| Throughout the 100-year
history of modern cinema, there are defining moments, onscreen
events that divide time into a before and after, and forever change
the way in which audiences perceive
movies. Here is one such moment: actor David Naughton, writhing
in pain in a bright London flat, screams in horror as he witnesses
his hand slowly elongating in front of his eyes. Before we can
fully digest this spectacle, he is hurled to the floor in convulsions
only to have his spine, legs, and then, amazingly, his nose and
jaw perform the same wrenching extension. With the aid of Rick
Baker’s revolutionary artistry and techniques, Naughton
completes his transformation into a lycanthrope for “An
American Werewolf in London,” and so the face of movies
was changed from that point forward.
Rick Baker has had a profound influence on movies
of the past 20 years — he won the first official Academy
Award for makeup on “American Werewolf.” But he had
made his mark long before that. While he was still a teenager,
Baker observed his mentor Dick Smith create the groundbreaking
age makeup on Dustin Hoffman in “Little Big Man” and
a few years later worked on the rotating dummy head in “The
Exorcist.” In the mid-1970s, Baker got many of his own monster
makeup assignments, including the demonic baby in “It’s
Alive!” and ‘King Kong” for which Baker created
and acted in a hand-made gorilla suit, one of his many ape characters
for movies. Then, Baker was contacted by George Lucas to populate
the famous Cantina scene with creatures.
Following “ American Werewolf,” Baker
enjoyed many movie successes in the 1980s, including
the realization of many realistic apes for “Greystoke”
and “Gorillas in the Mist,” and designing and producing
a realistic radiocontrolled giant for “Harry and the Hendersons.
” Baker also made a
demon out of Michael Jackson and his dancers for the pioneering
music video, “Thriller.” At the end of the decade,
he created convincing character makeups with Eddie Murphy in “Coming
to America” and created dozens of imaginative creatures
for the wild sequel, “Gremlins 2: The New Batch.”
Into the 1990s, as hundreds of talented new people
set up shops as makeup effects artists, only an elite few emerged
successful enough to supervise their own movies. With CGI, or
computer-generated imagery, gaining increased attention and threatening
to replace special makeup effects, the role of makeup again faced
reinvention and demanded a new type of artist comfortable with
both methods. Nonetheless, the ongoing advances in makeup materials
and application techniques has kept makeup relevant, as evidenced
by Rick Baker’s realistic character makeups in “Ed
Wood,” the Eddie Murphy vehicle “The Nutty Professor,”
and “Men in Black.” Including numerous makeups in
“How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” Baker now has six
Academy Awards with the 2001 remake of “Planet of the Apes”
likely leading to yet another Oscar nomination.
About the Author
Scott Essman has been writing about makeup and movie craftsmanship
since 1995. As part of his company, Visionary Cinema, Essman has
also created memorable tributes to makeup history, including special
events to honor Dick Smith, John Chambers, and Jack Pierce. In
1998, his tribute to the makeup for “The Wizard of Oz”
was celebrated on Hollywood Boulevard at the historic Mann’s
Chinese Theater. In 2000, Essman published his first book, “Freelance
Writing for Hollywood,” and that same year, he published
a 48-page special magazine about the work of Universal Studios’
makeup legend, Jack Pierce. In 2001, he was joined with Universal
to nominate Pierce for a star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk
of Fame.
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