Rick Baker Details the Making of American Werewolf in London | Joe Rogan

It's such an interesting time capsule when you look at these films and you look at something like Nosferatu from 1922 and then you look at what we're doing today with CGI in a lot of ways, I mean, I'm not a fan of CGI. I'm not a fan of it in terms of like for monsters. It just seems, everything seems fake. The suspension of disbelief is higher than if I'm like, what you did with American Werewolf in London? One of the more brilliant things about it was the special effects and the makeup were fantastic, but they were these really quick scenes. It was like you saw it for a second and it was burned into your eyes and then it vanished. Yeah, what John Landis said to me is that I'm never going to really show the werewolf for more than a couple of seconds and I hardly even want to show it thin. What was great about werewolf working on that film with John Landis was he said, you're the expert, I want a four-legged hound from hell. I wanted to make a biped werewolf. We argued about it and it was basically he wins, he's the director, but he says four-legged hound from hell, make it and I did. The first sculpture was what the final thing became. Same with everything in it, the Nazi demons, all that stuff. Cut to like when I did the Wolfman, I mean, it did thousands of designs and all these producers are going, well, maybe if you do one between this and that and do one between this and that, maybe this poor should be over here. That kind of stuff just is so soul sucking and it's one of the reasons I retired. To this day, I mean, on the cover of my book is the sculpture from one of the Nazi demons from American werewolf and a number of people said this is one of the greatest designs ever, this kind of stuff and it's people who are production designers and stuff. It's pure Rick Baker without interference. That's what I thought the industry would be, which it isn't for the most part. Well, it's just everybody wants to, it's the same with comedy. It seems like it's the same with everything. Everybody wants to put their greasy little fingerprints on it and say, the reason why his nose is like that was me. I told Rick Baker, you don't know what you're doing. You got to make the nose wider. Yeah, no, I know. It's watered down the designs. Like I said, it's soul sucking. I mean, sculptures take a long time and we sculpt every pore and every wrinkle and everything. I have magnifying glasses I wear when I'm doing this. After you spend hours and sleepless nights doing it and then some guy who doesn't know what he's talking about comes in and says, well, why don't you do this? Well, they're disturbing your artistic vision. When someone contributes money and they're the ones who get to decide whether things get made or not, they think they're artistic as well. It becomes a disaster. It's the thing, when you see a movie or a TV show and there's 47 producers, it used to be they were show people. For example, on Gremlins 2, Mike Fennell, who is the producer, who came from Roger Corman School of Filmmaking. He really checks every penny. He was a guy I could go to and he would look at everything. He'd go, why is this? Why are you buying this? He would explain it to him and he'd go, okay, that makes sense. There'd be a person you could talk to and you could get an answer from. Now there's, like I said, 47 producers and nobody will commit to anything. It drove me crazy. I did make it because I loved it and I feel so fortunate that my hobby became my profession and I did well and got awards for it and stuff. For something I would do for free. It got to the point where I was just becoming a bitter old man because of all this. I decided I have to retire and I want to make things for myself while I still can. I'm almost 69 years old and having trouble with joints and vision and all kinds of stuff. I'd be pissed off if I was working on some movie for some producer that didn't know what he was talking about and screwed up my work. Right. A mess with your head. It's time to just make my own thing and I'm loving it. When you look back, what was the first thing that you did where you're like, okay, that was a good one? It's funny once you do something and you look at it, you see all the things are wrong with it. I always say I wish I could see the film before I make this stuff because so many times the thing that's supposed to be the most important thing just isn't and something that you threw together is all of a sudden the most important thing. American Werewolf was probably the one where ... That's one that really put me on the map. A lot of people say King Kong was, but American Werewolf, I looked at it and I thought, well, that's pretty cool. I also went, God, I wish we did this and I wish I didn't do that. I see so many things that I would do differently now. That movie's a masterpiece. It's a great film. It's a great film. My second film was Schlock, which was John Landis' first film. I was 20 and he was 21. I had, again, I think I had six weeks and I think I had $1,000 again to make ... John played the Schlock therapist. I don't know if you've ever seen Schlock. No, never saw it. That's another one you're going to watch. Low budget movie shot by a kid, basically. Like I said, he played this. It was based ... Have you ever seen Trogg? Yes. Crofford? Yes. He saw Trogg and couldn't believe that they made this movie, so he was making a joke version of Schlock. He wanted to play this eight man character and it's like, well, okay, but you're going to be the director too. He had to be on set at six in the morning, whether Schlock worked or not, all made up. It was shot in three weeks and John and I were going on two hours sleep at night. I would make him up. We were out in Agora, where it used to be an Oakwood school where John went for a while and I think it was thrown out of. We lived and worked in this screen and patio that was left over in this dilapidated building. I was making up John on a bar stool and eventually he was falling asleep and doing that thing. I'd have to grab him. For some reason, they were doing the dailies at MGM, so we would have to go from ... After 12 hour day of filming and an hour moving the makeup, we'd get in the car, drive to MGM, look at the previous day's dailies, drive back, sleep for two hours, get up, start again. Oh my God. It was during a heat wave in Agora. The first day, John had the suit on all day and I was like combing it and brushing it and the hair was just falling out in handfuls. I went, oh my God, and then my second film of my career is over. I was staying up all night with a hair director trying to dry the suit out so I could glue more hair on it. It's actually kind of a cool makeup and kind of a fun character. John had already written American Werewolf and he said, my next film is going to be American Werewolf. He wrote that by the time he was 21? He was 20 when he wrote it. Wow. He goes, it's going to be my next film. He said, I want to do a transformation in a way that had never been done before. It doesn't make sense to me that a man changing in his body going through this metamorphosis would sit in a chair like Lon Chaney Jr. and be still until he finished changing because I think it would be painful and I want him to be able to move and I want to show the pain and how would you do that? I'm like, oh my God, I have no fucking idea, but I would love to because we both love those transformation scenes. Pull that transformation scene up. The initial transformation scene is so fucking awesome because I remember seeing it in the theater. What year was this? 1981 I think it was. Okay, so I was 14 years old. I was in high school and I remember seeing this in the movie theater and this was another one that sort of cemented the idea that I wanted to be a makeup artist. When he pulls all his clothes off and he's burning up and then he looks at his hand and his hand starts stretching out, that was incredible. This was just such a different Werewolf too. Everything about it was different. Yeah. Well, again, and I credit John for that and he also said, I want to do it in a brightly lit room. It's not going to have horror film lighting. It's going to be real. How did you do this? We called it a change-o-hand. It was actually a fake hand. We storyboarded the whole sequence and that's a different fake hand there. That's the second one and that's another one there. It's got syringes in it that we pump. Now he's wearing an appliance hand that matches that. We storyboarded the whole sequence and as you saw when David first took off his clothes, he's not very hairy. I said for me to glue a little bit of hair on and then we do him a little hairier and a little hairier, it's better for us to work in reverse. Let me do him in the hairiest first and I'll pull hair off and trim it. Interesting. Yeah. But we boarded the whole thing out. This hair growing was reverse. I punched hair through rubber and then pulled it through and we reverse printed it. Look at this going on. This is a whole fake back again with things coming out of it. You punched hair through rubber and pulled it through and then reversed it. Then it grows out like that. Wow. We thought what would be the most impactful thing would be for his face to change last, but what I don't like about the transformation, like here, the wolf has a big mane of hair so he's got this big hairy neck that I don't like. David doesn't have lenses in his eyes. That was a 10 hour day of makeup. Really? Just exhausted and with makeup on? This was incredible, man. That's crazy that he doesn't have anything in his eyes. That's just his eyes. Holy shit. Yeah, this is the first stage change ahead. This is a rubber head that had mechanisms that push it out. This is the second stage change ahead. It just stretches out like that. The thing that was interesting, because I was 30 when I did this. It was at a time when there weren't people that did this kind of work. Just a few in Hollywood, like John Chambers who did Planet of the Apes. But for me to find a crew, I hired kids that sent me fan mail. I was a kid from Texas that sent me fan mail, another kid from Connecticut, and they were like 18. Wow. I had a crew of basically 18 year olds and me. There was like, I think six of us who did this film 30 however many years ago. I'm not good at math. It still looks pretty decent. Fucking awesome. Not just pretty decent. There's a reason why I have the American Werewolf, the Pat McGee version of it sitting there in the front. But now I have to call Pat and tell him the legs are off. What's wrong with the legs? They're too stretched out and too long. That was the problem because I didn't know how I was going to make this four-legged wolf work. Yeah. I thought, well, I'll figure out something. It came to me one night. I thought, I remember as a kid, you ever do that wheelbarrow race thing where somebody holds your feet and you're walking on your hands? I thought, well, if we do something like that and have puppeteered legs in the back. The reality is if you really see the full wolf, there's feet sticking out of his ass. He's got two legs sticking out, but we had him on a platform with wheels and the back legs were puppeteered with little rods. So you never ... The back legs come in, that's when you cut. And a lot of the stuff, like in Piccadilly Circus and the big bus crash and stuff, that's me in a wheelchair with a head, which John pushed me down the street. Wow. That was a great scene. God, that was a great scene. And Werewolf comes bursting out of the ... The Porno thing? Porno thing, yeah. Bites the guy in the head? That script, I think, was the only script that I've worked on in my entire career. The script that I read was basically the script we made. The only difference was when John wrote the script originally, that Aeros cinema in Piccadilly Circus was a cartoon cinema. And in the original script, it was a cartoon cinema. But when we got there, it was a porno cinema. So he changed that scene to a porno cinema. Other than that, the script is basically verbatim what he wrote as a 20-year-old. And his use of music and everything was groundbreaking at the time. People didn't do like the way he did. And his friend that kept returning more and more rotten every time, that was a genius idea as well, that Jack had explained to him, like, hey man, you got to kill yourself. You're a werewolf, you're going to kill a bunch of people. Everything about it was so unique. It completely flipped the whole idea of what a werewolf movie was on its head. Yeah. And it worked. And Griffin, who played Jack, when I first made him up in that makeup, as I was putting the stuff on, in the makeup chair, he's kind of getting more and more sad and sinking down in the chair. And it's like, what's wrong, Griffin? Is something wrong? And he goes, look at me. And I go, yeah. And he goes, look at me. This is my big break. My throats torn out. And nobody's going to look at me. And it's like, did you read the script? Yeah. And he didn't say your throat was torn out. But I didn't think it would look like this. And he goes, I did. And that's what John thought it should look like. So he was bummed out? Well, he was at first. Because it's disturbing to see. But it's a great role. Yeah. And he was brilliant. And he was terrific to work with. But the initial shock of seeing himself torn up was hard for him to take. Because it's so realistic. Yeah. But I thought, OK, I got to call. John was in England, already scouting locations. And so I said, you got to talk to Griffin. He's kind of upset about what he looks like. But I took that opportunity, being the sensitive guy that I am, to tell him that the third part of his transformation was actually going to be a puppet. It wasn't really going to be him. Because he was supposed to become basically a talking skeleton. And the makeup process is an additive process. And he would have to be a huge skull to look right. And he wasn't too happy about that either. But I said, but I want you to operate the mouth. Because you're doing the lip sync. You're doing the voice. So he operated the puppet. But he turned out to be a great guy. And I thought he was brilliant in the film. The whole film. The film's amazing. And it's funny, too. That's one of the things that's interesting about the film. It's silly but horrific. Like the violence and the explosive scenes of the werewolf are ripping people apart. But then some of it is hilarious. Well that whole sequence in the porno theater with all the dead people. I mean when we were filming it, I was kind of going, is this funny? It was a welcome sort of comic relief from the graphic horror of the werewolf tearing people apart. Yeah. And I think it's a brilliant film. And it changed my life. I mean I got my first Oscar for that film. So fortunate to me that John came into my life. This happened again because of Don Post Studios that I talked about. They made the Halloween masks. John was a male boy at Fox for a while. And he knew John Chambers. He would deliver mail to John Chambers who did the Planet of the Apes makeup. And he talked to John Chambers at first about doing schlock. And John said, well I need $250,000 in the budget of the whole film. I think it was $30,000. So I think he basically didn't want to deal with this hyperactive kid. So he sent him to Don Post Studios. And Don Post said, well same thing. They didn't really want to deal with this kid. And it would be way too much money. But they said there's a kid who comes in here and buys material. I used to go there to buy materials. Because in those days, now there are stores that sell all the supplies that you need. I used to have to drive all over California to get what I need. And some stuff, they would only sell you in a 55 gallon drum, which I couldn't afford. Like polyurethane foam, which is a two part foam that foams up. Chemical reaction foams it up. Make cyanide gas when it foams. Which nobody told me. But Don Post would pour some in a can. You go, here you go kid. First time I used it in my bedroom. I practically died. Really? Yeah. And I have a real strong, I have a very strong allergic reaction to it now. Because of that? Yeah. Wow. I mean my throat closes up. I could hardly breathe. And I didn't know what was going on. And I found out what it was. But Don- Consyanide, Jesus. Yeah. But because of that, because I left, that's the only time in my life I actually had a business card. And John says, you know, it said Rick Baker, Monster Banker. But I think it said Rick Baker, Makeup Artist. But I gave a card and some pictures to Don Post. And when they were trying to get rid of this kid who wanted a funky gorilla suit thing, you know, they said, well this guy's made some gorilla suits. Why don't you talk to him? And John lived in Westwood near the cemetery there, the veteran cemetery. He drove out to Covina. And again, I was still pretty shy at that point. And my bedroom at that point was, you know, I had, I slept on a convertible sofa because I had gotten enough money to buy one so I could fold it up and have more floor space to work. But my masks and my, had work tables everywhere, you know. And John is very loud and hyperactive and he was coming in and he was flipping out over the stuff that I made, you know, and like touching it and stuff. And I'm going, oh, it's like this guy's in my room. He's touching my stuff and he's really scaring me, you know. But I mean, thank God, I mean, American Werewolf, you know, put me on the map. And I mean, I did Coming to America and my introduction to Eddie Murphy was, you know, and I did a lot of films with Eddie. And because of John, I actually met my wife, Sylvia on John Landis film, where he had me play a, originally it was a Jesus Freak. It was a film called Into the Night. And it was all filmed at night. And met my wife on Hollywood Boulevard in front of Fredericks of Hollywood in the middle of the night. And it turned out, they changed it to a dope dealer. I was playing a dope dealer and Sylvia was the hairstylist on the film. And John came in and says, I want you to be in the movie. I want you to play the part you were born to play, a hooker. So my wife was a hooker in the background, you know. And there's a picture of us, it's in the book actually, on the night we met in front of Fredericks of Hollywood. Oh, that's cool. And, you know, now we have two amazing children and a great life. And, you know, I owe John a lot. Well, you and John made magic. He really did. I mean, that movie was so good. You know, and as we said, one of the things about that film is it was so strategic in its use of the werewolf. You know, that you really, when you got a chance to see it, like one of my favorite scenes was when the guy, the businessman is in the subway and he's running away from the werewolf and you know it's chasing him but you don't see it. And you don't see it until he's stumbling on the escalator and then you see it at the bottom of the escalator just for a second. Just walking into the frame and you're like, fuck yeah. And they cut right before you see his feet sticking out of his ass. Well, that was the thing with the design of the werewolf as well because John said he wasn't going to show it. Really you would, when you do something that's going to be an animatronic character, you kind of sculpt it in a neutral position and you let the mechanism make the expressions. But from my experience in other films, the editor doesn't necessarily choose the moment where you think it's the best expression, you know. And I thought if it's only going to be on for a second, I want it to be scary looking. So I sculpted in a scary expression on it, which I normally wouldn't do. So there was no way that it wasn't going to look scary when you saw it. Right, snarling. Yeah.