chiller blog

Posted Apr 14, 09 03:17 PM

Someone’s in the Kitchen with Brian, Part Two

Chiller: How did you ascend?

Brian: Actually, I started as a designer (conceptual drawing) for people like Don Post, Jr. and Greg Cannom back in the earliest days of my career. I wanted to be out in the shop learning the ropes, not stuck in an office drawing pictures. But I quickly learned that a certain amount of respect came with being stuck in those offices drawing for directors, producers, art directors.

The guys "grunting" out in the lab thought what I was doing was the coolest job and yet I thought what they were doing was. I remember one time, the shop foreman told me my work looked like Ron Cobb's!!! Talk about making a 19 year-old kid's day!!!

Over time, I was able to finagle myself into the workshops and learn … on the floor, in some case literally (they had no tables). Certainly being part of the make-up effects heyday (1980's and 1990's) before the advent of CGI, working in the monster biz was pretty darn exciting. Getting to work and learn from the greats (Rick Baker, Stan Winston, Michael Westmore, Greg Cannom, Doug Beswick) and their crews when that whole scene was exploding... ahh ...it was just a magical, magical time!

Chiller: Nowadays, does work usually find you or do you find it? What's been the up in "up" and the down of "down"?

Brian: I have been quite fortunate over the decades. As much as I didn't want to believe it when people say, "It's WHO you know in Hollywood, not WHAT you know… blah, blah, blah..." it really has turned out to be true…

Back when I started, long before Facebook and MySpace, the only way I could get noticed was to send portfolios out to whatever make-up artists I could find in the phone book. I was too shy to cold-call, so I did everything by mail. Then one day, the phone started to ring. I vividly remember the day my mom came outside to tell me Rick Baker was on the phone. My legs nearly left the rest of my body behind…!

Most of the work I get is the result of recommendations.

As for the ups and downs...the "ups" are… the creative outlet and accomplishment. But they can be the downs, too. You put your heart and soul into a project and really do work that you and your crew are proud of, it becomes a "part of you", and then the movie may turn out to be the worst turd in history. That's always a "downer". Another downer is… the project never materializes for whatever reason. That happens all too often with designers.

… I truly am fortunate to get to work with folks on a regular basis that I idolize. People who are MY heroes. It's so cool to be a part of this extended "family" of artisans and filmmakers.

Some of the BEST "ups" is the traveling!!! Seeing the world on someone's dime…!!!

Some of the WORST "downs" are ...well...the traveling. All the packing, schlepping, unpacking, repacking, and more schlepping. Ugh. Did I mention my crew and I saw Europe this past holiday season? London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, and London in as many days… Yeah, I don't know how politicians and musicians do it…

Chiller: How far in advance are you typically brought onboard a production? What's the "normal" timeline/stage of an assignment from contact to concept to execution?

Brian: It depends… For commercials, I always like… 15 days to design and build something that we'd get 3 months to build for a film. The "down-side" to that is commercials usually only give you 9 or 10 days to design and prep, so there are some 40- and 70-hour workdays on those.... The "UP side", however, is that they pay as if it were a 3 month build..!

Sometimes we do get all the time we need to prep a show, other times we are brought in to rescue a show that someone else started but botched, so there is NO time to prep…

Chiller: Each project has it's own start-from-scratch science, it's own complicated demands to problem-solve. And the clock ticks fast. What are some of the most unusual out of the box problems you've faced, and how did you clear those hurdles?

Brian: Oh, you would have to go there… One incident that comes to mind was for a whimsical film called "FREAKED". The project had a whole slew of over-the-top circus freak-type characters. One in particular was a Cowboy, played by actor John "Deadwood" Hawkes. … A suit character with a larger animatronic cow-head mask.

My boss came running up to me at the craft-service tent, "freakin'" out. Which kinda was the norm for him on set, but this time there was a legitimate problem. Seems the guys responsible for making the Cowboy character had forgotten to make a tongue, and Cowboy did a LOT of talking in the film. So it was first day of filming, we're on location, and only now does my boss notice we have a tongue-less bovine.

… I took one look, went over to my make-up kit, grabbed a powder puff, rubbed some PAX paint across the surface to make the "taste buds" stand up, pinched it into a tongue-like pose and glued it into the mouth. Literally, it took as long to do as it did for me to tell it to you.

… It was… rewarding to have de-fused that walking time-bomb.

It's kind of a funny thing. Like using cashews or brazil nuts for fangs... when somebody loses their vampire teeth before… filming is done. You make whatever you have work…

Shannon Shay tells a great story about filming a scene for the first (the only) PREDATOR movie, down in the jungles of South America. He said that the director came up to them and wanted to do an extreme close-up of the skull of the Indian being slammed down into frame with blood and fleshy bits dripping off of it. 40 feet across on the big screen, super powerful impact shot!!!

Well, skulls and blood they had on the work truck, but drippy oozy fleshy bits, they did not. They were in the middle of the friggen' jungle!!! And they had to make due with what was available. Toilet tissue became the tissue of choice for shot.

Chiller: So when an actor is in a make-up chair for seven hours, with all of those appliances being applied, what do you guys talk about -- if he or she can talk, to begin with?

Brian: Ahhhh...now you are digging for secrets! Sorry, client/artist privilege. LOL! We talk about all sorts of things; girls, current events, girls, you know...girls.

Sometimes we talk about food. I was stuck in Bulgaria for 6 weeks on film with Ving Rhames. During the long make-up application, I mentioned how bland and downright gross some of the local gruel was, and how much I was dying for a good American steak.

Later that morning, his wife and two young children came to visit, but Ving's make-up was so horrific, his kids didn't want to have anything to do with him, even though they knew it was "daddy". So I grabbed a piece of unused prosthetic, got down to their eye level and showed them that it's all just fake rubber and goo, and, "look! It's fun. It stretches!" To get them involved with the process and not be afraid of daddy's ugliness.

Come lunchtime, there was a delivery to my trailer. The biggest, juiciest steak smothered in a Roquefort Garlic dressing that was to die for! It was Ving's way of saying thanks for being good to his kids, without him letting down that big tough guy persona. He's such a softy!

Chiller: Congratulations on the Emmy nomination for MAD MEN!

Brian: Why, thank you very much, but Joel Harlow is truly the man behind that masterpiece. Well, him, Debbie Zoller and Jake Garber, as well.

Chiller: Is this the work of which you are most proud?

Brian: You know, it's really tough to just pull one thing out that I'm most proud of. It's easier for me to say that I'm not proud of ANY of it, because what I did last year, last month, last week, or even yesterday is in no way as cool as what's spinning around in my head today!

It's easier for me to say what project s I had the most FUN working on, like Pirates 2 & 3 or all of the Planet of the Apes promotions we've done. But as far as saying I'm most proud of any one project, I can't really say. I have yet to do my best work.

Chiller: I suppose seeing all of your work onscreen is like watching your "children", in some way?

Brian: Yes and no. I like to escape and be entertained when I go to the movies. If the film is good, I get lost in the moment and become a spectator. I'm not paying attention to my work.

But yes, when something really works well on screen, it does make a guy feel like a "proud parent".

Chiller: Did you dress up for Halloween?

Brian: I had the FLU!!! But I usually do (dress up) with the nieces and nephews and we go trick-or-treating. I make it an activity that all the kids have to help Uncle Brian get ready, and of course, it's a big slapstick comedy in the process.

I mainly started doing it that way so that the youngest kids wouldn't be freaked out by whatever the heck I was dressing up as. I've learned that if I involve them, "Okay Sierra, you have to help me put my nose on,” then each kid has a hand in it and they feel that they are part of it. And there's the boasting rights, "I got to glue uncle Brian's nose on, Mommy!"

So instead of me being this towering weird thing that makes them poop their pants, they know it's just silly Uncle Brian in his costume that they helped me put together.