Interview with John Dods
By
David Kempf
Horror
and special effects artist John Dods has been described by CNN as
“one of the world’s foremost masters of disguise.” Dods has
worked on such great cult favorites as Don Dohler’s NIGHTBEAST,
SPOOKIES and the unforgettable DEADLY SPAWN. He did the makeup work
on the TV Horror hit Monsters and Broadway’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.
John studied under Academy Award winning makeup artist Dick Smith
(The Exorcist) and began a successful career in mainstream film.
The movies he worked
on include POLTERGIEST III, GHOSTBUSTERS II, DEATH BECOMES HER, THE X
FILES and ALIEN RESSURECTION.
Most recently, Dods
was the prosthetics makeup designer for the Broadway production of
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN by Mel Brooks.
As a lifelong fan of
John’s articles in Cinemagic Magazine and his work in general, it
was a real pleasure to interview him.
John
Dods INTERVIEW
Tell
us how you came involved in makeup and special effects.
When
I was 10 years old, I produced and directed "The Wizard of Oz"
in the back yard. It had makeup and special effects galore - such as
they were. My Alice In Wonderland had been so well received the
previous year, that I went for broke with Oz. There were 15
neighborhood children were in the cast - all in costume - and the
famous characters - Cowardly Lion, etc were all present. The "Tin
Man" was actually the Aluminum foil man, The Cowardly Lion was
me in dyed long johns and a rubber lion mask, etc. The adult audience
seemed to enjoy the sight of small children putting on a show. I
thought then that I would grow up and direct shows on Broadway, and
for years, each summer of my childhood I staged one or more shows or
"Spook Houses" - usually in the basement.
My
parents were very supportive and they always gave me a place to be
creative. Later I realized that I was too introverted to be a
Broadway
director
and that I better enjoyed the more solitary life of a stop motion
filmmaker. But I never stopped loving live theatre and it come back
into my life later in a big way.
How
many short films have you made?
I've
made three short films and am now working on a forth. GROG (1970) was
my first - a 5 minute comedy which introduced the Grog character who
appears in all of my films. I had started to shoot GROG in 8mm
Kodachrome, but was miserable with the poor image quality of 8mm. So
I began to save for a 16mm Bolex camera. This took me a year - while
I worked at Macy's department store. The new 16mm footage was
exhilarating - the registration was rock steady,
and
the sharpness and grain looked nearly as good as the 35mm prints I
saw at my local movie theatre. My next film was FOREST STORY - which
I worked on for years. Because I was learning, I shot on a very high
ratio - about 6 to 1 - often rebuilding the models and sets in order
to improve the footage and learn all the craft skills needed by a
model maker and miniature set builder. I worked on FS for years but
then left it sitting on a shelf while I had several careers in
practical effects for film, TV, amusement parks, and theatre. FS sat
for 30 years
I
went back to it recently and finally finished it using new digital
technology to do the post production. Now, I'm working on GROG
RETURNS which will be animated with stop motion photographed with HD
digital still cameras.
Tell
us about your work with the late cult director Don Dohler.
In
1972 Don asked me to write for his new magazine Cinemagic. He had
seen an article on my short film GROG in the Bolex Reporter Magazine
and wanted to do a feature on it himself; that article appeared as
the cover story of Cinemagic #2 in 1972. I wrote for Cinemagic for
many years after that and Don and I became good friends. Every year,
I would go down to Baltimore for the annual Balticon Convention to
screen GROG and later the unfinished FOREST STORY and visit with Don.
In 1979 He asked me to create the monster for his second film
production NIGHTBEAST and that became my first paying job in
filmmaking. Don made a long series of extraordinarily low budget
features and got each one of them distributed. Although these were
not "good" films by conventional standards, Don became an
inspiration to Do It Yourself filmmakers by proving repeatedly that
it was possible to make a film for a few thousand dollars and get it
distributed. Today, Don Dohler is legendary among independent
filmmakers. An impressive roster of the NIGHTBEAST crew members went
on to very successful and prominent careers in film production-
perhaps the best known of these is producer/director J.J. Abrams -
who wrote music for NB. Although Don and I went in very different
directions after NIGHTBEAST, I remember of all of my projects with
Don as exciting adventures.
Please
tell us what it was like to learn your craft under Dick Smith.
I
was nearly 40 years old when I decided to take Dick Smith's
Professional Makeup Course and finally fulfill an old ambition to
learn how to do prosthetic makeup. I was already a somewhat competent
sculptor and mold maker,
but
had never learned the techniques and materials specific to "special
effects makeup" - that's a term which was invented to describe
the work of Dick Smith, whose astonishing creations for ALTERED
STATES (1980) and THE EXORCIST (1973) had expanded all previous
conceptions what a makeup artist might contribute to a film. It was a
mail order course and the actual interaction with Dick was normally
minimal, but Dick started recommending me to the producers of the
MONSTERS television series ('88-'90) - on which he was the "Special
Makeup Consultant" .One episode, "Holly's House" led
to many others - 18 by the end of the shows 3 year run. There was so
much work that It was like having an entire career in 3 years. I
thought that it was the best job imaginable. They would
send
me piles of scripts and let me pick which episodes that I wanted to
work on. Each season of that show was like Christmas for me -I
created prosthetic makeups, mechanicals and puppets, and even filmed
a stop motion mutant rat for the "Stressed Environment"
episode.Dick advised me on many of my episodes, and personally
designed the monsters for 2 of them - "Holly's House" and
"The Gift" (written by Dick's son David). We often spoke on
the phone or met at his house in Larchmont, New York. Dick had no
professional secrets
and
shared his expertise freely with everyone who asked for help. His
curiosity about finding new and better ways of doing things was
boundless, inspirational, and exciting to be around. He would talk
with as much enthusiasm about Danny Kaye movies or the physicist
Richard Feynman as he would about silicone prosthetics or new ways of
coloring foam rubber. Working with Dick Smith
made
me a better makeup artist and, I think, also a better person.
Do
you enjoy mentoring other special effects artists?
I've
been influenced by Dick Smith to freely share my knowledge with
others. A lot of people in the film business have told me that my
instructional articles for Cinemagic, Fangoria, Starlog and other
magazines over the past 30 years have inspired or helped them in some
way. That's wonderful to hear. I'm not sure that anything I do rises
to the level of "mentoring" but I try to help anyone who
asks for it.
How
many plays have you worked on?
About
6 shows - all musicals… A few of those were such big successes
that they kept me occupied for many years, designing and fabricating
prosthetics. Right after "Monsters", I was asked to work on
Disney's first Broadway show "Beauty and the Beast" in
1990. That came out of the blue because I had not been trying to get
into New York theatre. I loved it and B&B was a gigantic
worldwide hit and my involvement - making masks and prosthetics for
eight characters - became an 18 year long occupation. We made over
50,000 prosthetic pieces for companies all over the world. "Mel
Brooks Young Frankenstein: The Musical" followed B&B
directly and also ran for years - I am the "Prosthetics
Designer", and "The Toxic Avenger Musical"
(Prosthetics and Special Effects Design by John Dods) must still be
running somewhere - although I'm no longer involved. "A
Christmas Carol" returned every Christmas at Madison Square
Garden for nearly 10 years. I did the head casts for "Phantom of
the Opera" on Broadway for many years (Chris Tucker in England
created the prosthetic pieces). My work in theatre has completely
satisfied my childhood yearning to work on Broadway shows and I
continue to work in theatre occasionally.
Are
there significant differences between working on your own films and
working for other filmmakers?
They're
very different. When I'm hired, then my only job is to help the
client to create whatever it is that he want s to see; my creative
input may as a designer or it may be only as a fabricator - and there
is always a deadline. I'm happy to create someone else's design if
that's what the job calls for - it's not always
creatively
juicy but I get plenty of creative fulfillment from many personal
projects. Today, I'm mostly working on my own projects. I only have
to please myself so I can do whatever I want without deadlines.
Tell
us about your daily (or nightly) working routine.
Although
I try hard to avoid work entirely, my inner demons keep driving me to
be productive. I spend much of the day at the computer, editing movie
footage, or trying to upgrade my graphics art skills, or checking to
see how many of my Facebook friends have "liked" the photo
I posted. I have several elaborate stop motion models under
construction for my film project GROG RETURNS so I try to move that
project forward - I just made several silicone molds of cores and
teeth for two new Grog models. I also have a beautiful house, three
cats, and one partner - all needing frequent attention.
What
do you feel is your greatest accomplishment as an artist so far?
I
still love much of my work on THE DEADLY SPAWN. "Beauty and the
Beast" features some of my best sculpture work - especially on
the "enchanted" characters - Cogsworth, Lumiere, Wardrobe,
Chip, etc. My prosthetics and hair work for the1,000 year old gnome
for the "Household Gods" episode of the "Monsters"
TV series looks good to me. The "Ice-Age" miniature set
which I supervised for the "Back To the Future Ride" (I had
a crew of 6 talented sculptors) turned out very well. FOREST STORY is
the only thing I've done that made me use everything that I know how
to do - writing, directing, editing,
and
all of the crafts skills you need to do a stop motion film by
yourself. Filmmaking is my passion, so it's gratifying that at age 65
I have come full circle to resume the work that I began as a teenager and always saw as unfinished business.
How
do you come up with the original monsters you create? The Deadly
Spawn certainly comes to mind.
I
use no reference material when I design an original monster - when
I'm actually designing the shape and form of an original character.
I'll study nature for texture and detail but not for shape and form -
that has to out of my head. It's too easy for me to give in to the
temptation to copy the great work of other artists if I have pictures
of their work thumb tacked to my studio walls. The Deadly Spawn
designs were a conscious effort to avoid the "man in the rubber
suit" look which
had
dominated the horror genre since the early 50's. Even a masterwork
like the Creature From the Black Lagoon looks like a man in a suit
and I was tired of seeing that. On the other hand, something real -
like a realistic dinosaur -
is
different in that anatomy has to be researched and reference
materials used.
Since
you do so much prosthetics work and build mechanical creatures, do
you miss the old style effects prior to CGI? Ray Harryhausen's stop
motion animation comes to mind. As does the beautiful matte painting
work of Albert Whitlock he did in many movies. I know you are very
familiar with the painful and patient joys of stop motion animation.
I
love Harryhausen and I continue to watch his films - as well as KING
KONG ('33), and all the classic practical effects films. All of that
great work is looking better than ever on Blu-ray. Today, practical
effects have been largely replaced by computer graphics technology -
which is increasingly spectacular. THE HOBBIT looks astounding.
This change is permanent. We're not going back to the way things used
to be done. I think that practical effects should marry the computer
and live happily ever after. I'm creating practical effects all the
time for my animation project, so I live in that world of "old
school" physical reality every day. But the computer has become
my most valuable helper and tool.
Name
some of your favorite horror books.
I
don't enjoy horror fiction nearly so much as the more optimistic
visions of Science Fiction stories - Heinlein, etc. Poe, Lovecraft,
and Robert E. Howard are the horror authors whom I frequently reread.
Howard's "Pigeons From Hell" is a long time favorite. Poe
and Lovecraft wrote with so much craft, style, and dark beauty that I
find their work hypnotic. Poe and Lovecraft especially seem to me
better than most other writers by far.
Name
some of your favorite horror films.
How
much time do you have! Hmmm…The visual German expressionism of the
20's, the Universal Horrors of the 30's – especially BRIDE OF
FRANKENSTEIN and THE BLACK CAT, Val Lewton in the 40's, the great
parade of giant monsters in the 50's, the colorful Corman/Poe and
Hammer Horror series of the 60's, the 70's great trio of horror films
for me is SUSPERIA, EXORCIST, and ALIEN.
I'm
still catching up on the last 3 decades but DAGON, NIGHTBREED, 28
DAYS LATER, and the WALKING DEAD TV series come to mind.
Why
do you think older low budget horror films remain popular?
The
more entertaining works of 80's Do It Yourself filmmakers have found
a new life and a new audience. DIY 80's horror films have now become
a recognized genre - their grainy 16mm look is now forgiven, the
obvious gusto and enthusiasm of the filmmakers is enjoyed, and the
merits of the best of these movies is finally being appreciated. THE
DEADLY SPAWN was widely panned when it opened in theaters in 1982,
but today it is one of the best reviewed films currently out on DVD.
Don Dohler's work today has a loyal fan base and Ed Wood's films are
more popular than ever. The budget seems irrelevant if the film is
entertaining.
What
are your latest projects?
THE
RETURN OF GROG is a short film project, and my graphics art project
is a Grog "children's" book.
Please
in your own words write a paragraph about yourself & your work.
I
am a filmmaker, writer, and practical special effects non-specialist
- that is, I've worked in many different areas of practical effects -
prosthetics, cable control, puppetry, stop-motion, and miniature set
construction - but never specialized in any one of them for very
long. In 40 years I’ve only had one bad job in the business - I had
to make synthetic sliced cheese for a Kraft commercial. I'm partly
color blind and it was a nightmare because when you unwrap cheese it
quickly changes color. They kept telling me that I'd got the color
wrong. I had to turn that job over to someone else!
Apart
from that one, I've had a lot of dream jobs and have finally reached
my goal of working less hard than I used to and of putting work and
life into a sane balance.
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