The Retro Injection crew is excited to bring you this interview with the legendary Steve Johnson. Mr. Johnson provided special effects for John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China, Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters, James Cameron's The Abyss, and many more classic films. Mr. Johnson brings his decades of practical effects expertise as he continues to work in film and television.
This interview contains mature language and horror movie elements.
Your versatility transcends genre. How have you managed to tailor your creative skills, and what challenges and rewards have you encountered in the process?
Genres, yeah, no, I think that I've ended up doing a lot of aliens.
I did Outer Limits for four years up in Canada. It's nothing but an alien of the week. Of course, I did the NTIs, the non-terrestrial intelligences for Jim Cameron on The Abyss and, my God, so many other aliens.
I cut my teeth when I was a kid on Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, so I'm very into science fiction. And I really don't like pure, straight-out horror. It's a negative workshop as far as I'm concerned.
So even back in the 80s, when I was first starting and I got my company off the ground, back then when we had the luxury to pick and choose our projects, I usually turned down gore. As a matter of fact, I just turned down Saw 10. Made a fucking fortune and I turned it down after working on it.
As a matter of fact, they tried to sue me because I went down, they shot in Mexico City, I went down there, I had all my meetings, I've been working with them for probably two or three months, but they simply wouldn't give me enough time, wouldn't give me enough money. And so I wouldn't say that I quit or walked off the project, but we never came to an agreement. Then they got really mad at me.
But the reason, it's like, okay, yeah, I don't have enough money, don't have enough time. That happens all the time. There's never enough money, there's never enough time.
But my feeling was, it's torture porn. And that's just like in the 80s when I would turn down a Chainsaw Massacre film. I really didn't want to be involved with the producers in particular on that film. Now, the director I liked, the writer I liked a lot, but those producers, my God, what must they dream about at night? It's just something that makes my skin crawl. I don't like being involved in it.
Your contributions to cinema and television remain visually stunning and emotionally enthralling. What era of your work has been the most rewarding?
You know, because I'm forced to answer, I usually don't like questions where it's like, what's your favorite this or what's your favorite that? Because there's a spectrum.
But if I'm forced to make an answer, I'd say the 80s. I mean, come on, that's back when this business was just starting to gallop out of the gate and it was a playground and we were respected. And it was a really, really fun time. It's kind of when this business started... A Nightmare on Elm Street, all that kind of stuff, when people were just starting to realize after American Werewolf and The Howling that you could do this stuff. And suddenly that freed writers to write anything they wanted.
It freed directors to ask for anything they wanted. And before American Werewolf, you couldn't really do that. So in the 80s, people were just making shit up. They were writing movies around whatever special effects they figured could be pulled off. So that was a really fun, very exciting time. And I was young. And as we all know, the film industry is a young man's business. So I was ready to go.
Your special effects company, XFX, grew into a cinematic powerhouse that oversaw multimillion-dollar projects of all kinds. How did you manage to maintain the company's business ethos or artistic freedom in the face of expanding commercial opportunity?
Well, you don't.
That's a very simple answer. I mean, I rode the crest of that 80s thing where, you know, if you wanted to do a movie, if you were Paul Verhoeven, let's say, and you wanted to do Total Recall, you'd get Rob Bottin because you'd already worked with him and you knew you liked his art. Just like if you were an art collector, you want to buy a Monet, you want to buy a Rembrandt, you like that artist, so you bring it into your home.
And that's what directors used to do by hiring the likes of Rick Baker, Craig Canham, Rob Bottin, me. They would choose their effects artists like they chose the paintings on their walls and they let us have freedom. Which, you know, too many cooks, you know that statement. Freedom and art means you're going to get better art. The film was a very collaborative effort. And you got a million people, that you have to make happy.
1988's A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master boasts some of the most captivating special effects in the series. What was your strategy in creating the jaw-dropping effects from script to screen? Which scenes did you find the most technically demanding?
First and foremost, we only did the final sequence where Freddy dies, where all the souls come out of him.
Because that was back in the days when we didn't have enough prep time. And for a long period in the mid-80s, production companies knew that there were all these dogs at the table, all these upstart makeup effects companies. And so if there wasn't enough time, which there never is, they would hire several companies to do the film.
So, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Part 4. I went in and I told Renny Harlan, the director, and the producer Rachel Talalay, I said, look, I'll do all the stuff. I'll just hire those other companies, and then you'll get something that'll be very cool because it all came from the same mind. But they didn't, so they hired Matt George.
I believe they hired John Buechler. I think Kevin Yeager was above a lot of them.
But what they did is they allowed me to choose what scene I wanted. I wanted to do the finale, which is the scene where all the souls get back at Freddy. And that was very technically demanding because what we had to do is blend an oversized 18-foot Freddy puppet with inserts of tiny little people.
So we made the people puppets coming out of the real Robert Englund look as real as we could, but then when we cut to our 18-foot tall puppet of Robert Englund as the Freddy character, we had real people and him trying to pull their way out, using a number of tricks. And I think there were 28 different effects shots in that scene. But we made the real people look fake.
You know what I mean? We made the fake people look real, the real people look fake. Because I never like it when you intercut. Look at The Incredible Shrinking Man when you intercut to oversized props; they always look like oversized props. So that was our technique there.
Special effects legend Rick Baker was one of your early mentors, and you collaborated on 1981's An American Werewolf in London. How did this partnership inspire and challenge you?
Working with Rick Baker is a pretty amazing thing. As we all know, Rick Baker is the best. He's got so many Oscars, he's lost track for best makeup. And I met him in the late to mid 70s. He came to Houston to speak at a convention, and I went up and showed him what I had been working on. I had a little shitty portfolio. Gave me his number, I started corresponding with him. So by the time I got up to California in 1978, he introduced me to Rob Bottin and Greg Canham. So I would learn the basic professional techniques from them. And then he finally hired me to work on American Werewolf.
And let me just tell you something. When I went over directly from Howling, I'm one of the few people that worked on both of those films, when I went over from Howling to American Werewolf, it was amazing. I was shoulder to shoulder with Rick Baker, my idol, and we were making magic. Now, we didn't know how much it would affect the industry at that point. But we knew we were doing something pretty special. And it was so fun. It was the most magical experience I've ever had in my life.
How did you manage to leave your mark on Freaked while dealing with a substantially- cut budget and rapid time constraints?
Interesting that you put it that way. I don't remember a cut budget. I don't mean rapid time constraints. I don't remember those things. But it doesn't mean they weren't part of the deal. It doesn't mean they didn't happen. It all blurs together after a while.
I love that film. I love that film because we did most of our work based on Big Daddy Roth and 1960s kind of hot rod cartoonists that did these giant characters. Slimer was before Freaked very much a Big Daddy Roth character, giant mouth, tongue hanging out, crazed. I'm a huge fan of cartoony stuff. The old Tex Avery cartoons, you name it, Tom and Jerry, that kind of stuff. I love it. And Looney Tunes too. I mean, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. It's funny stuff.
And that stuff has come through in my work a lot. I mean, that was the whole goal on Ghostbusters was to make this stuff feel like a live action cartoon, like an old classic cartoon. So that was kind of the deal on that. And Alex Winter and Tom Stern, the co-directors, were wonderful to work with. Poor Alex had to wear that fucking makeup, which was actually a great illusion. I'm really pleased with that. A lot of people saw what we did there and replicated it for other really effective ways of getting a big mouth like that. So, yeah, that was loads of fun. Not for Alex Winter though.
What are your thoughts on the state of effects in today's film landscape and which young effects artists do you find promising?
Well, I think that AI, which we can't get into, that would have to be an entirely separate interview. Surprisingly, I'm all for it, actually. I'm amazed by it and the potential ramifications it will have on the industry.
The young effects artists that I find promising, here's the thing, because information is out there everywhere because of the internet. I didn't have the internet in the 60s when I was trying to figure out how to make foam rubber appliances. I was on my own. I mean, I wasn't even close to New York or Los Angeles. I was in the middle of a field in Texas trying to figure out how to make foam rubber collapse.
And there were no books and there was no online school and there was no one to call and no one to ask. So I had to figure it out myself. What has happened now, I mean, the worldwide communication through the internet on effects techniques has elevated the art to places that I never even thought were possible.
There are people all over Europe that are doing stuff that would make Dick Smith spin in his grave. I'm sure he is, you know, because there was like one guy for how many decades? Dick Smith, that could do an old age makeup. And now you've got kids popping up all over Norway and Belgium and you name it, that are just brilliant, brilliant artists.
And yeah, unfortunately, I think we're moments away from people having to decide, like they decided, do we want to get computer generated or do we want to do it stop motion? There's a charm to stop motion. There's something there, but we're moments away from makeups being able to be put on a slider. And I want this person to be 12 and a half years old, and slide. There it is mapped to the whole movie for 12 and a half years younger. But then there will be those actors that want to wear the makeup. They won't want to go through the process.
And Kazuhiro is doing an outstanding job. The work he just did on Maestro, that Bradley Cooper thing is ridiculous. Mark Coulier from London, Goran Lundström from Norway. So many great people. It's actually a really exciting time for makeup, but let's keep our ears perked to see how AI affects that.
What was the last film you saw that impressed you or floored you with practical effects?
Now, I did scan these questions earlier and I know the answer to that question because it was absolutely floored. It's called Barbarian and oh my god, not since I saw The Exorcist have I been this disturbed. It's really good. It's one thing transforming into another. I don't know where, I know there's a lot of practical stuff. I don't know where the digital starts and that's what is exciting. It's just so well placed in the film too, the timing and everything, but it's just really, really, really, really, really cool and I don't know how they did it and I love it when somebody tricks even me because one would think I'm supposed to be an expert on something like that.
Your work has graced cinema, television, and literature. Which medium has afforded you the most creative freedom and which have you found the most stifling?
Well, clearly writing is by far more freeing because when you write a book, when you write a story, particularly non-fiction, you are the actor, you are the wardrobe designer, you're the set dresser, you're the production designer, you're the director, you're the editor, you're all of it. You know, nobody can tell you, no. So writing is really, but writing is also the hardest thing I've done to face that blank page. Tough stuff. Okay, but there was a second part of that question. Which medium has afforded you the most creative freedom? Writing.
Which have you found the most stifling? I'd have to say film making. Yeah, I really enjoy the collaborative process, but on my own terms, you know, so it kind of isn't even really collaboration, is it? But it all depends on who you're working with. You know, you get certain people that'll jump up and down on your throat until your eyes pop out and you're vomiting blood. James Cameron comes to mind, Guillermo del Toro, never satisfied. Let's move on before this goes dark.
Your foray into books brought us the highly-acclaimed 2017 Rubberhead series, which provided an unflinching view of your life and work. What lessons have you learned through your experiences in the film industry that continue to resonate today?
I don't know, maybe because I did three films last summer that overlapped and I had a really good time, more fun I think than I've had since I was in my 20s, early 20s. But I learned, I think this is also an attribute of my being older now, I'm much more experienced, because you go off on these movies these days and I'm older than all of them, I'm the oldest guy on set, so I've got clearly the most experience, so they actually listen to me and they respect me.
So I did like a slew of three movies that all overlapped last summer and I felt really good about it. And the thing that I did differently is that I didn't treat the director and the writer and the producer like enemies, which I didn't normally do, but most often I felt like I was under them, they were above me, being my best behavior, all that. Well, this time I just thought, hey, they're cool guys, they're cool, talented people that I could be friends with.
And so that kind of leveled the playing field. And when you're friends with someone, the connectivity allows the communication to be better and then the whole project's better. It really is.
And when you're afraid, but who can't be afraid of James Cameron? I was afraid of John Linus at first, but then I got to be friends with him. You know what I mean? If you're friends, you're going to get all that other stuff out of the way and you're going to do a better job. Everybody's going to get a better product.
That's what I learned.
From The Abyss, Innocent Blood, Species, and countless others, you've contributed decades of finely-tuned knowledge, technical troubleshooting, and astonishing creativity to film. What remains your proudest achievement?
I have to say The Abyss. As a matter of fact, I just saw the one day only 4K remastered thingamajig projected at the Burbank AMC 16.
Great seats. Better be, for a three hour movie, but it still holds up. It's good.
You know, Jim Cameron is the only director that's ever made me cry on set. I did. I broke down. He's tough. He's a tough cookie, but he also makes you work better than you could do on your own, and I think that's about what everybody knows about him. And so that's enough about that. But yeah, the NTIs from The Abyss were a remarkable achievement against all odds, and my team did a great job, and Jim did. James Cameron did a great job. He helped us through the process to do something that no one had ever done, shooting underwater with clear creatures that change color. Yeah, my proudest achievement. Also the hardest.
Which of your movies do you revisit the most?
I don't revisit. I really don't. The one that I've probably seen the most times is Ghostbusters, because I'm forced to. People take me to, you know, 20th anniversary shit and all that.
What were your favorite moments with the eclectic cast and crew of 1985's horror comedy classic, Fright Night?
Probably my favorite moments are hanging out with them now. We did a Fright Night reunion in Chicago and everybody came. Brandon, Holland, Stephen Geoffreys, Amanda. Yeah, that was a fun one.
What creative pursuits do you wish to follow that might surprise your fans?
Well, you know, the whole writing thing, although I haven't written for a long time, I don't want to get into that because... for a million reasons. But I still think like a writer. It was a very fun... God, I spent 10, 12 years writing every day like it was a full-time job.
But now I'm trying to actually make money and you can't get paid writing books. It's just so difficult.
What advice do you have for a generation of uninitiated practical effects artists venturing into Tinseltown?
Make friends. That's really it. I mean, the old adage, it's not what you know, it's who you know, is so true.
And you have to also be cool. Someone else has to want to be around you on a frozen cliff at three in the morning outside of Pittsburgh, you know? On a night shoot when you're basically at war. This is your little group, you know? It's a little group of planets that orbits around you.
And so you have to be likable. You know, you got to meet people, you got to be friendly, because people will get the job with less talent than you if you're a fucker, you know? You have to be that person somebody wants to go to battle with. That's the best advice I can give.
You worked on several high-profile projects that never escaped development hell. Please share with us how you feel some of these cancelled films might have been received had they been fully realized.
We were mostly paid for all the work we did on Curious George, on The Hulk when Gale Hurd and Jonathan Hensley were doing it, on all of these high-profile Tim Burton things. We were designing legions of aliens, but they paid us for all that and then it just didn't happen.
It sucks. It really sucks. In Rubberhead 2, there's a graphic novel that actually explains this quite well.
You can get Rubberhead 2 on Amazon right now if you're interested.
Lastly, have you ever considered optioning your fantastic Rubberhead property as a biographical film, or do you think your mystique is best left to the page?
Well, the answer is both because many people have circled around me wanting to do something with this, an extended series for Netflix or a movie or a documentary or something. And one of the documentaries, and I've taken so many meetings on this, one of the documentaries has spent a fortune and we've been shooting for a couple of years on it and we got some great stuff.
So we'll see if Rubberhead, the documentary, ever comes out.
Retro Injection thanks Steve Johnson for his detailed answers to quite a few questions! Contributing writer Luke Worle receives special credit for helming this interview.
Read our other celebrity interviews, and our movie reviews, including this list of underrated '80s horror films! And I can't resist shamelessly plugging Retro Injection's famous article, "A Tribute to Defunct Video Stores."
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