Below The Line - Creature Design & Practical FX (Starship Troopers)

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Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of Below the Line with What Went Wrong, where we interview the incredible artists and storytellers that you don't often hear from, responsible for some of the most interesting movie magic to grace the screen.

Today is no exception as we are speaking with a veteran of the creature design and practical effects industry, and that is Alec Gillis.

Alec Gillis came up under Stan Winston and Roger Corman.

He co-founded the Oscar-winning creature effects studio Amalgamated Dynamics Incorporated, and he currently runs his solo studio, Studio Gillis.

He has worked on or designed nearly every monster under the sun, our sun, and alien suns alike, from graboids to werewolves to xenomorphs to predators and so, so much more.

And I'm not even including some of the directors he's worked with.

So without further ado, we hope you enjoy our conversation with Alec Gillis.

And action.

Alec, if you can, please describe your job as if you're explaining it to a three-year-old or, as you know, working in the film industry to your parents or somebody who does not work in the film industry.

What do you do?

Well, I am broadly, I could be called a character creator.

And the tools that I use are more traditional tools.

animatronics, special makeup, specialty costumes.

We do props as well.

I have another company called Pro Machina that builds miniatures, miniature spaceships and things like that.

So it's anything that it has to do with in my heart a character, because a spaceship could be a character,

that we create through more traditional practical effects means.

So otherwise I get go like, you know, I'm a monster guy.

Right.

There are a lot of monsters in your history that we need to talk about.

Nearly all of them, I would say, or at least all the ones I grew up with.

But let's go back before that.

Why movies and why

monsters, characters, practical effects within movies of all the dozens and dozens of jobs that you could have had in this business?

Well, I did run through some in my mind as a kid.

I've wanted to be a monster maker since about age 12.

And prior to that, it was things like

President of the United States.

Sure.

Thank god i i didn't go that way i did play the president of the united states by the way in a neil blom oh nice wow so uh called called dad president so that was i did achieve that goal actually congratulations um but you know uh you know childhood things that just sounded like cool astronaut whatever but i also wanted to be a comic book artist for a little while and i was you know When I was nine or 10, I was drawing all summer to try to, you know, be as good as Russ Heath and, you Joe Cubert and guys like that.

But then when I think I landed on monsters, it was the summer that I was

looking at a bunch of magazines on the rack, and I saw a magazine called Castle of Frankenstein.

And on the cover was Talos from Jason and the Argonauts.

So this would have been,

it was not a new movie at that time.

But I thought, ooh, I love that monster.

And I started flipping through it.

And then I saw the Cyclops from

Syndad.

I saw, you know, the

First Men in the Moon, the Silenites.

I just saw the Emer.

I saw all these

creatures, the Hydra from Jason and the Argonauts, that were like, I thought were just spectacular designs.

And then I realized it was an interview with one person, one artist who had created these things.

And that's when it clicked in my mind that this is a job.

This looks like a lifetime of creativity.

Ray Harryhausen, of course,

is the guy.

So that's who I wanted to be was Ray Harryhausen.

Where did you grow up, Alec?

I grew up in California in

Orange County.

I could see the Disneyland fireworks from my bedroom window.

And so I spent a lot of time at Disneyland, which was also

formative for me because I really fell in love with animatronics by, you know, hanging out in the park.

Back when my mom would drop my brother and I off when the park opened at like 11, and then she'd pick us up when it closed at 11.

Oh my God.

That's the dream.

We'd run out of tickets.

There were ticket books back then.

So we'd run out of tickets within 90 minutes because there were no lines that I could really remember.

You could just like run through Pirates of the Caribbean and just get back on it again.

That's amazing.

But the tickets would be gone in 90 minutes, and then it was just all eating.

Like, you know, what can you buy?

You know, giant dill pickles.

You walk around.

Anyway.

So am I right in thinking that you came up in both Roger Corman's studio and Stan Winston's?

Yeah.

The order of events were,

you know, I.

When I was in high school, I was making stop-motion movies and, you know, I took over my mom's garage and

you know I was learning about film latex you know it was all the self-taught stuff because there was no YouTube tutorial back then

and

so that segued into I went to two years at community college with the I had the idea that I wanted to go to film school and I

got turned down by the School of Cinema at USC

and then I was like, well, now what do I do?

I guess I'll go to, you know, the local community college.

So

I went to two years there.

And during that time,

a

high school art teacher that

my wife, I wasn't married in high school.

Let me back up.

My girlfriend, you know, when we were in high school a couple of years, this high school art teacher that I knew said, hey, my husband teaches oceanography at Cal State Fullerton.

And there's this guy who is making movies and he kind of does what you do.

And you should connect with him.

And I got a phone number and it was Jim Cameron.

Wow.

Who lived in Berea, I think.

This was during his

work,

his very important work delivering school books for the school district there.

But, you know, I met him and I like went out to Pomona to see a movie.

that he had worked on, a short film called Xenogenesis, which you could find online.

I think a really terrible copy, maybe you can find online somewhere.

And this movie was shot in 35-millimeter.

And I went back to his place afterwards and saw the models he had built.

There were these giant stop-motion models.

He had taken a 16-millimeter camera and stripped it down and turned it into a projector and put it inside a stop-motion model for the woman in the cockpit.

And I was like, holy crap.

Granted, he's six years older than me.

So I'm like, okay, but what a great role model and example of sort of like, he was on fire.

And that was that era between Star Wars and meeting Cameron and that kind of shifted my focus, expanded my focus away from the pure fantasy filmmaking of Ray Harryhausen to the broader sci-fi world.

And then I got an interview with Roger Corman's folks

for Battle Beyond the Stars.

So that would have been in 1979.

And

if you'll hold on one moment,

this is my,

sorry, let me put this back on.

You see, I'm a master of technology.

This is my first paycheck.

Oh, wow.

From Roger Corman's for Battle Beyond the Stars.

And so I framed it, of course.

But anyway, that was Battle Beyond the Stars.

And that led to a couple of other Corman films that I worked on, Galaxy of Terror, Android,

you know, some other things.

What was that like?

Because he's come up so much across so many episodes and seems to be a place where people really learn a lot.

Was it just, was it like very shoestring?

What was that environment like under him?

It was.

extremely exciting, but being that it was my first professional experience, you know, I went from my mom's garage and shooting super eight movies with my friends and to working in a professional environment.

But we were always aware that we were not top of the line and that this was,

there were

limited resources.

But what was great about it was the opportunity that was there, the collection of people that were there.

I mean, you know, Gail Ann Hurd was there at the time.

The Skotak brothers, who went on to win multiple awards for Cameron's movies, Aliens and the Abyss and stuff.

They were miniature geniuses.

And Bill Paxton was a carpenter there and i didn't know that i remember reading that just so many people didn't work in that studio yeah i met rob botine there my very first time i met him he kind of harshly yelled at me and told me to get away from his monsters i'd never seen a full monster before they were the humanoids from the deep and they were shooting like they had a pup tent set up so i think there was a you know it was probably corbin probably said we need more sex so they so in the offices they had a pup and Rob had his stuff set up.

And I was like, you know, just drooling over all this.

And I hear this voice, you know, you're not supposed to be in here.

Go on, get out of here.

And he was like a sass warrior with the hair.

And I'm like, and then I discovered we were the same age.

And then that's where depression sinks in because you're like, this guy, when he did the thing, you know, at like age 22.

And I'm like, is this what you have to do to fucking get your name noticed?

So anyway, it was the people who were there were just spectacular, and it was great.

Well, let's talk about that a little bit.

Like, Botine kind of famously nearly killed himself on the thing.

And like, in those early days, it's kind of the wild, I'm guessing it's the Wild West with Corman a little bit.

And, you know, what are what makes a disastrous or difficult production in that early part of your career?

Well, I think, you know, I built up to responsibility in my career, you know, like I think I was was about 22 or 23 when I did the miniature shark for Jaws 3D, the famous one where it breaks the glass in a chilling, a chilling and most effective moment.

And I cannot imagine being that same age and being in charge of the effects on the thing.

Holy crap.

So, you know, I know, I believe that from what I've heard,

he did have a rough time with that.

And who wouldn't, man?

Earlier on in my my career, the things that had me most distressed were if someone entrusted me with an opportunity and I took it and

I could not deliver, that I was in over my head.

Because, you know, that's what me and Cameron would do this.

I learned this from Jim,

you know, when we were at Corbin's, you know, because we started off as model builders.

And I was sort of, you know, Jim's assistant on that because he was, you know, he was levels ahead of me in terms of self-confidence and experience and all that stuff.

And so I would sort of like help fill in some gaps that he'd mold making, whatever that he didn't have.

And then he would move up the rung of the ladder and then I would finish up that and then I would join him on the next rung, you know.

So it was a lot of fun.

It was like the best.

I dropped out of film school because

Corman's was unparalleled.

There's no way I was doing, working with motion control systems and loading 35 millimeter BIPAC cameras and

building miniatures.

And

there was nothing like that.

Why would I pay money to sit and listen to failed filmmakers

teach

screenwriting classes?

What exactly did you do, Professor, before you started?

Screenwriter.

Well, I was an assistant cameraman.

Oh, so now you teach screenwriting.

I get you.

So

anyway,

and there were a few times where I kind of dropped the ball and I felt like shit about it.

And I just thought, my career is over because, you know, you're very dramatic when you're young.

But there were very supportive people, Chuck Kamiski, who ran the VFX department there and the Skotak brothers.

They were very supportive.

You know, they saw that, well, if you're trying, you're really trying and let's figure out how to fix it rather than, you know, abuse you and kick you to the curb.

I'm very grateful for that.

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You mentioned feeling like the worst thing that could happen is that you couldn't deliver on something.

And I very much relate to that.

I'm curious about the first movie that you did with your company, ADI, which of course is one of my all-time favorite movies, Tremors.

What was the experience of kind of going out on your own for that project?

What was that project like?

I would love to hear more about Tremors.

Well, Tom Woodruff and I formed ADI after we left Stan Winston.

So I was with Stan for about two and a half years.

And two and a half years with Stan Winston was like 10 years.

Yeah.

You know, anywhere else, because we were just doing, you know, the original Predator, Aliens, Monster Squad, Alien Nation, Amazing Stories, Leviathan, Pumpkinhead.

You know, it was just hand over fist, great opportunities.

And Stan was great about giving us responsibility.

So Stan didn't really teach you technique.

He put you in the deep end.

And that was the best possible.

And he gave you support.

Maybe he gave you floaties.

But that gave Tom and I enough know-how to know that we could run a department.

You know, we weren't, we didn't know business.

We didn't know anything about payroll, really.

So there was a lot of business stuff that we had to fill in.

But we left Stan's because we had written a script that Gail and Heard's readers really liked.

And it was an anthology, horror, comedy thing.

And we thought, we'll go get this movie and then bring it back to Stan.

And, you know, Stan will direct one, and I'll direct one, and Tom will direct one.

And I think Stan couldn't wrap his head around that that might actually happen.

And in retrospect, it didn't.

So I guess Stan was right.

So he said, you know,

well, basically, like, you got to make a choice because I need you as monster makers,

but you got to make a choice.

And I thought, well, I'm not, I didn't really get in the business to be, you know, shackled to somebody, despite my love of Stan, and he is a mentor of mine.

So I left, and then shortly Tom followed me, and then we shackled to each other.

So we used to joke that the company was formed on failure because the script never got made.

And it was a good valuable learning experience.

But we were out of work for quite a while after we left Stans.

You know, that was like, ooh, do we go crawling back or do we?

And we just sort of like, you know, hung on.

I think we did some laurel entertainment had the tv show monsters we did a couple of episodes of that and then gail heard

contacted us and said i've got this script i think you guys would be perfect for it you're gonna get a call and then steve wilson brent matick and ron underwood the two writers and the director uh reached out to us and It was a little while before the movie came together, but we knew

we could do it.

There was no question in our in our minds that we could pull this off and we were just like chomping at the bit for an opportunity like that.

And we were going to repeat the success of aliens right the in terms of the methodology.

We said we'll build big worms as we built a big queen alien for alien.

But you got to have a miniature version of the worms as well to do the really crazy, cool stuff that's going to put it over the top.

And Gail's like, well, yeah, of course, because she was the producer on Aliens, you know.

And then we brought the Scotex in to do the miniature photography.

We built miniature puppets.

And so that's how that all kind of came together.

How much was the Graboy described on the page versus what you and Tom put together?

Not much, not much.

I need to get a framed copy of my sketch that kind of was the one that we jumped off from.

But they described it as being

a worm

and that its head opened up like a grotesque flower.

Nailed it.

And that was really all it was.

So then we started talking, like, well, you know, the only closest comparison is Dune, the De Laurentis David Lynch Dune.

And we looked at that because, like, you know, this, we're going to be compared to that.

And God forbid they should feel like we're just ripping it off.

So our thought was instead of going earthworm, which is more what

what the David Lynch

sandworms were like, we would go more kind of like I was calling it pterodynamic, right?

We'd have a sharp, bony head that was very, you know, aggressive.

It could just punch through, push things away, scoop it aside, you know, and then a body that was more kind of

leathery and reptilian.

And then they have in the film, they have those three different explanations when the character is going, it's from outer space.

It's nuclear radiation, whatever.

So prehistoric.

So we had to make it look like it could be any one of those

things,

which was a blast.

It was a great, really a highlight.

Were there any problems from the set or from making that movie?

Any what went wrong moments from Tremors?

Yeah, that's the thing about what goes wrong is that if you don't run away from it, but you know run into the burning building, you tend to find solutions, sometimes better solutions than what you think.

You know, when we worked with Ridley Scott, I had a million questions for him about the original alien.

And he said that the suit could not move as much as he expected.

It was very stiff and restrictive.

And he had to change the way he shot the creature, which is what led to the...

piercing mouth.

Like instead of just like tearing you apart and throwing you around, it had to pin you down and go,

right?

And he said, thank God for those limitations.

It made the film better.

So I'm a believer in that kind of stuff.

Like, like, I don't,

I like to solve problems.

And the, and the, the worms on tremor basically work as we hoped that they would.

But we did have some, some times on set where we were, we hadn't really worked out, this is kind of typical of, of the practical effects work.

You're given, you know, you ask for five months to build things and you're given three three months.

And then, so when you're, when you're on set and you're, you're out there in the sun and you're like, how do we get the tentacles to like come out of the mouth?

And you're like, shit, because now you have these heavy tentacle mechanisms that you got like guys with big giant levers that are making them squirm.

You can't really push them in a bundle because the whole inner mouth, rubber inner mouth, then goes boop and prolapses.

And which, if we'd have thought of that, that could have been a pretty cool thing to work into it.

But it was an undesirable serendipity for us.

So we were going back and forth, you know, trying to like yank it out with cables.

You could see the cables.

It just didn't look good.

And then we're like, wait a minute, what are we doing?

We got to do this in reverse photography.

So that's, and that was like, you know, we learned this on aliens, you know, the value of.

reverse photography.

So when the worm opens his mouth and those tentacles come out and they come right to the camera, that's because we could position them at the end of the shot, right to the camera, and then we just start undulating them and then we count down and pull them in and snap everything shut.

And it's a beautiful comedy, you know, like you have the miniature worm comes up out of the ground and hits the ground, and then you punch in for the close-up.

You know, it looks so good.

Beautiful.

We also, for some reason, Tom and I were like, you know what?

The whole bit with this movie is it's like, it's outdoors, it's naturalistic, it's not a scary alien movie in drippy, you know, corridors with lots of slime and all that.

Yeah, it's very bright.

Let's not use any slime.

So we were leaving the mouth as if it's kind of like, like, if you've ever seen inside of a parrot's mouth or an alligator's mouth, they're not like wedding slimy,

right?

And so we did that.

We had a shot where its mouth opened and there was no slime.

And the studio, the next day, Dr.

Kack said, said, Okay, there's something wrong with the mouth.

And this is typical, you know, studio execs don't necessarily talk in, you know, they don't talk about viscosity of, you know, and clear transit.

They don't, they say, it looks like it was painted with nail polish.

Oh, no.

And we're like,

slime,

slime.

From this point, from this point forth, we're just going to, so we got the buckets of ultra slime, which is the brand name of the super sticky, stringy stuff.

And by the time we did the, when the worm is dead and they, you know, and they pry the concrete in the gully,

it's just buckets, buckets and buckets.

And we, in the, at the premiere, uh, the audience went through the roof on that.

It was just

applause.

And we turned to each other and said, slime from now on.

Slime.

That's great.

So, you know, you talked about when you were making the worms that you were sort of working with,

they had to look like one of three different things.

So you're creating a creature, but you also have worked on films like Jumanji, where you're making a lion.

It's something that exists in real life.

What are the different challenges involved with that versus creating something out of your own imagination?

And what do you prefer?

I like to jump back and forth between the challenges.

Like it's nice to do a little subtle character makeup, and that's a nice break from a, you know, 20-foot-tall queen alien.

But in general, it is

more difficult to create a realistic, you you know, a lion.

We've all seen a lion.

We know what lions look like.

So you have, on the one hand, your design is kind of baked in.

It's not like, what's this thing going to look like?

Well, it's going to look like a lion.

So it's a good starting point.

But on the other hand, you have less leeway

for wiggle room.

In the case of Jumanji, though,

our take on it was that because this is a game,

it comes almost from a child's imagination.

Yeah, I love that.

The game is like reading, you know, it's age-appropriate.

So we stylized everything that we could.

We, you know, the crocodile that Robin Williams is on, we modeled that after the proportions of the crocodile from Peter Pan from the Disney movie.

Cool.

So great big jowls and slender nose, all that kind of stuff.

But with realistic textures, we didn't want them to have like a Henson-y style to them.

We wanted them to just be, you know, ultra-real, but but a little distorted, a little stylized.

So I'm always seeking to punch things up with style.

I also think that in movies,

you tend to like lose about, I don't know what, 30 or 40% of your oomph if you don't punch things up a bit, you know?

And sometimes you don't want to do that because it's dead real.

Like a David Fincher movie, you're probably not really going to get away with like, you know, making something look spectacular.

Or, you know,

He's going to say, look at this picture of an actual dead person.

That's what I want.

Which is good.

That's what, that's his story.

Speaking of animals and things that we've seen before a lot,

the alien franchise, obviously, you've got experience with Predator, Monster Squad, Alien, and then Alien 3.

We have the famous or infamous, depending on how you want to phrase it, Whippet costume approach to that character.

Can you talk to us about what it was like kind of coming up with a new spin on, and then you did Alien Resurrection 2, I believe, right?

Which had all of the different variations of Ripley's clone, right, with the alien DNA.

What's

that like getting to play?

It's like, I know what an alien looks like.

Everybody knows what an alien looks like, but I'm getting to do my version or Fincher's version of, you know what I mean, of what the alien would be.

I believe my

people said we were not going to talk about the whippet okay

i love i love talking about the whippet the poor the poor little whippet um

the there's a lot of pressure in working within beloved franchises right uh because you have to you have to give the fans what they want but somehow you got to freshen it up you got to make it somehow different otherwise you may as well rent the old movie um

And it's a funny thing, it's like, where is that line?

You know, this is, I've been involved with the alien franchise and the Predator franchise.

I think, this is a bold claim, but I think it's correct.

I think I have worked on more alien movies and Predator movies than any other person.

I think.

I looked at your IMGB and it's, yeah, I would guess so.

I feel like between the two franchises, I have worked on 11 of those movies.

And that's maybe that's double counting the Alien versus Predator movie.

That's fine.

You're allowed to double count.

You had to do both the characters in those.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, my introduction to

the pressure was when

we did Aliens, when I was working for Stan Winston, and Jim came to us and said, you know, guess what?

Guess what we're working on?

And we were all like, oh,

because Alien is like the massive artistic accomplishment in sci-fi horror, you know, and it's and the weird thing was five years prior to Jim directing that,

I watched it in a movie theater in a mall, at the Brea Mall with Jim.

So like in five years, I went from that to directing the sequel to Sir Ridley Scott's.

It was amazing.

Yeah, but what was great was, you know, we would say, I remember with Shane Mayhan, Shane and I were like,

so Jim, wow, are you nervous about this?

He's like, nah.

And we're like, really?

Are you going to bring in

H.R.

Gieger to design stuff?

And he goes, nah.

He says, I'm going to do it myself.

And if we hadn't, you know, known him, seen what he could do with the Terminator and with, you know, I guess by that point, he had written a Rambo sequel and stuff.

You know, he was pretty much there, young, up and coming, but pretty much there.

And we were like, okay, he's got confidence.

So

that's a great sign.

So we'll just throw ourselves into it.

And we did have to kind of change things up a bit.

And the Queen Alien, obviously, it was a massive departure from

the Warriors.

But the movie was great and people loved it.

If the movie is great, you tend not to get the pushback.

It was also pre-social media.

So there was really like...

you know, nobody was talking about what we were doing before we did it.

It was just unleashed onto the world and you just sit back and wait.

And our English friends who were on the Aliens crew and, you know, on the Alien 3 crew, I mean, the vibe in England was they were a little bit, you know, not so thrilled about aliens

because it's a very American sort of gung-ho war movie.

You know, that's, it's, it, you know, and, and.

An alien is so dark and dour and creepy, and it has a high art quotient because of Ridley Scott, you know, and H.R.

Geager, obviously.

And it was the original.

So the English didn't seem to love aliens as much as we did, but it's grown and morphed over time.

Then Alien 3,

because that was a retraction away from the big, now you have like aliens.

Aliens kind of conceptually skipped over a couple of

possible sequels, right?

Like, and it just was like balls out an army of aliens and a power loader and marines and all that shit.

So, so where do you go from there?

They didn't really know where to go.

So they kind of retracted back to one creature and no guns.

And that had then the American side was like,

you know, and the English were like,

they loved the darkness and

the decay and the cynicism and all that kind of stuff.

And that was where I, that was like the beginning of social media.

I don't know whether it came out in 91 or 92.

We were working on it in 90, 91.

And by the time it came out, I had never seen such vitriol aimed at me

and Tom.

And we were like, what the hell is this?

Like people would bring in printed out copies of chat room stuff because I wasn't online, you know, and I'm reading it going, what the fuck?

These guys are making really personal attacks

on us.

And there was an interview with H.R.

Gieger, and it was sort of like because of the Aliens

production, Alien 3's production problems, right?

It went over budget and it got shut down for a little while and all this stuff.

And

Fincher was getting a lot of blame from the fans, which was completely misplaced.

But Giger,

who I had only had a few interactions with H.R.

Gieger on the production of Alien 3 phone calls, because

he didn't want to leave Zurich.

Fincher would bring us what he had done, which was faxed, you know, curled up Dead Sea Scroll images of what Geeker had drawn.

And, you know, there was a lot of Bambi burster, which led to the Whippet and,

you know, and the super face hugger or the queen facehugger.

There's a lot of great stuff, but it wasn't hitting all the notes for David Fincher.

So he said, I need you guys to fill in the gaps.

We're like, okay, that's what we do.

You know,

So

in this article,

we would give a quote like, yeah, we designed the alien effects.

And we made sure that

in the credits, when we were submitting our credits for the film, we made sure that we didn't want to step on Geeger's toes because he's a genius.

I mean, the guy's like unlike any other.

film artist ever and he's influenced, right?

We know that.

And we said, listen, it's he he designed the original characters, and it is his body of work that has led to anything we're doing.

So give us alien effects designed by,

and he can have whatever credit you guys are negotiating with.

Just we don't want to step on his toes.

But that somehow still got

still got warped into us taking credit from him.

And I think he felt that way too.

He was upset about the Oscar nominations because the Oscars say

in visual effects, say it's the four individual names of people who most influence the effects of the film.

And his assumption was because he got that on the first film where he was actually the department head and he was sculpting and he was called he was art directing everything.

He just assumed that's how it was going to be.

And it could have been that way if he had come from Zurich and worked with us.

We would have happily worked under him.

But it wasn't that way.

So I think he had some, which was a drag because he's somebody that I really still respect him.

He had the right to feel however he wanted to feel.

And I know that he had some studio dealings that I'm not privy to.

I'm just more aware about that.

kind of hatchet job article that kind of painted us as as villains as upstarts who you know whose arrogance you know was attacking the HR Geeker.

And it just wasn't the case.

Speaking of integrating with other versions, but in a slightly different way, and this is obviously true of Jumanji, but so I just re-watched Starship Troopers again last night.

I watch Starship Troopers every five years, and I say, and every time I watch it, I say this moment in time is when the synergy between practical effects and visual effects CGI was at its, in my opinion, like its highest creatively.

And every time there's a shot that's close, we get a practical insert, you know what I mean, or an effect.

And every time we're wide, we use the mastery of CGI.

And it's so smartly done.

And I'm curious, what was that process like?

Build, I mean, these bugs are enormous.

They look fantastic.

The practical effects look fantastic.

The CGI also looks fantastic.

How do you create something that has textures that then the CGI team can realistically follow through on?

Like, what's that working relationship like?

Well, in this case, which I think is not the case of Jurassic Park, which is the other pinnacle of the combo.

Yeah, I agree.

In Jurassic Park, Stan Winston led the dinosaur design.

So he was deciding on textures, et cetera.

And, you know, Phil Tippett was involved with both Jurassic Park and Starship Troopers.

So I believe Phil could correct me, but I believe that

the way this shook down was that Phil, who was in charge of the whole effects approach, said, in order to do something of this scale on a doable budget, we have to let the CGI lead in the decisions of design, textures, colors, all that stuff, so that it's affordable.

Because he knew how hard it can be to chase.

I mean, he told me, like, yeah, the digital stuff is amazing.

It gets you 80% of the way there, and you get feeling like really good about it, but the remaining 20% is exponentially more difficult to get to than that 80% was.

And that's where it lives or dies.

So Phil and

Craig Hayes, who was his designer, they were the ones that designed the creatures.

The warrior bugs, the brain bug.

We did the autopsy beet holes.

Those were so good.

And when Denise Richards vomits and it's actually real vomit, that's great.

Right in the bug.

Yeah.

And

there was no digital counterpart to those autopsy bugs.

So they were like, oh, you guys can do that.

I'm like, yeah, cool.

Lots of slime.

Lots of slime.

You know it, brother.

We learned that lesson.

Great.

We learned that lesson.

We also did, like, we really wanted, because Verhoeven is a force of nature, right?

And like, he's a nut.

He's, he is so, yeah, he's so passionate and so energetic.

I remember when we were walking around, hiking around in the desert.

I don't know how old he was.

He was, I feel like he was in his, he was at least 55 if he got older.

And he's out like, he's out like a half a mile ahead of everyone, you know, and it's, and it's like, people are like trying to carry their books and stuff and, and catch up to him.

And we're like, this guy's going to exhaust everybody.

And then at one point, I remember we were doing a location scout in Wyoming, I think it was.

And we were like all talking, like, how do we even get giant bugs to this location?

And we're talking, and we're like, where's Paul?

Paul's, Paul's gone.

We look up.

He's on the top of a bluff.

I don't know how he got up there.

It was like suddenly he was up there.

He was like that big on the top of a bluff.

And he's shouting down at us because he sees a road that could we're like oh fuck he's ahead of us and above us he's everywhere anyway you you don't want to disappoint i was going to say what's was there any particularly like what was your favorite thing that he said or did over the course of that film oh my god okay well it's a personal interaction this is where i i'm just like I love this guy because he is a, like I said, he's a force of nature.

And I've worked with a lot of really, you know,

it's movies.

You have to have, as Ridley Scott said, you have to have an inordinate amount of energy to direct a film.

And that energy can go out in all directions, you know, at once at times.

And

if you know that about the filmmaker, if you accept they just want the very best thing for this movie, that's a good thing for you, too.

And I can remember thinking with Paul, like, you know, he can be so,

so in your face, literally in your face.

He is like the

T-Rex, like he's searching for

fear, you know, in your eyes.

So there was one story, if I may, you guys can edit all this to

however much snippets.

But there was one story where we had the brain bug, right?

We built the front half of the brain bug.

for the for the scene, you know, it's afraid, that whole thing.

Yeah, with the smoothie proboscis at the front, which I love so much.

Yes.

So we had to like drive that thing down in a big Graydall, which is like this massive industrial forklift, right?

So the brain bug is on it.

And it takes a long time to traverse these.

And there had been rains, as there always is down in Hell's Half Acre in Wyoming.

So there was mud and all.

And the idea was, okay, on, you know,

on Monday, you guys are going to move the brain bug into position

and you're going to rehearse and then we're going to shoot it on Tuesday.

It took us all freaking day just to get the thing there.

And we didn't have our stuff set up.

And

I said, I got to call this.

I got to let the ADs know that we are behind schedule and it's, you know, this, this is what happens.

And I said, we are not going to be rehearsed tomorrow.

We would like to take tomorrow to rehearse if you can move the schedule around.

And then we were like, you know, setting up and

Paul comes down with a contingent, you know, of worried, sweaty producers.

And

he comes right up to me, like inches, you know, half an inch from my nose.

And

he says,

are you telling me that you are not prepared to shoot this bug tomorrow?

And I said, we can shoot tomorrow.

And he says, I understand that that is not the case.

Well, we won't be rehearsed then you cannot shoot and he's you know his eyes are looking

you cannot shoot and i said i have confidence that my team will give you a performance that will be really great and he's looking at me like kind of confused because i had to set the tone i can't just say no we ain't ready dude

and then i said if you can reschedule anything to give us time

Why don't you have, why aren't you on schedule?

Well, it took us all the, you know, I explained it.

And he's looking at me and I said, we would really love that to, to, you know, but it's up to you.

We can shoot or not shoot.

And he looks at me and he and he realizes that there's no,

there's no victim here.

He's not, he's not, you know, I, and he, and he spins on his heels to the producers that I thought were all ganging up on me.

And he says, shame on you for not giving him enough time to rehearse.

And I'm like, wow.

So he really, that's great.

He's not out looking for blood.

Yeah.

Well, he kind of is.

But he just wants to make sure that it's as excellent as possible, right?

We're going to a lot of trouble.

And then he walks over and stands like 50 feet and leans against a boulder with his back to everybody, looking like, you know, I wish I had a picture of that.

And then he comes back cheerful and he says, all right, here's what we're going to do.

We're going to, you know, shoot this scene tomorrow, you know, instead of, and you guys, you guys good with that?

Yeah, good.

And we all leave.

And one of the producers who I also love comes up to me and he's just like exhausted because he deals with this all the time.

And he says, why didn't you just lie?

Oh, no,

buddy.

And I said, because I'm not a producer.

Before we jump off of Starship Troopers, can you help our audience understand not just the scale of the bugs, but, oh my God, there is so much gore makeup in this movie.

Like just the sweeping shots of dismembered mobile infantry, men, you know what I mean, amidst all of the bugs bugs and stuff.

And I have a question: was any of that miniature or was that all full size?

It was all full size.

Wow.

We did, our build list was the

front half of the brain bug,

two fully mechanical, you know, hydraulic and electric warrior bugs that could lift people up off the ground, and the cranes that supported them.

And then I think it was

13 dead bugs.

I'm looking around for pictures to see if I have anything.

13 of the dead bugs that we could kind of recombine into different poses and stuff.

And then the gore was done by Kevin Yeager, my old buddy

from way back when.

I met him on Friday the 13th, part four.

He does amazing work.

And he was like the guy getting shot in the head, you know, and

the half body of

Michael Ironside, you know, being pulled out, as well as just like a ton of dead soldiers everywhere.

And it was really grueling because, you know, my team was out there carrying like giant bug parts out and you set them up and then you shoot a, you shoot a plate and they, you know, lay some human beings around too.

shoot a plate, locked off camera, and they go, okay, next position.

And they have to disassemble the bug and set it they got 13 bugs but everybody's moving these bugs around so that they could do comps and make it look like but it's all full scale wow crazy there may be some digital painting in there too but um yeah it was it was just a massive massive undertaking did you have any issues with the hydraulic warrior bugs on set no the only issue was um

there was a

Because of the design of them, they have like this central, you know, torso sphere and everything goes up through that.

So, everything, the whole bug swivels around this one point of movement, which we made as beefy and as and as structural as we could, given the size of it.

Phil Tippett was great because we said, Oh, you know, your design actually has a slimmer waist, and we would like to bump it up for safety reasons.

He said, Yeah, do whatever you want.

Because Phil, one of the great things about Phil is that he knows that intercutting between practical and digital, you can get away with a lot, you know,

in terms of proportions.

Because when you have a real thing and you're up under it and you got a wide angle lens, it's got different distortions.

You're never going to notice the sizes.

So we bumped it up, but it still held everything.

And there was one night where we had a guy in it that we were thrashing around

for hours.

And

I said to Paul,

you know,

if we keep doing this full, because everything with Paul is like 11, you know, max it out.

And it wasn't like, we weren't really like building up to it because he's like, why are we wasting our time?

I'm not going to use anything that's, you know, like that.

I want to, you know, and I said, okay, just be aware that we are going to break the joint.

And he said, well, what will it be to fix it?

And I said, depending on how bad the break is, you know, it could take us a few days, you know, because we're going to have to reweld.

And he said, yeah, well, we're not using it for a while.

so we'll just break it.

Let's just break it.

We're like, okay.

And we just thrashed the guy around until the bug broke.

And then we took a week to fix it.

That's what it takes to get the shot that you need.

That's right.

It's his bug.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, we don't want to take up too much more of your time.

So I want to end with this because there's a name that's come up a bunch over the course of this interview.

And he's someone who's come up a bunch over what went wrong as well.

And of course, that's James Cameron.

Jim, to you, Alec.

Jimbo, Jimbo.

Jimbo, great.

No, no, not really.

What's your favorite memory of working with James Cameron?

Or it can be good or bad, whatever you want.

Yeah,

I had a ton of great positive memories.

You know, because

I was in the great position of working with him at Corman's when he was

working to become recognized, working to, you know, achieve and accomplish something.

And it was a great inspirational

time for me.

But I do remember when I finished on Battle Beyond the Stars, we were winding down.

And he had,

I think around that time, he had the Terminator script.

And

he had asked me to work on it.

And I was kind of like,

I'm going to go to UCLA Film.

I got accepted to UCLA Film School.

I'm going to go,

I'm going to go finish that

thing, you know, that phase of my life.

And he said, film school?

He said, why?

I said, well, you know, I just want to, you know, I want to learn aspects of filmmaking that I'm not.

He says, I don't think you need that.

And I was like, he said, I don't think film school's worth it.

And

I said to myself, I said, okay, mister, we'll see who

gets further.

You continue working in that.

Yeah, I didn't, not exactly.

But I thought, well,

that is what he would do.

Because what he would do

in the time that I, you know, when I first met him, he was, if he had like questions, technical questions, he would go to USC to the library, the film library, film school library.

And he would just, you know, Xerox copy chapters of books.

And

that was what the film school was worth to him, you know,

a buck 80 in copy costs, and then he had all the answers he needed.

And a lot of people are like that.

You know, David Fincher was like that.

David Fincher has a great story about how

he got into ILM.

He was, he was,

he was doing a um, like a click, click, click with a 30.

He had modified a 35 millimeter camera and he was walking through the streets of San Francisco.

And it would look like he was like

rushing.

And he entered that into a film contest.

He was like 17, and he got a he got a phone call from dennis murin and it was kind of a as fincher told me it was sort of like a stern like you must stop doing what you're doing because we're developing something very similar at ilm for the speeder bike chase through the trees and david's like i'm not going to stop it's a 17 year old kid talking to ilm i'm not stopping you you can't tell me to stop and he's like well well what well you can't what and david said why don't you hire me And I'll, and I'll show you what you do.

They're like, okay.

So Fincher got a job at ILM at like 17 years old.

And he was, David Fincher was a puppeteer on the Rancor pit monster.

He's down there, you know, on that.

He did that secondhand smoke thing with the little baby that is smoking, which he told me he thought was just.

hilarious he came up with the idea because he thought it was hilarious like how did the baby light the cigarette you know he has all those logic questions and then he was surprised that people found it chilling and uh then that just kind of, you know, jump-started his career.

But,

but I love that kind of like preternaturally ballsy people who like, how the hell, and Cameron was one of those people.

How the hell do you come out of, you know, step out of just like apparent obscurity, fully formed and ready to go?

I wasn't that way.

Do you have any advice for folks interested in practical effects for the movie business in general, aside from don't go to film school?

Yeah.

I mean, I think film school has value to it because people learn differently, right?

Like those, those people who don't need it are probably people who are real fire brands who kind of like have a fire in their gut.

Other people like community.

They want to be part of a, you know, a group of people.

And there's, you know, what you can you argue with

Lucas and Coppola and Spielberg didn't.

Spielberg went to Long Beach.

Okay.

I guess that's school.

But my difficulty in giving advice now is that it's such a weird and messed up time, right?

Because apparently the movie industry, at least the Hollywood movie industry, is crumbling around us.

And my optimism says, well, that must mean that

opportunities are being created.

And you just have to be able to spot those.

And it's just more difficult than ever.

I think that for people who.

want to sort of be plugged into a system.

And there's a lot of, you know, a lot of my artists are like, I don't want to run a shop.

I don't want to be out hustling.

I want you to tell me what the parameters are so I can ply my craft.

And that's very honorable.

And I couldn't do what I do without those people.

But I don't know really how to advise young people, especially with AI coming in

and the AI shit that you see on Instagram is like,

I can say it's soulless, and I can give you

all the reasons why I hope it doesn't become super pervasive in the arts, but it's here and it must be dealt with.

I'm hesitant to say, learn AI.

It's just a tool.

It's not just a tool, though.

It's more than a tool.

So I don't know.

I just, I hope, I hope that,

I mean, I think maybe my flip on advice to people wanting to get in is to say to them, what do you think we should do?

Do you have any?

Because you're young people

who have some idea of, you may not know exactly where things have come from, but

you know where they are.

And can you envision where they're headed that does not exclude artistry and human experience and camaraderie and

the team spirit?

If AI takes over, we're not going to be talking about tromping through the desert, getting yelled at by Paul Merriman.

We're going to be talking about what prompts did you use?

I can't think of anything less alive than that.

I mean, I'm not diminishing it because I know

you have to learn how to use the AI stuff,

which I don't know how to use.

I just don't know.

I'm just sad for...

I'm sad.

You caught me in a real sad moment.

Well, to try to get us into a happier moment, is there anything, Alec, that you have coming out soon or that is out now that you want to plug?

Yeah, what's out now that I'd like to plug?

We had a nice run there with the werewolf movie.

We had Smile 2.

We have,

you know, Prey

Hulu.

There's the bone mask from Prey.

You can always go back and look at the

point break if you want.

Tremors.

There it is.

But there is a movie that you should all go watch, which is a movie that we created in-house.

It's called Wellwood.

There is the monster.

Oh, great.

It's available on Amazon.

And if anyone wants to follow me on Instagram, Alec underscore Gillis, the link in the bio has a link to purchase Wellwood.

We're starting to kind of creep across the world with it, but it's a good practical effects-based movie.

Awesome.

Nice.

That's kind of like, I remember watching Harbinger Down a few years ago.

And that, like, because I was a big like Leviathan, Deep Star 6, like sort of fan and it really tickled that like aquatic Lovecraftian itch.

Yes, I do enjoy that.

It is, it is probably closer to Leviathan than anything else.

And I love that.

That whole era is pretty fantastic.

But yeah, so I don't know, keep a lookout.

We've got another Boots Riley project called I Love Boosters that will be coming out probably in six months or so.

Great.

We will check it out.

Well, thank you so, so much.

This was really amazing.

You've been very generous.

Thank you so much, Alec.

Yes.

Thank you again to Alec Gillis for joining us for today's conversation.

We hope that you guys found it as interesting as we did.

If you're interested in more of Alec Gillis's work, head to studiogillis.com or go watch Prey on Hulu or Smile or No One Will Save You, Werewolves, I'm a Virgo, Wellwood, or Take It Back to Aliens or Alien 3 or Alien Resurrection.

We still haven't covered that one.

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Thanks again, guys, for tuning in to this week's episode of Below the Line, and we will see you on Monday for

Bohemian Rhapsody.

What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer, editing music by David Bowman.