Wizards of Goo and Gadgetry

By Gerald Clarke

Makeup artists manufacture monsters, gore--and more

Question for moviegoers: Is it worse to be killed by a werewolf or merely to be bitten by one? Answer, as anyone will tell you who has seen the summer's newest horror film, An American Werewolf in London: avoid both. The American college student who is hacked to death by one of the beasts is thereafter seen wandering around in various states of stomach-churning decomposition. But his companion, who survives the attack, has it just as bad. Every time there is a full moon, he becomes a werewolf himself, his hands turning into claws and his teeth into fangs. All this seems to happen on-camera without a second's fadeout for the actor to jump into his wolf costume. At some screenings audiences burst into applause, as if they were watching a performance by a great actor.

In a way they were: makeup artists like Werewolf's Rick Baker are authentic stars of many new movies. In recent months Hollywood's new wizards of goo and gadgetry have shown their skills in such diverse films as Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Elephant Man, Raging Bull, Altered States, The Incredible Shrinking Woman and that howler, The Howling. "There have been half a dozen films in which makeup was vital," says Dick Smith, 59, who is dean of the trade. "The same certainly cannot be said for costuming, sound or design."

The obvious importance of the craft has led to a new demand, by Smith and others, for recognition at the Academy Awards, along with myriad other special categories. "The academy has never had a permanent Oscar for makeup artists," says Smith. "The fact that they didn't give an award last year--with so many obvious candidates to choose from--points out the inadequacy of the system." Fay Kanin, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, promises that the academy will look at the complaints and make a decision, probably in the fall. It had better hurry, or this particular special interest group might just decide to turn Oscar into a voodoo doll.

Makeup artists have been around as long as Hollywood, of course. In the '30s and '40s, when makeup was heavy, they enjoyed great prestige on studio back lots, but in the '60s, when movie stars were suddenly supposed to look like real people, warts and all, the makeup man went into a decline. A revival--the beginning of the Golden Age of Makeup--began with Planet of the Apes (1968), and The Exorcist (1973) and scores of films featuring a graphic spilling of blood and guts. In Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, some 20 years ago, a knife was never seen touching the victim, played by Janet Leigh. "Now, they want it to cut right through," says Mike Westmore, who did Robert De Niro's makeup in Raging Bull. "Movies run in strings, and we are now in a blood-spurting era."

Westmore should know. For Jake La Motta's saga he used gallons of chocolate syrup, an ingredient that simulates blood in black-and-white films. Director Martin Scorsese told him that he wanted both to see and to hear De Niro's nose break, so Westmore constructed a kind of teetertotter proboscis for De Niro that popped when it was hit in the big fight scene. Seven tiny tubes were also attached to the star's face, and when the fake nose went bang, Westmore, who was on the other end of the tubes, began pumping out Hershey's Type O. (In color films the newest recipe for blood is Karo syrup, food dye Red No. 33 and food dye Yellow No. 5.)

Francis Coppola also spilled a lot of blood in The Godfather, adding his bit of realism to the lore of gore. Until he came along, special effects men would fire wax pellets filled with cosmetic blood at actors who were to be shot. When they were "hit," they would yell "ouch!" or whatever else the scriptwriter demanded. Blood oozed out and the audience usually got the point. But the pellets left a blotch on the skin, which was not realistic in closeups. Ever the perfectionist, however, Coppola wanted not only blood but bullet holes. Smith covered the actor's real skin with a false latex skin, putting both blood and tiny explosive discs in the space between. On cue the discs were detonated by means of copper wires, creating an authentic-looking bullet hole through which blood would pour.

Smith, who made his reputation with Linda Blair's gruesome makeup in The Exorcist, solved another kind of problem in Ken Russell's Altered States. To simulate the surge of energy that transforms William Hurt from a questing professor into a primitive being, Smith attached seven overlapping air bladders, covered with a skinlike material, to the arm on which the camera was focused. Inflating the bags one after the other, he gave the impression of a flow of life-changing energy.

Rob Bottin, 22--a pupil of Baker, 30, who is in turn a disciple of Smith--used bladders for different effects in The Howling. Thousands of these little bags were glued to the actors' faces, which were then covered with masks of false skin. At the proper moment, the sacs were inflated, and the faces seemed to grow as big as beach balls--about the size, that is, of the average movie werewolf's face. Bottin also devised fanglike teeth for his werewolves, rubber incisors that stretched when the actors pressed little triggers with their tongues.

The most elaborate changes require a lifelike dummy, however. In American Werewolf, Baker made a dummy of Actor David Naughton, then put a new device called a shape shifter, operated by pistons or cables, inside it. When the full moon rose over the horizon--werewolf time--Baker turned on the shape shifter, stretching the skin and turning a perfectly harmless dummy into the meanest creature to hit England since Grendel was a boy.

An equally gripping scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark shows Toht, the German villain (Ronald Lacey), dissolving into a puddle. How did Makeup Man Chris Walas do it? He began by taking a life mold of the actor's face. From that he made a plaster skull, which he covered with layers of chilled gelatin. When it came time for Toht to melt away, a heat gun--a super hair dryer--was turned on and the gelatin began to drip. So ended that particular Nazi menace.

For actors and artists, such effects often demand both time and patience. It took 81 hours, for example, for Christopher Tucker to turn John Hurt into the elephant man. Hurt had to report for work at 4:30 a.m. and, since he was not transformed until noon, often wound up on the set until after midnight. With his misshapen skull and body, which was in fact largely foam rubber, he was unable to lie down or even rest between shots. The tedium can result in tension on location, and there are some actors the artists will not work with. After clashing with Robert De Niro on The Deer Hunter, for instance, Smith resigned from the picture and now refuses to go on a set with him. Says Smith: "Bobby is a paranoid perfectionist, and it is difficult to satisfy someone like that."

The very top makeup artists, who number only about ten, can earn $500 to $1,000 a day. They are remarkably generous in sharing their innovations. "We're an exclusive club," says Tucker. "We meet whenever we can and we talk constantly on the phone, discussing new techniques and materials." Each has his own preference. Smith loves old-age makeup, and Baker is fascinated by gorillas. Westmore knows just how blood should spurt in a prizefight. Besides Raging Bull, he has done Rocky I and II and the upcoming III. "If I haven't done every fight film, I've been asked to do every fight film," he sighs. He therefore found it a relief to make up Farrah Fawcett for a recent television movie. "I enjoyed it," he says. "After Raging Bull it was relaxation. But refining is also very difficult. It is easy to be ugly because it is so easy to distort."

One problem, however, has not been solved. Except for a few classy pictures like Raiders, Elephant Man and Raging Bull, the best makeup is usually done for horror films that most adults never see, or would admit to seeing. "Some of my best work," complains Stan Winston (The Wiz), "has been lost on bad movies."

--By Gerald Clarke. Reported by Elaine Dutka/New York and Martha Smilgis/Los Angeles

With reporting by Elaine Dutka, Martha Smilgis

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