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Interview with a Monsters are rotten, made of cotton, and toilet paper, and corn syrup, and brown paper bags. ... At least that's what Bryan D. Furer believed when he was growing up.
You'll be a graveyard smash
thanks to the magic of make-upBy Nadine Kam
Star-BulletinToday, "Baywatch -- Hawaii's" head makeup artist still believes those things are great for creating Halloween monsters, but he's added a few more tricks to his repertoire. He'll be sharing his knowledge in two makeup workshops at Prosperity Corner Saturday and Oct. 21.
The sessions will deal primarily with face painting, where the secret to a professional job is blending, he said. Saturday's session will focus on children's faces. The second session will cover special effects for adults. Furer's work will also be displayed 8:30 p.m. to midnight Oct. 20, 21, 27 and 28, when Prosperity Corner -- already decked with cobwebs and corpses -- hosts an original production of "Interview with Vampires," inspired by the writings of Anne Rice.
Furer will be creating the look for Lestat (Brett Joubert), Louis de Pointe du Lac (Van Fujishige) and an extended family of vampires who will mingle and take part in interviews with attendees.
WHERE THE GHOULS ARE
What: Special effects make-up workshop with Bryan D. Furer
ALSO
Furer says he's always been inspired by monster movies and strangely, comedies. One of his first Halloween costume choices was to dress as Larry of The Three Stooges. And when Beatlemania hit and Beatles wigs were made available, he wanted Ringo's hair "because it looked the most like Moe's (head Stooge).
"It's fun to be scary and funny at the same time. 'Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein' was the best of both worlds, combining stupid comedy with stupid monsters."
Furer began making his own monster films at age 10, borrowing his parents' camera. He'd gather the kids in his Manoa neighborhood to star in the monster extravaganzas.
"I'd do 'The Mummy' and 'Dracula.' To do the monsters I needed make-up. The mummy was interesting. I don't know where I got the idea, but I used water and corn syrup like glue and put toilet paper over their faces, then wet it down again so it would be all wrinkly."
He used red food coloring as blood, and coated his neighbors with more layers of white facial tissue, before wrapping their bodies in shredded sheets and throwing dirt on them.
"They'd say, 'Uuuugh, this is sticky and icky,' but I'd say, 'Oh well, you wanted to be the mummy and this is how it's done.' "
The kids kept coming back for more, so their parents couldn't have been too mad about the messes that came trudging home. Furer's parents were supportive, though he said, "I think they thought I was a little odd.
"I was also in the Boy Scouts and we'd do realistic first-aid demos, really getting into gore and blood."Furer's parents sent their imaginative son to Honolulu Theatre for Youth classes, where he got hold of real stage make-up, and in high school, his talent was like a talisman offering protection from bullies.
"Once there were these guys hanging around and they said, 'A, what you got in that paper bag?' So I pulled out a plastic bag with a cut-off hand (a fake one) all covered in blood and juices and they left me alone after that. They were probably thinking, 'What a sick haole guy.' "
Furer's father eventually introduced him to a helicopter pilot who flew for "Hawaii Five-O," which led to a serendipitous meeting with the series make-up artist, Keester Sweeney.
Sweeney got his start with MGM in 1936. An art student at UCLA, Sweeney answered the studio's call for a designer to shape Asian eyelids from gelatin, that were needed for the filming of "The Good Earth," Furer said.
"He took me under his wing and became like a grandfather to me, showing me all the tricks of the trade."
With Sweeney's recommendation, Furer, at age 19, found himself working on "Five-0," then one of the most popular television series in the nation.
"I'm amazed and thankful and extremely grateful for having been able to turn my hobby into a profession and be living in Hawaii," Furer said. "I didn't have to go to L.A."
One of his biggest claims to fame is the blood used in the scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where Harrison Ford is chased out of a cave by a giant boulder.
"A guy falls down in front of him with darts in his back. (Director Steven) Spielberg wanted to put the blood on himself, but the stuff he had was too dark, so I handed him some of my homemade blood and he loved it. So that's my big blood claim to fame.
"That's when I started trying to perfect my formula; I've been tweaking it ever since."
Furer's fake blood is sold out of Prosperity Corner at $70 a gallon, and he says, "It doesn't stain very much and it's relatively harmless in that you can put it in your mouth, though I wouldn't swallow it."
(Blood should also be in plentiful supply this time of year at Long's, costume and novelty stores or make your own batch with corn syrup and food coloring which may be red, blue, yellow or green depending on the planet you're from.)
Furer has also done makeup for "Godzilla," "Six Days, Seven Nights" and "Mighty Joe Young" and the TV update of "Fantasy Island" also filmed here." His "Baywatch" schedule keeps him too busy to have worked on "Windtalkers" or HBO's "Lessons Learned."
One wouldn't think his blood expertise would be required on "Baywatch," when actors are more likely to need tint jobs, but he said, "This season is a lot different from the past one in that there are a lot more casualties. If you have a casualty, you want to see the problem. We had one shark bite sequence with prosthetics, a pump and blood squirting."
Furer doesn't usually show off his abilities by dressing up for Halloween.
"Last season was the first time I made myself up in years. I started out as the Gatekeeper from 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail,' but I ended up as Miracle Max from 'Princess Bride.'
(Max was the ancient version of Billy Crystal.)
"People really liked him, so I might reprise that one," Furer said.
For those looking for Halloween ideas, Furer suggests watching the Sci-Fi Channel for inspiration.
"They sometimes air episodes of 'Fantasy Island' and that had a lot of creative makeup. It was like a 'Twilight Zone,' and the fantasies weren't always bright and cheerful. There was one time I had to turn a guy into a devil with contact lenses and fangs. Another guy had to become a hunchback."
He said AMC and TNT are also showing old monster films. Seeing "Frankenstein" again reminded him of his own experience pulling a brown paper bag over his head with wine bottle corks doubling as the screws in the monster's neck.
"It was pretty stupid. I looked like the unknown comic."
Nevertheless, he says never to estimate the power of inexpensive cotton, spirit gum, a little makeup and a lot of imagination.
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