Today’s Monster Maker Interview features Academy Award-nominated Character Creator and co-founder of Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc., Alec Gillis. In our wide-ranging discussion, Alec reveals his monster maker origins and early influences, his early experiences working with James Cameron on films for Roger Corman, his appreciation for FX cowboy Tom Savini, his tenure at Stan Winston Studio, all way to the founding of ADI with partner Tom Woodruff, Jr. and teaching for Stan Winston School of Character Arts.
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- Alec Gillis’ First Monster Memories
- Discovering That People Make Monsters
- Breaking Into Filmmaking With James Cameron and Roger Corman
- Focusing on Makeup FX With Greg Cannom
- (Almost) Working for Stan Winston
- Makeup FX Lessons From Tom Savini
- Working at Stan Winston Studio
- Making Monsters at a Breakneck Pace
- Stan Winston’s Greatest Lesson
- The Founding Of ADI
- Alec Gillis on Teaching and the Future
Alec Gillis’ First Monster Memories
Growing up with a father who was into monsters and pop culture ignited Alec Gillis’ passion for fantasy characters at a young age. The film that "flipped the switch" for him was Jason and the Argonauts. “The skeletons themselves were clearly not guys wearing suits. There was something else in play there that I didn’t quite understand, but that really started a lifelong interest in how monsters were made,” said Gillis. “Fortunately, I had a dad who was very into it, too, and he could explain a fair amount.”
(The skeleton army from Jason and the Argonauts kindled Alec Gillis' fascination with monsters.)
Discovering That People Make Monsters
But it wasn’t until Gillis discovered that many of his favorite monsters were actually made by a single artist, Ray Harryhausen, that he realized that “people do this for a living. People make monsters. All my favorite stuff.” From that point he began to watch movies differently, not just as a fan, but as an aspiring monster maker.
(Ray Harryhausen's pantheon of stop-motion monsters inspired Gillis to consider a career in monster-making.)
Breaking Into Filmmaking With James Cameron and Roger Corman
Alec made his first meaningful “connection” in Hollywood when he met another aspiring filmmaker, a twenty-something artist named James Cameron. “He was about 25. I was 19 or so… he said, 'Come see this film that I made.'" Although Cameron's short film, Xenogenesis, was made for next to nothing, it was clear to Gillis right away that Cameron was a filmmaker with a vision and both the ambition and the skill set to pull it off.
Their connection finally led to work for both men when Gillis was called to interview for a job on Roger Corman’s Battle Beyond the Stars. Worried they’d dismiss him as too green, he asked if he could bring his friend James Cameron along to the interview, feeling that bringing Cameron into the room would help him land the job. Gillis’ instincts were rewarded when they were both hired to work on the film. The low-budget, break-neck “Roger Corman” style of filmmaking would expose both men to a huge range of techniques and an all-hands-on-deck approach to filmmaking that would serve both of them well when they eventually left the company.
(Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars would be the first time Alec Gillis collaborated with James Cameron.)
Focusing on Makeup FX With Greg Cannom
With all that he’d learned at Roger Corman’s, Gillis still felt he was lacking experience as a makeup fx artist and began looking for a job that would give him his start. He was eventually hired by future 3-time Academy Award-winning makeup artist Greg Cannom to work on Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. Gillis found himself surrounded by young, talented artists who would go on to make their own marks in the industry, including Kevin Yagher and master sculptor James Kagel.
(Almost) Working for Stan Winston
It was while working for Cannom that he got his first call from Stan Winston. James Cameron’s film, The Terminator, had been greenlit, and Gillis’ old friend had asked Stan to consider including him on the Terminator FX crew. But Gillis felt it would be unprofessional to walk away from Cannom in the middle of a job. Working with James Cameron and Stan Winston would have to wait.
(Stan Winston airbrushes the T-800 endoskeleton for James Cameron's breakout film, The Terminator.)
Makeup FX Lessons From Tom Savini
Gillis couldn’t have foreseen that it was Cannom himself who would leave the movie over creative differences with the filmmakers. While disappointed at first, it gave Gillis the opportunity to work with yet another name in the makeup fx industry, the reigning king of zombie and gore fx, Tom Savini. Gillis found himself impressed with Savini’s unorthodox way of doing things. “He was totally self-taught… he came up with alternative approaches and techniques and materials that were really quite ingenious. It really kind of turned my thinking not to be afraid to be the guy who does something kinda kooky or what other people think is unconventional because that’s where some of the greatest discoveries come from.”
(Tom Savini touches up a version of the "Jason" makeup on the set of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.)
Working at Stan Winston Studio
When the opportunity came to finally work with Stan Winston again on the pilot for a T.V. show called The Steel Collar Man, Alec felt he was much better prepared, having spent time with both Cannom and Savini. At Stan Winston Studio, Gillis “was in heaven. That’s where I met Tom Woodruff Jr., Shane Mahan, John Rosengrant, Richard Landon… It was a fun time to be there with all these young guys being led by Stan, led by a guy who was very capable and very respected in the business who would just give you opportunities. And I had the stamp of approval from Cameron, so that went a long way with Stan. So I felt like I was welcomed after a long time of sort of drifting, bouncing around, you know, looking for a home basically where you could start improving your skills and applying all the stuff that I knew and show my talents and all that stuff… to be able to land at Stan’s was a dream come true. And he gave us all more opportunities than we ever imagined.”
(Stan Winston critiques a “drone” suit from Invaders From Mars, which would be Alec Gillis' first film at Stan Winston Studio.)
Making Monsters at a Breakneck Pace
Gillis’ tenure at SWS saw a flurry of activity from Invaders From Mars, Aliens, Predator, Alien Nation, Leviathan, and including Stan’s directorial debut, Pumpkinhead. “I was only there for two and a half years. People are always like, ‘What? Only two and a half years?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, but two and a half Stan Winston years was like seven years for anybody else. We were just running at a breakneck pace and learning a lot.'”
(Alec Gillis and Julian Caldow test the Bishop Torn In Half gag for Aliens.)
(Alec Gillis sculpts one of the many character makeups SWS provided for Alien Nation.)
Stan Winston’s Greatest Lesson
But perhaps the most important lesson Gillis learned during his time with Stan was how to keep it fun, even under pressure. “One of the best experiences I had was Pumpkinhead, seeing him get to direct his first feature, and how happy he was, what a goofball he was on set. Again, that opened my eyes because, you know, you have preconceptions of what a director is like. But here was Stan; his motto was, ‘I’m gonna have more fun than anybody, and if this isn’t a fun set, then what are we doing?’”
(On the set of Pumpkinhead, director Stan Winston and his crew pose for a group shot.)
The Founding Of ADI
The late 80s saw Gillis eager to take the leap into filmmaking himself. When a script co-written with fellow SWS artist Tom Woodruff Jr. began to garner some buzz around Hollywood, the two young men left the studio to pursue their new writing careers. But as happens more often than not, the project fell through, and Gillis and Woodruff Jr. found themselves at a crossroads: continue pursuing a writing career together or return to their FX roots. They chose the latter and founded Amalgamated Dynamics Inc. (ADI). Though now competitors with their former boss, Stan blessed the endeavor, telling them, “Make no mistake. I’ll always do the job if I can. But if I can’t, I’ll send it your way. And he did do that. And it helped us out a lot," said Gillis.
For their first job as captains of their own shop, Alec and Tom reconnected with Aliens producer and Gillis’ old friend from his Roger Corman days, Gale Anne Hurd, for the now cult-classic Tremors. The excitement that came with successfully pulling off their first film as ADI was quickly tempered by a seven-month struggle to find a follow-up project… until Alien³ came along. Stan had stayed true to his word and, after passing on the project, recommended Tom and Alec to help realize David Fincher’s new vision for the Alien franchise.
(Tom Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis on the set of their first job as Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc., the now cult-classic Tremors.)
(Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. took over the alien duties for David Fincer's Alien³.)
Only five years after Aliens, Gillis was back in London on another Alien film, but this time he and Tom were running the show. “But we were still very young. When I look back at the old footage of ourselves, I can’t believe anybody hired us or put us in charge. And no wonder all those old, experienced English department heads looked askance at us because we just looked like kids. Even though we were older than the director, David Fincher!”
(Tom Woodruff, Jr., David Fincher & Alec Gillis on the set of Alien³.)
As a testament to their leadership of a crew of future industry heavyweights, including Dave Elsey, David Leroy Anderson, Chris Cunningham, Paul Catling, Julian Caldow, and Mark Coulier, Alien³ earned Gillis and Woodruff Jr. an Oscar nomination… to go along with their other Oscar nomination in the same year for Death Becomes Her. Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc. had arrived. They wound up winning for the latter and have remained a top echelon Character FX Studio ever since, with work on films including Wolf, Mortar Kombat, Jumanji, Starship Troopers, Evolution, Alien vs. Predator, The Thing, The Zookeeper and the upcoming Ender's Game.
(Alec Gillis tends to a Predator suit on the set of AVP: Alien vs. Predator.)
Alec Gillis on Teaching and the Future
“When Matt Winston approached me about being a teacher here at the Stan Winston School of Character Arts, I thought, first of all, “yes,” because if I can keep his dad’s legacy alive if I can contribute to that… to the ongoing interest in what Stan did and what Stan created, I feel good about that because Stan helped create me,” said Gillis. “But once I got into it, it actually became a different… I don’t want to say “mission” because that makes it sound like there’s some effort to it. It’s one of the most fun things I’ve ever done and it’s the responses back from students and from fans of this work that make it so fun.”
(Alec Gillis in the display room at Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc.)
Alec sees a bright future for monster makers. One that won’t be just limited to film but that, in fact, takes advantage of the inherent, tactile “realness” of what they create. Whether it’s live spectacles like “Walking with Dinosaurs” that allow audiences to experience the visceral thrill of sharing space with a real, physical creation or carrying the Creature FX crafts over to the robotics industry to help create lifelike recreations of animals and people. “Those are the moments that I’m waiting for, and we just have to make sure that people who are interested in this art don’t just disappear into other techniques so there’s nobody there for when that day comes… because that’s going to come very soon.”
-Matt Winston
For more from Alec Gillis, check out his lessons: