Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 127. Tom Savini

Episode Date: October 31, 2016

Gilbert and Frank celebrate Halloween with the "King of Splatter," makeup effects wizard Tom Savini, who reveals the secret of onscreen suspense, shares his admiration for legendary makeup artists Dick Smith and Jack Pierce and explains how "Midnight Cowboy" changed his life. Also, Tom praises George Clooney, defends Jerry Lewis, laughs it up with Tony Curtis and shakes hands with the Three Stooges. PLUS: Joe Spinell! "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors"! Christoper Lee makes an entrance! Tyrone Power battles Basil Rathbone! And the Cary Grant movie that brings Tom to tears! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried. And there are rewards in it. I can't even say reward. Rolling. Rolling. And there are... Cut. And, you know, like signed posters. And some of you, if it's enough money, I'll roast you.

And there's so much, so much. But it's patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried. Give me money! Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. We're once again recording at Nutmeg with our engineer, Frank Fertorosa. Our guest this week is an actor, director, writer, photographer, stuntman, and one of the most innovative and admired makeup and special effects artists in the history of cinema. You've seen him in popular movies and TV shows like Knight Riders, Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow, From Dusk Till Dawn, Machete, Grindhouse, Machete Kills, Planet of Terror, Django Unchained, The Perks...

I knew I'd fuck that up. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and The Simpsons, among others. As a director, he's helmed episodes of Tales of the Dark Side, director, he's helmed episodes of Tales of the Dark Side, as well as an installment of George Romero's Dead Time Stories and a 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead. His award-winning makeup and special effects work have made him a living legend among fans of horror and suspense films with credits that include Dead of Night, Martin, Friday the 13th, Maniac, Creepshow, The Burning, Monkey Shines, Day of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and many more. In his long and successful career, he's worked with George Romero, Ed Harris, Quentin Tarantino,

Stephen King, Robert Rodriguez, and George Clooney, just to name a few. He's also the author of the book Grand Illusions, a learned by example guide to the art and technique of special makeup effects. And if that's not enough, he's also the teacher and mentor who oversees Tom Savini's special makeup effects program at the Douglas Education Center. Please welcome to the show a master of horror who says his favorite movies are actually love stories. What a fucking pussy. The king of splatter, the godfather of gore, Tom Savini. There's nothing left to say. You make me sound so important.

I like whoever you're talking about. I think I like them. The long, drawn-out intros have become part of the mystique of the show, Tom. The fans demand them. I gotcha. Well, I'm honored to be one of them. It will be like being insulted by Don Rickles.

Honored to have that. Quite a compliment. So, I just a few months back, I did a show in Pittsburgh, and I was there for like a few days, bored out of my fucking mind. And then Bobby Slayton tells me that you live in Pittsburgh, and you've got this house full of monsters and special effects. There's one right here. Oh, look at that.

Oh, wow. We've got Tom on camera. This is Fluffy from Creepshow. Sure. It's the bust of him that, you know, I kind of sculpted him and all the universal monsters. They're down in the basement. Hopefully I can take you down there and this thing won't die.

Well, he was unconsolable tom when he didn't get to see the uh the workshop hopefully you'll come back yeah no i bombed the livestock he's got cool shit in there he's got a christopher lee's mummy and he's got uh the creature from the black lagoon and i think you both have vincent price life masks yeah oh. Well, here's a, can I, is there a way to, you can't turn this around. See now, now no, no one is, we can see it, but our audience can't. Yeah, that's great. There's the Vincent Price life mask on the wall. Oh, that's, that's very nice.

Well, that's him young and this is him old. Can you see it? Okay. I can't tell if you can see it. Oh, I can't really make out the, I think, yeah. Okay. Oh, I see, yeah. Oh, there you go.

Oh, that's the one I have. Yeah, and then there's James Cagney up there. Oh, look at that. That's cool. James Cagney and David Bowie from The Hunger. Wow, look at that. Our listeners are going, it's a goddamn audio podcast. I can't see any of this.

Take out. Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Clark Gable. Look at that. Gil, that puts yours to shame. Oh, mine, I just have four. And Fela Lugosi. Well, in the kitchen over here, I just got these. This is Jack Palance.

Oh, the Jekyll and Hyde? Yeah, Jack Palance there. Wow, look at this. And Humphrey Bogart. Oh, my God. Phil, it's luck you're there. Wow. Yeah, but then Charles Bronson is in the back.

I'm a big fan of Charles Bronson. Oh, I am too. Yeah, yeah. Charles Bronson is in the back. I'm a big fan of Charles Bronson. Oh, I am too. Yeah, yeah. Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin. When men were men, Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin. Well, after we're finished recording and we don't have any other audio issues, you can take us up there, and Gilbert will get a thrill. And you, who are known as like one of the kings of gore,

but you have experience in real life gore oh yeah yeah now that's that's part of the misunderstanding about me being the the wizard of gore dr splatter everything they call me they think that it all began when i went to vietnam but uh you know my my my interest and i started doing this when i was 11 after I saw Man of a Thousand Faces. You know, the James Cagney. Oh, yes. Sure, sure. That's why Cagney's up there.

And the Man of a Thousand, well, it posts over there. But anyway. The Plaza Theater in Pittsburgh. You know the theater. Wow. You know, that's been, that was here up until five years ago. It opened in 1917. I saw a piece about you in a doc.

You said you shined shoes. I shined shoes so I could buy masks. Right. But Vietnam was a lesson in anatomy for me, which is why I have the reputation for realism. All my stuff is anatomically correct because I saw – I'm the only makeup artist who has seen the real thing. And it was kind of a safety behind the camera. I mean, I saw horrible stuff, not our guys, but Viet Cong, you know. Well, I saw our guys, but I didn't photograph our guys.

So I saw horrible stuff. So for me, the safety was behind the camera, looking at it and thinking, how would I create that? And I've been creating it, you know, ever since in my career as the special makeup effects artist. Yeah, I've heard you say you hate the way people die in films, in war films, because it's so unrealistic. Very good. Yeah, because, no, it's not very good. Yeah. Because realistic, because no, it's not realistic because they all want to look pretty for the camera. Here's a guy coughing and

the guy, his friend is giving him his last cigarette, you know, and when he dies, he's like, yeah, pleasant mouth and eyes closed. Right. Everybody, every cadaver I've ever seen, you know, you don't, you don't, you don't, you lose all your muscles, all your muscle control. And these are muscles that hold your jaw closed. All the jaws are slack, you know, on the cadaver, all the, unless it's a position that just gravity is pulling the mouth close, you know. But that's what I hate when the best portrayal of dead bodies is Danny Trejo, Peter Coyote in Random Hearts, because they didn't care about looking pretty. You know, they were doing stuff like that. I'll tell our listeners, Tom is doing that.

They were being cadavers. Acting it out for us. To me, an actor is not doing a great job portraying his own death if he's not got his jaw slack you know only because i'm you know your point of view is based on your experiences and my experiences we're seeing many many many many corpses and cadavers and the jaw is usually slack and that's that's the long answer to your short question. So their mouths are always open when you see dead bodies. I want to ask you, too. Go ahead.

Zombies should walk around with their mouths open because if they're walking, they have control of some muscles, you know. I just want to ask you about your childhood, too, Tom. As long as we're talking about the Plaza Theater and I read that you would go in at nine o'clock in the morning and stay there all day and in those days. And aren't you aren't you old enough to have that experience? Oh, sure. You go in at nine o'clock in the morning and see 17 cartoons. Right. Then a serial or two Flash Gordon or, you know, the ape and the gorilla or the ape and the robot. And, you know and Tarzan. And then two feature films.

You came out at five or six o'clock at night and you couldn't see because you've been in the dark theater all day coming out. But that was the best time. And you're surrounded by screaming kids, laughing kids. When do you experience that today? I actually hate going to movie theaters today because of the anxiety of how many people am I going to have to tell to shut up? Yeah, and everybody's messing with their phone.

Turn that phone off in my face. Yeah. The respect is gone. These were palaces. These were temples of joy, temples of pleasure when I was a kid. Do you have a theater, Gil, a local theater where you would just go and sit there all day? The theater I remember growing up was the Cameo Theater on Easton Parkway, which turned into like a church or something. You'd go early in the morning and just sit there all day and they wouldn't throw you out?

Yeah. I remember sneaking in when they were playing Midnight Cowboy. Oh, wow. Right. Rated X. And I wanted to talk to you, Tom, about Man of a Thousand Faces. Well, can I tell you first about Midnight Cowboy? Oh, sure.

Yes. When I came back from Vietnam, I was an emotionless zombie. A lot of guys were when they came back. Marriages failed. They call it PTS syndrome now. Okay. I probably had that, but because you have to turn off your emotions to survive mentally in this sort of situation, I was kind of lucky because as I've said, I would look at it and

think, how would I create that? But still, when I came back, the emotions are turned off from my sanity. What brought my emotions back to me, it took two years. What brought my emotions back is when Dustin Hoffman died in Midnight Cowboy. I went berserk. I was in the theater and cried hysterically. My wife and a friend were there. The whole theater was empty, and I'm still in there sobbing, crying. I think all the pent-up emotion of holding back in Vietnam and then two years after that. When he died, it was too much. So a movie like Midnight Cowboy brought me back. From that day on, sunsets were beautiful. My marriage failed. I was too late for that. I saw the movie with my ex-wife at the time. But that movie was very important to me

because that's when my emotions came back. That's when I became me again. Don't forget, I'm a little Italian kid loafing on the corner here, shining shoes to buy, you know, mask and put makeup on my friends. And suddenly it's like, it's like Deer Hunter. You're plunged in this situation where you, you know, it's just a horrible situation. But I'm happy to talk about Man of a Thousand Faces. So, but Dustin Hoffman dying on screen. Bratz or RZA. Yeah, Midnight Cowboy. Did me in, did me in.

That did more than years of therapy or anything like that. I mean, even when I finally got my shit together and was able to stand up and leave the theater. Back then, theater marquees, there were poles holding the marquee outside. It happened again. I grabbed a pole and, again, just weeped hysterically. All of it came back. And I felt like the sun came up within me. I mean, if I could give it a metaphor.

So the power of movies. A movie brought it back. I tell people that story a lot. Wow. What a coincidence that that was a movie you would bring up. Yes. Yeah. It was a movie that began my career and a movie that brought me back to life to continue my career when I was, you know, back in the States. So let's get back to Man of a Thousand Faces, James Cagney and Mr. Magoo as his agent. Right.

It was like I saw that movie a few thousand times because they used to show it a lot. Yeah. And the funny thing is, very big fan of the movie, but it's also one of those movies that whenever Hollywood has a based on a true story, they're quite liberal with the truth. Very liberal in his case. Yeah. He didn't he wasn't on his deathbed and wrote Junior at the end of his name you know yeah in fact creighton tall cheney went through hell to have a movie career and he didn't have one until he changed his name to launch yeah there were there were a bunch of movies primitive movies where you see creighton cheney right yeah yeah but um before that movie to me frankenstein the Wolfman, Dracula creature, they were real. They were real. I wish I could see a movie again through the eyes of an eight-year-old child who believes everything is real.

The Man of a Thousand Faces showed me that somebody creates the movies. Somebody creates the monsters. It was like another awakening. It was like, oh, Jesus, yes, of course. So I decided then I'm going to be one of the guys that creates the monsters. But for a long time, I thought James Cagney was Lon Chaney. Until Famous Monsters magazine, and I could see the real Chaney. And I have a son named Lon.

He was named after Lon Chaney. He has a daughter named Chaney. Chaney Savini. Wow. Imagine when she grows up, you know, her father is Lon. I'm Tom Savini, you know, the makeup guy. You know, it's going to be quite a conversation. And his wife's name is Boris.

Actually, he had twins, and one is Chaney, and one, and the girl is Chaney, and the boy is Price. Oh, wow. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. But first, a word from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by FX's The Bear on Disney+. In Season 3, Carmi and his crew are aiming for the ultimate restaurant accolade, a Michelin star. With Golden Globe and Emmy wins,

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And who, I forget now, who did the makeup for Man of a Thousand Faces? That's a good question. I mean, I think it was one of the Westmore. Yeah, Bud Westmore? It was either the Westmores or William Tuttle. Yeah, I think it could have. Yeah, I forget. But I remember being very disappointed in the makeups there.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And also, like, Cagney had that big round face as opposed to Cheney's, like, thin, long face. Right, right, right. Yeah, the makeup, especially the phantom. Oh, horrible. Yeah, really horrible, especially the phantom. Oh, horrible. Yeah, really horrible. It was just a rubber mask almost. It looked like the nose was like about a foot long. Well, it was a pig nose. Yeah. It was up like that, you know. Chaney went through, you know,

he suffered. There's a fabric called silk organza. Back then they called it, There's a fabric called silk organza. Back then they called it, well, one of the names for it was fish skin. And that's where the incorrect mythology of Chaney using fish hooks, you know, it was fish skin. Yeah. He glued to the tip of his nose and then pulled it up and glued it to the bridge so his nose would stay up like this, okay? And he had a dome on the top of his head to make his head longer. He was basically doing a stage makeup of a skull. You know, the teeth, the sunken eyes.

It's an excellent stage makeup. In fact, I did eight years of repertory stage. I was in a play every night. I would do everybody's makeup and then play a part. You know, I was King Arthur in Camelot. I was in a play every night. I would do everybody's makeup and then play a part. I was King Arthur in Camelot. I was in Fiddler on the Roof. So I would do everybody's makeup. But I would do it. I mean, when you're on stage, the distance you are from the audience and the lights, you can get away with a lot. But I made myself and them up for the mirror. And that was great training for doing makeup on people for movies when their faces are 40 feet high and 60 feet wide.

It has to be quite realistic. Yeah. You know, I've been doing some research about Lon Chaney. We had Ron Chaney on the show. Very nice man. Very nice man. Told us things we didn't know, like that story about Creighton being born and being shoved under the ice. You remember that, Gilbert?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was allegedly. Allegedly. Yeah, because with Lon Chaney Jr., I think he could tell some stories. He was born dead, and his father ran out to, like, this frozen river and dunked him in it. Punched a hole in the ice and put him in it. Yeah.

Yeah. According to Ron Chaney. Yeah. And that brought him to life. That's it. I don't think I've heard that story. Have you ever met Lon Chaney Jr.? No.

No. But I have a Ron Chaney story. Okay. Real brief. You know, I do horror conventions all the time, and so did he for a while. And a bunch of us were in the bar, and Ron Chaney walked by, you know, in the hallway. And one of my friends yelled, hey, Ron, can I buy you a drink? And like that, he said, I never drink wine.

Love it. Nice man. So I'm trying to get the chronology of this, Tom. You started doing this stuff at 11, and you worked with a traveling group, a traveling theater group, a magic group? Yeah, there was an ad in the paper live on stage, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, Dracula. So I went, and, you know, Frankenstein was just a guy in a mask. Wolfman was a guy in a mask. Dracula was a kid that they picked out of the audience. He just stood there. He just stood there. They put a cape on him. He just stood there.

Well, that really pissed me off, you know? How old are you around this time now? 13, 14 maybe. So probably 14. So I went back to the theater and made sure they picked me. I sat on the aisle and they picked me. I had my own cape. I had fangs. I was ready. And this is when I learned about misdirection because I'm backstage with my cape and I can see the crowd is watching the Frankenstein and the Wolfman on the stage. So I creeped out and got real low in front of them. And when it was Dracula's turn to appear, I jumped up and spread the cape, and they screamed and physically moved backwards out of fear. And the people running the show saw that. So they no longer picked the kid from the

audience. I became part of the troupe and went with them from movie theater to movie theater. I was their Dracula. And they paid me in chocolate milkshakes and silver dollars. So you're hooked on acting at this point, performing as well as you're hooked on the makeup. In grade school, the nuns would do bake sales and I would do skits dressed as a woman. And they were saying, but the principal, the nun was saying, you know, I'm a kid. I'm eight, nine. You should pursue this, you know, in life. And so take us through the chronology.

I mean, when did Dick Smith come into your life? You went into the Army. I went into the Army. I went into the Army. You went to Carnegie Mellon? I got a fellowship to Carnegie Mellon to teach makeup, and I was part of the acting directing program, which means the students in the makeup course were my classmates. That was kind of tough.

I gave blanket grades. If they did a project, they got an A, you know, you know, because these are my classmates. Sure. So, um, but George Romero was gearing up to do Martin, the, you know, so I went down to audition for the vampire. It was already cast, but he had remembered me because he came to my high school when I was a sophomore, uh, and looking for a guy there were 1500, it's an all boy high school. There,500 of us. He picked me. We had auditions. He picked me. The movie never got made. So when I went down for more, and he recognized me, and I had my portfolio, you know, with me, and I showed it to him, and that's how I got to do the makeup effects on it. And I played a part and did the stunts. part and did the stunts. And that's what I tell my students. You know, I have a school here and we just celebrated our 16 year anniversary, a school for special makeup effects. They come from all over the world. Every time you see Face Off on television, at least five of them are students from my school. Last year, one of my students won Face Off. But chronologically,

I took a leave of absence to do dawn of the dead for George Romero. I was doing a play. I was doing a play in Carolina, a line in winter and got a telegram from Georgia said, start thinking of ways to kill people. We got another gig and it was dawn of the dead. Okay. So, um, I did dawn of the dead, but you, but you asked me something in relation to the chronology. Well, I was trying to figure out if Dick – I know Dick Smith was a mentor, and I know George came into your life too, right? We did Dawn of the Dead. The next movie that was offered to me was Friday the 13th, the original – I created Jason for Friday the 13th.

In fact, I'm also working on the Friday the 13th video game that's coming out. I devised all the kills and created a new Jason, and it's pretty brutal. Now, one thing I heard that you did that sounds idiotic. You turned down one of the Friday the 13th because it didn't make sense.'t make sense i love that but but but just to answer your question and continue yes yeah one of the dead i ordered blood from the 3m company remember 3m they made oh yeah copy machine scotch tape didn't they the blood was it was a stage blood that they made it was horrible and that's the blood in dawn of the dead it looks like looks like melted crayons it's horrible it's like paint um so before friday the 13th i called dick smith on the phone because we're going to kind of pass his house on the way

to the this the location and he gave us his blood formula and um, you know, you couldn't learn this stuff when I was trying to learn it because nobody, excuse me, shared their secrets. But Dick shared everything. He would spend hours on the phone telling you how to do something and then Xerox it, Xerox back then, and then mail it to you. You know, it was priceless. Okay. So. And just quickly tell, remind our listeners, Dick Smith was the greatest. He was the greatest living makeup artist on the planet. He invented everything we do. We have simply taken it and enhanced it and added to it and made it better.

But he's the he's really the godfather of special makeup effects, you know. And he did the godfather. Age Marlon Brando. Yeah. The Exorcist midnight cowboy so many yeah he's done some fantastic amadeus he won the academy award for amadeus right what someone said and i didn't even realize this what shows him as a great makeup artist is everyone's looking at linda's monster makeup, but you don't

realize the exorcist, Max von Sydow, was like in his 40s at the time. He had trouble getting work after that because everybody thought he was 70-some years old. Wow, that's great. Because the makeup was so great. Today, he looks like the makeup. It was very accurate. So yes, Jason, Friday the 13th, they sent me the script. Now, Friday the 13th kind of pissed me off because all I wanted was a big screen TV out of this. I think I got paid 15 grand to do all the effects in Friday the 13th,

pay my assistant, buy materials. And then the movie made $72 million. And the reviews all said the star of this film is Tom Savini's makeup effects. So they sent me the script for part two, and here's Jason running around. Well, Jason was the kid that drowned in the first movie. The mother was the killer. I said, what do you got? You got Jason running around. Well, Jason was a kid that drowned in the first movie. The mother was the killer. I said, what do you got? You got Jason running around. Oh, no, no, no. We're going to change that.

Well, they didn't. You know, Jason is running around. And he's still running around, OK? I stopped watching him after part five. In part five, the fucking ashtray was Jason. His spirit kept him. So but they just got really stupid. So I turned down part two. they did not offer me part three

and the series was waning and they did offer me part four which is called the final chapter part four is called because they thought that was going to be the last one and so when i to make up for part one i asked for a fortune and i got it. Okay. So I did that movie, created Jason as a 35 year old. I created them as a kid in the first one. And that made so much money. I mean, look, there's going to be a Friday the 13th part 13, I'm sure. And the game is coming out and it's quite, it's a franchise, you know, a multimillion dollar franchise. And you have a bust of Jack Pierce, the great universal monster maker. Yeah, I do have Jack Pierce. Yeah.

That man was incredible. You know, the Frankenstein makeup took about nine and a half hours. Karloff would sleep in the makeup sometimes with his head in a position, you know, pillows and stuff, so he wouldn't have to go through it the next day, you know, because it was built up of cotton and collodion. Collodion is 24% ether. You know, you can imagine smelling that all day, you know. In fact, they would walk him around with a bag over his head on the Universal lot because he was so scary. But that is a masterpiece of makeup, the Frankenstein makeup. And he did the mummy.

He did the Wolfman. Wolfman, of course. Sure, sure. He was, yeah, Jack Pierce. After Lon Chaney, he's second on my list of, you know, my idols. Then, of course, there's, you know, Dick Smith, Rick Baker, Rob Bottin, Greg Nicotero, Steve Johnson, you know. I've heard you say you admire, speaking, since you brought up Rob Bottin, you admire very much his work on The Thing. Well, that's the, that's the masterpiece of Splatter. I'm called the king

of Splatter, but that was the masterpiece of Splatter. In fact, when I did Creepshow, I had to create Fluffy. Fluffy was the first animatronic creature I had to make. I didn't know how to do it. I called Rob Bottin, and hours later on the phone, he has explained to me step by step how. And then when I went to LA, I was in a movie called Knight Riders, which you've mentioned. Rob Bottin came, took me to his house, and tore the skins off all the howling creatures to show me how the mechanisms worked in there. He says, well, I never keep the skins anyway. But he's responsible for teaching me how to do an animatronic creature. The effects in the thing are very impressive.

Just today, Even now. Blu-ray of the new Blu-ray of it. Another makeup that really impressed me was like an American werewolf. Rick Baker's makeup was in a brightly lit room. That happened right in front of you. Yeah. That happened. All my stuff and all stuff like Rick Baker's stuff and Rob Bottin, that stuff was happening right in front of you. That happened. All my stuff and all stuff like Rick Baker's stuff and Rob Bottin, that stuff was happening right in front of you.

There was no CGI. You did not have to change your mindset into thinking, well, this is real because it was real and it was happening. See, that's the problem today. People always ask me about CGI, and I love it when it's done well. I think the best effects today are a combination of the CGI and practical effects. I wish I had CGI when I was trying to solve a problem or hide an edge back then, you know. So these are the best effects, the combination. And Walking Dead does it constantly. You know, the bicycle girl with half a body, that's just a girl in green tights, and they erase the legs, you know, later, you know.

So that would be hard to do. Also, if you've seen The Walking Dead, like I think the first episode last season was the trough episode where people were being bashed in the head and their throats were cut. Well, they put the tubing on the people to shoot the blood out, but they didn't even have to bother putting appliances over it because the visual effects guys would go in and erase the tubing. So what you saw was just blood coming out of there. And that made for quicker cleanup time, more setups to be done, more takes to shoot. Because, you know, when I tore Joe Palato's body in half in Day of the Dead, the reset was five hours, you know? Right. You know, on that set, the reset was, you know, two minutes.

Now, I always think, like, when I was a kid, I knew how they did King Kong and the Wolfman. I knew it was just basically turning the camera off and turning it back on. But I remember as a kid and to this day, I feel like I can touch those things. And with computer generated images, I feel like there's nothing to touch. Well, that's what happened to me. I saw Jurassic Park and I knew how it was made. So I didn't see any dinosaurs.

I just pictured guys at a computer and that really pissed me off. So the next time I went to see it, I smoked a joint, which helped focus. I went to see it. I smoked a joint, which helped focus. And I said to my mind, I changed my mindset to no matter what I see, foreground, background, it really exists. And the movie blew me away. It was spectacular. But I had to change my mindset to do that. I think that's the collective dislike of CGI today. People have to change their mindset. They have to make that effort. And they don't feel like making that effort because old timers like us are used to seeing it happen right in front of you. But the new generations will be accepting that and will just be part of their toolbox as filmmakers. You know, props to Rob Batin and Rick Baker,

because we're talking about two movies that were made in the 80s. And those both of those effects hold up very well now. And I would wonder if kids were raised on CGI would see those movies and actually have an issue with them. Yeah. Or just buy into it. They think it was primitive. No, I don't think so. They hold up very well. Or this or one of the sad things that happens, and Steven Spielberg says this of his son Max, who's 13, if it's impossible, it's CGI. Yeah. You know, that's very sad because, again, Greg Nicotero did this wonderful makeup in Land of the Dead of this baseball player zombie who part of her face was gone and you could see her teeth, you know. And that was a makeup.

But people thought it was CGI because it was so good. So if it's impossible, they think it's CGI. As long as we're talking about Walking Dead, Greg Nicotero was your protege. I've known him since he was 14. He assisted me on so many movies. I just saw him last weekend at his uncle's funeral. And I will see him again this weekend in L.A. at the funeral of one of the greatest makeup artists who has ever worked with us, a guy named John Vulich. He was part of my crew on many movies.

He formed the special makeup effects company called Optic Nerve in L.A. And he's 55. He died Tuesday in his sleep. Oh, sorry to hear that, young man. Memorial, yeah. You told an interesting story about that during The Godfather, Coppola went up to Dick Smith. Yes. And said the blood doesn't look real.

Right. Dick cut his finger open. Not on the spot, but at some other time. And with his finger bleeding, he walked up to Coppola and said, what about this? Ah, no, that's fake. But it was his own blood. I love that story. I never heard that. It's great. Dick was a tough guy. I mean, he almost got in a fist fight with Dennis Quaid over some old makeup

on some baseball movie that Dennis Quaid was involved in he didn't take any shit, Dick Smith Wow since you brought up Creepshow, let's talk about Creepshow which you said was the hardest the biggest challenge the biggest makeup effects challenge

well it's five movies and it was just me and a 17-year-old kid that did all that stuff. The fluffy creature, Nate's corpse coming out of the grave, the cockroaches coming out of E.G. Marshall. Yeah, I love that. That got applause and screams on the set when that happened. Because listen, I hate bugs, and I was never in the same room with those 28,000 cockroaches that entomologists collected in Trinidad living in bat shit, okay? The stories they told of collecting those roaches is scarier than any movie you've ever seen. I miss those anthology movies, you know, the five movies in one.

Oh, just like Dr. Terrorist's House of Horrors. What's the one with Burgess Meredith? Day of Night, Dead of Night, the British movie. Oh, that's a great one. Oh, yes. Michael Redgrave. Yes. But people tune out of those anymore.

Creepshow was great. Those two were fantastic. But a lot of them, you know, I mean, because, you know, Hammer tried to keep making those and they just got silly. Dr. Terror, I mean, look who's in that. Donald Sutherland was in one of those things. Yeah, Christopher Leap. Yeah, everybody. What's the one

with Burgess Meredith where he's the carnival leader? It's Torture Garden. You know this one? Oh. It's another one. It's another one of those anthology pictures. Horror anthologies. Yeah, it'd be nice to bring them back. I got to tell you how I met Christopher Lee. I'm at a convention in New York. Rumor has it that they were going to bring him in through the kitchen. So a few of us scurried to the kitchen, and it was in the dead of winter.

So the kitchen door opens. Snow whiffs in like fog christopher lee steps through the door with his overcoat over his shoulders and he's he's fucking dracula walked in you know yeah you know and he's very he's three feet taller than me i'm five seven or eight you know so uh that but that was my encounter with you you know, Christopher Lee. Years later, I was talking to him about asking him whether he continued fencing because, you know, he was Rochefort in The Three Musketeers. Right. Oliver Reed, I mean. Right. Richard Lester.

He said to me, I had trouble believing it at the time, but he said, I, Christopher Lee speaking, I have the most screen sword fights of any actor. And I guess he could see in my face that I was doubting him. And he started rattling them off, the master of Bell and Trey with Errol Flynn, Three Musketeers. And he said, and he showed me his hand and this little finger of his is bent at a right angle. It's not straight up like I'm showing you right now. It's bent at the second knuckle. He said, that's a little present from Errol Flynn, who by noon had been doing this.

Drinking. Yeah. Bending the elbow. Supposed to go for the shoulder, went for my thigh, and just crushed, broke his little finger with the sword, the big sword they were using. And that was in the Master of Bellantrae. But yeah, he's quite the swordsman. And so was Basil Rathbone and Tyrone Power. Tyrone Power's mother was an Olympic fencer. You know, one of the greatest screen fights ever was in The Mark of Zorro with Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone. And they did every second of it, which pisses me off about movies today.

When they do fights in movies, it's in close-up so that you can see the actor's face doing a couple of moves. And then it's stunt guys. That's Greg Nicotero. I love the Looney Tunes. Your cell phone. That was Greg. I'll have to call him back. But so, yes, that was the greatest screen fight because they're actually doing it.

So you can shoot the whole body head to toe and see Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone doing all those fantastic fencing moves. My favorite thing watching fencing is, number one, if you are really having a fight with two swords, one person would be seriously injured in a second. Well, if you're good, you know, if you're good. Well, you know how to fence, don't you, Tom? Yeah, I'm a tournament fencer. I mean, tournament fencing is the same thing. It's two guys facing guys facing each other and i mean they're going to get a point if they touch you or you're going to get a point if you touch them the point is just to parry and block

any attempt that they make so i imagine back then when swords were sharp and you were defending your life you had to be good to not get hurt you know i'm gonna throw you guys a curveball on wait wait i got it i got it this is the other thing that drives me crazy what's that have any two people in real life who were fencing to the death ever had one guy drop his sword and the other one like toss it up in the air and let him catch it to continue fencing. Well, I've done that just as a point of honor. There was back then, you know. But in real life, how would anyone do that? If you're defending your life and someone's trying to kill you, you may take advantage of that situation.

But I mean, the corpse a corpse move, which is when they come in close and hold the swords against each other's face to spit out some dialogue, that is totally unrealistic to me. I don't think that would ever happen. But there's so many things in movies that should piss you off. Like when it starts raining, they stand there and keep talking in the rain. We don't do this. You run away from the rain. Here's another example, okay? How many movies have you seen where like a rock comes through the window and

there's a note attached to it? What do they do? They run to the rock to read the note. Of course. Rocks through my window. You know, I like when the bad guy has a gun on you and, and the good guy goes,

Oh, come on. You don't want to shoot me. You want to do this mano a mano. Come on. The guy puts the gun down? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know what? The other thing that pisses me off, and they did it in Skyfall, in one of the greatest Bond movies, you know,

at the beginning of the movie, he's on a train in a gunfight, you know, and he runs out of bullets and throws his gun away. Yes, yes. Your gun away. This is your gun. You can reload it some other time, but it's your gun. Put it away. You know, how many times they do that? And I read something today that made me laugh. It's like, OK, if Superman is is if bullets bounce off Superman, why does he duck when they throw the gun at him at the end? That's funny. This is the TV series.

Also, and since you know about injuries and stuff. So and since you know about injuries and stuff in movies, the good guy who looks like he got shot and it's dying and he'll fall to the ground. And then you find out the bullet hit his shoulder, which, according to movie science, means you could take a bullet in your shoulder and it's nothing. This doesn't shatter your collarbone. No, it doesn't do a thing. If you took a bullet in your shoulder, lots of pain for one thing. Can't lift your arm anymore after that. They take many. But look, look at the licenses, the license they would take in a John Wayne movie. He punches a guy in the face and the guy and they they keep fighting, throwing punches.

That one punch from John Wayne would cause severe head injury to you. Right. Probably break your jaw, crush your eye socket. You know, I mean, but they keep going. But you're you're as an audience, you're being trained to accept this ridiculous lunacy. And another thing I love, and it's still being done, is you could take the butt of a gun or a rock or a club, whack someone over the head. They conveniently go to sleep and then they're fine in the next scene. No, this again, we're talking severe head injuries.

And that was the cliche that used over and over again, knock them out. You know, with your gun. Tom, you're a movie buff, so here's a curveball on a fencing scene in a comedy. A good fencing scene in a comedy. Princess Bride. Yes, that one, but also one

starring one of your favorite actors, Tony Curtis. You'll know where I'm going with this. The Great Race. Yeah, and Ross Martin. A well-directed actual duel in a comedy. That scene is lifted from The Prisoner of Zenda. Yes, it is.

You know, what's he say, what'soss martin say at the window um those that live fight and run away yeah fight another day and he and he dives out and he hits the boat that's right yeah that was that line is from the prisoner of zenda with ronald coleman and um i forget who the villain was now that he fenced in that. Henry Daniel? That's another one of the—no, not Henry Daniel. No, it's not him. No, Robert—he was Errol Flynn's nemesis in Don Juan. Robert Douglas.

Robert Douglas is the guy. That sounds right. Yeah. But in a comedy, you don't expect to see quite a convincing sword fight. You know what? I sat with Tony Curtis. He came to Pittsburgh to promote his book. He was hilarious, this guy. He was still wearing the white toupee, you know? Oh, yeah. I was standing outside of the theater, hoping that when I got in, I would get close enough

to the stage to see him. The writer of the book, the ghost writer, walked by, recognized me, and brought me into the VIP dinner with Tony Curtis and his big Swedish bride. And he said to the guy, hey, is there something on my shoulder? And when the guy looked at his shoulder, he grabbed his balls. You know, that's a trick that we didn't have. I immediately thought, wow, that's wonderful, okay? So I had a folder full of 8x10s, five or so of him, Yul Brynner, Jerry Lewis. I collected 8x10s of these guys. So he came over, sat on the couch with me, and went through.

And he said, can I draw on one of these? And he gave one of his pictures butt teeth and glasses hey tom can you fix me up because somebody told him i'm a makeup artist you know he got to jerry lewis and he said ah what an asshole they did boeing boeing that's right yeah yeah yeah i mean listen i love jerry lewis i Lewis. I hear these stories all the time. But this is somebody that you grew up with and were in love with. He's the Jim Carrey of my day. I'm the same way. It's like I've heard every single asshole story you could hear about Jerry Lewis. But also, I grew up watching him.

And he's like, like an idol. Right. But if you saw him on a talk show or his talk show, you kind of, you know, so yeah. So, well, what's the point though? Um, Oh, Tony Curtis. Yes. Tony Curtis. So I asked him, you know, the one of my great, you know, earlier on you said that I'm a sucker for love stories. Yeah, we found that in the research. One of the greatest love stories was Trapeze. Oh, with Burt Lancaster. Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis and Gina Lola Brigida.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen that movie. I fell in love with that movie. I even have a music box that plays the theme from it. You know, the daring young man on the flying trapeze and all that stuff. So I asked Tony Curtis, I said, when you go to the circus today, are you astounded by the triple? Everyone throws a triple, all the trapeze artists, that's their goal to throw a triple. And that movie was about, you know, Burt Lancaster teaching him the triple. So, and he said, yes, he loves the circus, you know. And to me, that was like closure.

Actually sitting there with Tony Curtis, who was the flying Orsini, you know, in Trapeze, telling me he loves to go to circuses and see them throw the triple, you know. I think that's one movie that's never come up on this show, Trapeze. Oh, yeah. We've mentioned a lot. We've talked about a lot of different kinds of movies. Did you ever see a Cary Grant movie called Once Upon a Time?

I don't think I have. Nobody has seen that damn movie. What's it about? One of my favorite movies as a kid. You won't believe the story, and I'll make it as brief as I can. Cary Grant is a con man, meets this girl. She has a son. The son has a box with a hole in it, and inside the box is a caterpillar. The kid would play on the harmonica, yes, sir, that's my baby nose, and the caterpillar

would dance. You never saw the caterpillar dance. You heard them reacting to the caterpillar would dance. You never saw the caterpillar dance. You heard them reacting to the caterpillar dancing. So Cary Grant tries to make a fortune off this damn thing, you know. It does become super famous. They're painting, it's called Curly, the caterpillar is called Curly. They're painting the caterpillar on airplanes, you know, like they did back then with, you know, pinup models. The Caterpillar became a star. One day, the kid is distraught. Curly is not in the box. And they're all so sad.

And Cary Grant, of course, how am I going to make money now? There's this Caterpillar that I've been using, you know. And this butterfly starts flying around in the room. The kid plays. I'm about to cry. The kid plays the harmonica. The kid plays the harmonica, plays, yes, sir, that's my baby. And the butterfly starts to fly like he's dancing to the music. Oh, wow. Why hasn't anybody heard or made a big deal? It's called Once Upon a Time. Do you know this picture? No, I don't know it either.

This sounds great. I thought I knew every obscure Cary Grant movie. For a kid, that movie, again, I'm choking up, you know, it was so beautiful, that movie. We'll look for it. Once Upon a Time, Cary Grant. You'll never hear about that movie. You describe yourself as a pushover for love stories and tear jerkers. Did you cry when Elvis died in Love Me Tender? I cried when Elvis Presley died in Love Me Tender. I cried when Yul Brynner died in The King and I. That's a hard one. I cry today when E.T. gets on the ship and leaves.

Okay, and he's a hard one. I cry today when E.T. gets on the ship and leaves. Okay? And he's a puppet. I'm crying my eyes out. So the master of horror is a softie. Yeah. Well, you know, in some instances. In accidents. Because I'm calm and collective and I can take control.

I can turn off, because I did calm and collective and I can take control. I can turn off because I did so. I can turn off my emotions like that when I have to. If something horrible is happening, I can be practical and distance from it. It's just something that I took with me from the war. I mean, it really pisses me off when I hear, hey, I just went on vacation in Vietnam. What? 58,212 of us died for Vietnam, and now it's a vacation? It's a resort? What?

This doesn't make sense to me, you know. Anyway. I'm sure. I'm sure. Completely different perspective on the place. Yeah. I mean, I'd love to go back and see where I was stationed. It's probably a resort, you know?

Now, you're a movie buff, obviously. Do you want to remake? Do I have this right? You want to remake the movie Most Dangerous Game, the Joel McRae movie? Oh, yeah. That was a horrible movie. Did you ever see it? Probably when I was a kid.

I saw the bad Andy Griffith TV movie. There was one called Savages with Andy Griffith hunts Timothy Bottoms. Oh, well, listen, they remade that plot many, many times, but not the original most dangerous game. I mean, I was bringing it to present

day. My villain was a cross between Idi Amin, Gaddafi, and bin Laden, okay? Guys that you would believe would behead you and put your trophy up on the wall. That's what I didn't believe about that movie back then. We're talking 1930, Joel McRae. Right. You know, the fencing scene was horrible. The villain was a milquetoast.

But that's typical. Every time there's a villain, it's some gay little milquetoast guy. The villain should be an equal. It should be, you know, Lee Marvin or Charles Bronson. It should be somebody who can kick your ass. Someone formidable. Some shit to win. It's always this little milquetoast guy, like in that movie movie who you didn't think for a second would have a

chance against joe leslie banks yeah yeah well i i i've always noticed like in the old movies and tv if you had a a gay actor he'd either be an eccentric or he'd be evil. A caricature, yes. Yes. Yeah. And there was something about, like, the evil villain, where the evil villains were always a little effeminate. Yeah. Robert Douglas, the guy we talked about, Errol Flynn's nemesis in all those fencing movies,

was very effeminate. But he could handle a sword, you know? So that brings up something. I saw something. It was a commercial on how to buy a Halloween costume for your effeminate son. Have you seen this thing? I've not. Have you seen this thing? I've not.

A camouflaged soldier outfit with a gun, you know. And this was really, this has got to, I'm surprised we're not hearing a lot more. This has got to be so offensive to people. How to buy a macho costume. Oh, it wasn't real. our engineer says was an onion piece. Well, see, I believe faked you out. Oh, oh, one thing. Just getting back to him. I, I, I know like Lon Chaney Jr.

They said actually knew how to do makeup. But by then the makeup union wouldn't allow it. Huh. Well, you know, I would believe that story simply because of, you know, the unions and don't touch that wire. That's his job. He's part of that union, you know. And well, part of the reason they got rid of Jack Pierce was that it took him – he was building that stuff from scratch every time and wouldn't use the new foam latex for – he was building it. So it was just taking too long. And Jack Pierce wound up doing powdering – Mr. Ed.

Yeah. His nose. And this was brilliant. This was a genius guy, you know. So, you know, I just love reading all these old Hollywood stories. One of the best is The Lion of Hollywood, and that's Louis B. Mayer and MGM. You know, I've read the book about Harry Kahn, you know, Universal, RKO. I mean, I just love that stuff.

Because to me, I think I'm born too late. If I were to come back in time, I would like to come back in 1925 on the Universal lot. Oh, wow. Can you imagine what you would see in the next five years?

Hang out with Todd Browning. Oh, with... On the set of The Phantom of the Opera. But this gets us to our next thing that I see in movies. Five years. Hang out with Todd Browning. Oh, we're on the set of The Phantom of the Opera. Yeah, Carl Freund. But this gets us to our next thing that I see in movies. I've been on bunches of movie sets, and I walk around the lot, and I've yet to see, like, Roman soldiers and ballerinas and spacemen. I saw that.

And I saw that when I was doing Friday the 13th. Friday the 13th was at the old Zoetrope Studios, the one that Coppola began. Oh, yeah. I think it was called Hollywood Studios after that and then Raleigh Studios or something. But on the back lot, Duncan Reagan was shooting the Errol Flynn story. I saw Roman fucking soldiers. I saw Duncan Reagan dressed in a swashbuckling outfit. To me, that backlot back then was Hollywood folklore, a dream,

the thing that you see and that I saw in movies growing up. But I know what you mean. I mean, that stuff does not happen, like on Culver City or, you know, something like that. There's no big spectacles going on where, you know, you're going to see that stuff. You know, see the Coen Brothers movie, the last one. I think you'll like it.

It's about... No, I just bought it. I saw it in the theater. Yeah. A fun look at that period. And Hollywood fixers. Genuinely accurate. Right. Eddie Mannix. Can you tell a story that, I mean, to me, there are some injuries where I go, oh, that's

too far, Eddie. That's too much. In Vietnam, a guy got his testicles. Oh, my buddy was shot in the testicles, yeah. Well, he was, okay, here's the thing. Back then, during the war, we would drop pamphlets all over the place from airplanes that hopefully Viet Cong soldiers would pick up,

and it was teaching them a word. I forget what the word is now. But if they said the word, it means they were surrendering and giving themselves up for, you know, recuperation, you know, being brought to their, to our side. You know, we dropped those flyers to any Viet Cong that didn't want to be who they were coming on our side. And, you know, I mean, we would detain them, of course, you know. So my buddy Gene Buttons was out one night on patrol, and this VI con shot him in his testicle.

So Gene was trying to shoot him back, but his M16, like so many of them, jammed. And while he's trying to shoot this guy, I guess the guy was out of ammunition or something. He started saying the word, you know, the word that means I'm surrendering. But Gene didn't care. He's going to shoot this fucking guy. You know, he shot him in his balls. And eventually the M16, he got it to work and shot the guy. And it's a good thing because the guy had pulled the pin of a grenade and stuck it in his armpit. OK. And he was coming at Gene with his hands up like this.

So when Gene shot him and he went down, the grenade went off and just blew the guy to smithereens. All of this was gone. And I have pictures of that guy you know that i took in fact when i was walking to the location i almost stepped on the guy's arm it was like 50 yards away you know but the grenade went off uh in his armpit and you know did all that damage to him gene wound up you know going home uh um purple heart you know the whole bit. But there were a lot of accidents, our own guys, you know, gun going off. And I was, you know, I'm there. I'm there to see it. Now, I wasn't in the front lines.

I was in the headquarters company, you know, processing reconnaissance film when the pilots came down. And then when something horrible happened. OK, here's a story for you. I'll try to make it as brief as possible. When you're in Vietnam, you're entitled to R&R, rest and recuperation. After six months, you're allowed to go to Australia, Thailand, a lot of close places like that. I went to Hawaii to meet my then wife. But I waited until my 10th month. I didn't want to go back to Vietnam and have six months left. So I waited until my

10th month. And when I went back to Vietnam, they put me on the worst duty possible, 30 days of guard duty, which means you're in a bunker with three other guys. Two guys are asleep, two guys are awake. And there's seven bunkers. There's a line of bunkers all made of sandbags, okay? And each bunker is an arsenal of weapons. Grenade launcher, M16 machine gun, M16s on your shoulder, Claymore mines, Claymore mines knock trees over, 5,000 pellets, you pellets shoot out of this thing. And sometimes the Viet Cong would turn them around and make themselves visible.

So you'd press the button and you would get wiped out. So we painted the back of them with luminous paint. So if we could see the paint, we knew it was facing in the right direction. In front of each bunker is a trip wire. In front of it and on each side. So if somebody bumps it, a flare goes off. If somebody cuts it, it's so if somebody bumps it a flare goes off if somebody cuts it it's spring-loaded a flare goes off okay now um again there's seven bunkers the commanding officer is in the first bunker you know and he's got a scope a night scope okay so but you're not

if you saw oh it's you in the bunker and there's the woods right in front of you, the jungle. If they're coming, you're first contact, okay? If they're coming through the woods, you're the first line that they're going to bother, you know, attack. All right, so, but if you see a thousand Viet Cong coming at you, you're not allowed to open fire. You have to call the command bunker. open fire. You have to call the command bunker. That officer has to come up with a night scope. If he sees the thousand people, then he will call battalion and request permission to fire. You're not allowed to just open fire, okay? So it's three o'clock in the morning,

seventh day of 30-day guard duty. Me and Morales are on duty. And right in front of my bunker, the trip flare goes off. Now, I immediately open fire with the M-16 machine gun. Guys upstairs are hitting grenade launchers, pressing the button for the Claymore mines. Every bunker in the line opens fire in front of my bunker. And it was a duck, okay? A duck had set off the trip flare. So now there's a caravan of headlights coming to me because I opened fire without calling the command officer. A general gets out of the Jeep and, you know, I can't talk. And when I finally calmed down, he said, why did you open fire? And I said, my trip flares went off, sir. He said, I guess I would have opened fire too. What was it?

I said, it was a duck, sir. He said, did you get it? No, it flew away. We covered every square inch of dirt with something, a bullet shrapnel, okay? The duck flew away. So they took me off guard duty that night. And for the rest of my time in Vietnam, they called me the duck slayer. Okay.

But the next night we were attacked. Guys in those bunkers died. Body bags carried away. We were attacked. I wasn't there. To me, the duck saved my life. I have never eaten duck since Vietnam. Wow. Wow. That's an ending. Wow.

That is a very strange and frightening story, Tom. Absolutely. A hundred percent true. I promise you. As we run out of time here, can we ask you about some of the legendary actors that you got to work with? We got a short list here and maybe you'd pick one or two. Okay, sure. Joe Spinell, John Marley, Fritz Weaver, anybody, any good story come to mind? Hal Holbrook? Well, you know, well, I wasn't with them on set as an actor. I was simply, you know, doing the fluffy creature, Hal Holbrook, especially for Creepshow. John Marley and I became pals. We would go out to clubs together and they would set up VIP areas. That's the guy, the guy with the horse head in the bed, you know.

Jack Waltz. Yeah, exactly right. So he was, I love that man. He was so, such a smart, intelligent actor. But who else? Who else we got on there? Patrick McNee. Patrick McNee?

You directed him? No, no. Didn't you work with Patrick McNee? No.ee. You directed him. No, no. Didn't you work with Patrick McNee? No. No. IMDb let us down. Oh, listen. I go to IMDb.

There's like nine things on IMDb. I have no idea what the hell they're talking about. How about Fritz Weaver? Fritz Weaver, yes. I hired and directed Fritz Weaver in one of my Tell Us From the Dark Side episodes. But there's also George Clooney. George Clooney, the nicest man you could ever want to hang out with. He was so inspiring to me.

He treated everybody so nice. And it doesn't take a lot of effort to be nice. And just he was – I can go on and on about George Clooney, how nice that man was. Who else we got? Fritz Weber. Oh, you know what? I shook hands with the Three Stooges, okay?

Oh, wow. Oh, my God. We buried the lead. In Pittsburgh. They came to promote the Three Stooges meet Hercules. I made sure I was on the aisle so when they walked down, I could shake. And they looked like businessmen. Hair combed back nicely.

Their hands were very dry. And they got up on stage and started smacking the piss out of each other. Mo's hair fell down. He became Mo. He pulled out Larry's hair, and Larry became Larry. And there it was, the Three Stooges, okay? I smoked a joint with Timothy Leary. Wow.

Also good. I'm at a convention in New York, Green Room. He's on a couch with this big joint. He took a drag, and then he's looking for who to give it to. I leaped across furniture to get there and get that joint from him so I could say that I smoked a joint with Timothy Leary. Wow, these are some good brushes of greatness. A lot of your listeners don't even know who that is.

Well, our listeners will surprise you. Okay. They wind up looking it up. Oh, yeah. Well, who else is on the list? Well, let's see. Who else? Hal Holbrook, Fritz Weaver, Joe Spinell.

Joe Spinell. Also from The Godfather. Again, a wonderful man. You know, I had to. Well, yes. And I couldn't wait to meet him because of The Godfather. from the godfather well again a wonderful man you know i i had to well yes that and that that's i couldn't wait to meet him because of the godfather and if you've you know we did this movie maniac together oh yeah sure he you know and i can't tell you how many meetings we had where i would say to

joe no joe please you can't bite that off of a woman, okay? He wanted to do horrible things to women. And, you know, I have to create it physically with latex and rubber. He said, no, no, no, no, no. He can't do that. Now, I had to cast his head and make him, you know, a fake head. Because his head gets ripped off at the end of the movie. Right. Now, I gave him the fake head.

And he put it on his television in his living room. Now, when he died, it was like William Holden. He hit his head and bled a lot. He bled to death, you know, on his apartment floor. And he fell with his feet facing the entrance to the apartment. So and blood was everywhere. So when the police came in, they saw him lying there and the head on the television. And they thought he had been decapitated because his fake, you know, his head is naked. You just couldn't see his head, you know, from the doorway.

You know, one of the guys who walked in actually told me this story, you know, with the police. Now, William Holden, he hid his head on the corner of the table. Yeah, coffee table. One of the end tables near the police. Now, William Holden, he hit his head on the corner of a table. Yeah, a coffee table. One of the end tables near the bed. Night table, yeah. And he bled to death as well. But wait, who else on the list? Joe Spinell? Just because you mentioned Joe Spinell,

I just remember that line. Oh, yeah, he had a lot of buffers. A lot of buffers, Senator. Willie Cheechy. Who else? Anybody else on the list that might have... I just scrolled down some character actors

that you worked with. Ed Harris, of course. Yeah, his second movie. Both your careers. And what about the older... You met Christopher Lee. Yeah. Any of the older horror actors still alive? Did you work with Carradine ever? I did a play with Carradine.

I did Inherit the Wind in North Carolina. Wow. John Carradine, he had wonderful stories. John Carradine, E.G. Marshall from Creepshow. But John Carradine, to me, was like beating boris karloff you know uh if you go to john caradine's imdb page there's something like 400 movies there i can't imagine an actor who worked more consistently longer of wrath grapes i know john caradine and never turned anything down apparently bride of Wrath. I know, John Carradine. And never turned anything down, apparently. Bride of Frankenstein, you know. Oh, yes.

My God, it's the monster. There you go. And his voice, he told me that directors would say to him, young man, you are in love with your voice. Could you please stick to the idea of the scene? That's good. If I had that voice, I would be in love with my, Oh my God.

Yeah. And you know, I've, I've worked with his sons. I've worked with Keith. I've worked with David. And, and I,

and I told him of course that I worked with their father and they didn't, it's like, I didn't say anything, you know, I don't know what their relationship was. You know, I think that was a wacky upbringing, having John as a father. Well, it couldn't have been as wacky as Bing Crosby.

I'm sure wacky is the word. You're laughing because you probably know. Oh, my God. He beat the shit out of his kid. Yeah, yeah. In fact, someone I know asked Buddy Hackett. He spoke to him about Bing Crosby. And Buddy Hackett said,

I don't know why Bing Crosby would be this kid. Because Bing Crosby couldn't get a high on. That was a very good Buddy Hackett. He's an excellent mimic, Tom. Did you ever see Buddy Hackett and who's the guy from the Carol Burnett? Can I tell you something? This is mentioned in just about every episode. Bud and Lou.

It's come up on this show dozens of times. I just bought it. I just bought it on VHS. It's horrible. Horrible. It's horrible. They look like they've never seen Abbott and Costello. All Buddy Hackett did was, like, talk slow and, you know, the routines.

It was just so bad. And I mean, who's on first, which is the whole rhythm, is the whole thing with who's on first. And he's going, what's the guy's name on first base. All he did was talk slow. That is so funny. Why didn't the director, you know, you don't quite have the thing there, buddy. I love that Tom Savini brought up Bud and Lou. That has popped up in every episode of this show.

We've done about 125 of these, Tom, and that comes up all the time. I've done Buddy Hackett's death scene in about like 50 of these shows at least. Every other show I'm doing. You've got to make it something that has to happen when you do these. Somehow you've got to bring it up, you know. Okay. It's like Nino with the Hirschfeld. Even though I just did this yesterday, when Buddy Hackett, as Lou Costello is dying and Artie Johnson, as the manager, brings him a strawberryted, and he goes, you know, I've had a lot of strawberry malted in my day,

but this one's the best. And then he falls down dead. He said it to get that far. You don't want to get that far. Stop watching after, I don't know, 10 minutes, maybe 15. Oh, they destroy the Abbott and Costello routines. Well, there's two guys that come here in Pittsburgh that should have done that movie. They do Bud and Lou, and it's perfect.

It's at a convention called the Monster Bash. It's a convention of all old-time horror. Rico Browning, who played the creature from The Black Lagoon. Yeah, he's still with us. Wow. When McCarthy was alive, this was a convention for old-timers. And these two guys were perfect. Joe Ziegler and Bill Riley.

They would even walk around dressed in the costumes from like Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein. I can show you pictures of Frankensteinstein. You know, I have, I can show you pictures of Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the mummy and them. And you would think it's a frame from the movie. That's how good these guys are. Wow. So there's a watching Bud and Lou.

I know that I know the VHS copy you bought because it's not even available on DVD. You have to go to this. Yeah. Long enough to be to this third. Yeah. Long enough to be a modern technology, I guess. It's atrocious. It belongs to that period of films, those that we've talked about on this show, those really bad Hollywood biopics that came out. They did the Rod Steiger as W.C. Fields. And they did the Gable and Lombard with James Brolin and Jill Klayberg.

And there's a spate of them so why did we talk about Bud and Lou I asked you you said something that maybe because it had to do with Bing Crosby he was doing Buddy Hackett to explain Bing Crosby the kid's childhood

did you fire a gun when you would speak to crowds did you do that oh yeah because a blank gun fire a gun when you would, when you would speak to crowds? Did you do that? Oh yeah. Because a blank gun, I would come out and fire a blank gun and it was so loud, you know? And I would say something like, I bet your security will walk in in a minute. Security never walked in. But the whole point was I would take all the bullets out of the gun and put one back in and spin the barrel and point it out at the audience.

And they would be, you know, and the lesson was that the best scares come from suspense, you know, show the threat and then make the threat. That's why I think World War Z is a terrific movie. A lot of people didn't like it, but that's an example of creating a situation, a horrible situation, and then throwing people in it because those scares became suspense scares. I mean, anybody can jump up and go boo and they do it all the time, even in big movies. And that scare lasts for like a second or two, but the suspense scares, you can draw that out. You know what I mean? But not too long. If you're a good director, but not too long. If you're a good director, you know that not to go too long. Like here's a room and there's a door here and there's a door here. You show behind this door is the psycho or the

tentacled creature or the bomb. You show the threat. Then you have the girl walk in that door. From the second she walks in, the scare has started no and you can't wait for her to get to that door in fact you please go to the door so i can see what's going to happen and if you're smart you slow her down the phone rings oh no the whole time she's on the phone you're going crazy you want her to get to that door okay so she hangs up and you feel great okay great she's gonna go to the door but then oh you slow her down again. Oh, I broke a nail. And now you're getting pissed.

You can't wait. Okay, if you're smart, she goes to the door. She opens it and there's nothing there. And you go, huh. And then the fucking monster jumps out from behind her or the bomb goes off or something. The best way to scare people is to put them at ease, make them laugh, and then boom, you've got them. But there's a time limit. It's all about timing. Well, you asked about my childhood. So just real quickly, I used to dress up as, I think I'm, again, 14. I used to dress up as Zorro. I was madly in love

with Zorro, the TV series. I hadn't even seen Tyrone Power. Guy Williams TV series? Guy Williams. This was a Disney show. A guy wearing a cape and riding a horse with a sword. That's me. I want to do that. If I could come back, I'd come to those times. But so it was Zorro I was crazy about. So I would dress up as Zorro and wait at night and wait for a car to come by on my street.

And I would jump in front of the car in his headlights and run away. Oh, jeez. Then run away. And I knew that that guy is going, was that Zorro? That was a thrill to me. And not just, not on Halloween. I'm talking, you know, July. I love that. We've learned so much about you, Tom.

You never jumped in front of a car in costume, did you, Gill? Just so I could be in the spotlight as well. Great stuff. Carve the Z in the air and then run, you know? And I want to tell you, next time I'm booked in Pittsburgh, I'm definitely giving you a call. Come see the monsters. Oh, yeah, you got to go.

And so this has been Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre and the master of horror makeup, Tom Savini. Tom, you are the perfect Halloween guest. Thank you. Thank you. We thank you. This time I'm going to celebrate it. I'm usually not home, you know, but I'll be home this time.

Putting on the Zorro costume? You're the Padre. You're the guy I keep seeing on Facebook. That's me. Roy Fremke's old friend. Who? Roy Fremke's. Oh, really?

I studied with him at SVA. Yeah. Document of the dead. You bet. You bet. Been hearing your name a long time. Good. Glad to hear that.

Thanks for doing this for us, man. My pleasure. Thank you, Tom. long time. Good. Glad to hear it. Thanks for doing this for us, man. My pleasure. Thank you, Tom. Goodbye. Thank you. Bye-bye.