Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - GGACP Classic: Dennis Muren

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

To celebrate National Film Score Day, Gilbert and Frank are joined by Oscar-winning composer and guest co-host Michael Giacchino for a chat with one of Michael's childhood heroes, Academy Award-winning special effects artist (and GGACP fan!) Dennis Muren. In this episode, Dennis 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! And Bob Burns recreates “The Exorcist”!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. This episode is brought to you by FX's Dying for Sex on Disney+. Based on the podcast of the same name, Dying for Sex tells the story of Molly, who is diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. Determined to feel everything she can before she can't feel anything, she decides to leave her unhappy marriage to explore her sexuality with some encouragement from her best friend

Nicky. FX's Dying for Sex, streaming April 4th only on Disney+. Sign up now at DisneyPlus.com. Something so fantastic So here's another Gilbert and Franks Here's another Gilbert and Franks Here's another Gilbert and Franks Colossal Classic 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 Ferdorosa.

And our guest this week is an Emmy and Oscar winning visual effects and special effects artist and the senior visual effects supervisor and creative director of industrial light and magic. You may have heard of him. Reading this man's list of credits is staggering and overwhelming, but what the hell will take a crack at it? Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back, close encountersounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, 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. 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's that? Yes. Yes. The legendary Dennis Murin. Hey, thank you so much. Who's that? Yes. Yes. Dennis.

Yes. 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. Geez.

That's not easy. Your numbers are way up there now. We're thrilled. We didn't believe it was now. We're thrilled. We didn't believe it was true. We were talking. I, I'm, came across Equinox on TV and, and at first I thought, well,

this is going to 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 well 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 for 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 $3,500 and with two or three or four friends made that movie, all in 16 millimeter.

And this started in 1965 and we finished in 67 and full of a special effects. It was just a way of getting 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 it had some good stuff, and I sold it a couple of years later to Jack Harris, who had done the blob and 4D Man and all and he bought it and put another like $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 got three fans of that movie right here. I'm gonna introduce the third one, the gentleman sitting to my right has done this podcast before. Michael Giacchino is here. Hey, Dennis. How are you? Fine, fine. Great to see you.

Only one Oscar? Just one. A snacker. 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! Look at that. 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? I, not up there, it's on the floor. If you want to, I can get it if you want to see it. Really? But it's a- We insist.

You actually have it? Okay, hold on. What's left of it? Okay. 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, 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. There's one- 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 that one it's like kind of greenish

On the left one on the far left. Yeah, isn't that the oh, that's the that's was a gift from Ray Harry I was and that's a You know a version that he did of the email from 20 miles to earth. Yeah He made a few of those and I've gotten lucky enough to have one of them. Can I ask you something about the equinox monster there? Did that have an armature in it? It does. And what was it? Dave Allen made this.

Was it a ball and socket or wire? What was it? Yeah, there's wire on the wings, the body's all armatured. Wow. And you made that at the time? No, no, my friend Dave Allen made this. Amazing. He was a couple of 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 to me it was still it's still magical to 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. And there was a quote, someone said on this show that Roger Ebert, he said that, CGI looks real, but feels phony. Stop action looks phony but feels real. Yeah, it feels very emotional. And the whole point of it's 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, because anybody can kind of do it. You know, you can go to any computer store, buy the stuff, download the materials off the internet, buy a book or training program, do it yourself. It's open to so many more people being able to do it that it's know, download the materials off the internet by 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 never the tool. It's how you're using it. Yes, it's and you certainly know how to use it. For God sakes. And that's something. Yeah, I mean, it's ridiculous. I remember being a kid and being completely disappointed, you know, after seeing being raised on Harryhausen and then we get to those

films where they put the prosthetics on the lizards and had them running around. Remember that? Yeah. 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 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 who was stabbing them, burning them and stuff. Yeah tied together and look like they're fighting, rolling them on the ground. Terrible. Yeah well we're all

we're all Harryhausen kids here and obviously you you just mentioned him. Dennis mentioned that he had a gift and he was an important person in your life, Dennis. Yeah, he was. I was also a big fan of all effects. I mean, I loved the stuff that John Fulton did with Bridges the Toker-ree and the Ten Commandments, not so much the Ten Commandments actually, but I liked the Reign of the Rancherpore

and the tornado and the Wizard of Oz. I was an effects fan and I still am. And you know, again, it's the emotion. You could look at something you can see, a Ray Harry has in the 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. That's what it's about. And I heard with that remake of Lost World, with Claude Rains in it, 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 create and And then they just used his name and threw in fucking lizards That isn't that sad imagine how excited he probably got there for a while too Yeah, so unfortunate because he thought he could use his talent for that but with more money behind it Yep use his talent for that but with more money behind it. Yep. But that's that showbiz and you know, that's Erwin Allen. He's made, you know, some real fun movies, but he was always tied 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 inspired. That was... oh my god.

But you were a fan of all... and I was reading about you, Dennis. You were a fan of The Thief of Baghdad and... Oh yeah. And I guess what the disaster movies of the day were. And just... and, you know, event movies. They weren't called tentpole movies then. They were... But they were...

They were movies. were you like movies you like big movies yeah I always I always did and I never ever thought I'd be working on them so this is my whole career has been like where the heck did this come from because I was a I've been doing this as 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 built 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. Then week later you'd see the film.

You got it back from the camera store. Was Rick Baker with you? It was exciting. You and Rick Baker broke up together? No. I got to know Rick later. Okay. When I was like about 20 or so.

Okay. I'm talking about back when I was 10 or 12. A kid working in Super 8. Problem I had- No, no, eight millimeter. Eight millimeter, pre-Super 8. Way before Super 8, yeah. 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. It's real.

Well, and the people that are- But 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, we's a lot of talented computer graphic people that around now But they haven't had a chance to really learn the aesthetics They just you know think 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 aren't before a 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 this, classes about what reality looks like on movie film or on movie digital. 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 you realize, I just am scratching the surface of all this stuff. What were you going to ask, Mike? Well, I was going to say, it's also about bringing up

Harryhausen again, the idea that he put character into those figures. There was a, 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 also a performing creature walking across that screen. It wasn't mindless. Nothing he did was mindless. That's what I loved. Right. And 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 want 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.

I was in La Cagnata 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. But he never talked about how he did anything. Really?

I don't even know if he talked about using rear projection. So I knew from the people I talked to and all how it was done, but he was 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. Ray took his early dinosaur films that he'd done to Willis in 1945 or 46, just when Obie was starting up with Joe Young and hired him onto Joe Young right away. So he saw something in that. And I don't think there was anybody other than Ray that was doing it. There was Obie, 30 years old or 40 years. And then everything I've heard, Ray was kind of on his own. I mean, he knew other fans of sci-fi, like Bradbury and Forry Ackerman.

But I don't know of any other people that he was actually doing his home movies with. Same with Peter Jackson. You look at Peter Jackson's home movies, have you ever seen those early ones where he never put the puppets into him? It's always just like one person, you know? It's him shooting it and then somebody else out there that's 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 effects sequences all during the late 50s and 60s. So we weren't really working on our own. 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 of this on your own. Were there any publications available? I mean, when I was a kid, there was like Sinefx and things like that. Sinefx, yeah. Sinefantastique and Sinefx. But when you were doing it, there was like sin effects and things like that. Sin effects, yeah, sin effect, fantastic, and sin effects. But when you were doing it, 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 I'm or whatever I

didn't know why they did it one way or another I understand now because it's usually economics but also it's some people don't have a vision and they're not really trying to entertain they're telling a story so why will I need to have you know a World War two battleship go from you know from the right of the screen and across to the left, because it's about to shoot a tornado, okay? So they shoot that as like a wide view. Somebody else gets in there and says,

no, it's dramatic, it's the power. It's about to shoot this thing. I'm gonna 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, you know, one is emotional and one is telling the story. But any director wants every shot to tell the difference. And 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 in 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. Oh my God. I had tons of them. Tons of them. I mean, we could sit here for hours and watch. You were a Harryhausen kid. Are you kidding me? And then of course, when you started working and doing your thing, I was around 13 or 14 when ET came out

and then I became obsessed. And can I bring it up now? One of my absolute favorite things that I have ever seen has been the shot where ET 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 61 though, film stocks aren't bright enough to do it. But I really wanted to do it and we tried it. Then we can put, he had to be walking away in that shot. I think if that's the one you're thinking of.

Just after he sees it, see him walking away. 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 with the wall. That's for the trees, and the background was 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 with a camera boom, very small scale. The lights were twinkling though. Yeah, they were.

Very much like it would with the atmosphere. So how did you do it? 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 cameraman part of me thinks that every moment should be like perfect. Like you're there, Steven's there, you know, with the cast, the crew, the cameraman, you're ready to shoot and suddenly everything happens and the moon changes and the sun 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, seamless part of the story. No. Well, I know, you know why that is? Because they have a storyboard. So So they say we want this, you know

Again, we want this ship this world war two battleship to go from the right across to the left to show these 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 artists 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 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 that put them together. And that's one of the reasons for that sort of static feel that you're talking about. 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, well that's, 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 gonna 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 a hundred 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 gonna build something and then how long, how long, you know, the smallest camera you could find, 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 smaller camera and we solve it. And I just, because we had a lot of Nikonons 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 put a,

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 Calistre 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 shouldn't stop motion, right? But you just crinkle the set around from behind until it looks good and you spray the color on it and shoot it and that's 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 just think of it,

well, I know that, okay, great, it's Luke or, I don't know if 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 play from a helicopter, where you're 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 it. And this is pre-computers, 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. OK. And he walked out. And within 15 minutes, I'd figured it out. That's fantastic. And I just learned the power of not giving up and thinking about there's usually some way to put pieces together

To get something that's gonna work was that up and printed? It was off Lee printer 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 on 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 it's really, there's some talk about it, but it's, the motion was done on an 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 it's, you know, the animation stand could push in to get closer to it, and we and we plotted it essentially the same way they used to do all those you know 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 piece of music for up. And you said it finally came to you in the shower? Yes, it did. Yeah. Dennis, are you just sitting when you need

to solve a problem like that? Are you just sitting at the computer and say, 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? That you say, oh, that's it, Eureka. I've solved it.

No, there are, 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 you know, if you can't figure it out, you're still thinking about it. You know, your subconscious is really working. I mean, that's the, that's the reason all of us, I think, are alive. I'm fascinated with that. It keeps us, 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 I loved watching it, the old time. And that was the transformation scene in Frederick March's Jekyll and Hyde. Can you explain how they did that? Yeah, that film was in black and white.

And what they did was they put, 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 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 lop 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? I'll explain to Mike. Yeah, I was crazy about, I kept saying that was the one I wanted, Janet Ann Gallo. Yes. Because I remember Ghost of Frankenstein. She was a child actor in Ghost of Frankenstein

with Chaney Jr. Chaney Jr. and Bela Gosi. What other shows gonna book these people Dennis I ask you? That's right I nobody nobody. And and she she thought nobody she goes no one's gonna know who I am. She thought we were crazy. And and I said on believe me the people who listen to this show you're bigger than Julia Roberts. Well, I don't know. Did I, you guys know who moved across the street from 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, 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, I lived, we lived in La Cunha 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. You have a fondness for- And we 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 principles and the directors and the production and how it's, the package, how it all came together and got done. And the problems you know the problems they had to solve. 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 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 two weeks and I just 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, and had the red hair. I remember hearing Ed Begley 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. 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 he used to open his house up and we could come by once we could drive. We could come by and meet people on like Sundays. The Ackermanchon. You'd see Ray Harry. I've been there. I did that.

I was lucky enough to get to do that a couple of times. Did you go to Gil? I was there twice. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Great. Yeah.

And I heard as he, he was a little too trusting of people with invaluable stuff. Like he had the actual dinosaurs from the original King Kong and just stuff you can't put in. 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 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. 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. He's so trusting. Do I have this at all right, Dennis? Were you profiled in Famous Monsters in Filmland as a young man? Yeah, you know, you know, Carrie and David Ankrum, Morris' sons and I put on this museum in La Cognata because we were collecting stills. 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 they had a back house and we put on the walls all these photos and posters and everything giant behemoth and stuff and put a big sign out in front of their house on

Saturdays and Sundays for people to come and see this. So then 40, I told 40 about it or wrote them or something. I may have been the one of the first times I met 40 actually. And he came out and showed up there and put it in his magazine. He called it the mirroring 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. Or something.

It was just. But they only had two people ever show up. For like three weekends we did it. Oh, only two people showed up. And Famous Monsters used to do that thing of wanted, more fans like, and they'd have a picture of a kid. 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 fascinating so you were a collector too yeah yeah you must say you must know you got to yeah how else are you gonna be able to keep those images unless you collect photos of them you know they're

fleeting right they're on TV or during the theater and they're fleeting and they're gone so there's only a way to do it I used to shoot 8 millimeter off the TV screen to make your own version of to shoot eight millimeter off the TV screen. To be able to look at- Make your own version of Destination Mooned and- No, but the real, 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, I grew up in New Jersey, so I was far away from Hollywood, but you were in La Cognata, 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 couldn't ever, you couldn't ever do 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 all the sets. If I was driving around though, and whenever you saw a big truck in LA, it was a film truck. So I would always stop and watch. And I saw a lot of stuff being done then. I saw all the stuff being done at John Marshall High School there in Los Feliz.

They were always shooting a Mr. Novak, that series. Oh, with James Francis. 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 always thought, if I'm just going to do this, I'm going to be by that camera. Cause 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 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, but first a word from our sponsor.

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Defeating your monthly payments? Sounds like you're at the top of your financial game. Rise to it with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. The credit card that rewards your good financial habits. Earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month. Level up from bill payer to reward slayer. Terms and conditions apply. How about close encounters? What can you talk about? What was Douglas Trumbull like? Doug was great, a really good artist, you know, really knew how to make things look really super nice and everything and good and completely different set up from Star Wars. They knew how to do things, but in Star Wars

we were going for speed. 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 pictorial beauty in it and 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 in 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 I 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. I hadn't heard anything about it. But 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 on to get unknown territory, right, with all these people I don't know on Star Wars. And the same thing 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 is 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 by the directors.

I loved 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, you don't have to be perfect. If you tried 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 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. There are tricks to making these. If you have a model or a bridge that's going to collapse, you don't necessarily make it out. And I did this as a kid.

You don't do it out of plaster. You do it out of 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 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. You know, I mean, it's just kind of there.

You know, 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 and... Yeah, the Cascade of California.

Cascade. Pillsbury Doughboy. Yeah, Pillsbury. 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 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.

And commercials were about the only place, and that was really just Cascade in Hollywood, right on Seward there, right near where Harold Lloyd's first studio was. It was a very famous part of LA. I know that block, yeah. I didn't appreciate it at the time. 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. Inhalation therapy. I'd seen in an ad in Los Angeles Times. Yeah, the LA Times. I think I can learn that, teaching people how to breathe. Wow. But then 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 good Jim Danforth and Bill Taylor and George said no no I don't want to go this complicated way I'm gonna 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 gonna do we don't have the money so they went away and I'm friends with them and they told me about it and I thought oh that's

just too bad you know that it's never gonna 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. Then they go with John Dijkstra, who comes up with this revolutionary, expensive, time-consuming idea that changes the industry. So they ended up having to go with new technology, you know.

And the rest is history. I just followed you know. 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 going to, You'll just make movies with no actors and no location shots Because it could all be done by computers. There's still composers

No, you know, you can auto compose too that's all coming. Yeah, that's I think it's probably out there Based on the color the scene or the let's hope not. How do you think I write my scores? based on the color, the scene or the... Let's hope not. How do you think I write my scores? Yeah. No, no, no. Let's hope not. It's an app on my iPhone.

Anyway, Gil, yes it is and it's happening right now, right? And there are animated films, but you're never gonna get the personality of the people. You're never gonna get the voice reflections. You're never gonna 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 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? It 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? It was a demo reel that they'd put together and they had like two minute scenes from, you know, these big movies that they had acted in. And they had a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit 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 then 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 I did the 2d 3d conversion on conversion on episode two and three

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. But, but I wish that footage were still around because it's neat to see those movies, especially cost of a Wizard of Oz, some of the Wizard of Oz in 3D, it's been done since. I gotta see this. Yeah, I know. You aware of this?

I am aware of it, yeah. Now I remember watching when I saw House of Wax in a theater and a couple of other 3D. And Blot a Devil. Oh yes. Wasn't that the double feature? Yes, by a one-eyed director. Andre de Taufe.

Of course, I had one eye. So he could never know if the 3D was working. I don't know. It's one of the great mysteries of Hollywood. You need two eyes, too. So they, of course, in Hollywood brilliance, hired a one-eyed director. But I remember those early 3D, when you'd watch, you'd look at a room or the actors, and it's like you could see depth, but you every figure looked flat. It looked like a pop-up card.

It looked like you could go into the room, but then all the actors were cardboard cutouts. Yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean. And that's even true of some of the movies now. They still sort of, they're shot in 3d. Yeah. I agree.

You think that's part of the future, Dennis? No, I mean, eventually, but I don't think so. It had a good chance. 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.

But I don't think people are thinking about it as much. And it really is the story. That is like a trick. But it's, the story is so important. Dennis, 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. Oh, 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, when I started there, it was mostly an empty building. They had model shoppers 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, hardly anybody over 35. 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 are being done and everything. So it was, you know, it was a fun place and I didn't quite fit in because I was too serious about it. And they were doing, they were, the guys were like racing cars and motorcycles on the weekends and stuff. That'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 gonna get this movie done. 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 big battle shots that are of the ships flying around, but there was so much that we spread that among ourselves. And George was in there a couple of times a week. He'd fly down from Northern California and 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 and I did. I think we had a shared vision. That's true of everybody I've worked with. If I've got a shared vision with like, well, it's like Spielberg comes up and he says, you know this guy in AI, we want this alien, or this 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? Probably just you. That's it. Yeah, I love that. So you know that, you know, and there was the same kind of a George and, you know, with someone with Cameron and those, you know, it's,

I enjoy those much more than if the director says, do anything you want. You're the effects guy. I think I know that. That's, that's too easy. Yeah. I saw him giving you, I watched the video today of Lucas giving you the, the life achievement award too. And he's talking about how you were, you were there in the middle of the night, just, just sitting around. You must have, 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's on this piece of paper.

He 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. You know, who knows? The thing is that it's 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 Malton 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, I mean, I, you know, wasn't he sort of saying he thinks they're staying on or something? Yeah, I mean, it gave me, it gave us hope. I mean, the Zig, obviously it's a different situation in LA.

I mean, here we lost the Ziegfeld, which you know about. No, you're right. Yeah, 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 LA in 2003, I think at least 15 theaters have closed

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. It's gone before you know it. When I was a kid I could see Star Wars 15 times in six months. 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. On demand, you'll be able to see it. You'll pay your money. This is like sometime

in the 90s or so. I think that's what started Multiplex is going so that you could play these movies all the time. You wouldn't, maybe it's not on demand, but within an hour, you'll be able to find it at your Cineplex because it's playing at two or three theaters. I think that's what kind of started all that. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this.

This episode is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. favorite moments without the distractions. And that's not all. New Galaxy AI features like NowBrief will give you personalized insights based on your day's schedule so that you're prepared no matter what. Buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra now at Samsung.com. McDonald's new cheesy jalapeno and bacon quarter pounder with 100% Canadian beef is here. So if you crave beefy burgers with a pretty peppery punch and pickled jalapeno peppers pile in the perfect bunch,

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Yeah, we put this out on social media and we were bombarded with questions for you. Okay. So we'll throw a couple of matches if you don't mind. All right, this is from 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 know 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. He's probably getting me, maybe he's getting mixed up with Brian Johnson. We were impressed. I know, I was, Robert Martin, we'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. Somebody. Peter Santamaria wrote this, I just had to share this, how many minutes into the podcast until Gilbert asks Dennis about the Penisaurus monster? And 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 Penisorage?

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? This is, this is interesting to us. Bob Burns.

Joe Baez says, does Dennis have memories of working on the Bob Burns Halloween extravaganzas in the 70s and 80s? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You know we had Bob here. You know the show. Yeah yeah we talk about it a lot together whenever we see him you know and we wish he was still doing them. Oh he's a sweet man. So what was that like? He is. Oh it was so so much fun. You know, there'd be like six or eight people getting together for like four weekends right before Halloween. And Bob had an idea. We're going to do the thing.

You know, we're going to build corridors like you're in the ice, or the Arctic up there, and doorways. And we're going to have a guide telling you to be careful. And they'll open the one. They'll don't open that door, of course course and that's the one that'll 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 some fiction. A big Goomba creature was on the top of Bob's house. We did a mad, I love it. I love it.

a Jekyll and Hyde kind of character with the blue and 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 and in the attic and then you're sitting there looking at it But then at the last minute, you know, you get scared and you run out screaming So it always had a punchline, of course when I'm blessed that when they were alive

They were hiring Glenn Strange and Bata Lugosi for some of those shows I heard. I don't think they were hired but they would come by. That's great. As fans. Yeah. That's great. You know, I've never seen them, but you know, it's so funny walking into Bob's,

Burn's house, you know, one day I'm walking in and there's Doodles Weaver. Wow! What? Oh my God! Whataver. Wow! What? Oh my God! What a great name! What a great name to bring up. I didn't know you knew Doodles Weaver.

Oh yeah, yeah, we've known each other for a long time. A lot of people like that. So these guys would show up, you know, we'd have on the Thing show, some of the actors would show up that were in the movie, in the original. Were there 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. 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 ET with Gilbert in the basket? I'll do it. It's a challenge.

Oh, I would love that. It wouldn't be very hard either. Think about that. 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. 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 really, 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 this 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, 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's numbers right, I had been, you know, 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 figuring out how to make CG work. But I think 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 2000 pages long. 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 math lines around the T2 character or any compositing. And it was just great. And then, but I thought that was gonna 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 know, you talk about seeing a movie with an audience. That scene 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 the oohing in the eye. You knew people were seeing something they had never seen before. Right. And there's nothing wrong. Yeah, there's no flaw. Imagine if that had been like, 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 magician part of me, I guess, likes to show that off. Do you actually do magic? 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 that extrovert. Now 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. 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 never say who you're doing. And they'll never have to do that crappy old age makeup. Or put the Vaseline on the lens to make it soft. 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. 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 Sito 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, you know, 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. In the original Raiders. Steven 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 gonna, you got a part in the movie. I'm, 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 tri motor was there and it couldn't fly, but it's where they were storing it. So we went over there, Stephen came up and the whole crew and everything, small crew, and we shot it in a morning over there. And it was the 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 the shadow of your nose on your cheek or something like that, or your head the right, half the right way and stuff like that. Do you have more of a warmth? It was pretty neat. Do you have more of a warmth for the Nazis now than you did? Well, Gilbert you played Hitler. Yeah. I don't quite yet. I have to soften up. I don't think I'm ever gonna quite have that. I want to throw out. 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 my our friend Mike Herman does Dennis think motion capture performers like Andy circus Should be eligible for Academy Award nominations That's a lot of 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. You know, but it's so important. How about this one from Ray Garten, 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, well we 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 Tonton

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, maybe I'm 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, 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 Harry Oss and sort of stuff. And even the stuff 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, in my mind,

convinced myself it's obsolete and I really do that. That's fascinating. It'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, you know, how do you find that if it hasn't been done before? Of course? So where are these nine Oscars scattered, Dennis? They're all over. Ask Michael where he keeps his. Our friends, family, work a little bit around, all over. I mean, 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. 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? I've got to put it out at least. Here's 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, I think that might be part of like, why my psyche wants it that way is because I kind of don't want to look at 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 you know so I feel like I learned something every time that's in my face I won't. I heard Spielberg when Spielberg directed the second Jurassic Park, he he felt like he was so he 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 didn't I didn't see any he worked hard enough. I didn't see any of that when I was on the film. I was, the interesting thing on 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 gonna end it on the island. We're doing something completely different. We're gonna like make a King Kong where he's in the streets, the T-Rex is in the streets, everything. I thought that was a really good idea. I never saw any sign that Stephen 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. Could be. It's a fascinating, Michael. It's really funny you talk about the Oscar. I had mine for the first year in a drawer. Oh, really? In our bedroom, the bottom drawer for probably the same reasons.

I don't deserve this. Right. I don't even think about it. Oh, that's funny. I feel embarrassed that we didn't give it to everybody who worked on the film. But now you have nine of them. They can't possibly all fit in that drawer, so you 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 was 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 fire fall. The fire fall, yeah. They don't do it anymore, huh? I forget the mountain up there. At nine o'clock at night, under or above where Camp Curry is, that's's all still there they used to push big flaming logs that had fallen down down a 2,000 foot cliff and the fire and hit rocks below and would all go out and everything but they did it every night in the summertime and I was you know 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, you know, a college just said, oh, it's not natural and like, and they were worried about something or 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 works cause of the 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, can a guy like you that knows how things work

maintain his sense of wonder when you walk into that movie theater, is it hard? Well, I've got to work on it. I work on it all the time, uh, to remind myself, I'm a kid 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, uh, you know, there's a lot of excitement when you're, you know, six, eight years old. Same Same question for you Mikey. When you're three years old. Can you 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. 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. Yeah, 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 can't find it. I have a picture of Fles Gordon. Do you? I wanna direct too, 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 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 that. Terry Gilliam, people I didn't even know were fans of his showed up, you know. Peter 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 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 what you're doing. I thought I was gonna 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 wanna thank you for all the inspiration you've given me.

Thanks very much. We all owe you a jet, 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. You know, we've interviewed. 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 got, you know, you got to be good at it. So when these times come, you're, you do them and you deliver.

But a lot of, I think a lot of people get out that maybe should have stuck around. Yeah. My friend, Susie Esman says, just stay on the bus. What's next for you? Are you writing a book, Dennis? I rumored you're writing a book. My wife and I, mainly my wife at the moment, are writing a book on sort of on, it's not a memoir, but it's more about an art book on how to visualize things and how to bring the emotion out of something in effects, or it can actually be in anything, can be in any art form. And it's, because a lot of, like I said, a lot of folks I know that are coming up

aren't even taught about, you know, about feeling. Oh, excuse me here. They aren't even talking about, you know, doing quality sound, or whether, I don't mean sound, but doing quality, to try to engage in the audience emotionally. They are just taught the technical side of it. And that's something that I'm trying to encourage. We're trying to encourage in this book to get people 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, you know that, you know that there was that, there's that school, the master's school or something, it's on the internet that a lot of people are talking about. Oh, master class, yeah. Master class. Well, I saw an ad for Carlos Santana's and he says exactly the same thing.

The previous, just like Imaizumi talking about visual effects, he's talking about music. You know, everybody, I think all of us that are in this field, you've got to, you want to feel it. We want to feel what we're doing. That's not taught in schools. Yeah, and be original. What's coming up what we're doing. And that's not taught in schools. Yeah. And be original. What's coming up for you, Mr. Giacchino?

Uh, I got a Spiderman coming up. You are scoring Spiderman. Spiderman 2, Far From Home. Mm hmm. Or Spiderman, Far From Home. Mm hmm. Um, and some other things you can't talk about. There's always things you can't talk about, you know?

And Dennis, I'm sure is way more entrenched in that than I am, but. Saw Incredibles 2 and Loved It. I can't talk about this. Yes. The secret that and lovely. This is, I can't talk about this. Yes. He can't talk. The secret that you asked him, Gilbert, he can't talk about. Yes. I can't talk about it.

So, so what fucking good are yours to get? Dennis, this might, this might be one of my new favorite episodes, so thank you so much. Well, thank you guys. 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 cohost, Frank Santopadre and Michael, I still don't know how to pronounce your fucking name. Chiquino. Oh, Chiquino. Chiquino. What kind of Italian is that?

Chiquino. You got it. And our main guest, a special effects wizard, and that's Dennis Muirin. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you. Thank you. 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. Bye-bye. Gilbert in the basket. That's right, yeah. We'll talk to you again, pal. Bye bye. All right, bye bye. The Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast is produced by Dara Gottfried and Frank Santapadre with audio production by Frank Fertorosa. Web and social media is handled by Mike McPatton, Greg Pair, and John Bradley Seals.

Special audio contributions by John Beach. Special thanks to John Fotiadis, John Murray, and Paul Rayburn.