Dick Smith: "Godfather" of Make-Up

Tonight the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences is hosting a tribute to a wonderful man and a great teacher - legendary make-up artist Dick Smith.

The artist behind such memorable make-ups as those in The Exorcist and The Godfather has been a teacher for many years - first by sharing the techniques he developed with other make-up artists (many of his discoveries are now standard practice in the special effects make-up community) and later by putting together a correspondence course to help teach the next generation. Guillermo himself is one of Dick's former students (along with many, many others).

I've been enrolled in Dick's course for the last several years and I've always found him to be a warm, generous teacher, even when offering criticism. "Well, you really went out on a limb with this one," he said once while we were discussing a particularly ambitious but ultimately unsucessful project of mine, " - and the limb broke. But that's ok, that's how we learn."

Because the course is offered by correspondence all my interactions with Dick were done over the phone. I didn't get a chance to meet him in person until last summer at the International Make-up Artists' Trade Show (IMATS) in Pasadena, California. It was a marvelous treat. The only event during the whole weekend which had a line-up was the one to get into Dick's Q&A session and even then, I think they were pushing the fire regulations to the limit to allow as many people in to see him as they did. Folks were sitting on the floor all around the table Dick and his fellow panelists were sitting at, and it was standing room only at the back (I did get an actual seat, but only because I was warned in advance to line up like an hour and a half before the start of the panel).

It was a wonderful privilege to get to hear some of Dick's stories first hand. Everything from a very funny anecdote about chasing Cassius Clay (soon to be Muhammed Ali) around the boxing ring set of Requiem For a Heavyweight with a spray bottle, in an attempt to make him look sweaty despite the absolute freezing temperature of the arena they were filming in, to a very moving and touching account of his long, long friendship with Sir Lawrence Olivier.

Looking at all the faces, many my age or younger, hanging on every word the rather surreal picture popped into my head of padawan Jedi all gathered round the feet of Yoda eager to hear words of wisdom from an old master of their craft. Please pardon my extreme geekiness - I'm in no way trying to say that Dick resembles a small wrinkled green Muppet - but the sense, in many ways, that we were being taught an oral history was very strong. Hearing it in person was entirely different than reading it or watching a taped interview. It was a little mind blowing to be sitting 10 feet from the man who invented many of the techniques of prosthetic make-up (Dick Smith, for instance, was the first person to apply foam latex appliances in multiple pieces - most artists prior to that had glued large, mask-like single pieces to the actors faces. This is both much harder to do and doesn't move as realistically as overlapping pieces).

It's about 10:30 now, which, when you factor the time difference in means things should just about be getting underway in sunny L.A. I hope the ceremony goes very well and I wish Dick the very best.

Living in the Land Of The Lost

Land Of The Lost comes out tonight and I admit to being torn. On the one hand Spectral Motion handled the special effects make-up on the new film, so we know at least it's gonna look good. I'm loving their dead-on Sleestaks - all the creepy characteristics of the originals (with a few nasty upgrades from the looks of things) without the visible zippers up the backs. (By the way, if you'd like to read more about Spectral's work on the movie the Land Of The Lost film has their press kit release available on their website, with several interesting pages about the Sleestack suits and Chaka's make-up).

Plus it was a lot of fun to catch a glimpse of a Sleestak temple rising from the backlot of Universal Studios when I was in LA last summer for the HBII fan screening.

On the other hand - it's a Will Ferrell movie... I really don't like Will Ferrell movies myself. I just don't think acting like an idiot while speaking as loudly and obnoxiously as possible is all that funny. I usually want to shake him instead of laugh at him. And according to the reviews trickling into Rotten Tomatoes as I write this, Land Of The Lost is shaping up to be like just about every other film Will Ferrell's ever made (if you're on the fence but want to save yourself the time and cash you could always go play with the Will Ferrell Movie Generator instead - you'll get the gist at the very least).

I do have very fond memories of watching reruns of the original show on ABC in the early 80's - although admittedly not very many. For the complete and utter dinosaur nut I was as a small child it was a definite fave. If you're not familiar with the tv show the basic premise is that a forest ranger and his two kids, while on a white-water rafting trip, get sucked into another dimension populated by dinosaurs, ape-men, and a strange race of lizard/insectoid humanoids called the Sleestaks. Years before I ever saw my first Dalek it was the Sleestaks that freaked me out - it didn't matter that they were slow as heck. They always acted like they were being controlled by some giant hive-mind so if they did catch you there was no reasoning with them (at least as far as I remember). In the early 90's ABC produced a very disappointing Land Of The Lost remake and the much more bumbling trio of talking dinosaur-men "Sleestaks" on that show were nowhere near as creepy as the ever anonymous original drones.
The only other scene I remember vividly stuck with me because my 4 year old mind found it pretty darn disturbing at the time. The family finds a map, which they think will lead them home - until they follow it and come across the skeleton of the map-maker next to a river of lava. Their hopes crushed they attempt to retreat back the way they came - and I can't remember what happened next...

A couple years ago I found a couple LotL DVDs for rent at our awesome local video store and just couldn't resist the trip down memory lane - even though I was fully expecting things to be a bit of a trainwreck. I was pleasantly surprised. Sure the actions of the dinosaurs (and the attitudes toward them) are horribly out of date in a post-Jurassic Park world but the stop-motion animation and obvious minature backgrounds still gave me nostalgic warm fuzzies.
And I was astonished to discover that the writers for the series reads like a whos-who of science fiction names. From Star Trek alumni like Walter Koenig, and Tribble-creator David Gerrod who was the season 1 story editor to people like Larry Niven, Ben Bova, and Theodore Sturgeon (!!!)
So for a kids Saturday morning show from the 70's it's pretty obvious they were trying to do the very best with the budget they had. But then again I also love the original Battlestar Galactica, which gives you some idea of how I roll...

It does look like the new movie is trying to pay some homage to the original show but I do think in the end I'm definitely going to pass on seeing this in the theatre. But my curiousity is too great not to check it out when it eventually makes it way to cable tv.