:: GREG NICOTERO INTERVIEW ::
BY Slick Matecheck
04/20/05

Our latest interview victim is the extremely talented (and extremely nice) Greg Nicotero of KNB Efx Group Inc. KNB is one of the leading effects houses in Hollywood and is highly respected by their peers and just about everyone in the industry. KNB has worked on around 500 movies since the company was formed in 1988. Some of those films include Sin City, Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn, Army Of Darkness, Misery, Dances With Wolves, every Robert Rodriguez flick since From Dusk Til Dawn as well as the upcoming House Of Wax, Land Of The Dead, Serenity and Chronicles Of Narnia. Mr Nicotero proved to be an incredibly down-to-earth and sincere guy as well as a great storyteller. We talked about how it was working on Sin City and Land Of The Dead (among other things) and I got to know a little bit more about the man himself.

FG: Sin City is absolutely amazing.I've seen it once, I need to see it again...how fun was it to make?

GN: It was unbelievable. It was such a challenge and such a delight. We've worked with Robert...Robert's been one of my dearest friends for ten years.

FG: Did it start with From Dusk Til Dawn?

GN: From Dusk Til Dawn was our first film together. And from that point on, we did The Faculty, did all three Spy Kids movies, we did Four...well actually, we did Four Rooms first, but we really didn't do much in Robert's segment, just Quentin's segment, but that's where we met. And then Spy Kids movies and Once Upon A Time In Mexico, so this is, I want to say our seventh or eighth project.

FG: You've done every one since From Dusk Til Dawn, right?

GN: And what a project...getting an email from Robert Rodriguez saying, "Okay, nobody knows this yet, but we're doing Sin City and I need you to design Marv." And that was...I think I even saved the email because everything in my office kind of froze for a second and I thought, "We're doing Marv?"

FG: So you were a fan of the novels before you guys did the film?

GN: I had read the novels, absolutely. Anybody in the makeup effects business knows who Frank Miller (Sin City author and co-director of the film) is because of initially, The Dark Knight was his sort of swan song, but Sin City was all about Frank's gritty, visceral, dirty vision of this horrible place that is controlled by corruption and prostitution and thugs. So, one of the most intriguing things about it was...my response to Robert's email was, "Okay well, who's playing Marv?" And he wrote me back and he said Mickey Rourke.

FG: Who is amazing in that film!

GN: Who is absolutely brilliant in the movie. I had worked with Mickey twice before. And Mickey used to be notorious for not being real happy about wearing makeup.

FG: Oh, I didn't know that.

GN: So, my first point...(sounding irritated) hold on one second...oh God, Edgar Wright is instant messaging me right now.

FG: Are they there, Edgar and Simon (Wright and Pegg of Shaun Of The Dead fame)?

GN: Edgar is here...wait hold on...all right, doing...what's the website name?

FG: Fangirl Magazine...fangirlmag.com.

GN: (repeating back) Fangirlmag.com...

FG: Simon was our first victim, so Edgar's probably heard of it.

GN: ...will call shortly...I was supposed to call him, he's like, "Dude, where are you?" I was supposed to call him a few months ago. Anyway, Mickey Rourke has done a lot of films and he did a movie called Johnny Handsome where he was disfigured and his makeup artist was Ken Diaz. There's some pretty interesting stories about Ken literally having to wrestle Mickey into the makeup chair. It's kind of classic makeup stories that you always hear.

FG: The dreaded ones.

GN: So then in my head the first thing I think is I'm gonna be wrestling Mickey Rourke into the makeup chair every day, and I know I'll lose. So Robert said, "He's perfect for the part, it'll be fine." It wasn't that I was worried, I just thought, "Oh man, this is gonna be intense."

FG: There's got to be nothing worse than working with an actor that's difficult, too. Not that he was...but, you know.

GN: And truthfully, I had done Once Upon A Time In Mexico with Mickey, so he really loves Robert and he loves the fact that Robert gives him the opportunity to act again. So Mickey took the part because he liked the character, he liked the look of the character, so our first round of makeup tests Robert had said we can't lose Mickey's look in this. We still want to know that it's Mickey. So our first makeup test was really pretty subtle. It was just a forehead and nose and a little chin. And Frank and Robert came by the shop to see the makeup test. And the first thing...you know Frank was really excited and it was the first time he had really dealt with prosthetics on a one to one basis. And then Robert starts looking at it and says, "Oh, we can go way farther than this, we can go way more than this. We want those cracks and we want to go with this. We want to add character to his face, we don't want it to be too smooth. We want the transition from his skin to the prosthetic to be as natural as possible. So add a lot of character into his face. This guy's been in bar fights, anything that you can imagine bad that's happened has happened to this guy. And he leads with his face." So, Frank sat down and did a two-second sketch of Marv's profile. He drew a semi-circle, and then half way down the semi-circle he cut in the nose, he went down to the mouth and cut straight back out and re-met the semi-circle and then shot down the chin and he said, "That's Marv's profile."

FG: Oh yeah, I know the profile.

GN: Really, if you took a semi-circle, you could draw Marv in two seconds. So that opened my eyes and I thought, "Okay, well now I know what kind of movie we're doing." There's no subtlety in Sin City whatsoever. So in about a two and half, three week time period, we created a couple different looks and went to Austin and showed them to Frank and Robert. And Robert basically looked at me and said, "Well, which one do you think is the signature Marv look?" And I said, "Well, I prefer this forehead and nose and this chin." He said, "Great, let's test those." So we glued those on Mickey, put his wig on, put his eyebrows on, put his dentures in we had made at Mickey's request, dentures with just slightly extended canines so when he sneered he looked a little more fierce. And he put his wardrobe on and he walked on set and it was unbelievable. And I'll tell you, his performance was astounding. We had a really great time. I have so much respect for Mickey as an actor and just loved working with him. You know, the trick to shooting any Robert Rodriguez movie when you're shooting digital is there's no touch-up time. There's no, "Oh, we're going to run in and do a few touch-ups because the eyebrow's coming off." When you're shooting tape versus film, you can shoot forever. It's tape, you can just record over it, no big deal. So, they would shoot twenty-minute takes. And you'd be sitting there with your spritz bottle in one hand and your jug of blood in the next hand. Between takes you'd run in and spritz them and dump blood on them and then run back out. They'd just keep shooting. So there's probably twenty-five minutes of footage of just me running in and out of shot putting blood on Bruce Willis or putting blood on Benicio Del Toro's severed neck.

FG: How was Benicio? He's one of my favorites and I loved him in this.

GN: Well, you know what was amazing was, once...the Marv segment was the first segment that we shot. And we kind of got our chops. I spent a lot of time with Frank and got into his head about what he wanted these characters to look like. So the second segment we shot was "Yellow Bastard". So we used all the comic books as reference, but I was starting to get into the groove with the directors as to how faithful we wanted to be with the comic book, but still keep that bit of realism to it. So they hired Nick Stahl, who is another amazing actor, and we create the "Yellow Bastard" makeup, which is a full-body prosthetic and face, and then we cast Benicio and Benicio said, "I want to look more like the guy in the comic book."

FG: Cool, so he was totally for it.

GN: He wanted to wear the pieces, so I looked at...and I knew instantly...at this point we had done two of the three segments and I'd been on set literally for every shot of the film and was able to...I wrote Robert and Frank an email because I was back in LA for a couple of days...and I said, "Benicio wants some prosthetics. I know exactly what we should do. Do you want me to send you photos?" Robert wrote back and said, "No, no, no, no. Just do what you need to do. You know what we want." So we gave him a nose and we gave him a chin and all of a sudden he looks like Jimmy Page! He looks like a rock star.

FG: (laughing) I never thought of that, but that's true.

GN: He did. He'd sit in the trailer and you'd give him that strong Roman nose and chin and all of a sudden he looks like a fucking rock star. And it was one of the first times that I can remember where an actor came and said, "Make me look like the guy in the comic book."

FG: That's cool. It doesn't surprise me though, considering Creature's his favorite movie.

GN: Exactly. He loves Creature From The Black Lagoon, without a doubt. It was a tremendous experience. It was great to be able to create these characters with the actors and with Robert and Frank. Mickey's really been tremendously grateful to our contribution because he really feels that part of the reason why Marv is successful was because of how he looks. Because people look at him and just...you don't even see...you see Mickey Rourke in there in terms of his mannerisms and his body, but you also see more because you see into Marv's character. And it's been tremendously rewarding. It's interesting for me to watch all the actors on talk shows because, you know I saw Mickey was on Letterman last night talking about the movie and Brittany Murphy and Michael Clarke Duncan, everyone that talks about the movie they say that Sin City has changed movie history. People won't look at movies the same way. Robert and Frank's vision was so uncompromising. They used every single panel of the graphic novels as the storyboard. So you can't help but be swallowed into the world because you absorb every single nuance. You look at a panel and you're looking at what the hooker's wearing and where the hand lands and which way the blood is spraying and what Miho looks like...I mean, you study every single frame of the graphic novel. So when you watch the movie, you're just watching the graphic novel come to life in so much more of a true sense than any other comic book film that's ever been made. Because they've never been that faithful. It's always sort of, "Oh, it's Superman, but we're going to take some liberties here." I mean, I love Richard Donner's Superman and I love Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies. They're really fun. They're just completely different. And to me, the fact that Frank wasn't really interested in letting anybody do Sin City for so long and then Robert shot the test footage with Marley Shelton and Josh Hartnett and like literally harassed Frank to show it to him. And Frank looked at it and said, "I'm in. Let's do it."

FG: So, he just found the right guy to do it.

GN: Well, Robert is such a visionary. Having watched him grow as a filmmaker in ten years is astounding to me. And having the good fortune to have my name associated with films like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill and Dances With Wolves and Misery and now Sin City, it'll be intersting for my children to grow up and pull out a DVD of Sin City when they're older and see the making of it and the behind the scenes and...I feel like I've been allowed to make my mark in film history by being involved with a film like that.

FG: Well, I don't know that it's good fortune Greg. I mean, you guys do phenomenal work. And you see how much...I love any kind of extra with you or Howard (Berger, Greg's partner and the 'B' of KNB)...like I just got Creepshow 2 mainly for that extra, not that I don't love the movie but...and to watch you guys on that is just so much fun. To see the pictures of you when you were young, then there's the little easter egg with Howard talking about Rick Baker, and it was the coolest thing because he was like, "Even now when I see him and he gives me a hug I think, 'I'm hugging Rick Baker! Oh my God!'" It kills me because you guys are fans.

GN: I haven't even looked at that yet. I mean, it's difficult because it still is a business. And the nature of the film industry is so different now. We just finished Land Of The Dead, and having the opportunity to work with George Romero, a guy who opened the doors for me, gave me my first opportunity. Filmmaking is so different now because if you read Easy Riders & Raging Bulls, which I think is an amazing book, it just talks about the shift in filmmaking. The shift goes from the passionate director's vision to the Hollywood event movie. And it's interesting because George is so passionate and so wants to make a movie that the fans are excited about. I love that. I love that George wants to make a movie...he thinks about the fans. He knows who he's making his movies for and he know if he pleases the fans those are the people that are going to go back to the theatre and see the movie over and over again.

From Savini.com Greg Nicotero (far right)

and The Godfather of Gore Tom Savini (far left)

FG: Now speaking of that, and as someone who's counting down the days to October 21st...

GN: Well, it's not October 21st anymore.

FG: (groaning) It's moved back now?

GN: No, no, no, no, no, no. Universal, as of two days ago, has moved Land Of The Dead to June 24th.

FG: (realizing Greg has just made her year) Oh my God!

GN: They're so excited about the film that they want to put it into their summer releases, they don't want it to get lost in an October horror release.

FG: Now did I just get an exclusive here?

GN: Well, it's all over the web already. I think it's even on Universal's website. I've seen the movie, I think the movie's fucking great. I think George is a genius.

FG: He is a genius.

GN: The movie looks like a $40 million dollar film that we shot for less than half of that.

FG: Is that the biggest budget he's ever had?

GN: Yes. But it's also the biggest movie he's ever had. You look at Night Of The Living Dead or Dawn Of The Dead and you start with a couple of zombies and through the course of the movie the nubmer of zombies grows and grows and grows, so by the end of the movie you have hundreds and hundreds of zombies, either overrunning the missile silo in Day Of The Dead or the mall in Dawn Of The Dead. In Land Of The Dead you open with hundreds and hundreds of zombies, because the world has basically been overrun. So it already starts with this huge impact, this huge vision and scope. And the movie looks so amazing. Our hopes are that we're going to go in and do a couple days of shooting to add a couple more little gifts for the fans. But, I think the movie's really good. This is an amazing year for KNB because we have Sin City in April, The Amityville Horror and House Of Wax in May, Land Of The Dead in June, The Island in July, The Adventures Of Shark Boy & Lava Girl in August, September is Desperation and Serenity, October is Hostile, which is the Eli Roth film we're doing in Prague and then December is The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. This year we have literally a huge movie coming out every month. Every month is a big KNB movie. I think people are going to get sick of seeing our name by the end of the year.

FG: I wouldn't get sick of that at all.

GN: Well, we had an amazing year last year and we had 120 people here throughout the entire year. These people just worked their butts off and really helped deliver some of the best work that's ever come out of the studio. And Sin City is the first example of it. Amityville Horror's a fun movie, I haven't seen House Of Wax yet. The Island, I love Michael Bay's movies and I think that The Island is going to be great. I think a lot of people are going to be impressed with how good the film's going to be. Mick Garris we've worked with on Riding The Bullet and he directed Desperation. You know, Joss Whedon with Serenity. (laughing) Last year was a hell of a year!

FG: Now, going back to Land Of The Dead, this is something I was curious about. Is there any element to this that is similar to the original script for Day Of The Dead?

GN: Yes.

FG: Because it seems to me from what I've heard of Land, and I've read the original script for Day, and it's my favorite Romero flick...so far. I'm a huge geek for that, I'd kill for one of those Bub busts, you need to sell those or something!

GN: Oh, you're so funny!

FG: And that original script for Day, as much as I love the film, the original script is like holy shit!

GN: You know, Savini (Tom Savini, makeup guru and Greg's mentor) and I joke that we call that the Ten Commandments of zombie movies. It's so epic and it's so big...yeah, there are aspects...(describing Land Of The Dead) in the downtown Pittsburgh area where people basically are living, you have the fat cats and then you have the people that are living in the streets in poverty. So, he did retain aspects of that original (Day) script, which I loved. It's just hard to say...it's a different world out there now in regards to zombie movies. 28 Days Later, which still isn't a zombie movie as far as I'm concerned, but is a great film, really redefined zombie stuff. And then of course the Dawn Of The Dead remake kind of picked up on that. Shaun Of The Dead makes fun of fast zombies, and basically is like, "No, no, no, no. You don't understand. Zombies are not on steriods."

FG: I'm sitting in front of my framed Shaun Of The Dead poster right now.

GN: Yes indeed. Which I still think is one of my favorite movies of last year.

FG: Yeah, it's one of my favorites of all time easily. Now, one thing I was always curious about, how did you end up with a role in Day Of The Dead, did you ever have aspirations to act at all?

GN: No, I never did. What ended up happening on Day Of The Dead was that we had a gag...in the original, original script there was a soldier that is just haphazardly killed and later we realize that Dr Logan is cutting the heads off of the soldiers to feed Bub. The same as in the release version, but it's much more of a, not a throw away gag, but the soldier was just kind of a generic guy, you just needed to see him alive, and then later the head comes out of a burlap bag and you realize what he's doing. You realize what Logan is up to. Then when the film was re-written and scaled down, there was only six soldiers or seven soldiers, so since we had originally cast my head as something to do just to get a jump on building the effects, then we said, "Well, we've already got a cast of his head, so let's just make Greg one of the soldiers in the movie." I was nineteen years old or twenty years old, what the hell did I know about acting or anything? All I knew is that I was growing my beard long. It's funny because if you think about that now, that's such an actor thing to do, to just not shave and grow a beard for a part in a movie. How the hell did I know that that's what I should do? I just did it. It's funny looking at pictures of me from then with that huge beard and go, "Well, I guess that's part of my character, that I didn't give a shit about shaving." I don't know.

FG: Well, you think about it, they probably didn't give a shit about much anyway, with the situation they were in.

GN:  Well, that's the idea. It was my first film and I met Howard on that movie and of course worked with Everett Burrell, who now does visual effects for a company called Cafe Effects and he worked on Sin City. And John Polish, who owns his own company, so it's like I still talk to a lot of the guys. Even Taso (Stavrakis, another Savini protege who worked on and acted in Day Of the Dead as well as Dawn Of The Dead) and all the actors, I still talk to Lori Cardille and Joe Pilato, I talk to all of them. I did a convention last year in Baltimore and it was sort of a Day Of The Dead/Dawn Of The Dead reunion. It was the first time I had seen Gary Klar or Lori Cardille or Tim DiLeo in twenty years. And it was like a week had gone by. We had so much fun and we got along so great and they were so complimentary of me and said, "Ooh, we've watched your career and we've seen your name on all these movies and we're so proud of you. You were just this little kid with a big beard." It reminds you, it sort of grounds you again and you go, "Wow, I remember how naive and wide-eyed I was." I get that feeling very rarely, unfortunately, now because the business is so different. But, you still have those moments. Those moments when you're sitting at the screening of Sin City and Mickey Rourke comes over and hugs you and says, "Man you guys did a great job." I remember the first time I saw Reservoir Dogs and I pulled Quentin aside and said, "That movie was unbelievable! Now I remember why I got into this business." And to be associated with films like that, that inspire me, that's why I sort of became...Eli Roth and I became sort of the unofficial spokesmen of Shaun Of The Dead last year, because we both love the movie so much and we were so behind it that we started telling people about it. When I met Edgar and Simon, the first thing that they said to me was, "We know that you got a DVD from the UK, then we hear that you told Robert Rodriguez about it, and told Quentin Tarantino about it and every time we read an interview with you you're talking about how much you like the movie." Yeah, because that movie inspires me. I can see the passion in that film and that's why I love the movie so much. Now I've been fortunate enough to become really dear friends with those guys.

FG: Yeah, I heard you'd marry Simon if he was a woman!

GN: I did say that! Who told you that? That's so funny.

FG: Jess, the other Fangirl (editor and creator of Fangirl Magazine, in fact) you spoke to.

GN: God, that's so hilarious.

FG: That is hilarious.

GN: And he's getting married this summer anyway.

FG: Yeah, which is great.

CHECK OUT WOLFMAN PRODUCTIONS WHO PRODUCE A PROGRAM HEADLINED BY KNB EFX WHERE THEY DISCUSS THE EFX INDUSTRY AND WHAT THEY DO.