Stan Winston

Stan Winston (April 7, 1946 – June 15, 2008) was an American visual effects supervisor, make-up artist, and film director. He was best known for his work in the Terminator series, the Jurassic Park series, Aliens, the Predator series, Iron Man and Edward Scissorhands.He won four Academy Awards for his work.

Winston, a frequent collaborator with director James Cameron, owned more than one effects studio, including Stan Winston Digital. The established areas of expertise for Winston were in makeup, puppets and practical effects, but he had recently expanded his studio to encompass digital effects as well.

One of the founders of visual effects companies Digital Domain, Stan Winston Digital and Stan Winston studios.

Only the second special effects artist to be honored with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Stars.

He studied painting and sculpture at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and graduated in 1968.

He moved to Hollywood in 1968. At first he wanted to be an actor, but no jobs came his way and the following year he became an apprentice in the Makeup Department at Walt Disney Studios.

He has become known primarily as a “creature creator.” His first such assignment was for the TV movie Gargoyles (1972) (TV).

Father of actor Matt Winston and daughter.

Made a living as a stand-up comedian before moving into make-up effects.

Helped out on some Special Effects scenes in The Thing (1982) when Rob Bottin was suffering from exhaustion at the time due to his immensely heavy workload.

Father-in-law of Amy Smallman.

Has four grandchildren.

Has a brother.

While filming Predator (1987), Winston returned to his hotel one day, to find his shower crawling with frogs. Convinced that this was a prank by Arnold Schwarzenegger, he called in the help of members of his special effects crew in catching the frogs in a pillow case and releasing them into Arnold’s bed. Neither Stan nor Arnold dared to bring up the subject the next day. Years later, Winston was on a talk-show and recounted the entire story, knowing Arnold would be a guest in that show the next day. But the next day, Arnold commented on the story by swearing he had nothing to do with the prank, upon which Winston’s crew members finally confessed they had played the prank on him. They knew Arnold was innocent but had decided to let Winston get even with him anyway.

He was awarded the Virginia Film’s Festival Virginia Film Award in 1999 and was a member of the festival’s advisory board.

Linda Tischler – FastCompany.com

A European journalist at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) this morning asked filmmaker Tim Burton, “What was it like growing up in Burbank, California?”

“Have you ever seen Dante’s ‘Inferno?’” he shot back.

Actually, he said, the monotonous suburb was a boon to a kid with a fertile imagination: “It had no weather, no seasons, no culture. You had to make it up.”

What he made up is an astonishing body of work: Edward Scissorhands, Beetljuice, Mars Attacks!, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sweeney Todd, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and, soon, the much anticipated Alice in Wonderland with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

Burton fans, then, will be in their glory this fall when MOMA launches the first major retrospective of Burton’s work–more than 700 drawings, paintings, storyboards, puppets, costumes, and cinematic ephemera. Some 550 pieces are from his own private collection, and thus have never been seen before.

The show will include screenings of film snippets, some from Burton’s years as an amateur–like the weird (OK, a redundant word when discussing Burton’s work)  Doctor of Doom, a spoof of old time horror movies, featuring Burton himself in a starring role.

The show opens November 22 and runs through April 26, 2010.  The museum will also screen Burton’s entire cinematic oeuvre–14 feature films–during the course of the show. Additionally, MOMA will  feature a series of films that inspired Burton, grouped under the title “The Lurid Beauty of Monsters.” They include Frankenstien, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Pit and the Pendulum, and Nosferatu. 

Burton seemed a little awe-struck to be the center of attention in such an arty august venue, particularly given his background. “I didn’t grow up in a museum culture,” he said. “The Hollywood Wax Museum was my first exposure to a museum.”

All the more surreal, then, was MOMA director Glenn Lowry’s introduction, in which he called Burton “among the foremost auteur voices of his time,” and compared his body of work to Andy Warhol’s.

I asked Burton: What would your mother make of such a comparison? “She’d say, ‘Who was Warhol?’”