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Thursday, May 24, 2012

Hero Complex Rick Baker Special Effects King

Rick Baker, who was introduced by Peter Weller aka RoboCop by accident was a surprise guest for Hero Complex. He surprised the audience bringing in an alien head from Men In Black 3. Rick took the audience through some fun stories about special effects. He is one of the greatest special effects artist out today and has worked on hundreds of films. Google him people!

One great story revolved around James Woods on the set of Cronenberg's Videodrome. Rick had created this sort of...uh .. er vagina chest for James to have videos to put in it. So Rick created this false chest and couch setup for James. Mr. Woods was moving around too much, so Rick told him if he moved around too much it might come off and it would take hours to reset. So after that James started going, "It's hanging on by a thread, be careful", later it took hours to take the thing off. Cronenberg went, "By a thread James?".

Another Videodrome incident had Rick simply telling James he looked sick well putting on some make-up. Slightly in the make-up session James went, "Yeah, I kind feel hot". By the end of the day James felt sick and needed to go home early. "Power of suggestion", with a smirk from Rick.


At one point Rick's chair broke and he decided to sit funny, even more funny when he re-enacted scenes from Videodrome.