Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 244. Dennis Muren

Episode Date: January 28, 2019

Gilbert and Frank (joined by guest co-host Michael Giacchino) chat with Oscar-winning special effects artist (and GGACP fan) Dennis Muren, who praises the artistry of stop-motion animation, looks back on the early days of Industrial Light & Magic and shares behind-the-scenes stories from the making of modern classics "E.T.," "Jurassic Park" and "The Empire Strikes Back." Also, Marlon Brando ages gracefully, Irwin Allen breaks up the Marx Brothers, Michael gets nostalgic for the "Temple of Doom" mine car sequence and Dennis remembers longtime friends Forrest Ackerman and Ray Harryhausen. PLUS: "Flesh Gordon"! The magic of Willis O'Brien! "Casablanca" in 3-D! Bob Burns recreates "The Exorcist"! And Dennis breaks down the transformation scene from "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This is David McCallum, and you're listening to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and we're once again recording with our engineer, Frank Furtarosa. And our guest this week is an emmy and oscar-winning visual effects and special effects artist and the senior visit visual effects supervisor and creative director of industrial light and magic you may have heard of. Reading this man's list of credits is staggering and overwhelming, but what the hell, we'll take a crack at it. Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back,

Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Willow, The Abyss, Terminator 2 Judgment Day, War of the Worlds, and Jurassic Park, just to name a few. Among his many achievements was spearheading ILM's move from models and miniatures to CGI for Terminator 2 and helping to usher in a brand new age of computer-generated imagery with the CG dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. He's been nominated for 15 Academy Awards, winning nine of them, giving him the most Oscars of any living filmmaker. He's also been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by his peers in the Visual Effects Society, and he's one of only three special effects artists to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Joining Stan Winston and his longtime friend and hero, Ray Harryhausen. Please welcome to the show one of the most significant figures in the 20th century cinema and believe it or not a man who claims he enjoys

this very podcast the legendary dennis murin hey thank you so much who Who's that? Yes. Yes. Dennis. It's actually true. You listen to the show. I listen to the show. Yes. I've heard. I probably heard at least three quarters or more of the shows. Wow.

Jeez. That's not easy. Your numbers are way up there now. We're thrilled. We didn't believe it was true. It's true. it was true we we were talking i i'm came across equinox on tv and and at first i thought well this is gonna be some awful crap and i'll watch five minutes of it and i wound up watching the it's a fun movie how did that come about, it came about because I had some time between my freshman year and sophomore year in college, summer, right? And I said, let's make a movie.

It was like Mickey Rooney, right? And Judy Garland, literally that was it. And I borrowed the money from my grandfather who'd put away some money for college for like, if I could get into USC and I couldn't get into it because of my grades i took the 3500 and was with two or three or four friends made that movie all in 16 millimeter and this is started in 1965 and we finished in 67 and full of the special effects it was just a way of getting uh effects out there because i was sort of tired of just neighborhood kids and friends and people in school looking at them I said I want everybody to see this work so what do you do you just make a movie and it wasn't very good but it was okay and I had some good stuff and I sold it a couple years later to Jack Harris who had done the blob and 4d man and all and he bought it and put another $40,000 into it,

which was eight times what I put into it or something, fixed the sound up, shot some new scenes, and that's the version you saw that was in the theater. Well, you've got three fans of that movie right here. I'm going to introduce the third one. The gentleman sitting to my right has done this podcast before. Michael Giacchino's here. Hey, Dennis, how are you?

Fine, fine. Great to see you. Only one Oscar? Just one. I know, I know. The man has nine. I know, I know. You're on your way. He can start a bowling alley with his. Do we see one behind you? Do we see those behind you,

Dennis, your Oscars? Oh, yeah. On the shelf. You know, no, no. There's a bunch of stuff there, but there's one Oscar up there and one C-3PO. Okay. That's all. And a lot of Vaders and other things I've got around,

but most of the Oscars are like all over the place. And do you have the monster from Equinox up there? Not up there. It's on the floor. If you want to, I can get it if you want to see it.

Really? We insist. You actually have it? Okay want to see it. Really? We insist. You actually have it? Okay, hold on. What's left of it? Dennis is fetching the monster from Equinox. Oh, I see a copy of it over there on the shelf. What is that?

It looks like the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Gilbert on the shelf. Do you see it? Oh, jeez. This is fantastic. Oh, this is too good. Oh, why aren't we doing this in Dennis' living room?

Let's go. Look at this. Wow. Oh my god, he's holding it up. Oh, boy. Fantastic. Holy cow. I wish we were a visual medium. Isn't that the other monster? What about there was that monster that was like, there's one on the

shelf over there. Right behind your head. Wait a minute. He just put his phones back on. Say it again, Gil. Now I can hear it. There's one right behind you. Right behind you.

Which one? Yeah. Okay. Let me see if we can get a clear view of this. Oh, that one, it's like kind of greenish. On the left? The one on the far left? Yeah.

Isn't that the... Oh, that was a gift from Ray Harryhausen. That's a version that he did of the Ymir from 20 Miles to Earth. Yeah, okay. He made a few of those, and I'm lucky enough to have one of them. Can I ask you something about the Equinox monster there? Yeah. Did that have an armature in it?

It does. And what was it? Was it a ball socket or wire? What was it? Yeah. There's wire in the wings. The body's all armatured. Wow.

And you made that at the time? No, no. My friend Dave Allen made this. Amazing. It was a couple years older than me. Very impressive. Now, I grew up on the stop action. Yeah.

And it's still where my heart is. Like, there's something about stop action. I remember watching a show where they had guests on, and somebody was talking about the new CGI effects, and the guy said, oh, you know, when you look back on those old stop action all you could think is thank god for CGI and that pissed me off good because it was like that that to me it was still it still magical, the look at stop action. Well, and also, you know what it is, is you can sense that there's an artist behind it trying to make this work.

Sure. And struggling. You can just feel the performance that they're trying to do with this hard, old-fashioned way of doing things. And you appreciate it. In computer graphics, you can't tell how it's done. It's so slick and mathematical looking. Yeah.

There was a quote. Someone said on this show that Roger Ebert, he said that, um, uh, uh, CGI looks real, but feels phony.

Uh, stop action looks phony, but feels phony uh stop action looks phony but feels real yeah feels very emotional and the whole point of its emotion you know any movie anything you're doing as a performer you want to get emotion from the audience and there's hardly any emotion when you're looking at some sort of something. It's too sparse. CG is too sparse and simplified. Although I love it because if you do it right, but it's hard to do it really right, especially with the demands now. It was necessary because the audiences did not really buy the old style.

And I don't just mean stop motion. I mean all the old style effects. It was really harder and harder to get the stuff to look real. But CG is, uh, because anybody can kind of do it. You know, you can go to any computer store,

buy the stuff, buy the, the, you know, download the materials off the internet, buy a book or training program, do it yourself. It's so,

it's open to so many more people being able to do it that it's just all over the place. So, but that doesn't mean it's all good. It's, it's never the tool. more people being able to do it that it's just all over the place so but that doesn't mean it's all good it's never the tool it's how you're using it yes it's and you certainly know how to use it for god's sakes and then some yeah i mean it's ridiculous i remember being a kid and being completely disappointed you know after seeing being raised on har Harryhausen. And then we get to those films where they put the prosthetics on the lizards and had them running around. Remember that?

Fucking worse. I remember how disappointed as a kid I was. That pissed me off so much. When I'm waiting for some stop action dinosaurs and I see like, you know, fucking iguanas. Yes. With plastic horns on them. Yeah. You can sort of see how it's being pushed into the scene too.

And it doesn't want to go. And they said to make matters worse, they had like people with prods that was stabbing them. Oh, no. I hope not. Burning them and stuff. Yeah, tied together and look like they're fighting, rolling them on the ground.

Terrible. Yeah. Well, we're all Harryhausen kids here, and obviously you just mentioned him. Oh, yeah. Dennis mentioned that he had a gift, and he was an important person in your life, Dennis. Yeah, he was.

You know, I was also a big fan of all effects. I mean, I love the stuff that John Fulton did with bridges, the toker re and, and the 10 command, not so much the 10 commandments actually, but I like the, uh, reigns of rancher poor and, you know, does that, the tornado and the wizard Oz, I was an effects fan and I still am. Uh, and you know, again, it's the emotion. You could look at something you can see a Ray Harryhausen film and say, oh, my gosh, you know, I feel something when I'm looking at it. Then you look at your 20th Century Fox Lost World movie where you have lizards and you say, I'm not feeling anything. I don't care about that. And I heard with that remake of Lost World, with Claude Rains in it.

Yeah. That they had asked Willis O'Brien, who was the creator of King Kong, to be part of it. And he was very excited thinking he'd be creating. He'd have more money to work with. And then they just used his name and threw in fucking lizards. Yeah. Isn't that sad? Imagine how excited he probably got there for a while, too.

Yeah. Which is so unfortunate. Because he thought he could use his talent for that, but with more money behind it. Yep. But that's showbiz. And that's Erwin Allen. He's made some real fun movies, but he was always tight on the dollar. Well, he also made the story of mankind and had the bright idea to separate the Marx Brothers.

Yes! Which we'll never forgive him for. Yeah! Groucho Chico Harpo, all in separate seats. Yeah, that was inspiring. That was, oh my God. But you were a fan of, and I was reading about you, Dennis, you were a fan of the Thief of Baghdad. Yeah, that was inspiring. Oh, my God. But you were a fan of all that. I was reading about you, Dennis.

You were a fan of the Thief of Baghdad. Oh, yeah. And I guess what the disaster movies of the day were. And event movies. They weren't called tentpole movies then. They were movies. You liked big movies. Yeah, I always did, and I never never ever thought i'd be working on them

so this my whole career has been like where the heck did this come from because i was a i've been doing this since i was like six or seven years old with a still camera and then i got a movie camera when i was 10 and i had plastic dinosaurs you could buy at a hobby shop and i'd build a toy boat or an airplane and blow it up of course everybody did that but i'd do it two or three times and have a movie camera on it you know because i would and then and then week later you'd see the film you got it back from the camera store was rick baker with you well you you and rick baker brought together no i got to know rick later okay uh when i was like about 20 or so i'm talking about back when i was you know a kid a kid and working in Super 8. Problem I have. No, no.

8 millimeter. 8 before Super 8. If computerization is done badly, it just looks too shiny and glossy. And it's like, I mean, what I love about stop action is you could put your hand into the screen and touch the thing that's there yeah that's exactly right you can feel it it's tactile without need to it's real well and the people that you know i i you know you can do that sometimes in cg if you get it right but a lot of people don't see it i think we've got a lot of it's a lot of talent that computer graphic people at around now but they haven't had a chance to really learn

the aesthetics they just you know if they you know the technical they'll hire you and you work on games which don't have to be photo real you work on commercials don't have to be photo real you get into the age you know the realm of feature films they really have not ever had any classes that i know of i've talked to schools about doing, classes about what reality looks like on movie film or on movie digital. Interesting. And the people don't know, they know what they think they know, but it's not enough. You can learn more.

The more you look at something, the more you learn, and you realize I just am scratching the surface of all this stuff. I was going to say, it's also about bringing up Harryhausen again, the idea that he put character into those figures. There was like, they would stop and scratch their leg or they would do things that we all would do. So it just felt like a real creature walking

across that screen. It wasn't mindless. Nothing he did was mindless. That's what I loved. And it was a, it was also a performing creature as opposed to that lizard from The Lost World. Exactly. You know, there was just too hot under the lights and things.

I just wanted to go to sleep. So how old were you when you decided to look him up in the phone book and place a call, Dennis? I think I was like 12 or 13. And he lived in Malibu. And I was in La Cunada near Pasadena. So he was in the phone book. And I managed to get over and see him. My mom drove me two hours across town. La Cunada near Pasadena so he was in the phone book and I managed to get over and see him my mom

drove me two hours across town and he was the nicest guy with his wife and all and invited me in and but you know he never talked about how he did anything ever he wouldn't I don't even know if he talked about using rear projection so you know interesting I knew from the people I talked to and all how it was done but he was really really secretive. And, you know, he's a magician. He just wanted to sort of keep his secrets as long as he could. He didn't want to reveal anything. And he was an apprentice of Willis O'Brien, wasn't he? Yeah, correct. Yeah, he was.

They were, you know, Ray took his early dinosaur films that he'd done to willis in like middle of 1945 or six just when obie was starting up with lost or with joe young and hired him onto joe young right away so he saw something in that you know and i don't think there was anybody other than ray that was doing it you know there was obie you know 30 years old or 40 years and then i everything i've heard ray was kind of on his own i mean he knew other fans of sci-fi like bradbury and fory ackerman but i don't know of any other people that he was actually doing his home movies with you know same with peter jackson you look at

peter jackson's home movies if you've ever seen those early ones where he never put the puppets into him it's always just like one person you know it's it's him shooting it and then somebody somebody else out there that's uh you know performing to the creature that was never in there and i think rain was the same thing and i was kind of lucky being later on that i had like four or five friends that loved this and we would gather around and show each other our effect sequences all during the late 50s and 60s so we weren't really working on our own we we encouraged each other none of us were in the business but we were encouraging each other and you had to figure out how to do all this on your own were there any publications available

i mean i when i was a kid there was like cinefx and things like that effects yeah cinefantastic and effects and but for when you were doing it what were you how were you figuring this out you know you just learn it on your own. You see enough in the movies. A lot of the stuff you can just look at and tell, oh, that's a model. In a bathtub, it looks like. It's actually some huge tank at Warner Brothers, but it looks like a toy. And you just see enough of that stuff, and you say, well, that's not the right way to do it.

Or whatever. I didn't know why they did it one way or another. I understand now, because it's usually economics. But also, some people don't have a vision. And they're not really trying to entertain. They're telling a story. So I need to have a World War II battleship go from the right of the screen across to the left because it's about to shoot a tornado.

So they shoot that as like a wide view. Somebody else gets in there and says, no, it's dramatic's dramatic it's the power it's about to shoot this thing i want to see the waves splashing up in front of the ship you know and you shoot it from another angle well a lot of people don't know the difference and uh you know one is emotional and one is telling the story but any director wants every shot to tell the story and it's just much more important to be able to do that. But you can really see it in the old films. And I've made a point of always trying to figure out why I like something, why I like the genie in Thief of Baghdad and not the giant Cyclops in Ulysses or something like that. Didn't you make your own films when you were a kid too, Mike?

All I did was make stop motion films growing up. Really? Oh, my God. I have tons of them. Tons of them. I mean, we could sit here for hours and watch them. You were a Harryhausen kid. Are you kidding me?

Yeah. And then, of course, when you started working and doing your thing, I was around 13 or 14 when E.T. came out. And then I became obsessed. And can I bring it up now? Sure. One of my absolute favorite things that I have ever seen has been the shot where E.T. is coming up over the hill. He's walking up, and he sees the valley, all the lights in the valley there. That, to me, was one of the most magical things I have ever seen in my life. And to this day, when I'm on the 405 and I crest the top of the 405 into the valley, I think of that shot.

And I want you to tell me, tell me everything you can about that shot. Well, you want me to? Yeah, yeah, sure. The first thought, of course, let's shoot it for real. So we go out there, and this is back in 81, though. Film stocks aren't bright enough to do it. But I really wanted to do it and we tried it then and then we can put the et had to be walking away in that shot i think if that's

the one you're thinking of yeah uh just after he sees it you see him walking away yep we could never get the light to do it so then it ended up being a model and we didn't have much money on that film and i made this tiny little model about four feet square and we just did it you know with the wall that's for the trees and the background was a paint like a piece of masonite or glass painted with little holes in there with lights behind it and we had a little tiny et made about two inches or no more than that five inches tall that somebody was just moving down there shooting a little slow motion but you got a camera boom they're very small the lights were twinkling though in in a yeah they were very much like it would with the atmosphere so how did you

yeah how did you you know i'd have to remember either it was like really simple and we had a bunch of like hanging string pieces of film or something with a little fan on it and shooting in slow motion i mean it was real simple so that's you know and it worked because it was so powerful you know and then i also really have felt the the cameraman part of me thinks that every moment should be like perfect like you're there steven's there you know with the with the cast the crew the cameraman you're ready to shoot and suddenly everything happens and the moon changes in the side and it's beautiful and that's when you shoot so that's what i try to do is come up with a better moment, like a magical moment for most of the stuff I do. Well, you did it.

And that's one of those, you know, and it's the brightness of the twinkly, all that sort of stuff. Here's something when they don't do stuff right with special effects is sometimes when you watch a movie, it looks like the movie stops, and it's like, ladies and gentlemen, special effects. Like, it doesn't go, it doesn't fit. You mean it's not organic. Yeah. It's a seamless part of the story. No.

Well, I know, you know why that is? Because they have a storyboard. So they say, we want this, you know, again, we want this ship, this World Wari battleship to go from the right across to the left to show that he's about to shoot the tornado we have to show he's pursuing and that's all the effects crew maybe is given okay and they just shoot it but the storyboard artist may not know what he's trying to do so they're not thinking as a director they're not thinking as a filmmaker that really and that's that's so, that happens all the time. It also used to happen because you couldn't really move the camera very often for some effects.

You had to keep it still so you could shoot a lot of different elements and put them together. And that's one of the reasons for that sort of static feel that you're talking about. I just want to bring it. But that always drove me crazy. It did? You know, crazy doing that. It ruins the whole film. Yeah, it seems like the movie is at a standstill.

Right. And that's why the sequence in Temple of Doom works so amazingly well with the minecarts because it keeps moving. The camera's moving. You're alongside. And you are cutting back and forth through that entire scene between practical set photography and what you did. And if you could just, again, I'm going to ask you to break one thing down a little bit. And at what point did you realize

you would have to make a new camera or modify a 35 millimeter camera in order to get those shots on the mine car chase? Well, I'd been over in England. I saw them shooting the big loop. They had a circle that was probably 100 feet around that they could shoot the car going in with the actors in it and everything.

And we were just thinking, okay, how long would a shot be when you've got a wider view? And it needed to be like seven seconds, eight seconds. You want something like that to really feel the energy. And you figure out how big a scale you're going to build something and then how long the smallest camera you could find and everything. It was too expensive to do it as a model. And we didn't

have space at ILM. We were really busy at that time on a lot of projects. And there was a back building we had that was probably 75 feet square. And okay. The only reason that we can't get a seven-second shot in a 75-foot run is that the camera's too big, which was like 10 inches wide. And I said, well, that's silly. Why can't we just do it with a smaller camera and we solve it? And I just, because we had a lot of Nikons we'd been using for lining shots up and everything, I said, maybe we can do it with a Nikon. I don't see why we couldn't. We just have to rip off the back and take a movement, they call them, from the movie stop-motion camera, put it on the back of that, and do it one frame at a time. And I got a friend of mine there, Mike Callister, engineered the whole thing.

And we did it, and it made a huge difference. And it meant that the walls of the cave didn't have to be concrete or anything like that. We could do them with aluminum foil. So you just, I mean, you shouldn't stop motion, right? But you just crinkle the set around from behind until it looks good. Then you spray the color on it and shoot it, and that's it. It sounds simple. Fantastic.

I love it. Fantastic. It's one of those things that, you know, there's a lot of those, you know, being boxed in and having a problem or is it to a real advantage? Because then you learn things and there's a reason why you were in the first place to try to solve it. And I learned something on Empire Strikes Back that I've never forgotten. There was a shot flying over at the beginning of the film, flying over Hoth, which is the ice planet, and you kind of look down and you see a Tauntaun, and it's running along down there.

And it's like, you know, you're just thinking, but, well, I know that. Okay, great. It's Luke or Han running after, looking for the other one or whatever. And the way that started was george just walked in right near the end of the show and showed me this background plate from a helicopter where you pushing in over the ice field about 100 feet in the air and the camera just tilts

down to the ice field there's of course nothing there and he said can you put a tauntaun in here with the guy running on it and i looked at and this is preers, right? No, there's no way with all those camera movements that you can do it and get a stop motion character in there. There's no way. And he said, well, just think about it. Think about it. And I, okay. And he walked out and within 15 minutes,

I'd figured it out. That's fantastic. And I just learned the power of like not giving up and thinking about, there's usually some way to put pieces together to get something that's going to work was that optically printed it was optically printed but the trick was getting the the tauntaun the perspective on the tauntaun to be correct one to lock it to the ground so it looked like it was running on the ground and then getting

slightly bigger as you move in and then as you're supposedly over it looking down on it, you're now looking down at its head because you're like looking down. Well, then how did you do it? Did you just have to break it down frame by frame and match that? No, no. It's the rig. Well, it was always done frame by frame. But there's some talk about it.

But the motion was done on animation stand. And the Tauntaun was being held on a rotator. So he could rotate from looking at it in profile to looking down at the top. And the animation stand could push in to get closer to it, and we plotted it, essentially, the same way they used to do all the Tom and Jerry cartoons with Gene Kelly and everything, that was all hard work on an animation stand. I just did it in a 3D space instead of in 2D space. But, you know, it took a leap of faith and all, and it took the challenge to do it. And knowing that that shot was better than if I said, oh, let's just do it as a big model

and it'll be fine. No, because it's better if it's real. So I took the time to think about it. I want to ask you a question about the problem solving. And this was something we asked you, Mike, when you were on the show. You were trying to solve the problem of that specific piece of music for Up. And you said it finally came to you in the shower. Yes, it did. Dennis, are you just sitting when you need to solve a problem like that? Are you just sitting at the computer and just – do you have to walk away?

Do you have to go for a walk? Do you have to do some kind of other exercise? I mean, how does it happen? Let's say, oh, that's it, eureka. I've solved it. It can be both. There can be the eureka moments, but often it's there when you're just trying to figure it out at the moment. But if you can't figure it out, you're still thinking about it.

Your subconscious is really working. I mean, that's the reason all of us, I think, are alive. I'm fascinated with that. It keeps us going. There was a special effect that puzzled people for years. It was finally revealed how they did it. But that was, I mean, I always loved transformation scenes. That was like, and there too, I knew how they did it. But that was, I mean, I always love transformation scenes. That was like,

and there too, I knew how they did it, but I love watching it the old time. And, and that was the transformation scene in Frederick March's Jekyll and Hyde. Can you explain how they did that? Yeah, that,

that film was in black and white and what they did was they put uh i think it was red makeup i believe on him and looking at it through a red filter you wouldn't see the makeup and it was like under the eyes and stuff like that to make them look really scary and then they slid the red filter that actually went from red to blue and actually just slid it along. It was transparent, slid it along. Or they changed the color on the lights so that when you see them in blue light, all that red makeup goes black at that time because it's the opposite. So there was no cuts, no tray, no lap dissolves, no anything like that. But it only worked on black and white.

But it was really great. They did a really good job on it. There you go, Gil. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, we were talking to Dennis before we turned the mics on. He's impressed that you managed to book Janet Ann Gallo on the show. Yes.

Speaking of horror films. I was. You know who she is? Yeah. I'll explain to Mike. Yeah, I was crazy about. I kept saying that was the one I wanted. Janet Ann Callow. Yes.

Because I remember Ghost of Frankenstein. She was a child actor in Ghost of Frankenstein with Chaney Jr. Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi. What other show is going to book these people, Dennis, I ask you? That's right. Nobody, nobody. And she thought nobody, she goes, no one's going to book these people, Dennis, I ask you? That's right. Nobody. Nobody. And she thought nobody. She goes, no one's going to know who I am.

She thought we were crazy. And I said, believe me, the people who listen to this show, you're bigger than Julia Roberts. Well, I don't know. Do you guys know who moved across the street for me when I was 14 years old? Tell us. Morris Ancrum. Wow. Wow.

You know, Colonel Fielding. I don't know how many colonels and scientists he played in those movies in the 50s. And he was the judge on Perry Mason for years. But he's in a lot of Harry Osmond films and Burt Gordon movies and everything. Burt I. Gordon. Still with us. And my mom called me and said. Burt I. Gordon, still with us. And my mom called me and said, you won't believe who moved across the street. And when I met him, I was just shocked.

There he was in person. I mean, we lived in La Cunada, which is only a half hour away, but we might as well have been living on the moon. And as far as who you ever see in the business, you know. And he had two kids that were really, really nice. You have a fondness for... And he had two kids that were really, really nice, yeah. You have a fondness for these obscure character actors that we talk about on this show? You know, a little bit.

I don't know about the characters, but also the principals and the directors and the production and how it's... the package, how it all came together and got done. And, you know, the problems they had to solve. I love that. Here's some trivia about Equinox as it relates to our show. If I hope I have this right, that one of the cameramen on Equinox was Ed Begley Jr.?

True. That's on the Jack. Oh, man. Really? That's the Jack Harris version. I was only out there on that. They only shot for two weeks on his version. Mine was two years.

But on his for two weeks. And I just saw him out there. I didn't even meet him. But he was tall. Right. You know, thin you know had the red hair i remember hearing ed bagley jr oh wow yeah and now he turns into a terrific comedian a connection to this podcast and this is also interesting and michael and i were talking before somebody else who turns up in equinox is the legendary forrest ackerman right yeah he was a friend yeah he was a friend and of mine and mark mcgee who wrote the script and dave allen who helped me with the effects and everything so uh he used to open his house up

and and we could come by once we could drive we could come by and meet people on like sundays the acrimonial you'd see ray har. I've been there. I did that. I was lucky enough to get to do that a couple times. Did you go to Gil? I was there twice. Yeah. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah.

Great. Yeah. And I heard as he was a little too trusting of people with invaluable stuff. of people with invaluable stuff. Like he had the actual dinosaurs from the original King Kong and just stuff you can't, and people would just slip it under their coats and leave with it and everything. Yeah.

Well, I remember, you know, I was seeing them in the 60s, the early 60s, and between and between like you know 62 or 63 and 65 or 66 i think his collection of still photos i think he'd lost or then stolen like a third of them were gone that's it people would just open you know he'd open his filing cabinets to incredible photos from these movies and they just would people would take them you know so later on they just continued that you know with the kong stuff and so much do i have so trusting do i have this at all right dennis were you profiled in famous monsters in film land as a young man you know because you yeah you know carrie and david ankram morris's sons and i put on this uh a museum

in la canada of because we didn't we were collecting still so i had photos from you know burt gordon movies and effects and frankenstein and all that sort of stuff again wanting people to see them and and they had a back house and and we put on the walls all these photos and posters and everything giant behemoth and stuff yeah and put a big sign out in front of their house on saturdays and sundays for people to come and see this so and then foray i told foray about it or wrote him or something i may have been one of the first times i met foray actually and he came out and showed up there and put it in his magazine he called it the murin museum but it really was that was not it it was

the i forget what it was the academy of horror and science fiction museum but but we only had two people ever show up and famous monsters used to do that thing of um wanted more fans like and they'd have a picture of a kid yeah and one time i think it was wanted more fans like little stevie spielberg it could have been yes yeah he did that with a number of friends of mine other two yeah i haven't talked to steven about it i don't know about that that's fascinating so you were a collector too yeah yeah. Yeah. So you must have. You got to. How else are you going to be able to keep those images unless you collect photos of them?

You know, they're fleeting, right? They're on TV or they're in the theater and they're fleeting and they're gone. So there's only a way to do it. I used to shoot 8mm off the TV screen. Make your own version of Destination Moon? No, but the real movie off the TV screen. Oh, okay. So I could at least look at it and study it as a kid did you ever try and I mean you I grew up in New Jersey so I

was far away from Hollywood but you were in La Cunada you could go down into Hollywood did you ever try and sneak onto the sets or sneak into any of the studios to see kind of what was going on you know I I couldn't ever you couldn't ever that. And you're too scared when you're like that young or so. But I had a guy across the street, a friend of mine in school, his dad was a doctor at one of the studios. And I went in on the weekend and saw some of the sets. So I'd occasionally see sets. If I was driving around, though, and whenever you saw a big truck in L.A.,

it was a film truck. Right. So I would always stop and watch and i saw a lot of stuff being done then i saw all the all the stuff being done at john marshall high school there in las filas they were always shooting a mr novak that series oh james franciscus yeah you could just drive by and there they were and i'd walk up to it and i'd look and here's the crew and here's the actors all and and there's the camera and i's the actors all. And, and there's the camera. And I always thought if I'm just going to do this, I'm going to be by that camera because that's where something's going on.

Everybody is focused and that's where they're making it. You know, it worked out. Did you ever think you'd see a big fancy schmancy criterion version of Equinox? I mean, it's got a real following. Well, you know, it's, it know, it's right in my collection, right between Citizen Kane and Grapes of Wrath. I mean, it fits right in there in alphabetical order, you know. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast.

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On Close Encounters, it was more reflection of Steven and with Doug in there of course which is going for for feeling and emotion and and you know pictorial beauty in it and and you know all that stuff which I liked but I'd never done that before in a big film so that was a great education for me and you know a year and a half to go from one show to another. How did you get on Close Encounters? How were you hired on that? I was wrapping up Star Wars after a year and I'd heard from somebody there, everybody knew each other. I didn't know Doug or anybody down there though, but said, oh, you can probably get some work down there on Close Encounters. They're doing something.

And it was down to the other side of town. It was going to be a long drive. And I thought, well, I can put up with it. And fortunately, I did. And went down and got the job, started four days later. And it turns out what they want me to shoot is the mothership. Oh, wow.

And I knew nothing about the script, hadn't heard anything about it. But what I really, really, I was about ready to get out of the business. And I stayed in a little longer. This is before Star Wars even, to meet the directors before I gave up. Is this when you were living with your mom with your maxed out credit cards? Yes. Oh, yeah, right.

That's it. I'm out of money. $750 in debt. And it was a lot of money to me. And so anyway, I wanted to meet george that's what pushed me to get onto and to get unknown territory right with all these people i don't know on star wars and the same thing to to meet steven for trumbull you know because i didn't know anything about that fancy equipment you know you look at equinox that's all i knew you know wood and sticks and glue and paint

and everything but i was so impressed by 2001 that I said, I wonder how these guys do this. And I knew kind of that Star Wars was going to be done like that. And certainly Close Encounters was. But it was scary going into those shows, not having a clue as to how the equipment worked or anything. But I was pushed. The directors, I loved those directors. But I was pushed. The directors, I love those directors.

What was some of the tricks you had to learn when you couldn't have the money for all the computerized stuff? What was some of the tricks of just gluing and folding? You mean when he made Equinox? Yes, yes. Like with your hands, getting your hands messy. Getting your hands, well, you know um you don't have to be perfect if you try to do something perfect you'll never get it done but in the context of a film you can have some pretty funky things for a few frames here and there and maybe you cut away right or maybe you put something really bright over that part of the scene or maybe if something falls apart you put a sound effect in

something like that you know there are all sorts of ways to do it but um you know you if you're going to have something break apart you do it out of plaster or something you don't make it out of concrete you know you may there tricks the main things if you have a model or a bridge that's going to collapse you don't necessarily make it and i did this as a kid you don't do it out of plaster you do it a balsa wood so it can just break and you know paint it to look like a bridge and all uh but um you know you have to know all those tricks because it is all a trick there's nothing real in it at all and that's all stuff that you know you would have thought when cg came in that i would have really been kind of obsolete. But I wasn't obsolete because I learned what looked real and what didn't look real.

So I can apply that to CG, what looked real and what didn't look real. I've heard. At the beginning in CG, go ahead. No, I was going to interrupt you. I've heard you say that you feared technology when you got into it. Yeah, I was feared it and wasn't really interested in it. Uh-huh. You know, I mean, it's just kind of there. I'm interested in the end image, that's all.

The end image, how I feel about it when it's over, and I have a way of seeing it in my head the way I'd like it to be. And it always changes. But if it always gets better, which it seems to with good directors, then I'm fine with that. Well, you know this show. You know we love to talk about turning points. And just to go back, you said something about getting out of the business.

This is after Equinox, and then you'd knocked around for a while. Do I have the chronology of this right? You worked on Green Giant commercials. Yeah, the Cascade of California. Cascade. Pillsbury Doughboy. Do I have this right? Right.

And you were fed up at a certain point. I was out of money. And out of money. And LA was a union town. And what's a 22-year-old going to do? How's he ever going to get a job? And there was no industry per se. There was no special effects industry

to go knock on a door. No, there wasn't. Mike and I were talking about that. There were places to do titles and stuff like that right and and commercials were about the only place and that was really just cascade in in hollywood right on seward there uh right near where harold uh lloyd's first studio was it's a very famous i know that block yeah which i never i didn't appreciate at the time so but anyway eventually i was ready to get out, and I said, that's it.

I'm going to go into inhalation therapy, which I had seen in an ad in Los Angeles Times. Yeah, in the LA Times. I think I can learn that, teaching people how to breathe. Wow. But then, you know, Star Wars, I heard about Star Wars, and I just pushed to get on it and managed to find people to talk to out there. How did Star Wars and Lucas show up on your radar?

I was working at Cascade right before Cascade closed up, and we sold a camera. We were, like, trying to consolidate to somebody who wouldn't say where he was working, but it turned out that he was working on Star Wars. And they were just starting to set up the animation department. And this was an animation camera. And then a couple of friends of mine went out

and actually heard an interview, George, they interviewed with George about working on the show and they were stop motion guys and overall effects guys, really good, Jim Danforth and Bill Taylor. And George said, no, no, I don't want to go this complicated way. I don't mind throwing the models

in front of the camera or sliding them down wires or something. That's the way we're going to do it. We don't have the money. So they went away and I'm friends them, and they told me about it. And I thought, oh, that's just too bad that it's never going to work out. And then, of course, I guess everybody else in town said the same sort of thing or said it was impossible, the people that they talked to.

And then they go with John Dykstra, who comes up with this revolutionary, expensive, time-consuming idea that changed the industry. So they ended up having to go with new technology. And the rest is history. I just followed it. Yeah, the rest is history. And then all that's like sort of obsolete once computers came in. I mean, nobody talks about that motion control stuff anymore

and how it really changed the industry. Do you think there's going to be a day when there's gonna you'll just make movies with no actors and no location shots because it could all be done by computers hope they're still composers barely are now no you know you can auto compose too that's all coming yeah that's i think it's probably there based on the color the scene or the let's hope not how do you think i write my scores let's hope it's an app on my iphone anyway gill yes it is and it's happening right now right and they're animated films but you're never going to you're never going to get the personality of the

people you're never going to get the voice reflections you're never going to get the reality sure you can do it that and that's get the reality. Sure, you can do it. And that's not the question. The question is, should you do it for certain stories? If you're trying to really feel something with people, do you want to look at a fake image? Or do you want to look at the real person there in a relationship that is just breaking your heart? Far more than an animated character ever could. What is this thing? I don't think. I saw in an interview with you, Dennis, you were, far more than an animated character ever could. What is this thing?

I don't think. I saw in an interview with you, Dennis, you were talking about the 3D design, adding 3D to 2D movies that you saw a test with Casablanca. Yeah, yeah. I saw Casablanca, Roger Rabbit. Could you tell us about that? There was a Marx Brothers film.

Wow. You know, I forget the company that did it. What were they doing exactly? What were they what? What were they doing exactly what were they what what were they doing exactly it was a demo reel that they'd put together and they they had like two minute scenes from you know these big movies that they had added you know post 2d and they're doing a lot now you know or 3d to 2d movies you see it all the time now and it's mostly not done right so it looks pretty bad when you see the 3d but they they did

it to sort of sell the industry on it and it kind of worked and people started doing it you know and they were really neat they did it much better than than most of the conversions are being done now and i i really enjoy 3d if it's done right but as far as i'm concerned nobody's doing it right and i it's too hard to explain why but it's uh i i did the uh 2d 3d conversion on the on episode 2 and 3 of star wars that have never been shown they were going to release them and they never did we showed them at conventions and all and they're done this different way where everything is much more spatial you're like looking at a room you're not like looking at the figure you're looking at the whole space and seeing people moving around and i thought it was really neat so uh but i wish that footage were still around because it's neat to see those movies especially cosmo wizard of oz

some of wizard of oz and in 3d it's been done since i gotta see this yeah i know you were i am aware of that yeah yep now i remember watching when I saw House of Wax in a theater and a couple of other 3D. And Buona Devil. Oh, yes. Wasn't that the double feature? Yes. Oh, my God. By a one-eyed director.

Andre de Tocque. That's right. Of course. I had one eye. So he could never know if the 3D was working. It's one of the great mysteries of Hollywood. You need two eyes. Of course, in Hollywood brilliance, hired a one-eye director.

But I remember those early 3D, when you'd watch, you'd look at a room or the actors, You'd look at a room or the actors, and it's like you could see depth, but every figure looked flat. It looked like a pop-up card. It looked like you could go into the room, but that all the actors were cardboard cutouts. Yeah, I know what you mean. And that's even true of some of the movies now. They're shot in 3D yeah i agree what do you think that's part of the future dennis that when no i i mean eventually i but i don't think so it had a good chance uh-huh a lot of the problems they had in the 50s and 60s they got rid of with digital so now there's almost like no excuse

because you can see it on the set and they never used to. And, uh, but, but I don't think people are thinking about it as much, you know, and it really is the story that is like a trick, but it's, the story is so important. That is what,

did you work at the shop in Van Nuys when you were working on star Wars? So can you tell me a little bit about that? Because that is sort of like a pilgrimage that I do once a year. I usually go and drive by. You do. I drive by where that used to be. I took my kids there when they were young and were like, this is important, this building

right here. So that's where they blew up the Death Star. Where ILM first existed? Yeah, exactly. Tell me about that. What was it like there? Well, it was when I started there, it was mostly an empty building. The model shop was going. There were some cameras being started.

The stages were kind of empty and nothing going on yet. And it was like a bunch of, like, you know, hardly anybody over 35. And most people about 30 or younger, a lot of people from Long Beach State, from the industrial design group that John Dykstra, who was setting it up, had gone to school in and hired friends and friends. So not many film people at all. And it didn't really so much matter because it didn't seem like it because George had the ideas and the storyboards were being done and everything. So it was a fun place.

And I didn't quite fit in because I was too serious about it. And the guys were racing cars and motorcycles on the weekends and stuff. It's really important, and I really respect it and all, but it wasn't who I was. So I didn't have as much fun because I was too worried about how the hell are we going to get this movie done. Right. And we barely did.

And what were some of your responsibilities at that time working on the film you know i was called the second cameraman richard edlin was mainly doing a lot of the stuff but i was shooting in nighttime shooting as much as i could in the daytime with the second camera so i shot a lot of the trench a lot of the uh the big uh battle shots that are of the ships flying around but there was so much that we we you know spread that among ourselves and george was in there a couple of times a week he'd fly down from northern california stay there for two days and go over all the shots for the rest of the time with us and everything and we got along really well george i did i think we'd uh i think we had a shared vision that's true

of everybody i've worked with you know if i've got a shared vision with like, well, it's like, you know, Spielberg comes up and he says, you know, this guy in AI, we want this alien or creature at the end of AI. I want him to look like that guy from Man from Planet X. And I say, yeah, I know what you mean. How many people on that set of 200 knew what he was talking about? Oh, I love that. Probably just you. That's it. Yeah, I love that. You know that, you know, and he was talking about. Probably just you. That's it. I love that.

You know that. And it was the same kind of a George and someone with Cameron. I enjoy those much more than if the director says, do anything you want. You're the effects guy. I think I know the answer. That's too easy. Yeah. I saw him giving you, I watched the video today of Lucas giving you the Life Achievement Award too.

And he's talking about how you were there in the middle of the night, just sitting around. You must be nostalgic for those days. I mean, everything was happening around you. It was the beginning. You could smell it. You could feel it. You could hear it. You were on the cusp of something big.

And what's in the future of special effects? You know, I can't say. It's a secret. Perfect answer. I have all the answers. I actually have it. It's right. I'm just thinking about it.

It's on this piece of paper. But I can't. You wrote it down. I did. I wrote it down. Because I can forget it now. I'm too old. I can forget it. wrote it down. I did. I wrote it down because I can forget it now. I'm too old. I can forget it.

I know the answer to this. Who knows? The thing is that it's not up to any of us. It's up to the public. That's interesting. Totally up to the public what they like

and what they don't like. That's what drives everything. We had Leonard Maltin here and we were talking about and we hope we don't see this day either but we were talking about what we see seems to be the slow demise of movie theaters. Yeah, I heard that show.

Oh, you did? Yeah, along with, you know, wasn't he sort of saying he thinks they're staying on or something? Yeah, I mean, it gave us hope. I mean, obviously it's a different situation in L.A. I mean, here we lost the Ziegfeld, which you know about. No, you're right. There are theaters for billion-dollar movies, but for anything else, it's like maybe, you know, movies that you'd see in every theater is now you'll find like one little art house in the city,

and you're lucky to catch it there. Since I moved back to New York from L.A. in 2003, I think at least 15 theaters have closed. I'm sure. In Manhattan. And that's what? In 15 years. Well, the other thing is different. That is the length of time a movie stays in the theater.

Yeah. It's gone before you know it. You know, when I was a kid, I could see Star Wars 15 times in six months. You know, it was just still playing throughout that entire time. I miss it. Well, that's why, I think that's why the multiplex started.

You know, it was all, my memory, it was all in defense of this big fear of cable coming in. And you can see any movie, they called it on demand back then. Right. On demand, you'll be able to see it. You'll pay your money.

This is sometime in the 90s or so. I think that's what started multiplexes going so that you could play these movies all the time you wouldn't you maybe it's not on demand but within an hour you'll be able to find it at your cineplex because it's playing in two or three theaters i think that's what kind of started all that we will return to gil Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast after this. That's the sound of fried chicken with a spicy history. Thornton Prince was a ladies' man. To get revenge, his girlfriend hid spices in his fried chicken. He loved it so much, he opened Prince's Hot Chicken.

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All right, this is from Robert Martin. Robert Martin. Robert Martin. Wow. For me, this will be up there with the Michael Giacchino interview. Thank you, Robert. Very nice. Looking forward to it. I would please ask to hear some discussion regarding all of his early groundbreaking work with the 1960s Jerry Anderson supercar.

Yeah. Tell us about that. I didn't work on it. You didn't work on it. The internet thinks you did. Yeah, no. No, I don't think it's – I don't know where it came from. That's British, right? Yeah.

Yeah, there you go. He's probably getting me – maybe he's getting mixed up with Brian Johnson. We were impressed. I know. Robert Martin, we're sorry, but there you have it. Okay. How about this one? You did work on Flesh Gordon. I did, yes're sorry, but there you have it. Okay. How about this one? You did work on Flesh Gordon.

I did, yes. Oh, excellent. Now I woke up. Peter Santa Maria wrote this. I just had to share this. How many minutes into the podcast until Gilbert asks Dennis about the penisaurus monster in Flesh Gordon. I'm afraid I wasn't involved with those monsters.

I was involved with some of the spaceships. Fair enough. Would you think of doing a sequel and making a more advanced Penisaurus? No, I don't. Maybe somebody's done that already. I think they did make a sequel to it, didn't they? Maybe so. I don't know. Where was this one that already. I think they did make a sequel to it, didn't they? Maybe so. I don't know.

Where was this one? This is interesting to us. Bob Burns. Joe Baeza says, does Dennis have memories of working on the Bob Burns Halloween extravaganzas in the 70s and 80s? Oh, wow. I see Bob a lot still. You know we had Bob here.

You know the show. Yeah, yeah. We talk about it a lot together whenever we see him. And we wish he was still doing them. Oh, he's a so what was that like he is oh it was so much fun you know there'd be like six or eight people getting together for like four weekends uh right before halloween and bob would get an idea we're gonna do the thing you know we're gonna build a corridors like you're you're in the ice uh at the arctic up there and doorways, and we're going to have a guide telling you to be careful. Don't open that door, of course, and that's the one that will open up.

What I wouldn't have given to have been there. In those movies, you not only saw the movie, but had a live theater show with it. Oh, yeah. That's what this was. These were live shows like for two or three minutes long based on movies we had a war of the worlds one we did we did some fiction a big goomba creature was on the top of bob's house we did a mad uh i love it a jekyll

and hyde kind of character with the with the blue and uh red light changing. And we did a really exciting one that was very hard to do based on The Exorcist, where the girl levitated right there in front of your eyes in the attic. And then you're sitting there looking at it, but then at the last minute, you get scared and you run out screaming. So it always had a punchline, of course. God bless that man.

When they were alive alive they were hiring um glenn strange and beta lugosi for some of those shows i heard i i don't think they were hired but they would come by that's great as as fans yeah that's great you know i think um i've never i don't remember seeing that but you know it's so funny walking into Bob Burns' house. One day I remember walking in and there's Doodles Weaver. Wow. What? Oh, my God.

What a great name. What a great name to bring up. Bob, I didn't know you knew Doodles Weaver. Well, yeah. We've known each other for a long time. A lot of people like that. So these guys would show up. On the Thing show, some of the actors would show up that were in the movie in the original oh they're to go through the show so i

don't know how bob knew everybody but he did you know what's so great about bob is there's no irony there's nothing camp about it at all yes he loves these creatures. Right. Absolutely. And we all do. And the actors. And that's why we're still here and the other people have gone on to doing situation comedies or something. Who knows what they're working on. I think we'll all enjoy this question from Michael Lavaglio. Can Dennis recreate the bicycle scene from E.T. with Gilbert and the basket? I'll do it.

It's a challenge. Oh, I would love that one. It wouldn't be very hard either. Think about that. Dennis, Rob Martinez says, Dennis worked on Captain EO with Michael Jackson. Does he have a story or a memory? Well, I wasn't ever on the set. Oh, okay.

But I knew about it because George was producing it and Francis was directing it. So I heard all the stories about it. And it was a very hard shoot. It was the most expensive per-minute movie, I think, up until that time, that had ever been done in 3D. And Victoria Storato, the great cameraman, shot it. And the stuff looked, I saw dailies from it. It looked just amazing and all.

But it was tough because that sort of thing hadn't been done before in 3D or anything, with spaceships and everything and analyzing, you know, how big should the spaceship look in 3D coming out in the audience? There were all sorts of things like that we had to deal with. Sure. Why did you say, and I think I know the answer to this too, but our fans will enjoy hearing it. Why are T2, Terminator 2, and Jurassic Park high points for you? Because for 50 years up till then, or whatever, I don't know if that number's right.

I had been struggling, not that long, 40 years, struggling with trying to make things look real. And it was really hard. And I thought reality as well as performance and the appropriateness for a movie was so important because the fakery can pull you out of it. And CG was the opportunity to do something that actually could do it real. And it was so hard

to get through the figuring out how to make cg work but i think in after the abyss which we only had like 17 shots that was so successful i didn't really understand it i took a year off and i bought a textbook uh on computer graphics uh i think it was 2 000 pages long wow and i had no idea what an algorithm was or anything and i spent about four months in a local coffee shop up here reading the thing and came away understanding that it's not magic it's everything is controllable it's just that it seems to me as though the people don't know where the controls need to be to make it look real. And that's what I was looking for and hoping for. And we've been working on it at ILM for years with the computer graphic department. So we were kind of ready to

make a big step. And T2 was the really big step. And I came up with ideas for digital compositing. So you no longer saw the matte lines around the T2 character or any compositing. And it was just great. But I thought that was going to be the breakthrough film, but nobody could figure out what they were looking at. And then Jurassic came out, which of course was the big one that knocked everybody off and changed everything. You talk about seeing a movie with a, with an audience, what that scene, when, when Robert Patrick passes through the bars, what is it in the asylum? Yeah. And this is what I miss about seeing movies with audiences is, is the, the, when the oohing and the eye, you knew people had not, or were seeing something they had never seen before. Right. And there's nothing wrong. Yeah. There's no's no flaw you know imagine if that had been like you know it's much of the yellow stop motion stop motion animated figure or something

or in the dark or you know i just love that that's the the magician part of me i guess likes to show that off do you actually do magic do you do you like magic you know i did when i was a little kid like 10 or 12 and i'm not good enough for it i'm not i'm not i'm not that extrovert now with with films now another thing that actors will have easier is that they don't need to wear bad toupees or get facelifts anymore. I think there have been whole movies where they put hair on actors through computerization, and they make them look 20 years old. I was looking at Michael Douglas being made younger

in the Ant-Man flashbacks. Yeah, it's amazing. It's pretty good. Yeah. I must say, it's pretty damn good. I wanted to hate it, but it looked wonderful. De-aging. Yeah, de-aging.

Well, you look at some of the credits, and one of the big companies that does that work, they got the second highest effects credit on a big recent movie, and they just do de-aging. And you look at it and say who was it who did they make look 10 or 20 years younger you know they never say you never say who you're what you're doing and they'll never have to do that crappy old age makeup or put the vaseline on the lens make it soft yeah yeah but you go back and you look at some of that old age makeup. You look at Dick Smith's work on Brando and Dustin Hoffman for Little Big Man.

It's pretty impressive. It holds up. The Exorcist. And The Exorcist. Because I heard Max Von Cito was like 40 when he did that. Yeah. And you forget what Brando really looked like, but you look at any of those scenes now

where he's in the makeup chair while they're applying it, and you just can't believe it's the same guy that's in that movie, in Godfather. Absolutely. Yeah, because Brando was in his 40s when he did that. Yeah. All right, let's get to something fun. You playing a Nazi.

Yes. It was my dream. For our listeners that don't know, that's Dennis behind the Life magazine. I know. That was the funniest thing. And the original Raiders. Stephen needed to get this other shot showing that somebody was tailing Harrison in the tri-motor airplane to go from point A to point B in the story.

And they were, I don't know how the word got out, but someone looked at me and said, you're the one. And I said, what? Okay, well, we're going to, you got a part in the movie. What? What? Okay. So we did it actually in Richmond,

which is only seven miles across the bay from where we were working. But the trimotor was there and it couldn't fly, but it's where they were storing it. So we over there steven came up and you know the whole crew and everything small crew and we shot it in in a morning over there and it was strangest experience to be on the other side of the camera with everybody's looking at you and you wonder what do i look wrong what am i doing wrong but they're looking at you know the shadow of your nose on your cheek or something like that. Or head the right, half the right way and stuff like that.

It was pretty neat. Do you have more warmth for the Nazis now than you did before? Well, Gilbert, you played Hitler. Yes. I don't quite yet. I have to soften up. I don't think I'm ever going to quite have that.

I didn't even know I was supposed to soften up. I don't think I'm ever going to quite have that. I want to throw it. I didn't even know I was supposed to be a Nazi. I probably would have said, no way. How about this question? This is interesting from our friend Mike Herman. Does Dennis think motion capture performers like Andy Serkis should be eligible for Academy Award nominations. That's a loaded question. That's a loaded question.

I think it's, you know, sort of. I don't have an answer for it. I think what they do is so important to get the right attitude and so much of the detail in it. It's just different. You know, I think some of the people are thinking about doing like special awards. That may be the way to treat that. know but it's so important how about this one from ray garton dragon slayer was a big leap forward for disney what were some of the groundbreaking effects dennis pulled off on that movie any first well for one thing a very realistic dragon

yeah right right i was uh well we had a i had a shocker after was, well, we had a, I had a shocker after Empire Strikes Back that we had a preview and a lot of the cards came back saying people did not like that Tauntaun creature. They thought it looked fake. The two-legged creature running on the, we thought it looked fabulous. So I started questioning my own wisdom. Am I seeing it the way the public was seeing it? And realized, well, not maybe we should try something different on dragon slayer i was actually thinking of trying it as rod puppets you know with puppets with rods below it and that's as a model but people would move it in real time but phil tippett said no no let's try it let's go beyond that let's do it actually with all the motors like we do motion control and do it that way so it's got a fluidity that's like real and you had never seen that before all you'd ever seen was the really the harryhausen sort of stuff and even the stuff we did did not have the reality of dragon slayer and then i kept it real moody and dark and mysterious and the design of the dragon was terrific and the sets were great and everything so it really worked we were really we're trying to something you're always trying to top yourself aren't you absolutely whenever i finish something i i in my mind convince

myself it's obsolete and i really do that that's just like obsolete you know and part of it is that i don't want to do the same thing again i'm going to do something like different but not just different but better you know and so then you got to figure out, well, what's better? How do you find that if it hasn't been done before? And where are these nine Oscars scattered, Dennis? They're all over. I'm going to ask Michael where he keeps his. Friends, family, work a little bit around. They're all over.

I try to get them back every so often so they can talk to each other and exchange stories with each other. Gilbert, we're sitting here with two gentlemen who started in life as little boys making their own movies in the backyard, and now they have Academy Awards. Don't you think there's something wonderful about that? That really is. That's amazing. Where do you keep yours, Mike? It's in the printer closet. Why is it in the closet? I don't know.

All that stuff's in the printer closet. I feel like. You don't put it on display. I don't know. I just. Jimmy Stewart gave this to his father and he put it in the hardware store window. I feel like my mom would yell at me. Don't.

You're bragging. What are you doing? You're bragging. You're going to put that out there and make people look at that. Put it out at least. Here's a question a question for both of you do you often feel like if you are looking at an academy award that you won that you'll get like a little lazy like oh look how good i am i won that and you won't try as

hard not if it's in the closet well Well, I think that might be part of why my psyche wants it that way is because I kind of don't want to look at it. I don't want to be reminded that I won that because I constantly... Listen, every time I finish a film, I think I failed and I promise myself I'm going to do better on the next one, and I'm going to learn.

So I feel like I learn something every time. If that's in my face I won't I heard Spielberg when Spielberg directed the second Jurassic Park he felt like he was so his opinion

was that he was so proud of himself for what he achieved with the first one that he didn't feel like he worked hard enough i i didn't see any of that when i was on the film i i was the interesting thing and that was when he changed the entire ending to taking place in san diego and that happened very quickly and wait a minute we're not going to end it on the island we're doing something completely different we're going to like make a king kong where he's in the streets

the t-rex is in the streets everything i thought it was a really good idea so i never saw any sign that steven didn't give it a hundred percent i mean i never does i mean it's probably just him like after watching the film like he's he wants it beyond perfect yeah it could be it's a fascinating michael it's really funny you talk about the oscar i had mine for the first year in the drawer oh really in our bedroom in the bottom drawer for the probably the same reasons i don't deserve this right i don't even think about it oh that's i feel embarrassed that we didn't give it after everybody who worked on the film but now you have nine of them They can't possibly all fit in that drawer, so you've got to put them around somewhere. That's right.

It was when I got three of them that I put them out, though. It took three to do it. That's pretty amazing. Dennis, as we wrap up, I just want to ask you about your speech. I watched you receive the Life Achievement Award from your peers, your fellow visual effects artists. And you talked about Glacier Park. You talked about this wonderful phenomenon that you... Oh, was it Yosemite?

Yosemite, that you experienced as a kid, and you said that sometimes that's what it feels like when a director asks you to do the impossible. It's a great metaphor. It was what they used to call the firefall. The firefall, yeah, they don't do it anymore, huh? I forget the mountain up there at nine o'clock at night, above where Camp Curry is, that's all still there,

they used to push big flaming logs that had fallen down, down a 2,000-foot cliff, and hit rocks below, and it would all go out and everything. But they did it every night in the summertime. And I was six or eight when I first saw it, and it was awesome. Just the most amazing thing. And thousands of people would be there every weekend

looking at this thing. And then they finally had to stop it because the ecologist said, oh, it's not natural. And they were worried about something or other. I don't know what, so they don't do it anymore. But it was the sense of wonder and seeing that something that's impossible is happening. It's not a waterfall.

I mean, it only worked because of Yosemite, right? Where you've got waterfalls in the daytime, and at night you've got fire falling down. Sounds wonderful. It looks like flaming water, and that had a major effect on me, seeing that. Yeah, and it leads me to the question uh can can a guy like you that knows how things work uh maintain his sense of wonder when you go when you walk into that movie theater is it hard it well i've got to work on it i work on it all the time uh to remind myself i'm a kid yeah and to you know bring back stuff feelings i had when i was a kid you got to or else you'll

get kind of jaded and bored. And there's a lot of excitement when you're six, eight years old. Same question for you, Mikey. When you're three years old. Can you do that? I mean, you've been in the business so long. You've seen everything. You've been a part of so much.

It's like he says. You have to work at it, and you have to force yourself to be in a certain mindset. But sometimes it just kind of overcomes you and happens. Like you get lost in a movie. And when that happens, it's really one of the most wonderful feelings. That really truly makes me feel like a kid again. When a film really works and you walk out of there not even thinking about how it was made, you're just amazed at the story.

I love that. Like the worst thing in movies is if you're anything that you notice, if you're watching, if you're going, oh, that scene was shot beautifully or the dialogue is so witty or the acting, that means you're not in the movie. All right. You're not lost in it. That's true. Yeah.

You're still carrying that picture of Ray Harryhausen around in your wallet? I do. I've got it somewhere, yeah. I still do have it. It's so sweet. It's always in my wallet. Isn't that sweet? He carries it with him. I carry a picture of Gilbert.

I have a picture of Fles Gordon. Do you? I want to direct to our listeners to check out, and it's on YouTube, is the Ray Harryhausen 90th birthday celebration. It's so nice and so sweet that he lived to see that and to see all you guys get up there and and make such a big deal out of him because god he really deserved it yeah he was great and a lot of great people showed up for the terry gilliam people i didn't even know the fans of his showed up you know it's a it's a great jackson flew in yeah he changed a lot of people's lives it's a great thing to watch well and i feel like you have too and i i just want to thank you personally for you know as a kid i never thought i would grow

up to write music for movies. I literally, I thought I was going to grow up and do what you're doing. I thought I was going to be doing visual effects because I was so obsessed with that. I love special effects. I love stop motion. And I sort of fell into music. But my heart is still hugely into what you do. And I just want to thank you for all the inspiration you've given me.

Thanks very much. We all owe you a debt, Dennis. Well, thanks. I was in the right place at the right time with the right brain or right mix-up brain. I don't know what it is. Something going on there. We've interviewed 250 people now in this show. And so often it comes up, you know, I was going to leave the business. I had one foot out the door. I was fed up. I was down to my last $48. And it's just wonderful.

It's wonderful how things change, you know, when you love what you love and you stay through it. You stay stubborn. Yeah, you stay stubborn, right. And, you know, you got to be good at it. So when these times come, you do them and you deliver. But I think a lot of people get out that maybe should have stuck around. Yeah, suzy essman says just stay on the bus what's next for you are you writing a book tennis you you are rumors yeah my wife and i mainly my wife at the moment writing a book on

sort of on uh on it's not a memoir but it's more about an art book on how to visualize things and and how to uh how to bring the emotion out of something in in effects or it can actually be in anything give me in any art form and it's because a lot of like i said a lot of folks i know they're coming up uh aren't even taught about you know about feeling oh excuse me here they aren't they aren't even talking about doing quality sound or whether – I don't mean sound, but doing quality – to try to engage an audience emotionally. They are just taught the technical side of it. to view things as a child and whatever they're working on, music, art, whatever it is, stir your own emotions up, not just deliver what you think you want to tell, but actually feel it. Wow. Wow. Does it have a title yet?

No, not yet. Okay. Great. You know, there's that there's that school the master's school or something that's on the internet that a lot of people are talking about master class yeah master class well i saw i saw an ad for carlos santana's and he says exactly the same thing the preview is just like him i was gonna be talking about visual effects he's talking about music you know everybody i think all of us that are in this, you want to feel it. We want to feel what we're doing.

And that's not taught in schools. Yeah, and be original. What's coming up for you, Mr. Giacchino? I got Spider-Man coming up. You are scoring Spider-Man? Spider-Man 2, Far From Home. Spider-Man Far From Home. And some other things you can't talk about.

There's always things you can't talk about. Dennis, I'm sure, is way more entrenched in that than I am. So incredible, too. I can't talk about this. Yes. The secret that you asked him, Gilbert, he can't talk about. Yes. Show what fucking good are you as a guest?

Dennis, this might be one of my new favorite episodes, so thank you so much. And thanks for listening to the show. We're tremendously flattered. Well, I'm flattered to be asked. I love you guys. Keep it up. Thank you.

Well, this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. And Michael, I still don't know how to pronounce your fucking name. Giacchino. Giacchino. Giacchino. What kind of Italian are you? Giacchino.

You got it. And our main guest, a special effects wizard, and that's Dennis Murin. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Work on that AT with Gilbert in the basket. That's right. We'll talk to you again, Dennis. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Work on that AT with Gilbert in the basket. That's right.

We'll talk to you again, pal. Bye-bye. All right. Bye-bye. ¶¶ © BF-WATCH TV 2021 I'm going to go. Web and social media is handled by Mike McPadden, Greg Pair, and John Bradley-Seals. Special audio contributions by John Beach. Special thanks to John Fodiatis, John Murray, and Paul Rayburn.