Music Class: Thriller - Michael Jackson

[playahaitian]

Music Class: Thriller - Michael Jackson (& LOST Vincent Price rap!!)

The Story Behind Thriller

​

Michael Jackson's video for "Thriller" was released nearly 30 years ago, on December 2nd, 1983. Director John Landis (The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London) extended the track — the seventh and final single released from the Thriller album — into a nearly 14-minute-long musical horror film, letting Michael indulge his monster-movie fantasies. It got saturation play on MTV and has been seen more than 149 million times on YouTube. Just in time for Halloween, here's 12 things you might not have realized the first time, or the 200th time, you watched it:

1. All "Thriller," Some Filler

The video cost half-a-million dollars; at the time, it was the most expensive video ever made. But CBS Records wouldn't pay for a third video from Thriller, and MTV had a policy of never paying for clips. Jackson and Landis funded their budget by getting MTV and Showtime to pay $250,000 each for the rights to show the 45-minute The Making of "Thriller." (MTV reasoned that if they were paying for a movie, they were circumventing their own policy.) Landis nicknamed the stretched-out documentary The Making of Filler.



Photo: Courtesy of Sony/Legacy
2. Before songwriter Rod Temperton came up with "Thriller," Michael Jackson's working title for the album was Starlight.

Temperton, a British native formerly of the funk band Heatwave, also wrote "Baby Be Mine" and "The Lady in My Life" for Thriller (and earlier, had penned "Rock with You" and "Off the Wall" for Jackson).

3. Michael Jackson's faith seeped in.

The opening title card ("Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult") was inserted due to Jackson's Jehovah's Witness faith. Another manifestation of his piety, according to producer Quincy Jones: During the recording of Thriller, in a studio in the Westlake district of Los Angeles, "a healthy California girl walked by the front window of the studio, which was a one-way mirror facing the street, and pulled her dress up over her head. She was wearing absolutely nothing underneath." Jones stared, as did Temperton — but Jackson hid behind the mixing console so he couldn't catch a peek.

4. "Thriller" is a coming-of-age story.

"In adolescence, youngsters begin to grow hair in unexpected places and parts of their anatomy swell and grow," director John Landis explained, regading the role of the werewolf metaphor in cinematic history. "Everyone experiences these physical transformations in their bodies and new, unfamiliar, sexual thoughts in their minds. No wonder we readily accept the concept of a literal metamorphosis." In other words, undergoing a lycanthropic transformation was a safe way for Michael Jackson to experiment with puberty.

5. "Thriller" had a Playmate.

Jackson's "Thriller" costar, former Playboy Playmate Ola Ray, also appeared on Cheers and in Beverly Hills Cop II, but her only other notable music video was "Give Me the Night" by George Benson (a single also written by Rod Temperton and produced by Quincy Jones!), on a date with Benson that involves hot dogs and champagne. That video's biggest special effect: Benson playing guitar on rollerskates.




6. Fred Astaire could've been a "Thriller" extra.

Hollywood legend Fred Astaire, a fan of Jackson's dancing (Jackson personally taught him to moonwalk), attended a "Thriller" rehearsal. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who edited Jackson's Moonwalk autobiography, logged some serious hours: When they were filming at 3 A.M. in a bad neighborhood in east Los Angeles, she was hanging out in Jackson's Winnebago.

7. The "Thiller" choreographer was a "Beat It" gang member.

Choreographer Michael Peters also did the epic dance sequences in Pat Benatar's "Love Is a Battlefield" and in Jackson's "Beat It" video (where he played one of the gang leaders — the one dressed in white, with sunglasses and a mustache). He won a Tony for his work on Dreamgirls and died of AIDS in 1994, at just 46 years old.



8. The appeal of zombie-dancing is global.

The largest number of people doing the "Thriller" zombie-dance routine, according to the Guinness Book of World Records: "13,597 participants in an event organised by the Instituto de la Juventud del Gobierno del Distrito Federal at the Monumento a la Revolucion, Mexico City, Mexico, on 29 Aug 2009."



9. There should not be business classes based on "Thriller."

John Landis on the motivations behind making "Thriller" and its huge financial impact: "The reality is, it was a vanity video. Everything that happened on 'Thriller' happened because Michael wanted to turn into a monster. None of it was planned. I want to make that clear, because there was a course taught at the Harvard Business School on 'Thriller,' and it was complete bullshit."​

10. "Thriller" may have the ability to possess you.

As a nine-year-old child, Cee Lo Green was so scared of "Thriller," he would flee the room whenever the video came on TV: "If he could be possessed, then I damn sure could be possessed, because Michael was so much stronger than I."

11. The video looks great even when it's rendered in Lego.

<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/73564884" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/73564884">Lego Thriller by Annette Jung</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/talkinganimals">Talking Animals</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>​

12. Vincent Price's "lost rap" is fantastic.

When horror-movie legend Vincent Price (House of Wax, Edward Scissorhands) recorded his spoken word, he did a whole verse that got cut: "The demons squeal in sheer delight / It's you they spy, so plump, so right / For though the groove is hard to beat / Yet still you stand with frozen feet / You try to run, you try to scream / But no more sun you'll ever see / For evil reaches from the crypt / To crush you in its icy grip."

​

 

[playahaitian]

Origins (1983)
http://www.totalfilm.com/features/the-story-behind-thriller

Michael Jackson: We tried to bring back motion pictures shorts. I wanted Thriller to be a stimulant for people to make better videos and short films.

John Landis: His whole thing was we gotta be good, it’s gotta be good, it’s gotta be great…

Jackson: The best.

Landis: The best.



Next: Influences



[page-break]



Influences



Jackson: I saw American Werewolf In London and I really, really liked it, because it was a different type of horror movie, it was comedy and horror, that’s the way I saw it.

So I asked, who’s the director who did it? And they said 'John Landis, John Landis.' I said, 'great, that’s who we’ve got to get, get in touch with him.'

Landis: I gradually became aware that he knew me from American Werewolf, but he knew nothing else.

It was real awkward. We asked, ‘have you seen Trading Places?’

Jackson (smiling): No.

Landis: Animal House?

Jackson: No.

Landis: Blues Brothers?

Michael: No.

Landis: It was a real depressing afternoon at Michael Jackson’s house.



Next: Creating The Monsters



[page-break]



Creating The Monsters



Jackson: When I first walked into Rick (Baker’s) studio, it was like a museum of horror, all these faces, I was so amazed by it.

There was one that was just a head that was split open, all these organs were pushing out, all his brains. It was disgusting, but it was brilliant. I think that he’s an incredible artist.

Rick Baker: I actually started make-up when I was 10. I made up all my friends in the neighbourhood and usually they were pretty ghastly make ups, third degree burns, gashes and wounds… I wasn’t allowed in a lot of houses when I was a kid (laughs).

The biggest challenge for this film was getting the amount of work we needed to have done, done in the time that we had.

At one point there’s around thirty different zombies that we created. We had twenty make-up artists all putting appliances on zombies. It’s the largest make-up crew I’ve ever had.



Next: Transformation



[page-break]



Transformation




Baker: I think the one thing that Michael wanted the most was to do the transformation, he wanted to change into a monster.

I actually tried to talk him out of it. He just wants to go through it, I don’t know why. I told him how horrible an experience it was going to be.

He likes the make-up, he likes it a lot and has a lot of fun with it. He’s a real good person to work with.

Jackson: You put this thing on and you slowly metamorphosis into this whole another person.

When you look at yourself in the mirror, you can’t help but let the whole mood and the character of it come to life.

You can see the way it should walk, the way it should react, the way it should move.



Next: The Dance



[page-break]



The Dance



Jackson: I did Beat It with Michael Peters and I choreographed portions of that as well.

So I told John Landis, I want Michael Peters to work on this thing. And so we got together and we did certain steps and we finally ended up agreeing on the piece.

Michael Peters: We have eighteen professional dancers, we have four pop lock dancers, I was looking for people who would really get off on what we were doing.

When they walked into the studio on the first day I said look, this is not a glamour gig, it’s going to be uncomfortable make-up and dentures in your mouth and twelve hours of being really weird looking. They said 'I love it.'

Michael is quite amazing to me.

He’s working with people that have studied this for a great portion of their lives and he’ll walk into a studio and you purely give him the rhythm of a step, and he just does it.

It’s really wonderful to watch, because it’s an innate gift that he has. He’s a dancer in his soul.



Next: The Legacy



[page-break]



The Legacy



Quincy Jones said on the set of Thriller: “This is going to be the Citizen Kane of videos.

"I think it’s going to be the most revolutionary thing in the history of videos. It’s a new art form, but I think this is leading the way.”

He was right. Thriller is still listed in the Guinness Book Of Records as the Most Successful Music Video and MTV to this day rates it as the Greatest Music Video ever made.

But more than that, Thriller is a part of pop culture like no music video before or after it.

There isn’t a filmed medium invented that hasn’t paid homage to it.

Whether it's in horror movie spoofs like Return Of The Living Dead II, stop-motion TV shows like Robot Chicken, awful reality TV shows like Big Brother (who staged the dance as a task in Series 9) or fan videos on YouTube, Thriller will be watched, discussed and copied forever.

When people saw the Sex Pistols, it made them want to play. When people see Thriller, it makes them want to dance. It’s a fine legacy.



Next: The Homages



[page-break]



The Homages

Thriller is still the most successful music video of all time. It’s been homaged a million times as a result. Here are a few of our favourites.

Filipino Prisoners Do The Dance




Why We Love It:

It’s incredible. There’s something eerie about seeing hundreds of prisoners stumbling around like the undead, and as for the dancing...

Best Bit:

When the music kicks in and they go into their perfectly timed routine.

It actually makes our jaws slacken with joy every time we see it. It's almost as good as the original for sheer wonder. Trust us, it'll give you goosebumps.

Oh, yeah, and keep an eye out for the prisoner playing Michael's girlfriend. We bet he was popular afterwards...


Gorillaz – Clint Eastwood




Why We Love It:

Gorillaz announced their existence to the world with a pitch perfect homage to the greatest music video of all time.

This is no spoof, this is a respectful tribute - complete with Thriller font, setting and dance routines - and it’s all the more entertaining for it.

Best Bit:

When the monkeys (gorillas?) shift their shoulders and clap their hands, in sync. Genius.

Indian Thriller




Why We Love It:

Because it’s hilarious. If we ever get dumped by girls, we watch this video and the world doesn’t seem so bad.

Best Bit:

It’s all amazing, but the moment at around the 0.59 mark, when the weird guitar kicks in, gets us every time.

Oh, and after all that, maybe you'll want to watch the original. Here it is, in full.

 

[playahaitian]

This is a rare Pop song with a horror theme. Halloween novelty songs like "The Monster Mash" had been around for a while, but this was the first hit song with year-round appeal containing lyrics about creatures of the night who terrify their victim. At the time, Michael Jackson was one of the least frightening people on Earth, so the video had to sell it. John Landis, who worked on the 1981 movie An American Werewolf In London, was brought in to direct. Landis had Jackson turn into a Werewolf in the video.

Vincent Price, an actor known for his work on horror films, did the narration at the end of the song, including the evil laugh. Price's rap includes the line "Must stand and face the hounds of hell." This was inspired by the most popular Sherlock Holmes novel to date, The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in which Sir Henry Baskerville's family is supposedly cursed by a bloodthirsty, demonic hound. Price's personal friends, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee (who appeared in several horror films with him), starred in a loose 1959 film adaptation of it. It was the first Sherlock Holmes film shot in color.

Price recorded the central spoken section in this sing on his second take, after it had been written by Rod Temperton in the taxi on the way to the studio for the recording session. (thanks, Brett - Edmonton, Canada)

The music video is considered the most famous music video of all time, at least by the Library of Congress, which added it to its National Film Registry in 2009, the first music video in their registry.

The video was a cultural milestone, introducing elaborate choreography, costumes and dialogue into the format. It also introduced the concept of the long-form music video, where a mini-movie was made for a song, then edited down for the short version. The long version of "Thriller" runs nearly 14 minutes, but had remarkable longevity, easily racking up over 100 million views when it showed up on YouTube. MTV usually ran the short version, which ran a little under five minutes but still contained about a minute of non-song content in a storyline that omits most of the movie the couple is watching at the beginning.

With its famous graveyard dance, the video started the trend of group dance scenes in Pop videos, forcing even non-dancers like Pat Benatar to front a group of dancers in their clips.

The video owes a debt to Alice Cooper, who in 1975 created a movie based on the stage show for his Welcome To My Nightmare tour. Cooper's production was based on an entire album, but it also used a horror theme and was narrated by Vincent Price.

Rod Temperton wrote this song. Once a member of Disco group Heatwave, he also wrote Jackson's "Off The Wall" and "Rock With You."

Most homes had VCRs in 1983 and sales of videos were big business. Along with the Jane Fonda workout tapes, you could buy a VHS or beta copy of Michael Jackson's Thriller, which included the full video and also "The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller," a behind the scenes documentary. This tape became the best selling music video at the time, and was later certified by Guinness World Records as the top selling music video of all time, moving 9 million units. Part of its appeal was the price, a mere $24.95 at a time when movies on tape cost much more.

The video distribution deal was through a company called Vestron, who approached John Landis about selling the film directly to consumers, which turned out to be very profitable. The timing helped, as the video was released a few weeks before Christmas.

The video won for Best Performance Video, Best Choreography, and Viewers Choice at the first MTV Video Music Awards in 1984. The show was hosted by Dan Aykroyd and Bette Midler.

Thriller is by far the best selling album in the world. In the United States, it was overtaken by The Eagles Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975, but reclaimed the title after Jackson's death.

This was the last of seven US Top 10 hits from the Thriller album. The first single from the album, "The Girl Is Mine," reached its peak chart position of #2 on January 8, 1983. The song "Thriller" was released over a year later, on January 23, 1984, peaking at #4 on March 3. This lifespan of chart singles from one album was unprecedented, but so was the video for "Thriller." The clip was so effective that after six singles and a year of release, it boosted yet another track from the album into the Top 10. It also brought the album back to #1 on December 24, 1983 - it lost the top spot on September 17 to Synchronicity by The Police. Thriller held the peak position until April 21, 1984, over a year after it first went to #1 on February 26, 1983.

Jackson, who was a Jehova's Witness at the time, insisted on a disclaimer at the beginning of the video reading: "Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult." He asked for the disclaimer after taking criticism from Witness leaders who objected to the zombies and other creatures that violated their beliefs.

The whole Jackson clan was raised as Jehova's Witnesses, but unlike Scientology, celebrities do not get excessive special treatment, and followers were asked not to idolize Jackson, as adulation should be given only to God.

After further conflict, Jackson cut ties with the Jehova's Witnesses in 1987.

The video cost about $500,000 to make, and Jackson's record company had intention of paying for it, since the album was on the downswing and they had already financed videos for two of its songs. According to John Landis, Jackson really wanted to turn into a monster, so he offered to pay for the clip himself. Landis took on the project because he saw it as a way to revive the short film genre, which he loved.

Jackson didn't have to pay for the video out of pocket because they made deals with Showtime and MTV to cover the costs. Showtime got to air a one hour special with the "making of" documentary and the 14-minute film before it was broadcast anywhere else. When MTV heard about this, their executive Bob Pittman decided that losing a Michael Jackson video to Showtime was unacceptable, and paid $250,000 for the exclusive broadcast rights once Showtime's window ended. MTV was founded on the principle of not paying for videos, so Pittman got around this by paying for the documentary, even though the money was really used to pay for the film.

Because of a disagreement over royalties, Vincent Price's rap was not included in the 7" single version of the recording.

Vincent Price, while a guest on the Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, laughingly stated that when he did the narration for "Thriller" (at the request of Michael Jackson who was a big fan of Price) he had a choice between taking a percentage of the album sales or $20,000. Price was well along in his career, so he took the $20,000. He was good-natured about it when Carson told him he could have made millions off of the royalties due to the vast number of copies sold even at that time. Price laughed heartily and said: "How well I know!" (thanks, Jonnie - St. Louis, MO)

Before the 14-minute short film of Thriller aired on Showtime or MTV, it was screened at the Metro Crest Theater in Los Angeles. This screening took place on November 14, 1983, in was a gathering of stars, including Diana Ross and Eddie Murphy.

In 2008 Thriller 25, a special 25th anniversary edition of Thriller, was released. The re-recorded album debuted at #2 on the Top Comprehensive Albums chart, where catalog titles mix with current best-sellers. This made it the highest-charting catalog album in the history of the Top Comprehensive Albums survey. Despite selling 166,000 copies in its debut week, it was not eligible for the main album chart as Billboard considered it to be a catalog or oldies album, and Billboard publishes a special chart just for catalog albums.
The version of the song in the video is different from the one on the album, which you need to account for if you're planning to stage a Thriller Dance. On the album, the song begins with a series of spooky sound effects that don't lend themselves to dancing.

Editing the song for the video was a challenge, since producer Quincy Jones wouldn't release the master tapes. In the book I Want My MTV, John Landis explains how they got around this restriction. "The song was 5 minutes long, and I needed it to be 12 minutes for the video," he said. "So Michael and I went to the recording studio at 3 in the morning. We walked past the guard - 'Hi, Michael.' 'Hi' - put the tracks in a big suitcase and walked out with them. Then we drove across Hollywood, duped them, and put them back."
Originally this song was going to be called "Starlight Love" and on some demos its titled "Starlight Sun."

In the UK this has become something of a chart perennial, regularly charting each year in time for Halloween.

Rod Temperton recalled that when he wrote this song he envisaged "this talking section at the end and didn't know really what we were going to do with it. But one thing I 'd thought about was to have a famous voice in the horror genre to do the vocal. Quincy (Jones, producer)'s wife knew Vincent Price, so Quincy said to me, 'How about if we got Vincent Price?'" (Source Q magazine August 2009).

In the week of Jackson's death, sales of his records soared. In the US, this song was the late singer's best-selling track at 167,000 copies, while the top-selling album was Number Ones at 108,000.

In an interview from the 1980s, published by the News of The World, Jackson revealed that he was considering scrapping the Thriller album before being inspired by watching children play. He said: "Thriller sounded so crap. The mixes sucked. When we listened to the whole album, there were tears... I just cried like a baby. I stormed out of the room and said, 'We're not releasing this'." Jackson added: "One of the maintenance crew in the studio had a bicycle and so I took it and rode up to the schoolyard. I just watched the children play. When I came back I was ready to rule the world. I went into the studio and I turned them songs out."

A black-and-red calfskin jacket worn by Jackson in the song's video was bought by Milton Verret, a Texas commodities trader at an auction in California for $1.8 million in June 2011. Jackson wore the jacket in the scene where a group of zombies rise from their graves and break into a dance routine.

The UPC code on the album cover contained 7 digits that were rumored to be Jackson's telephone number. People with that number in many different area codes got swamped with annoying calls.

The female lead in the video is Ola Ray, who was Playboy's Miss June of 1980.

In 2008, this was used in a commercial for Sobe beverages that premiered on the Super Bowl. It showed their lizard mascots dancing to the song with model Naomi Campbell. It wasn't the first time Campbell danced on film to a Michael Jackson song: she appeared in his video for "In The Closet."

There isn't much crossover between Michael Jackson and Alice Cooper, but they have Vincent Price in common. The shock rocker used Price on the introduction to his 1975 song "The Black Widow," which was a key part of

Cooper's subsequent Welcome To My Nightmare tour. A highly theatrical production, the stage show was made into a movie that year, with Price performing his introduction. In many ways, Welcome To My Nightmare was an antecedent to "Thriller."

Special makeup effects were created by Rick Baker (who plays the zombie whose arm falls off in the graveyard sequence). Baker was the first Academy Award winner in the Best Make-Up category for his work in An American Werewolf in London (1981).

 

[playahaitian]

http://thegrio.com/2012/11/30/micha...ot-know-2/#s:330db3f8e6b28ba52de2a468ad5444dd

 

[playahaitian]

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<div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152801236329483" data-width="466"><div class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152801236329483">Post</a> by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/kim.freeman.39750">Kim Freeman</a>.</div></div>​

 

[World B Free]

Making of Thriller:

part one



part two



part three

 

[World B Free]

&


special "making of thriller" footage, this part I've never seen before:

 

[World B Free]

Quincy Jones & The Make-Up artist from Thriller REMEMBER:

 

[World B Free]

The Making of the Album Thriller


Audio Documentary:

 

[Djmarkxr7]

Weird twist is that now almost two generations that have NO IDEA of Vincent Price's work in horror movies can identify his voice SOLELY because of "Thriller", basically immortalizing him to a whole slew of fans that would NEVER watch any of his movies because they're old, with a few being in black & white!

 

[World B Free]

MJ performing Thriller in concert:


[VV]7119029[/VV]

 

[fu2]

Great info all around. Vincent Price was the man for closing that song how he did. BARS!!

 

[HeathCliff]

I remember coming home early to see the preview for this video. My little ass didn't know what the hell I was watching

 

[playahaitian]

​

 

[playahaitian]

Makeup Artist Baker Is the Man of a Thousand Faces

It's been a big week for Eddie Murphy, with "The Nutty Professor" doing hefty box office and garnering belly laughs from critics and the public-at-large.

www.latimes.com

Makeup Artist Baker Is the Man of a Thousand Faces​

By CHUCK CRISAFULLI
July 5, 1996 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
It’s been a big week for Eddie Murphy, with “The Nutty Professor” doing hefty box office and garnering belly laughs from critics and the public-at-large. And while it’s Murphy’s ample performance as the overweight academic Sherman Klump that gives the movie its comedic weight, no small amount of credit for the film’s success must also go to the person who plumped Murphy into a convincing big man to begin with--makeup effects artist Rick Baker.

Baker, long recognized as one of Hollywood’s most outstanding makeup talents, has earned Oscars for his work on “An American Werewolf in London,” “Harry and the Hendersons” and, most recently, “Ed Wood.” He also received a nomination for his work in turning Murphy and Arsenio Hall into a variety of characters for 1988’s “Coming to America.”

He’s turned men into wolves, Martin Landau into Bela Lugosi, and Tommy Lee Jones into Batman foe Two-Face, but, for all his formidable skills, Baker says the challenge of turning Murphy into the obese title character of “The Nutty Professor” was particularly daunting.


“It’s the hardest kind of makeup to do,” Baker explains, relaxing at his San Fernando Valley home a day before heading to New York to craft some extraterrestrials for the forthcoming sci-fi film “Men in Black.”

“It’s one thing to do animal-men or aliens. People are more accepting of what they see--if the foam rubber on an alien’s head is oddly shaped, who’s to say that’s not what an alien’s head looks like? But if there’s a hole in the middle of a fat guy’s face--something’s obviously wrong. I also definitely felt the pressure of doing this makeup for the title character--if it didn’t work, the movie wasn’t going to work.”

Murphy’s transformation into professor Klump began at Baker’s Glendale shop, where a number of head-to-toe life casts were taken of the actor. Sculptors began designing face makeup, applying generous quantities of clay to the reproductions of Murphy’s head, and modeling it into what became the face of Klump. At the same time, others of Baker’s crew were experimenting with silicon, foam rubber and liquid-filled bladders to create a “fat-suit” that would give Murphy’s body believable, jiggling bulk.

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While Baker quickly came to believe that the makeup would be a sizable success, the film’s production staff had its doubts. “At one point, it was debated whether it was a mistake to make Sherman overweight,” Baker says. “There was fear that it would be offensive. I said, ‘Did you read the script I did? The overweight guy’s the hero.’ But I was told, ‘Unless you can prove that the fat makeup can be funny, we won’t do it.’ ”

Baker accepted the challenge, pulled together a Klump prototype and called Murphy in to the shop for a makeup test. “Eddie was amazing--he instantly figured out what he could do in the makeup, and just became this other person. I pointed a video camera at him and he took off. It was one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen.”

That footage convinced the film’s producers that Sherman should remain large, but debate turned to Murphy’s desire to play multiple characters in Klump family dinner scenes. The chance to transform Murphy into a variety of characters had been one of the main attractions to the project for Baker, so when grumbling began over the added costs the additional makeup would add, he acted quickly.


“I got Eddie back to the shop and did a test makeup of him as the professor’s mother. He looked great again, but he said, ‘I’m not sure what to do.’ I turned on the video camera and said, ‘Tell me about your son Sherman.’ That’s all it took to get an hour of hysterical mother material. The next day he came in and did Sherman’s dirty-talking grandmother and we got two hours of material out of that. We put a tape together and sent it to the producers and said, ‘Are you sure you want to cut this out?’ Their response was, ‘OK, OK--we get it.’ ”

In addition to Sherman, Mother and Grandmother Klump, the finished film has Murphy playing Sherman’s brother, his father and a white exercise guru bearing a striking resemblance to Richard Simmons. He also plays, without help from Baker, Sherman’s alter ego, the lean, testosterone-drenched Buddy Love.

For 70 days of the film’s production schedule, Murphy spent 3 1/2 hours in the makeup chair every morning before filming, and an additional hour in the chair at the end of the day for safe removal. “I love makeup,” Baker says, “but even I wouldn’t want to sit in a chair for 70 days with people poking me in the face. Eddie was always in great spirits. The only thing he wouldn’t do was shave his mustache, which made the mother and the grandmother a bit more of a challenge. But all in all he was a joy to work with.”

Because he could only be made up as one character each day, the Klump dinner scenes were filmed with Murphy acting and reacting alone, with some trick photography turning the separate performances into the raucous, gassy tours de force audiences see in the film.

“It was pretty amazing,” Baker says with a laugh. “Once you get Eddie started, it’s hard to stop him. The makeup and photography and the lights were usually fine, but a lot of takes were ruined because Eddie got the crew laughing too hard.”

In addition to the laughs, Murphy also evokes pathos in his touching portrayal of the kindly, romantically frustrated Sherman. Baker says that while on the set of the film, he came to think of the rotund professor as a close acquaintance quite apart from Murphy.

“Most of the time I spent with Eddie, I was really with Sherman. The first thing I’d do is get Eddie into Sherman makeup, and that’s the way I’d see him all day. We were with Sherman so much, we really thought of him as a person. When we realized one day that it was the last Sherman day of the shoot, we were really sad. It was like losing a friend.”

Baker’s handiwork can next be seen in “Escape From L.A.,” for which he designed faces for characters who’ve suffered a variety of plastic surgery mishaps. His shop is busier than ever, building everything from animatronic puppets to rubber monster suits for a wide range of projects. But Baker says that in the wake of his “Nutty” experience, he’s considering a change in his career path.

“I’m thinking of working only with Eddie Murphy,” he says with a laugh. “We’ll just let him play everybody in every movie he does, and I’ll make him as many rubber faces as it takes.”

​