Monster Talent with Greg Nicotero

Greg Nicotero is a special effects make-up artist who began his film career working on George Romero’s 1985 film Day of the Dead. With over 25 years in the business Greg has worked on films such as Misery, Pulp Fiction, Scream, Sin City and Inglourious Basterds. In 1988 Greg formed his special effects studio KNB EFX with his friends Howard Berger and Robert Kurtzman. KNB EFX has worked on over 700 film and TV projects and is renowned for providing some of the more horrifying and amazing special effects make-up in Hollywood.

Greg recently made his directorial debut with a short film entitled- The United Monster Talent Agency. Full of nostalgia for the classic horror villains, as well as plenty of interesting cameos and horror film references, this short is screening in Sydney’s Fantastic Planet Film Festival with a slot on Halloween.

Film Synopsis

Dateline 1954 – Movietone News has broken one of Hollywood’s biggest stories! Riding the wave of the America’s fascination with Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolfman, it is revealed that these famous foes are not men in make-up, as believed, but actual living, breathing MONSTERS!!!! Gathered from around the globe by THE UNITED MONSTER TALENT AGENCY, this company has provided talent to some of Hollywood’s biggest studios. Their employees cater to the needs of these in-demand creatures, housing them in custom habitats when their fearsome talents are not required on the studio lot. Get a glimpse behind the scenes as your favourite horror characters’ true natures are revealed!

A still from The United Monster Talent Agency

Surprised and delighted that someone in Australia would want to talk about his short film, Greg, who is Hollywood-based, took some time out to talk to Beth Wilson about his long career and the lessons he’d learnt along the way.

Occupation

A special effects make-up artist. So I’m allowed to create fantasy characters, horrific deaths, animatronics creatures, anything fantasy or supernatural related. I’ve had the chance to do everything from comic book characters like Marv from Sin City to Nazis being scalped by Brad Pitt. A little bit of everything really.

How did you get involved with special effects make-up?

Ironically my childhood dream job was to make monsters. My dad is a retired physician, so when I was growing up my parents had said ‘you’re going to be a doctor’. I kind of always loved monster movies and Universal films and read Famous Monsters Magazine, but had always thought –‘well it is just kind of a fun little hobby, it is something I’m really interested in, but I’m going to go to school and become a doctor and my love for movies will just be a hobby’, and that was where I started. I met George Romero and we got to be friends and I was a fan of Night of the Living Dead, and had visited him on sets of a couple of his movies and in my third year of college as a pre-med student George had offered me a job on a film and I took it. I told my parents, ‘I’m going to go back and finish up college, but I’m going to take a semester off and work on this movie.” That was 700 movies ago.

The first horror film you remember watching and where you saw it?

The first horror movie was Christopher Lee’s Horror of Dracula. My Dad was a real gadget person when we were younger and we had one of the first video recorders and it was this giant reel-to-reel tape recorder and we recorded the Horror of Dracula and The Time Machine, those where the first movies I remember seeing. Because we had recorded them we watched them over and over again.

Which horror film has had the biggest impact on your psyche?

Either Dawn of the Dead or Jaws. I remember seeing Jaws in the theatre, that night I remember having a nightmare that our basement flooded and filled with sharks, it really terrified me. The irony was my mum covered my eyes a couple of times, like at the beginning when you seen Chrissie’s remains on the beach my mum covered my eyes because I was 13 I think, so in my mind I imagined it worse than it actually was. So when I finally saw the movie again and watched it, it was more tastefully done than I had imagined it. I was more scared of what I thought her body was going to look like laying on the beach.

Greg Nicotero talking about his love of Jaws

If someone was unfamiliar with your work what would you suggest they watch?

I would probably suggest a couple of movies- I would say watch Army of Darkness, Sin City and The Walking Dead. Army of Darkness had creature suits and characters and puppets and make-ups. Sin City was very character make-up driven with Mickey Rourke, Benicio Del Toro and Nick Stahl, and then The Walking Dead was pure horror and getting a chance to put a new spin on Zombies and what zombies look like and how people regard them and see them. I think those three movies really cast a wide net in terms of the kind of work I have been doing for last 25 years.

What has been the most useful career advice you’ve ever received and who was it from?

You know George Romero said to me one day- we did a gag on Land of the Dead where a Zombie bites a girl on the cheek and rips a big chunk of meat out of her cheek, we’d spent an hour and a half gluing this prosthetic on, it was a gelatine piece with blood tubes in it and all this stuff and it looked beautiful and I’d said to George, “We really only have one shot at this because once we rip that meat out, putting the piece of meat back in and making it look all clean again is really not going to happen.” So he yells, “Action!”, the zombie moves in and bites her and right as the zombie bites her, her arm came up in the frame and blocked the bite, and I almost had a heart attack. George said, “That’s great, that was fantastic,” and looked at me and saw this frown and said, “What’s the matter?” and I said, “Well her arm came up and kind of blocked the effect a little bit,” and he said, “But Greg that’s real. If you think she wouldn’t struggle or fight if someone was tearing a bit of flesh off her face!” He said, “Life isn’t perfect, things aren’t perfect but what makes things real is spontaneity, that unknown.”

It made me realise I needed to step back and allow my job and the make-up effects to be organic, because you never know which way the blood will go, you never know if it is going to spurt or dribble, you just don’t know. But some of the most riveting moments are when you don’t know what is going to happen and then it is captured and it has an impact you could never have imagined.

What has been the most challenging special effect or make-up look you’ve ever had to create?

Every project puts down a different set of challenges. Sin City was a great challenging project because Robert [Rodriguez] called and said Mickey Rourke is going to play Marv and I thought having an opportunity to create that character three dimensionally on an actor like Mickey, he’s got such a presence and there is so much about him that already is that guy, that it was a little scary, because you never knew what was going to happen. I remember the first day we did the make-up, [Rourke] was in costume in the long black trench coat and blood stains on his shirt and hands and he went walking into the set and Frank Miller literally backed away from him. It was like Frank Miller saw this guy he had been drawing for all these years and he was literally in the flesh walking towards him. To me Sin City was a tremendous challenge because we had to be true to Frank Miller’s characters and execute them on the top name Hollywood actors, for Robert Rodriguez, who is a guy who is my best friend, the pressure is on. The pressure is on a little bit more when you work with your friends because you want it to be perfect.

What is your advice for anyone who wants to get into special effects and make-up design?

My advice would be to put a fantastic portfolio together, continue sculpting, continue making masks, continue doing make-ups. When you get an opportunity to show your work to someone you want to put your best foot forward, so documenting your work is critical. A lot of people we get portfolios from they have blurry photos, or the flash washes everything out. You have to understand you might not be able to sit there next to me and show me your portfolio, so your work has to speak for itself. You may only have one chance to make that impression, so what I always tend to tell people who are interested in special effects make-up is to really choose the quality and the best work you possibly can to represent what sort of artist you are.

What was the scariest thing about making your directorial debut?

At one point, while making the movie, I started getting a little overwhelmed because I had basically hijacked my entire studio and all of my employees. What had happened was I’d been on the road for about two years, I’d done Inglourious Basterds in Berlin, I’d done the Book of Eli in New Mexico, I’d done Piranha in Arizona, and then Predators in Hawaii and Texas, so I’d been literally away for almost two years. When I got home I realised I had a six-week window between when we wrapped Predators and when we were going to start The Walking Dead so I decided to do the movie. I wrote it in a couple of hours and then I started to call my friends, “Hey I want to make this movie,” – then I was pregnant, and now I’ve told people I’m going to do it, now I have to do it. I paid for the whole thing myself, I called all my friends, I’d spend a lot of time working with people, and I’m not the kind of person who calls and asks for a favour. When this opportunity came up I called Frank Darabont and I called Eli Roth and Dana Gould and Robert Rodriguez- I called my friends and I said, “Hey man I’m doing this movie and I’d love for you to do a cameo or I’d love for you to help me out, what can you do?” When you ask for favours from your friends and people who are working with you- you better damn well pull it off, because you don’t want people wasting their time and wasting their energy and then having it go nowhere. We spent three days filming every geek, nerd monster moment I could fit into a shoot and it was a gleefully, ridiculous fun time, it rejuvenated me, and it inspired me.