It actually pushed me into getting my own business. I also worked on “Cocoon” for Ron Howard. He’s done everything “The Howling” and “American Werewolf in London.” Those films are what got me into makeup effects. I got to be in the video chasing Michael around. I got work on Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” which was great. Ok, well when I got to L.A., I called up a makeup artist that Dick Smith had given me the name of Greg Cannom who had done Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” with Gary Oldman. Can you just tell me a bit more about how that actually happened? That sounds insane! But even if the directing path didn’t happen as you wanted, you still had a huge career as a special effects makeup artist. I’ve worked with just about everyone that’s got a reputation. I worked with some tough, crazy producers over the years. You know, those two guys, and I can say this more openly now, it was nuts. I mean, that was just a Weinstein debacle. Did that experience turn you off the idea of directing? Do you still want to direct? I know you did a couple of episodes of “Tales from the Crypt,” and then had a terrible experience directing your first feature, “Hellraiser: Bloodline” where you ended up taking your name off the final film as it had been completely re-edited and reshot against your wishes. The woman you were working with, you and your brother, you all use monsters to a certain extent, to escape. You never know who you were going to get so we were always walking on eggshells. She’d be happy and then sad, show love and then suddenly just flip out. Or we’d go out to play all day, and we’d pee on the side of the house just so we wouldn’t have to go inside. We would hide away in the basement, and we would do these creature things just to stay out of her hair. When I was a kid I was abused, not sexually, but my older brother and I were physically abused by my mother. She had been abused by her father in real life, and so she wanted to do a story about abuse and how monsters saved her life. I mean, I still do Chucky and makeup like Freddy, but as far as big creature suits and stuff like that, we don’t do that anymore. My business deals with monster stuff and it’s gone way down. But thingshave slowed down since computer animations. I would recommend schools, try to encourage people and stuff like that. It’s easier now to connect than it was back then. Did you take a page from his playbook? I mean, do people reach out to you now, and do you try to help them out? Even if it was late at night, he would always get on the phone. He shared information over the years with everybody, and tried to help every single kid that called him up.

He invented the lipstick that turns up for Max Factor and didn’t take any credit for it. There’s never been anybody like Dick Smith. after she got divorced from my dad which was in 1983. When I get back, give me a call.” So I eventually got on the phone with him and he said, “Listen, if you are serious, you have got to come to New York or L.A.” So I convinced my mom to move to L.A. He immediately wrote back and said “Listen, I’m going out of town. I did the “Planet of the Apes” makeup, and then old age makeup on myself. In the letter, I sent him photos of some of the stuff that I had done.

He did “The Exorcist,” “The Godfather,” “Taxi Driver” and a bunch of other films. He is a legend in the special effects makeup industry. Later, when I was about 20, I wrote to Dick Smith. He would buy all the magazines and supplies, and I got to piggyback on that. I kept thinking that there’s got to be something else that’s quicker.

Joe action figures and started animating those things one frame at a time, but it took so long. And we’d dress my brother up like a werewolf or a mummy or whatever when we made these old films which segued into animation. My older brother and I started doing things like eight-millimeter films back when we were kids, before video. Can you tell me what got you into this field in the first place?

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