Specialist Practice

Seven Chris Walas Transformations Transformation scenes were really something to gawk at in the '80s. The Howling Cat People, An American Werewolf in London, The Beast Within, and many other movies featured the latest special makeup FX technology to turn hapless umans into frightening beasts right on camera, with few if any cuts or dis olves. Since then, the computer has risen as the primary tool in many transfor mation scenes, morphing" actors into creatures seamlessly and almost ffortlessly. But even if this burgeoning technology has superseded the lengthy, bladderpacked, latex-ripping FX spectacles of the past, 1986's The FTy still stands out as the ultimate metamorphosis movie. Directed by David Cronenberg and a remake in name only of the 1958 movie of the same name, The Fly achieved new levels of man-into-monster Fx, brack- eted by an emotional story of one man's loss of humanity. The film won makeup Fx creator Chris Walas an Academy Award in 1987. It became a cooperative effort," recalls Walas of the film's genesis. The fo one-year-old designer's Marin County-based company, Chris Walas, Inc., has gained notoriety on such movies as Gremlins, Enemy Mine, Cronenberg's Na Lunch, Ghost, Arachnophobia, and virtuosity. "I broke the script down, saying, I think there's got to be five stages of makeup. And then we're gonna have to just get rid of the actor [Jeff Goldblum] and move on to a puppet for the last sequence." It was everyone's intent to try and keep the actor in the role as long as possible, because you can get a lot more out of an actor than you can from a rub- ber puppet. So it was very tough finding an avenue, visually, that would allow that. "Our initial designs were very biologically oriented, b they were sort of sym metrical, logical progressions," Walas continues. "It was David who came in and "No, you gotta at it disease, as in there really twisting and not balanced out. That was a real good inspiration. We and turning, back, and just kind of ran to a medical library and brought a few disease books spent a half hour getting sick to our stomachs

113 Chris Walas 

Timpone, A. (1996) Men, makeup, and monsters