In Memory of Stan Winston

I never had a chance to meet Stan Winston in person.  I interviewed him by phone in 2006, on my 36th birthday, about the then-upcoming book The Winston Effect: The Art And History of Stan Winston Studio.  It was far from my first interview, but I was really nervous.  In my capacity as a contributor to both Rue Morgue and, more recently, Fangoria, I'd spoken with many people whose work I'd respected and admired.  But I'd grown up as a horror/sci-fi/special effects-obsessed teenager with a life-sized poster of one of Winston's Aliens on my bedroom door and the old Thorn/EMI release of The Terminator playing on a constant loop on my VCR; this one was special. 

The interview was a quick one; "I'll only need about fifteen or twenty minutes of your time," I remember opening with. 

"Sure, five or ten minutes sounds fine," was his good-natured, but definitively no-nonsense reply.  I hope he had that characteristic Cheshire Cat grin on his face as he said it, at least.  Like most high-profile industry people, he's been the subject of a million interviews, answering the same questions ad nauseam, and was without a doubt looking to keep this one just as short and sweet as he could. 

And sure enough, the first few answers were pretty much by-rote soundbites.  Disappointing?  Sure.  But not unexpected.  At the time he was in pre-production on James Cameron's upcoming Avatar and, unbeknownst to all but a few of his closest friends and family, five years into a battle with the multiple myeloma cancer that would take his life less than two years later; I imagine he had more on his mind than spending any more time than was necessary to some schmuck from Canada who was going to ask the same damn questions anyway. 

Except that when I prepare my interviews, I work hard not to ask the same questions I know everybody else is going to ask, and sure enough, after the opening salvo, he started to relax and settle into a groove, occasionally drifting off onto tangents all his own.  In the end, he did give my twenty minutes, which is as nice a birthday gift as I could have received. 

Thanks for the extra time, Stan.  I wish you'd had much, much more. 

The following is the original text of the interview I wrote, which appeared, in substantially-edited form, in the November 2006 issue of Rue Morgue:

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THE (UN)NATURAL HISTORY OF MONSTERS

By Joseph O'Brien

This may come as shock to you, but apparently Stan Winston, the mind behind such latter-day cinematic legends as the Predator, the Queen Alien and Jurassic Park’s T-Rex, doesn’t do special effects.

“I never think of what we do as ‘special effects’,” says Winston, 60, from his Hollywood Studio. “We use effects to create great characters. While I’m often tagged as a special effects artist, I like to think of myself and the people at my studio as character creators.”

After more than thirty years in the business, a resume exhibiting more famous monsters than Famous Monsters, four Academy Awards and a star on the Walk of Fame, Winston can call it whatever the hell he wants to call it. He’s in the Goddam Stan Winston Business, an industry which has expanded into film production, toys and comic books. All those achievements and more are now the subject of a massive, uncompromising retrospective, written in characteristically exhaustive detail by Cinefex editor Jody Duncan, entitled The Winston Effect.

“The title itself is a double-entendre,” says Winston. “It’s really the art and history of Stan Winston Studios. I embrace the use of effects where needed, but for me the Winston Effect is the effect of our work on the world and what it has taken to do that work.”

Said work becomes all the more impressive with Duncan’s revelation that Winston arrived in Hollywood in 1968 with no aspirations towards the effects industry at all.

“What I came out to do was to be an actor, and I failed dramatically. But I wanted to create characters, as an actor. And I’ve maintained the concept of creating characters. I just did it behind the camera instead of in front of the camera.

“When we look at a script, we look at it in terms of ‘What does this character look like, how does this character going to act? How’s it going to perform?’ Those are the first questions. Secondarily it’s ‘What kind of technology do we need to make that happen? Does it need to be prosthetics? Animatronics? Puppetry? CG?’”

It might seem strange to hear the dreaded phrase computer graphics invoked by a man in the makeup eff … sorry, character creation industry. But much of Winston’s success can be traced to his philosophical view of digital technology.

“People would go ‘Oh, aren’t you afraid that’s going to replace animatronics?’ Of course not. No technology replaces art. It encourages art. Because of digital technology we’re able to do more with animatronics and robotics. And what you can’t do with live action you should do with animation. We’ve always done that; it’s just that we used to do it with stop-motion animation. The exciting thing for me is to take all of these technologies and tools and use them to create a better magic trick. Art will never be replaced by technology. We will always advance art by using technology.”

Despite major contributions to big-budget science fiction epics like Spielberg’s A.I. and longtime associate James Cameron’s upcoming Avatar (Cameron’s amusing and insightful introduction to the book was written during preproduction on that film), Winston hasn’t completely abandoned the genre in which he first distinguished himself.

“I love a horror film in the same way I love a comedy. If you can make somebody laugh, what a great release that is. But if you don’t laugh, no matter how good that movie is, it doesn’t work. If you go into a horror movie, you’re expecting to be scared. And if you’re not scared, the movie didn’t work. There’s something fun and visceral about that emotion.

“Horror movies have always been one of the staples of my emotional diet, because I love to be scared, and I love to scare people. I think it’s cathartic. I think we all need to express that emotion, and I think when people bottle up their fear and don’t allow it to come out, don’t allow themselves to be afraid of the most simplistic things, like horror movies, or rollercoasters or whatever, then they live in fear, then they take it to bed with them at night.”

Having created so many fearsome boogeymen in his day, Winston finds it difficult to single out any one as a personal favorite.

“You know the old saying ‘How can you possibly have a favorite child?’ It’s the same thing. My favorite thing about the work we’ve done at the studio – and I don’t lay ownership to any of it – it’s been a collaboration. I’ve just been fortunate enough in my career to be a common denominator in a lot of great movies and a lot of iconic characters. You want to know what the baby is? The baby is the body of work.”

With everything on his plate these days, does he miss the days when it was just him and his makeup kit?

“I don’t miss anything,” Winston says cheerfully. “I’m always looking forward to tomorrow.”

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Rest In Peace.