Throwback Thursday – Hooray for Hollywood, Pt. 3

(Revisit Part 1 Here)        (Revisit Part 2 Here)

In four short months, somehow I had found myself going from frantically finding work, to getting hired to work on licensed prop replicas, to working on a television series, to helping out with a motion picture.

California is weird.

I was pulled from the archives in early 2001, to start helping out with the team working on Blade 2. No, I wasn’t doing anything glamorous, nor did I meet any of the stars of the movie. Instead, I helped creating shipping materials. That’s right, my first major Hollywood production, and I was making foam and vacuform pieces to ship items from Burbank to Prague on. All of the Reaper makeup, including cowls, face masks, and chest pieces, had to have forms to allow them to keep their shape in transit, so I was making over a hundred heads out of expanding polyfoam, and the same amount of faces and chest forms out of vacuformed plastic. This wasn’t too difficult to work with, as everything was easy to pour and deal with, until it was my third day working with the stuff.

Someone, somewhere, figured that I had enough experience after a couple shifts, that I could go from Beginner to Expert level. I was told to run a body of Kris Kristofferson. Polyfoam Kris’ were used for the toasted Reapers towards the end of the film, and they needed a few more to carve up. The mold was originally used for the Whistler, floating in a vat of blood at the beginning of the film, and was created and used by people much more experienced than I was. This means, as I’m in the middle of the work floor, unknowingly under the eyes of the boss, I botch it up royally. I was very nervous, I mixed up the expanding polyfoam before making sure I knew how to pour it in the mold, and it started kicking off before I was even halfway done. I panicked, and threw the overflowing bucket of foam into a nearby trashcan, which then started overflowing onto the shop floor. The mold was okay, the trash can was toast, my ego was bruised, but they realized they had thrown me into the deep end just a bit too soon, and finally convinced me that I was okay, and I wasn’t going to be tossed out on my arse.

As I was working on the shipping forms, they realized they needed to be running the foam makeup pieces for the Reapers around the clock. They shifted me from the normal day shift to overnights, and had me split my time between shipping forms and doing similar work to what I did on The Tick, which was helping with foam injection, mold prep, and all of that type of work. This was fun, because I was always fairly busy, bouncing between the two projects, and the lack of downtime made the shift go by quick. Plus, working the night shift made that drive into and out of Burbank a heck of a lot more pleasant. While this portion of the job was fairly uneventful, filled with learning, foam latex, and cheap steak nights on payday, it was also an example of how small of a world it is.

One evening, while working in the foam room with Ben, the only other person in the studio at that late of an hour, we’re talking about weekend plans. I discuss how I’m going to drive to Vegas, because my family is flying out. He asks where they’re flying out from, and I tell him we’re from Indiana. The conversation then goes something like this:

• Ben: “Oh, where in Indiana are you from?”
• Me: “It’s a small town north and east of Indianapolis.”
• Ben: “Where?”
• Me: “Kind of in the middle of Anderson, New Castle, and Greenfield. Real small town, man.”
• Ben: “Where?“
• Me: “Fine, smart guy. Shirley.”
• Ben: “Oh, Shirley? Did you go to Shenandoah or Eastern Hancock?”
• Me, blinking in confusion: “Um… Shenandoah…”
• Ben: “Oh, did you know….” and he starts listing off names of my former classmates.

Yeah, it turns out my co-worker was from Farmland, near Muncie, and we had mutual friends and acquaintances. That was kinda weird, and cool, at the same time.

This work lasted into spring, and as it was winding down, I was asked if I could stay on to work on another character, that of Damaskinos (pictured at the top of this post). The Damaskinos make-up was being made with silicone gel, which was supposed to look more natural, move more naturally, and be more comfortable for the actor wearing it. The issue was, it was also a pain in the posterior to work with! In the end, though, everything worked out, I helped keep notes about what worked and what didn’t, and with my OCD note taking, combined with their experience, we got everything working in time for it to be shot.

This lasted up until my birthday, and then there was nothing. Absolutely no other work to be had, and I wasn’t sure what was going on.

Sometimes California can suck, too.