Rick Baker Remembers Ray Harryhausen

My kids found out about Harry Hilsen from Monsters, Inc. And they were like, who's that? Who's Harryhausen? And I said, well, he's the guy that made all the early monster movies. And so then we sat down and we watched King Kong together. And they were scared at first. They were like, oh my God, I'm scared. But they started laughing when they saw King Kong. The Star Martian. Yeah, I mean, it's today in comparison to, you know, even in comparison to your version of King Kong, when you could make it mechanized. And, you know, it's just, it's amazing when you think about how far we came. But you know, he has the stop motion. And Harryhausen didn't animate on King Kong. He did My Dijo Young. Oh, okay. But King Kong is what inspired him. That was Willis O'Brien and Pete Peterson, who were the animators on that. He did, what was the one with Medusa? Did he do that one? Harryhausen, yeah. Clash of the Titan. Clash of the Titan, that's right. That was him, right? And that was a one man show. You know, in stop motion, you know, it's 24 frames a second. He did all himself? All himself. And when you're animating seven, and Jason the Argonauts, there's seven skeletons fighting seven guys. Right. He did all that himself? Himself. And I became friends with Ray. Wow. And I would say to him, and this was during the time when computer stuff was starting out, you know, and, you know, his movies were $50,000 movies, you know, you know, the whole budget of the movie, you know, not just effects, the early ones that he did, you know. Doesn't it piss you off that now they get millions of dollars and there's hundreds of people working on stuff that you did by yourself, you know? Well, they could never take away his legacy, though. You know, even though he did it all. But he was not just a ground breaker, but he's the guy. When you think about stop motion films and horror films, he's the guy that you think of. And you've pulled up Jason in the Argonauts skeleton scene. I can't believe he did that all himself. Because that's a very, very detailed and intricate scene. No, because you have to match what they're doing. Yeah. I mean, and, you know, you're in a room by yourself, you know, moving a fraction of an inch a puppet at a time, you know, and it takes forever, you know. And I mean, having if you've never done stop motion, you can appreciate it. Yeah. Oh, my God. What year was this? I'm not sure exactly. And look, they pop out of the ground. Yeah. And it's a great Bernard Herriman music in this. You know, he always had terrific scores in his films as well, you know. And again, he was a fan. He was a fan of who made a living doing something that he loved, you know. And imagine being the actors and having to sort of respond to all this. Yeah. To these skeletons that are popping out of the ground with shields and swords. Which aren't there. Which aren't there. Yeah. Which, you know, came, you know, months later. Yeah. Okay. You're seeing the skeleton now. He's scared. He's going to take your soul. Well, Ray would kind of direct those scenes because most directors don't know what to do with that kind of stuff, you know. Yeah. But he was, you know, what I thought was great about Ray is like so many artists, you know, aren't appreciative until after they're gone. You know, Ray saw the impact he had. I mean, I went to his 90th birthday celebration in England. The British Film Academy did this great tribute to Ray. And everybody showed up. I mean, Peter Jackson came. You know, people who didn't show up sent video, Steven Spielberg sent a video, Jim Cameron did all talking about how much Ray's films and Ray's work influenced them. And it was really great, you know. And it's so nice that he was able to be appreciated like that in his lifetime. And now I'm actually, I mean, the funny thing is I'm getting that now with my book that's come out. It's just going, oh my God, I love you so much. And the stuff that you've done, it's just, you know, it's nice to know that, you know, I served a purpose in my life. Oh, you served a giant purpose. And you served a big purpose in my life, man. Like I said, I'm such a huge fan of your work.