Cinema Scholars is pleased to present an interview with Oscar and Emmy winning visual effects pioneer Phil Tippett, ahead of the U.S. premiere of his 30-year opus Mad God at Fantastic Fest 2021.
Introduction
To the casual filmgoer, his name might not ring a bell. But for legions of special effects fans, the name Phil Tippett evokes images of tauntauns, dragons, alien spiders, and all manner of creatures imaginable.
Growing up in the 1950’s and 1960’s when stop motion adventures exemplified movie magic, Tippett was intrigued by the craft at a young age. After earning an art degree, he began his career with a bang, innovating a technique coined Go Motion that ushered in some of the most iconic special effects in cinematic history. From Star Wars and Dragonslayer to later innovations melding practical effects with digital in Jurassic Park and Starship Troopers, Tippett’s contributions to the film world are astonishing.
Throughout decades of meticulous work earning two Oscars along the way with ILM as well as his own shingle Tippett Studio, the effects pioneer was quietly toiling on a passion project of his own. Tippett’s thirty-year fever dream has finally culminated in a feature-length spectacle from the dark depths of human imagination, Mad God.
Cinema Scholars’ Rebecca Elliott recently had an opportunity to connect with Tippett ahead of Mad God’s U.S. Premiere at Fantastic Fest 2021.
Interview
Elliott:
Hello. Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m super excited to talk to you.
Tippett:
Oh my pleasure.
Elliott:
I feel like you did everything in reverse. You went ahead and won all your Oscars and now years later you’re making your experimental student film. Can you talk about how Mad God is 30 years in the making? And is this really the culmination?
Tippett:
No, I’m never going to make another movie like that again. I wouldn’t, it just took too long and it was far too painful. And I just went to this very dark place in it, and I ended up sort of cracking up. It was a dark journey, and it’s one that a lot of filmmakers, it happens to them, if you do get into something super intense.
I was just talking to Mad God’s sound designer, Richard Beggs, who goes back to the Apocalypse Now days, and his work with Francis. And he said the same thing happened to him after Apocalypse Now. Its just, you can go down the list…It’s going to war without bullets, and you come back a changed person. And it’s not postpartum depression, it takes a while to reorient yourself…I usually do that by moving on to something else, I don’t have to think about it anymore.
Elliott:
Did you find any catharsis with it once you finally did reach the end, or not?
Tippett:
Well, that’s what I’m still working on. A premiere at Locarno was certainly a vindication, because I thought I was doing my thing. My calculation was to make something, among other things, for a younger audience and an older audience. So there was a great deal of history, for people that study that stuff. And then there is just a lot of eye candy and spectacle, which is always popular. I mean, that’s what movies are about.
Martin Scorsese gave an interview earlier in the year, and he was super angry about the state of Hollywood today because everything is the same, with content, content, content. Content equals hot air, hot air, hot air. So people are really hungry for something different. And so I guess that calculation paid off. So we’ve gotten like 12 negative reviews and that’s about it.
Elliott:
Nice. You sort of come from the Ray Harryhausen school of special effects, but of course you innovated and created your own thing. So how are the artists coming out of the school of Phil Tippett going to be innovating going forward? Will it be a VR thing? Is it even better digital? Is it going back to more practical, or a combination of all the above?
Tippett:
I was kind of irritated when the computer graphics revolution hit. And, yeah, that was a difficult time for me for a couple of weeks, and then I got over it. But it’s not I that changes anything, it’s me that’s changed. But it’s always technology that drives the next thing, so you just have to relearn. A lot of working on, say, like translating stop motion into this other Go Motion system that allows the stop motion puppets to get blurred. And so each time you do that, you just have to totally reorient your approach.
Elliott:
Right. Yeah, I guess it’s different for every project anyway, and whatever the vision is.
Tippett:
Every project is a prototype, so you’re just figuring it out as you go along, particularly Mad God. I mean, I didn’t have like a Hollywood script that I referred to. I referred to 15 pages that were mostly just tone. And I got that down, I didn’t look at it anymore.
Elliott:
In the movie it seems that there are countless forms of media and techniques that you’re utilizing. Can you talk about that amalgamation. There’s live-action in there with all the animation. Can you talk about sort of marrying all those different elements but still making it a cohesive feel or vibe?
Tippett:
Well, it was, it was managed bit by bit, over 30 years. So I had nothing but time. I spent my own money by Kickstarters and selling artifacts that I had made from other movies. And got some, a couple of wealthy people that were friends, to lend some money to finish it. So I just kind of scrambled them together.
I mean, the movie would never have got done without the team that built it with me. There were key people like, Chris Morley and Ken Rogerson as well as, probably about a half dozen great animators that worked for me. They’re stuck doing computer graphics, but always, were inspired by Star Wars, and all that. So they were really happy to-
Elliott:
To get their hands dirty for once instead of… (mimics clicking a mouse) You can’t get your hands dirty doing this all day, clicking a mouse.
Tippett:
Yeah, exactly. So that’s what they really like to do. And so this, Mad God gave them an opportunity to do that. And then, very lucky, through our friend, Alex Cox, I met composer Dan Wool, and Richard Beggs. I mean, that was a miracle that I got those guys really cheap. I mean they were willing to work on it for free or like, I think both of those guys came in around 2008.
Elliott:
Well, I mean, that speaks to your level of professionalism, and probably all of those alliances that you’ve forged over the years. So, I mean, I guess that’s how it works. People want to play in the same sandbox.
Tippett:
I think Dan was kind of dubious going into it, I mean all of us were, so it was just like little steps. But I was influenced by the artist Joseph Cornell quite a bit in that I collected stuff for, since I was a kid. I just don’t throw anything away.
And so I kind of meditate on like all of these objects that I picked up from all over the world, museums and whatnot, and so they’re just kind of staring at me. And the images talk to you, over time, they just become part of your psyche.
Then you’re working on something…Usually I have like two or three or four setups going at the studio and other animators will be helping. And I would usually, at least, if I knew I had animators I would set up all the processes and set up all the shots, and then let them go. But a lot of times I just had to do it myself because they’re, they have a day job, they don’t have the time.
But without those guys it was impossible. And so it’s, to me, a miracle, looking back at the gravitational appeal this thing had. Because it was, everybody recognized from the beginning that it was unique, but didn’t know where it was going. And then a lot of people were dubious, so I just kept my head down and just kept doing it.
Elliott:
Well, and it is pretty dark. And there’s some… I mean, I hate to use the word grotesque, but there’s this kind of shocking imagery, so definitely not for everyone. But can you talk a little bit about, were there any limits or did you draw the line anywhere or was that just where your head was when you were creating those particular sequences?
Tippett:
Well, yeah. Every time I completed a chunk of it, because they were done mostly in chapters, it gave me time to evaluate what to do next. And I never moved backwards, I never cut anything out because the stop motion was so, we would all get everything on the first take. I’m like working in the computer racket now where middle managers who are just hounding over and over and over, lose money. And I could not get out of the movie racket fast enough.
I mean, it was a different time because when I got into it. I mean, there was probably not more than a half a dozen people that I can think of that were interested in this stuff.
Elliott:
Right.
Tippett:
And then the miracle happened with George Lucas, and then the rest was… So I didn’t start, I mean, I was very calculated from a very young age about look, okay, so my intention is to have my own studio where I can work on my own movies. And then how do you go about doing that? I was really lucky to be invited into… it was like old Hollywood.
And I started working back in commercials in the sixties, the late sixties. And so we were all in pig heaven, we would shoot at studios where Lon Chaney would shoot. There’s a set on Universal where they didn’t, on one of the sounds stages, where they didn’t destroy a set of walls from the cathedral in the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Elliott:
Wow, that’s so cool.
Tippett:
They painted it white instead of tearing it down. And we shot on that stage for Jurassic Park, so that’s how I know about it, at Universal.
Elliott:
That’s so cool. Do you have a favorite part of the process? I mean, I guess there’s the design phase. Then there’s the crafting or building phase. And then, of course, the meticulous shooting. What’s your favorite part?
Tippett:
It’s like any, it’s all process. If Mad God is about anything, it’s about scale and process and time. I mean, that’s what it’s about really, right? It’s not about like a narrative. I mean, I could walk through it. And the other reviewers, they get it, they find the narrative through line.
Elliott:
Yeah.
Tippett:
Yeah, I was surprised.
Elliott:
Has there been any recent creature work that you got to geek out about, that has stood out to you? It seems like there’s a lot of people in independent horror in particular that are embracing practical and even incorporating some stop motion here and there in their creature work. Has there been anything that stuck out to you in the last couple of years that you’ve been able to nerd out about?
Tippett:
Not for me. I’m actually not a huge fan of animation, but of stop motion when I was a kid. I just learned the craft and became skilled at it. I always knew, I mean, I’ve got like quotes from articles back in the nineties where they would ask me in the interview if I ever thought stop-motion would come back. And I said, yeah, I think so. People aren’t getting tired of this shit.
But no, and I haven’t seen, I have not seen anything. I mean, most of the creature design is totally second rate. The stories are bullshit. But there are some that leak through. I thought they did a great job on Arrival and looking forward to Dune. But like Scorsese said, what was the last movie you saw that you remember that was spectacular? And he said, the only one he could remember was Gravity. It was the last big movie that wowed everybody. And why? Because it was the most amazing spectacle anybody had ever seen.
Elliott:
I think Guillermo’s trying pretty hard. He’s been, I think, kind of holding the torch. But he hasn’t really dived too much into the stop motion, but definitely with the creature work.
Tippett:
Oh, yeah, no, he’s doing Pinocchio now.
Elliott:
Right, that’s right! We get to see what Guillermo can do with the genre now. And that wraps it up nicely because I think our time is up! Thank you so much for taking time to talk to me today, and good luck with the film. We finally get to see the inner workings of your imagination unleashed.
Tippett:
Yeah. Too bad for you!
Elliott:
(laughing) Well, I’m excited about it and I know a lot of people are too, so thank you so much.
Tippett:
Okay, you too. Thank you.
