Rex roars into view in Jurassic Park. The mommy monster of Aliens slavers at Sigourney Weaver. Stan Winston did. Winston, who died Sunday at 62, after a seven-year bout with multiple myeloma, probably gave more kids more sleepless nights than anyone in Hollywood. He leaves behind his wife Karen, their two children and four grandchildren.
Stan Winston was of that small, brilliant, edifyingly demented breed of special-effects makeup men. They make horror visible by sculpting it.
Before Winston, there were two masters of horror makeup who names are so ordinary, they could be scrawled in a motel register by a teen seeking furtive sex: Jack Pierce and Dick Smith. No sleepless night for the kids, either. Baker is the one FX makeup artist to snag more Oscars than Winston did: six, to his four.
Botttin and Savini had FX makeup in their blood from childhood. They were of the generation inspired by the trail-blazing work of Winston and his tiny band of predecessors. Winston came to Hollywood in , long before the lovingly detailed rendering of the grotesque had become fashionable. Back then, most films were photographs of people talking, and action movies were photographs of people fighting.
Young Stan arrived in town hoping for work as an actor. With no jobs coming, he joined the Makeup department at Disney. Moving into feature films, he forged productive relationships with directors as imaginative as he: Burton, Steven Spielberg for Jurassic Park and A. Sometimes he built on the design work of others. He adapted H. Note to the budding creators of creatures: When in doubt, give them an extra set of teethโthe better to eat you with, my dear. Predator and a sequel, which he sat out.
