered directors as Tim Burton, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron and such actors as Johnny Depp, Danny DeVito and the Jurassic Park ensemble. "Again, there is an essence of me when you see the Penguin or Edward Scissorhands characters, but those are Tim Burton movies. And remember, we only assisted Johnny Depp in creating what he did with Edward Scissorhands. That was a great collabora¬tive hand-off. People who are secure will not be threatened by what we do. An actor has to be comfortable with what he's wearing, because you can make some neat rubber pieces, but if the guy wearing them is not comfortable, it's lost. With Johnny, it was like we went, 'Okay, so now here's what we've done,' and then BAM!--he became that character. I love it when actors become entrenched in their characters like that. But first, it's my job to be Tim Burton, to get inside that mind. And it's a pretty bizarre mind, you know?"

I ask Winston if, for all his technical wizardry, he couldn't have managed to perform some magic that might have made the humans in Jurassic Park seem anywhere near as cool as the dinosaurs. "It's like the old adage, 'Never act with kids or dogs,' "Winston asserts. "The dinosaurs in the movie, by virtue of their uniqueness and reality, acted their parts pretty damn well. Unfortunately for the rest of the actors in that particular motion picture--and this is where insecurity comes in ... you know, people are intimidated by fantasy characters because, naturally, that's where your attention is drawn. I thoroughly enjoyed the human performances. We all have only so much creative energy and we have to prioritize where we're going to compromise. Steven compromised in the right places, in terms of what the movie was about for audiences: dinosaurs."

What about dealing with James Cameron, about whose volcanic intensity some have complained loudly? "A lot of people have problems with that because Jim's a pretty awesome presence. His attention to his vision and detail is challenging. People find that hard to deal with? Good. Fine. It's terrific to deal with if you really take it as a positive challenge, knowing that your work is going to look wonderful. Take Aliens, when Sigourney Weaver looks at the queen alien and says, 'Get away from her, you bitch!' Well, I had to see that bitch. If you're supposed to be afraid of a character, then I've got to create an illusion that's going to scare the piss out of you. And that's not just the way the thing looks, it's the way it acts. It's got to be totally real. If it's ludicrous, you're not going to be afraid of it. I would say that my wish to perform, my wish to be an actor, which never came to fruition, is very integral to the creative process by which I develop characters for films."

An actor, hey? Well, a little background is in order here. Winston came to Hollywood in the '60s, after acting in college in Virginia, where he earned an art degree. Because he "didn't want to park cars or wait tables while waiting to be a star," he involved himself in a makeup apprenticeship program at Disney under veteran rubber eyes, ears, nose and throat man Bob Schiffer. "My model was Lon Chaney, an actor who went into character by virtue of makeup," Winston recalls. "I found that acting, what I came out here to do, became less of a passion. Creating characters was my passion and it didn't really make any difference how I was doing it. I was into a realm where I was using my talents: drawing, painting, sculpting, being involved with actors in the character-creating process."

After winning an Emmy for Gargoyles, his first made-for-TV movie, then another for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, the jobs kept coming. Happily, according to Winston, they were jobs in the fantasy-film arena. "As a kid, I couldn't wait to see movies like The Creature From the Black Lagoon and The Wizard of Oz," he recalls of his Virginia childhood. "Watching men dressed up in big rubber suits, like in Godzilla, was fun but, they weren't convincing to me. They were too strapped by a lack of artistic and technical ability to really create live, believable monsters. The stop-motion movies, the ones where we could see real dinosaurs and real characters, like King Kong and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, were my favorites. But, in my innocent mind, I always thought, 'Gosh, wouldn't it be nice not to know it was animation? For this to be really real?' Those are the things that pushed me in the direction that I eventually went in."

Outside of Industrial Light and Magic, Winston's venture with James Cameron would seem to have a lock on most of the top movie projects that call for big-time special effects. For Tank Girl, starring Lori Petty as the hellbent, randy warrior woman out of the British cult comic, he and his cohorts have designed, among other things, giant kangaroo suits. Congo will feature Winston's expression-filled simians. So, what of the upcoming bumper crop of sci-fi and fantasy projects might most thrill him? Speed director Jan De Bont's new Godzilla? Oliver Stone's new-wave Planet of the Apes? "I loved Wolf, but it's not a makeup person's dream of a werewolf. That's why we would like to do An American Werewolf in Paris. We can do what people missed--for that small community that wants to see the ultimate werewolf. I mean, I've always wanted to play a werewolf. Unfortunately, in this particular piece, I'm too old right now for any of the parts. Those things gnaw at me."

Winston may be most enthused about a project he hopes will become a feature movie that spawns his creation of "the most amazing amusement park that anybody has ever seen. I would like to create the ride that scares you more than the roller coaster, a ride that, by virtue of the characters you meet on it, robots that are so completely real, sends chills up your spine. You know the height requirement on roller coasters? On mine, you'd have to be a certain age!"

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Johnny Depp for the October Movieline.

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