http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2010/06/rick-baker.html RB: It was the Universal films that made me want to do what I do. "Frankenstein," "Dracula," "The Mummy," "Creature from the Black Lagoon" -- it's what hooked me. "That's what I want to do, I want to make monsters." And especially "The Wolf Man." And when I heard they were going to do a new film I knew I wanted to do. I never pursue stuff, I'm kind of stupid that way, I'm not really a good businessman. I like when somebody calls me because they want to use me. But with this one, I didn't to let it go by. I went and talked to someone at Universal and said, "If this is really going to happen and it's going to put a person into makeup -- as it should be done -- then you got to use me. I really want to do this." I was begging. I was glad to hear they wanted to use me, first of all. But then, like you said, then the reality hits and you think of the challenges. I need to make an homage to the Jack Pierce makeup, but I also need to modernize it and make it work for a modern audience. Are they going to accept a guy with hair on his face? It was a daunting task.
RB: That's one of the things I always enjoyed about Wolf Man movies, the metamorphosis. And Lon Chaney Jr. was really underrated as an actor. I think in the original film and in the follow-ups there's this deep sympathy you feel for this poor, cursed man. That's so much of the appeal of it. He's this tortured soul who, not by choice, turns into a monster and kills people. It just tears him up. But watching the man turn into the animal is one of the special things. I wasn't sure going into this film how it was going to be done, Thirty years ago, with "American Werewolf in London," we changed the way people thought about transformation. So what do you do now? The answer is they pretty much left me out of the transformation. They did it with CG. They utilized my ideas and concept sculptures, they scanned it all in, but it was all done in the computer. I would like to have been involved in it more because I also do a lot of computer stuff -- I do my designs on the computer -- but I thought they did a terrific job. On the Blu-ray there's a lot of cool stuff showing how the transformation stuff was accomplished and also how I did my thing. It's great for people to be able to see all that stuff. I tell my daughters, when I was young we didn't have the Internet, we didn't have home video -- to watch these movies when I was young, I'd have to scour the TV Guide and see what time it was on and hope that my parents would let me watch it if they weren't watching something else on the one TV in the house. You only had one shot at it. And there wasn't a lot of information out there, either, but luckily there was Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and Forry Ackerman. He talked about the people behind the scenes and articles on how to do this stuff. That's how I learned it was an occupation. But today the information is out there everywhere. I'm hoping it gives us a whole generation of whiz kids who are masters at this kind of stuff.
RB: It's funny -- like you, the people who like old-school horror movies tended to like it. It's the closest thing to a monster movie that's been out in a long time. There's fans of the old movies that went and saw this one like eight times. It's not a knife-wielding-crazy-guy-movie where teenagers get cut up in the worst ways possible. It's more of a gothic horror film. I was hoping it would bring back that type of film, the kind I really enjoy. It's very much a monster movie, and I hoped it would bring back monster movies. Will this make it harder to continue make more? I don't know. It's always kind of tough. When you're working on a movie you always hope that people will go for it and enjoy what you're doing. I don't know what they were expecting. Frankly, it seems to me that part of the problem was when it was released. To put out a movie called "Wolfman" on Valentine's Day weekend against a movie called "Valentine's Day"? I didn't really understand the logic of that. What do you expect? Release it on Halloween and I'm sure it would have done a lot better.
