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In memory of Stan Winston (1946-2008)
01/07/2008 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 
Stan Winston brought Visual Imagination to the Screen. Mark's original article for this week, the fourth part of series of four, had to be postponed a week so that Mark can note the following milestone in the field of artistic expression of fantasy and science fiction. Buy Gargoyles in the USA - or Buy Gargoyles in the UK  Each generation there seems to be one name most associated with translating visual fantasy to the screen. Willis O'Brien did King Kong and Mighty Joe Young. His mantle was passed to Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen is still alive, but the man most logically considered his successor died of cancer this week at the young age of 62. But unlike Harryhausen, who is best known for one particular technique, stop-motion animation, Winston was a generalist and master of many different visual techniques.
He started his career with fantasy in makeup, but his skill set extended also to mastery of puppetry and to robotics. He is also known for digital effects. There was little in the visual expression of fantasy on the screen that he did not get involved with in some way. His resume reads like a history of the big science fiction blockbusters.
As a boy in Richmond, Virginia, Stan Winston was early an enthusiast of puppetry of the creation of masks. At the University of Virginia he studied painting and sculpture graduating in 1968. He continued his studies at California State University, Long Beach, but left intending to take up a career in acting. Unable to make a living at acting he also learned the art of makeup working at Walt Disney Studios. While there he rediscovered his childhood interest in puppetry and masks. This redirected his career.
He formed Stan Winston Studio in 1972 and that same year did the makeup/mask effects for the TV-movie Gargoyles. His work on that film won him an Emmy and established his credentials in Hollywood. In the 1980s he began a long association with James Cameron when he designed Arnold Schwarzenegger's robotic makeup for The Terminator in 1987. The following year his work on Cameron's Aliens netted his first Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. He continued in a similar vein with Predator and in a very different vein for the makeup of Edward Scissorhands. These two projects, together with his earlier work on Heartbeeps, each won Winston a nomination for an Academy Award. And in 1992 he won two Academy Awards in one evening for Terminator 2: Judgement Day, one for makeup and one for visual effects.
To this point Winston's creature creations had been ways to make up humans to look alien either before or after shooting the film. When Steven Spielberg brought him on board JURASSIC PARK he expanded his skills with digital imaging. He used it to create creatures digitally inside the computer and combine the images with live-action. His effects won him another Academy Award. That same year, 1993, he founded Digital Domain, a digital visual effects studio.
Winston again worked with Spielberg on AI: Artificial Intelligence and The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Those films and Batman Returns netted him three more nominations for Academy Awards. His most recent work that has made it to the screen was the special effects that he and his company did for Iron Man, released just weeks before his death.
Lessor-known of his work was to produce a series of films for cable with titles taken from 1950s Roger Corman films. (I refuse to call them remakes as some have, because only the titles are preserved.) He wrote the story for and directed the horror film Pumpkinhead. And at one time he was also a stand-up comic. He was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2001. (Oddly, Ray Harryhausen did not receive one until 2003).
Winston's makeup and visual effects on the screen were an integral part of some of the most sensational fantasy films on the screen from the 1980s to the present. He was a major creative force. He had a wonderful imagination and the power to show the audience what he saw. He was also known for his philanthropic works including founding Free Arts for Abused Children www.freearts.org.
I also note with sorrow the passing of Algis Budrys and (outside genre) Tim Russert.
Mark R Leeper
© Mark R Leeper 2008
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