I recently had the opportunity to talk to Mark Shostrom, the Emmy Award-winning makeup artist who brought Evil Dead 2, along with many other excellent films, to life. We spoke on a Sunday afternoon, he in sunny LA and I in dreadfully hot Houston, Texas. As an indie effects artist myself, I was really chomping at the bit to find out a little bit about what went on behind the scenes on some of my favorite films and gain a little insight into the world of professional makeup effects. This is what he had to say:

Cliff: I know we all have our influences and our heroes. I myself got into special effects by watching Tom Savini as a kid, and it’s well known that Lon Chaney, in turn, influenced him to pursue his career. Who or what influenced you and made you want to get into special effects?

Mark: I think the first major influence was when I saw Bride of Frankenstein, and I didn’t know even that a makeup artist had done that, and it got me into monster movies. I started reading Famous Monsters, and it had photographs of Jack Pierce. I also read about a guy, a younger man named Dick Smith. Then Planet of the Apes came out, and of course, they had a huge article on John Chambers. So that’s Dick Smith, John Chambers, Jack Pierce, and of course Lon Chaney. How can he not influence any makeup artist? He’s the granddaddy of them all, so to speak.

Cliff: Yeah, I think that’s the core four guys that have influenced most makeup artists.

Mark: Yeah, when I saw Lon Chaney’s makeup kit at the Science Museum in LA, I was amazed. I was just like, “Wow,” you know?

Cliff: Yeah, I know the Museum of the Moving Image in New York has a large collection of things. Some of Rick Baker’s work and a lot of Dick Smith’s stuff are on display there as well.

Mark: Right, right. I knew a guy named Hanks Edds at Paramount who was a good friend of Jack Pierce, right before he died, and he got Jack Pierce’s makeup kit. He brought it into the Dick Tracy sculpting lab one day, and we all actually got to pick up the brushes and hold them, and that was movie history, makeup history. It was pretty cool.

Cliff: Those old kits are incredible. I have the famous picture of Lon Chaney holding out his kit to the camera, wearing the Phantom teeth hanging on the wall in my shop.

Mark: Yeah, when I was a little kid and watching Frankenstein at 9 years old, I totally got bitten by the monster bug, and I remember in our art class we had a project with a linoleum cutout where you had to do, almost like a photographic negative, to do a black and white print. My linoleum cutout was the Lon Chaney/Phantom of the Opera. Wish I still had it. I wonder if my mom does? Haha.

Cliff: Speaking of being a kid, your biography on IMDb mentions that you grew up in Hong Kong. What was that like, and when did you come back to the States? Did that experience shape your career in any way?

Mark: Well, I moved to Hong Kong when I was 13 because my dad was transferred there and worked at the U.S. Consulate. I was doing makeup at the time, by myself, and I was really into it. I was exposed to different movies there; I was exposed to a lot of the Chinese cinema. They had a lot of European movies, so I got to see Spaghetti Westerns. Movies are huge in Hong Kong, from everywhere, so sometimes I’d see 3 or 4 films on a weekend.

And you know, it was always about the makeup. When I was 13, just barely moved there, I got a chance to meet Boris Karloff’s widow, Evelyn Karloff. In a nutshell, I read in the newspaper that Mrs. Karloff was staying at a hotel which was next door to our block of flats. I didn’t know what to do, so my Dad suggested I drop off flowers and a note.

So I wrote a little note in my 13-year-old handwriting and lo and behold, Mrs. Karloff called a few hours later. I got to meet her twice, and we became friends for 18 years. It was pretty cool to hear all her stories about Peter Lorre and Vincent Price. Then I asked her my burning question, of course, “What was Jack Pierce like?” And she said, “I don’t know – I never met him!”

Cliff: Aw, no!

Mark: Yeah, but it was very cool, so that was neat. We came back to the States in late 1976. About 4 years later, I moved to California and started my career, so to speak…

Cliff: I’ve heard that John Chambers, FX legend known for his work on the Planet of the Apes, gave you your first big break.

Mark: Well, I wouldn’t say it was a big break; it was a series of small breaks. What happened was, I didn’t know anybody in LA. I had the address of my brother’s old friend to stay with. But I didn’t know anybody at all, no friends, no movie contacts. But I had started writing to John Chambers in 1975, and I found his address in the back of a makeup book where it listed him as a source for bald caps. I decided to try it and wrote to him, and he wrote to me some very wonderful, handwritten, very long letters back. When I moved to California, of course, I called him up, and he remembered me and invited me to his little garage.

Cliff: Oh yes, I’ve heard stories about his famed garage, where at any time you might find some famous movie star in for a life cast for their next role.

Mark: Yeah, it was just a one-car garage, but it was converted into a very efficient, neat lab. He sort of let me hang out whenever I wanted to. He was always there on the phone or in person for advice and support. He gave me Tom Burman’s number, and I had my first sort of formal interview with Tom. I had maybe a few photographs in my portfolio and a hell of a lot of enthusiasm, and it was that passion that opened doors.

I do remember John Chambers lived about a 15-minute drive from my house, and he called me one day, and he said he was in talks to do a TV movie about Father Damien in Hawaii. It was the true story of a priest who helped the lepers in a leper colony and ended up getting leprosy himself. John kept me up to date, and he said he wanted to bring me on as the lab guy or the mold maker, and I was very excited. But unfortunately, the project did not fall to John, or went south, and somebody else made it years later. But you know, the fact that he thought of me was flattering and amazing.

John did one cool thing I’ll always remember: I was going to be doing a movie, and I ended up doing it with Bart Mixon in New Mexico in White Sands National Monument, in the middle of July when it’s 120 degrees there. And the production wouldn’t give me an air-conditioned makeup trailer. It happened to be a Sandy Howard production, and Sandy really liked me a lot – and John Chambers of course, had done a couple of movies with Sandy Howard, including the Island of Dr. Moreau.

So I called John, explained my dilemma, and he kind of said, “Let me see what I can do.” The next week, I walked into the production office for a meeting, and everybody’s moaning and groaning, “How come makeup gets an air-conditioned trailer, and we don’t?” It turned out that the actors and makeup got air-conditioned makeup trailers, and that was, I strongly suspect, because there had probably been a phone call that John Chambers made to Sandy Howard to say, “Give this guy what he needs!” There’s no other way it would have occurred. So John was very, very helpful in so many ways.

Cliff: Did you learn any big life lessons from those first gigs that helped you early on in your career?

Mark: Oh, how can you not? Every first project is a learning experience. Every project, even at my age, 55 now, is a learning experience. Of course, when you’re starting out, especially in the film business, you don’t know things like how to handle yourself on set, how to stand up to a production manager who’s trying not to give you the money you need. Different stuff like that, basically, how to stand up for yourself.

I got a lot of that from John Chambers because, although he was a very giving, generous, warm man, he didn’t take shit from people. If he thought you were… You know, he would stand up to people in a very sort of hot-blooded, Irish way, and he knew that, and he admitted it. I guess that would be a life lesson. It’s all about how you conduct yourself. I had to budget a film one time, and I didn’t know what the hell a budget looked like! I ended up getting a US government military guideline for doing budgets in a used bookstore, and that became my template when I was starting out!

But it was a point of reference. It was a point of reference. I did get some bounced checks by an unscrupulous producer who is now legendary for that. So you know, you learn the hard way by going to the bank, and they say, ” This producer has no money, and my crew has just worked a week for me. Well, guess what? I’ve got to write them their paychecks out of my personal account. So you learn lessons about how to conduct yourself in business, because it is an art, but it’s also a business. A lot of artists are not great businessmen, and vice versa.

Cliff: I read an article about a makeshift foam latex oven you and Shannon Shea built when creating the effects for the film “The Supernaturals.” As an up-and-coming FX artist myself, I feel the same pain as you guys felt then when it comes to cooking foam latex. I have often thought of building a foam latex oven myself. Tell me a little about the process, which seems especially interesting since it seems you guys had to rebuild the thing each night?

Mark: Ah, yeah, that was on Shannon’s blog, right? In fact, I emailed with Shannon a lot the night before he put that up to remind him of things. What happened was I had a little shop, which was a two-room art studio above an antique store. I think I had maybe a total of 400 square feet, and there were four of us: Myself, Bart Mixon, Ed Ferrell, and Shannon Shea, making six head-to-toe ghost costumes, including molds for everybody’s hands, heads, and bodies. We had other effects to do so as well.

Space was at a premium. After the body molding of the actors, we started putting spandex on the body forms and spatulating the foam on, and then we said, “Where the fuck do we bake them?!” I don’t know who came up with the idea, but I noticed that about 5 or 6 pm, all the other graphic artists and marriage counselors in the building next door to me, down the hall, and across the hall, would leave for the day, as they were pretty much 9-to-5ers.

We were the opposite, we were 5 to 9. So what we did was, we saw that one room had been vacant for a while, a completely empty room down the hall. We didn’t want anybody to be wise to what we were doing, so we started working later. And sometime after 5 or 6 when the foam was run, usually later like 8 or 9 at night, we would go into this vacant room with a couple of Makita drills and our premade plywood oven pieces and we would screw the whole thing together in about 15 minutes, put in our space heaters, bring in the bodies down the hall with the foam on them put them in there and check our watches.

We’d come back a couple of hours later, pull the bodies out, pull out the Makitas, unscrew the whole thing, and bring all the pieces back to my studio. Nobody ever found out. Surprising, considering the room reeked of baking rubber.

Cliff: Very McGuyver-y.

Mark: Yeah! This was before McGyver!

Cliff: So the space heaters were actually the heating element in the oven?

Mark: Yeah, and I don’t remember who turned me on to the different ways of baking foam. I knew already from destroying my Mom’s oven when I was 17, that you should not bake foam latex in your home oven because your Thanksgiving turkey will smell and taste of sulfur! Luckily, my parents forgave me for that! And of course, you can’t fit 6 human-sized body molds in a home oven. I think it was early on that a bunch of people in the effects business all discussed ways of doing it cheaply. Plywood with a little aluminum foil or insulation is a very workable source. Basically, you make a large box. It can be plywood, it can be metal, or ceramic. You’re not baking at incredibly high temperatures, maybe 170-180 degrees.

I found that by putting in a few clip lights or a space heater, you can control the temperature; of course, you need a thermometer in there as well. It’s a little bit of a fire hazard, but honestly, at my studio for 12 years, I had a really nice oven that Bob Kurtzman made for me that was plywood with doors, with a thermostat and everything, and Celotex insulation about an inch thick from the industrial supply. The fire department would come by and give me inspections, and they’d always give it the OK. It was jerry-rigged, but it was safe, and it worked. The alternative was spending anywhere from 12 to 30 thousand on an industrial oven. So there you go!

Cliff: Ok, this is a long one, for the Evil Dead 2 fans: You wrote a great article for Fangoria detailing the work you did for the Evil Henrietta suit for Ted Raimi. I think most effects artists dream of the day when they get to create a full-on creature suit. This was definitely the case for Ted, whose entire body was covered from head to foot. How do you go about the process of sculpting an entire body suit? How long did it take to sculpt?

Mark: Well, I had just completed “From Beyond,” which had the Pretorius creature, the big pretzel-shaped creature, and that was HUGE. It was about 2,000 pounds of wet clay and a very complicated mold. The sculpture, once you got it fine-tuned, would get dried out overnight, so you had to keep it wet, which meant putting damp sheets on it and wrapping it in plastic bags every night. When I was faced with Henrietta, I really didn’t want to have to cover the damn thing all the time and pull it off because it ruins the detail. So I decided to sculpt Henrietta out of Roma Plastilina #2, which is a pretty firm plastiline, a non-drying clay. Basically, when I put it on Ted’s body form, I was smashing big chunks that had been heated up, bashing them on with a 2×4 just to rough it out. To answer the next part of your question, sculpting just the body took me about six days, or I’d say six evenings, because usually at the shop I’d be so busy with other stuff I really didn’t get one-on-one sculpting time until after everybody was gone. So I’d be there from 6 pm until midnight or so, working on it, so it took about a week just for the body.

Cliff: What was the casting process like? I think I read you molded it out of fiberglass?

Mark: Yeah, mostly for weight. It was a very lightweight fiberglass mold.

Cliff: Now, you didn’t make the suit out of foam latex, I assume, because of the difficulty involved with cooking it, so you instead opted for other materials that didn’t rely on heat to cure. How did that material stand up to the punishment I’m sure it was forced to endure?

Mark: Really, the reason I didn’t do it out of foam latex was because of strength and tearing and all that. I’d worked with Poly Tech urethanes, I think it was 10-14 F.R., we used on From Beyond, we did the whole Pretorius body, the main torso with that foam. It was a very resilient, soft polyurethane foam. For Henrietta, we sprayed a skin in the mold so it would have a surface skin for the detail, and we’d close the mold and literally mix a few large cups by hand of the polyfoam, pour it in, and rotate the body mold, and we were done. We could pour two or three in an afternoon. But we really just made two hero suits that could be painted and reinforced and whatnot, so if one tore, one was always ready to be worn and filmed while the other was being repaired. So really, for the whole film, we only had two suits.

Cliff: How many times did Ted have to wear that suit and go through the makeup?

Mark: I don’t remember exactly because it’s been 25 years, but I would say maybe six or seven times. And we would alternate days because not only was it very hot there, even with air conditioning, it was probably 90 or 85 in those days. It was very hot, and Ted was often on wires. We tried a bean bag suit under the polyfoam suit at one point to give it the movement of real fat, but gave it up when it didn’t read well at all and only added more weight and discomfort for Ted. There was a lot of physical activity, and Ted was very healthy, you know, a martial-arts-workout kind of guy, and he would show up in the makeup chair at 2 am with great energy. By the end of the night, after twelve hours in the makeup and suit, he could barely walk down the hallway to the showers because he was so exhausted. So we made sure never to do that two days in a row because it was too much for him.

Cliff: I also remember from some of the behind-the-scenes footage that there was an issue with Ted sweating and having no holes in the suit to allow the sweat to drain out. I would have never thought to make drainage holes in that suit. Is that something that was simply overlooked, or was this a learning experience for those on set?

Mark: It was a learning experience! I knew enough that when it was starting to get really hot and I went on the sound stages to check things out. I found out that they weren’t planning to have any air conditioning. I went to the production manager, and I said, “We need to get some air conditioning in there,” and he turned me down. I went to Sam, and I said very seriously, “Your brother is probably going to drop dead if we don’t get some A/C.” The long story short – all of a sudden, production was able to cough up, I think, 8 or 10 thousand dollars for this air conditioning unit.

Cliff: This is a running thing with you and A/C!

Mark: Yeah, exactly, well, it’s me looking out for the actors basically. I think, as I recall, it was kind of a big portable a/c unit that had two big hoses, I don’t know, two feet wide like a giant sandworm from Dune. One hose would go to set, but one hose was reserved for Ted Raimi because when he finished a take, we would sit him down, unzip the back, and stick that hose right up to him and blast in the cool air. He was grateful for that. The sweat issue was also a total learning experience.

There’s actually one shot where he’s on the wire, and he turns and screams, and you can see this unbroken stream of sweat coming from by his ear. The thing was, he sweated so much, and unlike foam latex, which might have absorbed the moisture, the polyfoam, even though it had tiny bubbles, had a slick surface. It would not absorb the sweat. And the sweat had to go somewhere, which was down, and that down meant into his latex booties, you know? So at the end of the day, he’d get in the makeup chair for removal, and the first thing we’d take off were his rubber boots, well, not boots but his rubber feet. The first time we did this, about a quart of sweat mixed with baby powder literally poured all over the floor. After that, we always had a bucket standing by because we would take off his latex foot, and it would be half full of sweat, and we’d just turn it upside down and drain it out. That was a learning experience! If I had to do it all over again, I’d figure out different materials or some sort of drainage system. Of course, today we’d use a Cool Suit, but that had not been invented at the time, or a drainage system, something like that.

Cliff: whose job was it to disinfect that suit every day?

Mark: Usually Bob Kurtzman or I, because we were doing Henrietta together to save application time. Of course, if I could get away with pawning it off to someone else, I would!

Cliff: You’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of other talented artists during your career, Rick Baker and Kevin Yagher, just to name a few. What’s it like working on set with so many other talented artists? How do you decide on who does what? Is it a collaborative effort, or does everyone just kind of work on their own projects?

Mark: Well, in the case of Evil Dead 2, I was in charge of the whole show. So I hired the crew, I hired Greg, Bob, Howard, Aaron Sims, Mike Trcic, Shannon, so that was my baby, I supervised everything. So that was a different deal, but say on Elm Street 3, the effects were divided by Kevin Yagher, Greg Cannom, and me. It’s all decided beforehand. I remember at the Nightmare production meeting we had, we did a script read-through with everybody there, and we’d come to an effect, and Chuck Russell would go, “Who’s doing this?” And Kevin, Greg, and I would kind of look at each other, or maybe somebody would raise a hand and say, “Sure, Greg, you can do that one.” It was all decided beforehand, or maybe the director thought a particular effect would be geared towards an artist. In fact, Chuck Russell wanted me to do the Freddy Snake because he’d seen From Beyond, but I just didn’t want to get into another huge mechanical creature, so Kevin ended up doing that one.

Cliff: Cool, so it’s kind of decided upon collaboratively, but then everyone works on their own deals unless the director wants it another way.
Mark: Yeah, it’s a bit of both, the director’s influence, but then it’s also the FX guys sitting around shooting out ideas. In the case of Evil Dead 2, there were very clear effects that were makeup effects that were my domain, but there were also some effects that overlapped with stop-motion and makeup effects or something like that. That was a case where I would go to Sam and say, “Hey, I know a couple of great stop motion guys, Doug Beswick and Rick Catizone,” and contacts were made with those guys. Doug ended up doing the dancing, Linda and Rick Catizone animated Henrietta.

Cliff: Pretty interesting. Well, there are so many places nowadays where you can go and learn to do makeup. Savini has a school, Joe Blasco has a school, and of course, there’s Dick Smith’s Advanced Professional Makeup Course. What did you do to learn everything you know in a time when there weren’t all these avenues?

Mark: It’s all about passion and drive. The best way to learn, and the way I learned, is just to get out there and do it. I taught myself to play piano by buying a songbook and learning how to play.

Cliff: So practice just makes perfect.

Mark: Hell, yeah. When I got bitten by the makeup bug at 9 years old, I read a little bit about it in library books. My mother brought me Corson’s “Stage Makeup,” and I read about grease paint and nose putty, and thought, “Oh, this is cool!” My dad helped me find a little pharmacy in Denver where we were living that sold pharmacy stuff, but also had a little section for Max Factor theatrical makeup. That’s back when Max Factor didn’t just have makeup for fashion models.

I went there with my dad and for 5 bucks got a quart of Max Factor movie blood, nose putty, two colors of greasepaint, and a tin of Stein’s Liquid Latex, which was my first makeup purchase, for 5 bucks! You know, it was a matter of, “Ok, I open Corson’s book,” and I would read how to put the little greasepaint dabs on somebody’s face and then blend it with wet fingertips, and I tried it on my Mom. And you know, I tried nose putty on my brother and a lot on myself, and it was just practice all the time.

I had a lot of support from my parents, and my uncle was a retired dentist, so he gave me wax and dental tools, and I learned how to make teeth and scars and stuff like that. So it was just constant practice. These days, you’ve got some great makeup forums on the internet. If you need to find out something, you just type in a question. It’s funny, I’ve got Dick Smith’s Monster Makeup Handbook. I have a couple of copies, but I haven’t looked at them in a while, and I needed to get Dick Smith’s gelatin formula from it, I think it was last week.

I couldn’t find my Dick Smith handbook, so I went on Facebook and said, “Hey, any makeup FX friends, what’s Dick’s formula from the Monster Makeup Handbook for gelatin?” Within five minutes, I had three replies giving me the formula, it’s amazing! So with the internet today, you can find any information you need: If you need a gelatin formula, or want to know how glue works, or how to do a zombie arm, people have YouTube demos! So if you’re passionate at this point, you don’t even need a book – you need a computer, and you can find out anything from there.

Cliff: It’s funny you mention Dick’s book. I was probably 10 when I got that book, and I remember reading in there how you can get all these supplies from the local pharmacy, as you said as well. Of course, by then that stuff was no longer available in pharmacies unless it was Halloween, but I remember scouring the local Eckerd’s and not finding anything and thinking “Damn you Dick Smith, you’ve led me astray!!”

Mark: Here’s how it went for me: When I got Dick Smith’s Handbook, I was reading Famous Monsters in Hong Kong, and I read about the Monster Makeup Handbook, and I talked my dad into ordering it for me. Well, when you order it from America, it would take about two months to get to Hong Kong. And then Dick Smith’s writing about “Oh, you can get this and this from your local pharmacy!” Well, having a local pharmacy in Hong Kong is a little bit different!

I could go to a Chinese pharmacy and find snake wine, but I can’t find a Stein’s makeup pencil there or face powder. So finding stuff to practice the make-ups in Dick’s handbook was a challenge for me. I ended up finding plaster in a little 1lb. boxes at a local English pharmacy called Watson’s, and I somehow tracked down Max Factor Pan-Stik from a supplier who supplied the Hong Kong TV stations with their makeup. But then I had to find Mortician’s Wax!

I remember that was an afternoon of me going through the Hong Kong phone book and calling for hours and hours, and I actually was able to find Naturo Plasto in Hong Kong. I couldn’t believe it. It was a challenge to find those materials! Dick’s Handbook talks about Stein’s grease paints, so I, in Hong Kong, couldn’t find Stein’s makeup, which is a New York makeup firm that deals with Broadway. But I got the next best thing, which was an English brand of makeup called Leichner, and they also had greasepaint sticks!

So if Stein’s number, such and such, were yellow, it might be a different number for Leichner, but I could go to the Watson’s pharmacy, and they had a whole section of Leichner greasepaint sticks. So I started with those, and those were very cool, very good stuff. And I got my Leichner face powder and cold cream and all that, so I was set.

Mark: I spent a lot of the summer of 1970 or 71 trying makeups or techniques from Dick’s handbook, as well as those from Corson’s “Stage Makeup” and Kehoe’s “Technique of Film and Television Makeup.” I would do a makeup, and my mother would photograph each one with an Instamatic camera. I even made my own sideburns on latex so I could reuse them. I made sculptures of bullet holes and a tiny plaster mold, and made my first prosthetics out of slip latex. I could get perhaps two small molds from that one-pound box of plaster from Watson’s Chemists!

Cliff: It’s definitely is a challenge finding supplies locally, even more so now since pharmacies just don’t carry stuff like that. I am lucky enough to live close by 1 of only a few costume shops in Houston that carry theatrical makeup.

Mark: The funny thing was that I had such a good time when I was a little kid learning all this stuff that the smells of the different make-ups still bring back memories. Today, if I open up a Max Factor pancake, it smells exactly the same as the ones I bought back in 1969. It brings back memories of all those fun times as a kid.

---

Cliff: You have done some pretty groundbreaking work, from the melting sequence in Phantasm II, to the monumental Freddy metamorphosis scene in Nightmare on Elm Street 2, to some very memorable character work in Dick Tracy. Looking back on all you’ve done, if you had to pick one favorite effect, what would it be?

Mark: Well, it’s hard to pick a favorite; they were all fun projects in different ways. But I’d have to say, if I had to pick a favorite, it would be A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 because it was good for a number of reasons. It was basically the standout sequence, right in the middle of the movie; I was working with a really wonderful man, a young man at the time, Mark Patton, and a great crew. It was just fun, but we knew it was going to be a challenge, and it’s one of those things that was also great for my career. I do remember Elm Street [Part 1] was a huge hit. I went with Bart [Mixon] to see it, and when the chance to do Elm Street 2 came up, everybody in town wanted it. It ended up being… I think it was I, Kevin Yagher, and two other people, whom I won’t mention, who were the final competitors.

It was a Friday after, the producers said they were going to make their final decision and call everybody on Monday. I was hanging out with my girlfriend the whole weekend, totally distracted by what might happen. I would turn to my girlfriend every half hour and say, “Do you think I got the job? Do you think they’re gonna pick me??” Finally, she just said “Shut Up! You’ll know Monday!” I knew it was going to be a great career thing for me if I got it, and I deliberately chose that sequence and designed it because I knew if I got this movie and did that effect my career was going to take off, and it did. One thing about that whole sequence is that it was never thought up by the writers! The script merely read, “And Freddy bursts out of Jessie.” That’s all the written description was.

So when I went to the meeting, and I asked the director Jack Sholder, “What do you want to see?” – Jack had this idea of Jessie standing there in a Freddy sweater with balloons underneath the sweater inflating, and all of a sudden the Freddy hand rips the face open or something. I thought that was rather weak, so I came up with the whole sequence as you see it. But to be fair, I storyboarded Jack’s sequence, and I had Bart Mixon storyboard my idea. I told Bart, “Make sure you draw Jack’s idea on a slightly smaller board, make it a little bit goofy, maybe put freckles on the guy- don’t be overt about it.”

Bart kind of shook his head; he knew what was going on. I said, “Bart, for my idea, I want to use a little bit bigger board, slightly larger drawings, a little bit more dynamic.” And he’s like “Gotcha!” The final decision about what we were going to make was not up to me, not up to Jack; it was up to Bob Shaye, the head of New Line Cinema, who was financing the whole thing. I went to the presentation meeting, and I put up Jack’s storyboard, and I put up mine, and Bob Shaye bee-lined directly to my idea. Right in front of Jack Sholder, Bob taps my design and says, “This is what I want!” And I kind of looked across the room at Jack and shrugged my shoulders like “Eh, sorry!” And then the next minute Bob Shaye put his nose to my nose and said: “I just want to hear that for X amount of dollars you’re going to deliver that!” I don’t remember what I replied exactly, but it was something like “Yes, I’ll deliver it, and it will kick ass!” So there you go.

Cliff: Wow, very psychological.

Mark: Yeah, and I have to admit that a lot of us effects guys were a little cocky in those days. I don’t know if I’d do it the same way today, I’m not sure. It’s funny, speaking of the Elm Street thing, Mark Patton recently started doing conventions, and there was a thing on Facebook the other day where he posted a little interview he and Kim Myers had done at a monster convention, and Mark talked about Elm Street, and he mentioned my name. He said Mark Shostrom did a great, amazing job! I thought it was so sweet of him to remember that. Of course, that was 25 years ago; if I had to do it all over again, there are things I’d do differently. Today we’d have different materials; we’d probably do a lot of things out of silicone instead of foam rubber, but for what it was at the time- 4 or 5 guys working their tails off for 8 weeks, it really worked!

Cliff: Well, it really still holds up. I’d put that transformation right up there with the transformation scene in American Werewolf in London.

Mark: Of course, that was a huge influence. Rick Baker said in many interviews that after American Werewolf, everybody started doing the same stuff. I tried to do something dynamic, but did it a little bit differently; it was not a werewolf, but there were specific references to Freddy cutting, tearing, and stretching. The actual chest stretching with Freddy’s face pushing out of Mark’s chest, that was a tip of the hat to Nightmare 1, where Freddy pushes out of the wall [above Tina’s bed]. So that was deliberate. I came up with that, I think. I said to Jack Sholder and Bob Shaye, “Wouldn’t it be cool to tie in to the first movie and have Freddy pushing his face out of Jessie’s chest?” So that’s how that came about.

Cliff: Well, speaking of the original Nightmare film, it says on your IMDB page that you worked on the original but were uncredited. How did that come about?

Mark: Dave Miller was a friend of mine, and we talked a lot, and he had gotten the job on Nightmare 1. He called me one day and said, “I’m so busy on set, just sitting around waiting on Robert Englund to work that I don’t have time to run the foam, and there are some sculpting chores. Do you want to work for a week or two?” “I said, “Sure.” So I basically worked out of Dave’s garage. Dave wasn’t there. He’d get home, if he was lucky, by 7 pm. I would run the Freddy foam, I think twice a day, because basically what they were doing to Dave was having him show up on set and making up Robert Englund and sitting around for 12 or 15 hours and not using Robert! That was burning through all his foam rubber, so he needed more pieces.

I ran the foam for him. It’s kind of funny, the molds Dave had were very thin peach stone, they were maybe an inch thick at that, and he’d already run them so many times that they were falling apart! So on every foam run, before I could load the molds, I’d have to superglue the damn things together! Every single time. And there were a lot of molds because Dave did a layered makeup, so there’s an inner foam latex makeup and an outer one. While the foam was baking, I sculpted a rotting corpse of Ronee Blakely that ended up changed or not used. It wasn’t a job where I was looking for any credit at the time; I was just helping out a friend, so there you have that.

Cliff: Well, still pretty cool to have the first 3 Elm Street films on the resume! If the transformation scene in NOES2 was one of your favorite effects, conversely, is there an effect that you weren’t really happy with that you wish you could go back and do over again if you had the chance?

Mark: Oh God! What wasn’t I happy with? I probably tend to block those out! I guess there are a few. I mean, I look back at everything in my career, and I think, “Oh, I could sculpt that so much better today!” or technically, I could do something better today. Look at Rick Baker, for example, and he says the same thing about American Werewolf; there are things that he didn’t like or didn’t work.

So I don’t know if we’ll necessarily mention specifics, but I think any artist who has been around long enough will look back at their older work and think, “Gosh, I’d love to do that again because I could do it so much better, artistically and technically.” And honestly, when a movie audience sees an effect that maybe doesn’t work for whatever reason, they don’t know what went on behind the scenes. They don’t know so-and-so had to whip that up overnight, or that they only shot it once, or that the cinematographer lit it wrong. So they don’t know the background, so it might be a good effect from a very good artist, but it was just handled wrong, or the artist was in a rush.

You don’t know, so it really isn’t fair to unjustly criticize any practical effect because you don’t know the reasons why it didn’t [work] perhaps.

Cliff: Yeah, and as an FX artist, I do this, and I am sure you do too, but you notice things and nitpick them that probably any normal person would never even notice, even on multiple viewings.

Mark: Yeah, honestly there are probably a few things in effects that I’ve done where I will critique it and go “Ah jeez, I see such-and-such here…” and there’s a shot or two in Evil Dead where Henrietta is flying through the air there’s a huge rip in the crotch but it goes by so fast that probably no body in the audience will never notice but my FX friend might and I certainly will! It’s funny – the goofs section on the IMDB page for Evil Dead 2 has more makeup goofs than anything, stuff like torn suit, torn crotch, sweat coming out.

Cliff: Well, I kind of like those things, while it may ruin the moment or the magic of the movie if you see it, to me it’s kind of like a glimpse behind the scenes.

Mark: True. I have a little funny trivia that I only found out two weeks ago. I did an interview for Evil Dead for a DVD, and I asked, “Who else did you interview today?” and they said, “Doug Beswick,” and I said, “Oh, cool, Doug’s a great guy!” Then Buz, the cameraman, said, “Yeah, he told me some amazing trivia!” Apparently, in the Linda dance of the dead sequence in the background, there’s a bunch of trees, and for two of the trees, they used Ripley’s Power Loader legs from Aliens. They redressed them! I had no idea about that until the other day!

Cliff: Wow, that’s like Inception, a movie in a movie in a movie with Evil Dead 2 being shot on the Color Purple set and all.

Mark: Yeah, that’s something that will hopefully get on that IMDB Evil Dead 2 trivia page. Doug had done the Power Loader/Alien sequence at the end [of Aliens] with stop motion with puppets, a lot of puppets, I believe, so they were incorporated into Evil Dead as trees, so that’s really cool!

Cliff: Well, speaking of the Color Purple, for most hardcore Evil Dead fans, to go to the site of the original cabin, long since burned down, is like a pilgrimage. I don’t think that anyone has yet to find the cabin set built for Evil Dead 2. Do you remember where it was, or do you have any idea if it’s even still there?

Mark: Well, to get to the exterior cabin, we drove to the Color Purple house, and that’s where the crew had lunch or dinner and whatnot. To get to the cabin, it was a short ride or walk, right down the hill. As far as whether it’s still there, I have no idea; it might still be there. I just talked to somebody who visited the J.R. Faison High School grounds, where we shot the interior cabin and had our production offices. She said she looked through the windows, and the piano from Evil Dead 2 is still in there, as well as some of the furniture. So I guess if you… Well, I guess now that this is on the internet, I’m sure someone’s gonna fucking break in and blame me! Anyway, I remember being there, but I was there at night, and someone drove me down the hill in a crew van at night, so I wasn’t really paying attention.

I do remember that at the end of Evil Dead 2, most of my crew had left to do Creepshow 2, and it was down to me and Bryant Tausek handling a few effects. It was maybe for 2 weeks of shooting left, and we weren’t being used every day, so we had days off. We took our car and drove out to the Color Purple house, which by this time production had vacated. I remember driving up to the cattle fence, and Bryant grabbed the fence and electrocuted himself, of course I got a big kick out of that when he fell on his ass! We blasted the car through the gates up past the house, and I drove that thing so fast we had all four wheels off the ground and hit our heads on the car ceiling. But I don’t remember seeing the Evil Dead cabin at that time.

Of course, we were going so fast we probably went right by it! I understand why people would want to look for it; that kind of thing excites me, too. For instance, the movie Double Indemnity, one of my favorites, I was so into that movie that about 25 years ago, I tracked down where the house was that Barbara Stanwyck lived, and I drove to the Hollywood Hills and found it! So I can understand, I can relate to movie fans who love to see cool locations. I was driving with Bryant to Prescott, Arizona, to visit the Creepshow guys on set.

I’d never been to Prescott, and we were kind of following Greg Nicotero’s written directions, and we were driving through this sleepy little Arizona town, and I slammed on the brakes and screamed out, “They filmed Billy Jack right there!” It was the courthouse where they had the fight scene, so that was really cool!

Cliff: That’s great, I’ve had a couple of friends who have tracked down the Elm Street house and the Haddonfield house from Halloween, and I always wonder what the current owners think of all these people who come to just stare at their house?

Mark: I’ll tell you, the Michael Myers house was around the corner from my shop and about 3 doors up from where I lived. When Sam Raimi came out to my shop one night, we had dinner, and afterwards I said, “Hey, I want to show you something.” We went around the corner, and in the darkness, there was the house. When Sam saw that house, he went crazy, he walked up to the windows holding his hand like a camera, humming the soundtrack! But to answer your question, today, I was there at the Michael Myers house, maybe 2 or 3 months ago, with a friend of mine. We wanted to take some joke photos of me on the porch. So we started taking photos on this Sunday afternoon, and all of a sudden, this guy came out and said: “What are you doing on my porch?” He was a chiropractor or something, and he wasn’t too happy I was on his porch.

Cliff: It seems like you’ve gotten to work on a lot of sequels, Nightmare 2 and 3, Evil Dead 2, Phantasm 2 and 3. Personally, I would take that as a compliment because clearly the filmmakers are looking for someone who can top the original and believe you are that guy. How do you go about approaching the sequel, knowing that the fans of the original are going to be scrutinizing every detail of our work and comparing it to the first film?

Mark: Well, I think back when I was doing those sequels, I didn’t really think so much about that. Instead, I was thinking more in terms of, “What really cool thing can I do to top myself,” you know? It also depends on whether the script is really any good, frankly. In Phantasm II, it was a question of actually showing things that were never seen in the first one. For example, the dwarf, I think Don Coscarelli used little children in cloaks, I don’t even think he had dwarf masks. But for the second one, it was clearly defined in the script when it says “the snarling dwarf bites at Reggie,” or “grandma dwarf,” or “the dwarf falls out of the canister, and you see him fully nude!” Obviously, we needed to construct that, so that was a cool chance in the sequel to show what was only alluded to in the first film.

Cliff: So you just want to push the boundaries of the original.

Mark: Yeah, I mean, you gotta challenge yourself, but there’s also a little pressure to deliver more because maybe the producers want something different and bigger and better than the last one. So there’s a little self-imposed pressure, pressure from production, audience expectations, who knows? You try to develop an art and make something really cool. I’ve always been the type to never really run out of ideas.

Cliff: Well, moving forward in your career, you really did some great work on some really groundbreaking shows that pushed the envelope of special makeup effects on cable TV. Of course, I mean Star Trek, The X-Files, and Buffy. In fact, you won three Emmy’s for your work. Tell us a little about the work you did that won you the award, and how that feel?

Mark: Well, let me answer the question kind of broadly. The first time I thought we should have be nominated for an Emmy on Star Trek, was for an episode called The Phage. Where Scott Wheeler and I created these really cool, patch-work aliens. They were very cool characters and I thought it was a shoe in for an Emmy nomination and it totally got ignored. I think it was the following year were Scott and I designed the makeup for Robbie McNeill for an episode called Threshold where he was on his way to becoming a lizard creature. The work was great and also we got an Emmy nomination and we won for it! So it was a little bit unexpected. The others I don’t recall specifically what it was, there were a lot of us FX artists working on those shows. I think I won 3 in the space of 4 years. But here’s my formula, you wanna know how to win an Emmy? Don’t go! Don’t go to the fucking awards! The first time I was nominated for Star Trek [Voyager] I got a tuxedo and a limo picked me up, I took my brother. It was against Star Trek Voyager, and Star Trek Deep Space Nine and one other show. I was the designated thank you, speech guy by Mike Westmore who didn’t go because he’s got like 12 or something. Anyway Cyndi Lauper was presenting and goes “And the winner is Star Trek…” and I start reaching for the thank you cards because I’m like “Oh, we won it…” and it was Deep Space Nine. So I’m like, shit ya know? So the next year, I decided not to go, and Tina, one of the other staffers, one of my friends at Star Trek calls me up at like midnight and is like “Mark, we won the Emmy, what do you want me to do with yours?” And I just said “Just bring it to work tomorrow!” But the last time was the funniest. I was having coffee with my buddy Steffan a few blocks down the street from the Emmys. I kind of forgot they were happening, I don’t really like to go to these formal affairs. Anyway I sitting there on a hot day, we’re sitting there in t-shirts, shorts and sandals, I’m having a smoke. So anyway a couple of limos go by and I didn’t think anything of it, but this one circled the block a couple of times and screeched to a halt in front of us. This girl named Mary Kay gets out and a bunch of other people in formal attire screaming “Mark, you just won another Emmy!” So all these people are staring at me and I just say to Mary Kay, “Well drive back down the street and bring it back to me!” So that’s my formula, I went and didn’t win and didn’t go and I’ve won twice, so I just don’t go. But really, I’m not in this business to win a bunch of awards, but when you do it’s nice. I think if your goal is to win an Oscar that’s a really insincere goal, your goal should be to do the best work possible. If your goal is to make a lot of money or win an Oscar, you’re kind of in it for the wrong reasons. The awards come from doing the best work. Rick Baker has 7 Oscars and he set out to be the best makeup artist he could, so by being better than pretty much everybody else, the awards came. I have no huge goals to win an Oscar but I would like to win a Saturn award. I’d be so flattered because I have been nominated 4 times but never won. Just to be nominated is a big achievement, but it would really be an honor to win.

Cliff: To horror fans you and the other special effects artists of your generation are legends because of the quality of your work. You’ve inspired a new generation of FX artists, guys like Robert Hall, Stuart Bray, and Neill Gorton to name a few. Do you have any favorites among this new group of artists?

Mark: Well I’m constantly being exposed, through Facebook, to new people and new talents. I was going to be a film in Canada several months ago and I had to find a pretty much all Canadian crew. I enlisted the help of a few friends that had worked up there and started getting names of artists with great ability and great attitudes. So I had a list of probably 30 people and I narrowed it down to about a dozen then finally a handful of people left. I remember it took me about 2 weeks to crew up with film with some really talented Canadians and I had one slot left. There was a fellow outside Vancouver named Jamie Salmon who does the AMAZING replicas in silicone. The show involved a lot of human replicas and punched hair and eyes. I had seen Jamie’s website and he and his wife Jackie Seo are both these amazing sculptures who do just amazing, lifelike, replica work. I read about Jamie and Jackie and they had done a few FX films here and there, but they were also doing galleries like in Portugal and fine art presentations. I didn’t even bother to call Jamie, I thought there’s no way in the world either A) this guy would be interested in a horror film or B) we couldn’t afford him. So finally I one or two more slots to fill and I just called Jamie out of the blue and guess what? He was a Mark Shostrom fan from way back! He grew up reading about me in Fangoria! So I was able to get him at a good price and his wife too! It was amazing. So it’s kind of neat to think that I’ve inspired people and when I was teaching for a few years I’d get the occasional student that would come up to me and say, “You’re the reason I want to do this.” It’s a good feeling because I know what it was like to be struggling and trying to get a job going in a business that didn’t exist and I’ll never forget how gracious John Chambers was to help me out and let me hand in his garage or give me free advice on the phone. Or Dick Smith answering my questions or letters. I’ll never forget the generosity of people like that and I want to give back, so if I can help people who have a sincere desire, I’ll do that any day.

Cliff: Well, I think that’s a great segue way into my next question. Dick Smith pretty much set the standard that the FX industry should be a share and share alike community. The industry thrives on innovations, and no one will be able to create new techniques if they can’t find out from someone else what the current technique is. What do you think about those artists who are super secretive or who are not willing to help out the up and comer?

Mark: Well to answer your question broadly, all I can really say to those artists who don’t want to share is that you’re not going to make many friends and you’re probably going to lose out on a lot of jobs. The people that get along and help each other are open. It’s funny, this whole special makeup effects industry, we’re all competitors, but we’re all friends! So there’s not this corporate animosity to hold our company secrets, and keep them from anything else. We’re not guarding the formula for Coca-Cola, we’re all creating the same kind of work. The people who’ve been around for a while are clearly willing to share and I think we all get that from Dick’s attitude of generosity. He’s inspired and influenced us and shared with us so much that it’s contagious. We’re going to do the same with other young make-up artists. Maybe somebody coming in from outside who’s trying to succeed for the wrong reasons, maybe they might be secretive, but it’s all bullshit at the end of the day. Dick Smith was in New York, working on his own, trying to get information from Hollywood. George Bow and Gordon Bow helped him, pretty much anybody else out here, if he’d a question, they felt threatened or pretty much tell him to fuck off and Dick would be facing a brick wall trying find out what rubber mask grease paint is or something out in New York. So that’s what inspired him to have an attitude of generosity because he knew what it felt like to have the door slammed in his face and people refusing to tell him where to buy make up because they felt threatened by him. If you’re a competent artist and you’re confident in your own abilities, you shouldn’t feel threatened by anyone. I’ll share a formula with anybody, even if that person is doing a show I wanted to do and they need some information. I’ll give them the information they need, because what goes around comes around. Karma has a good way of catching up, either with a slap in the face or a pat on the back.

Cliff: Well let’s talk about the present. What made you decide to relaunch yourself under this new moniker of Hello Boss? And where did you come up with the name?

Mark: Well, I started teaching in about 2005 and it was great for a while, a steady job. It was fun, I actually enjoyed teaching. But in recent years I’d be giving an demonstration or something and a student would say, “Don’t you miss being on set?” And I’d start to think, “yeah I do, more than you know.” So I started formulating the idea in my mind to really just get back out here and get a new studio going. I’ve done it before and it’s scary, its financially a big risk these days, you’re competing with CGI and the thought of doing it myself had held be back for a couple of years. So I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in about 20 years and we decided to make a go at it. Long story short, as I developed ideas, he kinda, I don’t want to say developed cold feet, but he has a great job at a great place and that’s where he belongs and he finally said I’m sure I’m ready for this. So I asked another friend of mine who I really consider a good friend, a talented artist, and a great business woman. We decided to go for it together and started formulating the company about a year ago. Actually the hardest part was coming up with the name. We went through all sorts of names and the words for the name “Hello Boss” I’d always liked. It comes from a Taiwanese iced coffee that comes in a can called Hello Boss. It’s kind of a cool name that could mean a lot of things to a lot of people. I further liked it because Hello Boss the company was sued at one point because it was alleged to have cyanide in the can. I thought, wow that’s a cool juxtaposition, you’re drinking this wonderful tasting coffee that could kill you horribly, it made me laugh! To make sure the title worked, I tried it out on everyone I know, people in the business, friends, family, everybody. Everybody loved it, some didn’t know why. Some thought it sounded sheik, cheerful, jaunty, confident, but it worked. So we just decided Hello Boss it is. Plus I imagined somebody answering the phone, “Hello, Hello Boss!”

Cliff: Well you mentioned CGI and your website mentions doing work in CGI. I think that’s a hot button issue with a lot of horror fans as many see CGI as unnecessary when practical effects look so much better. What made you, as a practical effects artist, want to venture into that territory?

Mark: Well I can tell you one thing, it is a real challenge. I’ve got some software I’ve been playing with but there’s a large learning curve to follow. My problem now is the time to learn this very intricate software. I definitely see a place for it in the future because, although I know quite a few directors who just don’t like the CGI route, they love practical effects, there are a lot of new people that think CGI is the answer to everything and it’s not. I think a mixture of the two is the perfect blend, especially in makeup effects where, sure you could do a head replica in CGI but will it be 100%? Maybe not, maybe you should do a silicone head. The decision to start putting in CGI is really because of the future, so much is CGI now, but it doesn’t have to all be CGI. If I started a makeup effects company and went strictly practical maybe five years from now we might have to close our doors. But if we add some CGI elements, maybe we can stay in business for a while. It’s definitely the road of the future in many ways, I know a lot of artists who totally resisted, I was that way when I saw Jurassic Park. I was depressed, I thought it was all over! Many of my friends at the time embrace computer graphics and got out of makeup and started learning that and that’s what they do today. I know a lot of artists personally that I ran into at Monsterpalooza who are frustrated and not working or what not. To a sculptor I might say, “Have you tried Z-Brush?” and their response might be, “Fuck Z-Brush, I hate that CGI shit!” Well, if you have that attitude, you might be grumbling about being out of work again in another year. My attitude is to embrace it and use it as another set of artistic tools. CGI isn’t the answer to everything and maybe practical effects aren’t the answer to everything. I think a good example and an intelligent choice and a wise way to approach things would be the goat creature in Pan’s Labyrinth. It’s a mixture of makeup effects and CGI perfectly blended and guess what? Guillermo Del Toro is a former makeup effects artist, he knew what elements to use where. But until every film director is a former makeup effects artist, to a degree the artist has to educate and inspire the next generation of directors and producers. Today’s generation of kids grows up with email and cell phones and CGI. When I was teaching I would show a 7 minute clip, basically wall-to-wall of all the effects that Rob Bottin and crew did for The Thing. A barrage from the dog thing down to the Blair monster. When it was done I’d turn the TV off and say “Zero CGI, it didn’t exist.” The students couldn’t believe it, how did they do that? It was all practical, it was there in front of the camera, splitting, stretching, bleeding. The actors saw it, the camera man saw it, what you’re seeing is without computers, it really has an effect on people.

Cliff: Well, one last question. What kind of advice would you give to aspiring makeup artists trying to gain a foothold in this industry while competing against CGI and other established artists such as yourself?

Mark: That’s a tough question. I saw an interview that Rick Baker did last year at a convention about the Wolf Man and they asked him the same question. He said well 20 years ago I would have said go get some makeup and start practicing, now I say get a computer. So today, if you want to go makeup effects, I really think you need to have computer skills as well because frankly people are sketching with a pencil, they are using Photoshop or zbrush. So really the best advice I can give is that you better be passionate about want to do this because there are thousand other people lining up to do this and maybe 100 of them are passionate. Do it for the right reasons, Rick Baker, Dick Smith, myself we all got into this because we loved monster movies and we loved make up and it really bit us in a way that it just stays with you. I’ve been into makeup since I was 9 years old, that was 46 years ago or something and I still get excited by it. When Frankenstein comes on I’m like, oh my god, stop what I’m doing, I want to watch Frankenstein, for the 50th time but it’s still exciting. It’s hard to say why other people get the makeup bug, but if you’re passionate about it nothing will stop you. When I got into the business it didn’t exist, and my girlfriend at the time’s father thought that what I was doing was insane. He said they don’t make movies like Planet of the Apes maybe only every 10 years. But I was stubborn guy, I’m still a stubborn guy and I was gonna do this no matter what because I really wanted it more than anything. I was passionate about it, and nothing was going to stop me and I believed in myself wholeheartedly. I didn’t really have a lot of family support at the time because my parents just transferred to India for 5 years. This is before email and cell phones so I didn’t have a lot of contact with them, they were supportive but they were also 10,000 miles away. I had to believe in myself and that gave me the drive to succeed and if you have that drive to succeed, I think you will too.

Cliff: Well Mark, that’s all I have for you, it’s been a great honor to do this interview with you and I hope you won’t hold it against me if I call you up and ask for advice every now and then.

Mark: No problem! It’s been great talking to you!

Thank you, Cliff Holverson

 

All production images are copyright Mark Shostrom. Please do not copy without permission.

---

Disclaimer: Any information presented in this article regarding materials and techniques, while believed to be effective and harmless, is not to be taken as a warranty, express or implied, for which Mark Shostrom and Hello Boss Effects LLC assume legal responsibility. Because the preparation, handling, and application of the materials described in this article are beyond the control of Mark Shostrom and Hello Boss Effects LLC, both Mark Shostrom and Hello Boss Effects LLC can accept no liability for the results obtained.