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STAN WINSTON (1946-2008) - R.I.P.

June 18th 2008 04:26

"People who are afraid to go to horror movies are generally afraid their whole lives. People say to me, 'Do you have nightmares?' I never have nightmares! And I go to movies and see the most bizarre things in the world, and go... Wow that is really sick, how fun is that! And I don't have to carry it around. I think that's very healthy."

Stan with Arnie on the set of The Terminator

Legendary Hollywood special effects whiz Stan Winston died last Sunday at the age of 62 (from multiple myeloma). I’m not sure how widely known his illness was, but apparently he’d been suffering for seven years. It certainly came as a shock to me. He died peacefully at home surrounded by family.

Stan Winston had four Academy Awards to his name for his brilliant work on Aliens (1986, visual effects), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991, visual effects and make-up effects) and Jurassic Park (1993, visual effects) and was nominated for a further six Oscars.

He was only the second special effects artist to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Stars, although as far as he was concerned, "I don't do special effects. I do characters. I do creatures." And it was his pioneering work in animatronics that he is best known.

His extraordinary animatronic achievements on The Terminator (1984) have helped garner the film a huge cult following. While his animatronic effects on Aliens (pre-CGI, like The Terminator) and later on Jurassic Park (he provided the numerous animatronic effects in addition to designing the CGI effects) cemented his position as the leading edge.

"Performance technologies that were created by Jim Henson and the Muppets, and created the Terminator as a puppet, as a full sized organic puppet, and it was the first time that anybody had seen something that life size, using animatronics for the head and neck, to be able to operate it. We broke ground with The Terminator (1984). Nobody had ever seen anything like it."

On Predator (1986) he designed (at short notice) the grotesquely memorable design for the alien itself. On John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) he helped out on some of the elaborate effects jobs when Rob Bottin was suffering from exhaustion from the huge workload.

His exceptional make-up design work included the villian creatons (The Penguin, Catwoman) on Tim Burton’s Batman Returns (1992), whilst providing Burton with the overall Gotham City look. Also of note was his terrific make-up design work on the ill-fated remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996).

Stan Winston studied painting and sculpture at the University of Virginia. He founded the Stan Winston Studio in 1972. The same year he won his first award, an Emmy, on a tele-movie called Gargoyles. In 1983 he created the Mr. Roboto facemask for prog-rock band Styx which was featured on their album cover and the subsequent video-clip for the single. This no doubt provided him with inspiration for The Terminator.

He directed his first feature Pumpkinhead in 1988, which although fared badly at the box office, has since become a mild cult favourite among Winston fans, mostly due to the terrific design of the demonic Pumpkinhead beast.

In 1993 Winston co-founded Digital Domain with director James Cameron and Scott Ross (ex-Industrial Light & Magic). After Titanic was released he and Cameron severed their working relationship and resigned from the company’s Board of Directors.

Most recently he did the excellent visual effects for Iron Man.

At the time of his death he was working on further sequels to The Terminator and Jurassic Park.

Stan Winston is one of my special effects heroes. In tribute to the man, the legend, in the very near future I’ll review my favourite movies featuring his work.

Stan, the man, Rest In Peace.

Biographical information sourced from Wikipedia and Internet Movie Database.