Items up for bid at today’s Rick Baker auction include development art from “Captain Eo” and Disney’s never-produced live-action “Gargoyles” movie

Jim Hill

9 years ago

I apologize for the extremely short notice here. But if
you’re a fan of modern film fantasy and live in the Los
Angeles area, you need to get in your car NOW and
immediately drive to the Hilton Universal
City.

Why For? Prop Store (the “Ultimate Movie
Collectables” folks) are riding herd on an auction of over 400 items from
Rick Baker‘s Cinovation Studios. And that auction gets underway in the Hilton
Universal City’s
convention space at 11 a.m. Pacific
Time TODAY.

For those of you who don’t recognize that name, Rick Baker is a seven time
Academy Award winner. He’s the make-up effects master behind such memorable
projects as “American Werewolf in London,”
“Men in Black” and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

After getting his start in the business back in 1973 as
make-up effect legend Dick Smith‘s assistant (Rick & Dick were the ones who
made then-14 year-old Linda Blair so scary looking in 1973’s “The
Exorcist”), Baker has decided to call it quits. “I like to do things
right, and (the folks who are in charge of movie studios today) wanted cheap
and fast. That is not what I want to do, so I just decided it is basically time
to get out.”

Rick Baker with the horns that he design for Angelina Jolie to wear in Disney’s
“Maleficent.” Copyright 2014 Cinovation Studios. All rights reserved

It’s worth noting here that Disney’s “Maleficent” (to be specific,
the extremely frustrating work experience that Rick had on this recent Walt
Disney Pictures release) is supposed to have contributed to Baker’s decision to
get out of the business. Rick and his team created dozens of elaborate make-ups
for King Kinloch (who was supposed to have been played by Peter Calpaldi of
“Doctor Who” fame), Queen Ulla (who was supposed to played by Golden
Globe winner Miranda Richardson) and their fairy court. Sadly, all of that work
wound up on the cutting room floor when Disney execs decided that
“Maleficent” needed an entirely different first act and junked everything
that director Robert Stromberg had previously shot for this portion of that Joe
Roth production.

Mind you, there’s nothing from Disney’s
“Maleficent” up for bid today. But of the 50+ production that are
represented at today’s auction, there are a few films that are sure to intrigue
Disney fans. Chief among these is “Captain Eo.” Or as this project
was known back in 1985 when Baker initially recruited to come work on this
Francis Ford Coppola production, “Captain Eo and the Space Knights.”

Looking over Rick’s initial notes for this 70MM 3D film,
while Jackson was always supposed
to play a “music & dance space guy, Captain Eo was originally supposed
to be surrounded by a very different crew. One that George Lucas reportedly
described as the “Seven Dwarfs (only as) aliens.”

Eventually, Captain Eo’s crew size was cut from seven to
six. There was the double-headed navigator / pilot Idey & Odey, that flying
monkey / butterly creature Fuzzball …

The ship’s robotic security officer Major Domo, a smaller robot
called Minor Domo as well as Hooter, a clumsy / combative elephant-like creature.

What’s fascinating about the “Captain Eo” related items that Prop
Store now has up for today is that you can see how — right from the start —
Baker was looking for ways to make these alien creature costumes accommodate
the human performers inside.

That’s what Rick really did best. He created make-ups that
still allowed the performers that was encased in these appliances to still
shine through. Take — for example — the Lothar mask that Baker created for
Tiny Ron Taylor to wear in Walt Disney Pictures’ 1991 release, “The
Rocketeer.”

Rick deliberately sculpted Lothar’s face to resemble Rondo
Hattan, an actor from the late 1930s / early 1940s who played thugs in dozens
of B movies. But at the same time, Baker made this make-up rig (which covered Taylor’s
entire head) flexible enough so that Tiny Ron’s own facial expressions could be
read by the camera.

Obviously, it took months of prep work to deliver effects make-up of this high
a quality. But Rick was always willing to put in the time. Check out this
setting-the-scene sketch that he did for Walt Disney Pictures’ 1998 release,
“Mighty Joe Young.”

Or — for that matter — this development drawing that Baker
did for that live-action version of “Gargoyles” that Disney toyed
with making back in the late 1990s / early 2000s but ultimately abandoned.

As you can see by this Goliath maquette,
“Gargoyles” would have featured some pretty impressive full-body
make-ups that would have then featured all sort of mechanical / animatronic
elements (i.e., Goliath’s enormous wings).

I guess what makes me saddest about Baker’s pending
retirement is that — given the quality of the work that he did on Disney’s
2003 “The Haunted Mansion” …

… I was kind of hoping that Rick would then get a shot at
working with Guillermo Del Toro on the “Haunted
Mansion” reboot that Guillermo
now has in the works for Disney.

Just to be clear here: Given that Del Toro & Baker had
such fun working together on 2004’s “Hellboy,” the two of them
collaborating on some future projects isn’t entirely out of the question.
Though Rick is still shutting down Cinovation and auctioning off items that
represent three decades of work, Baker has also said that he’d be open to
consulting on a film further on down the line if the work was challenging or
the project interested him.

But that’s off somewhere in the distant future. As of this
moment, the Rick Baker / Prop Store auction is already underway. And if you
want to get in on this once-in-a-lifetime event, you can either drive to the Hilton
Universal City
(which is located at 555 Universal Hollywood Drive)
or hop online and try to get in the action that way. Or — better yet — make a
phone bid.

Rick Baker and some of the “999 Happy Haunts” that he & the Cinovation team
whipped up for Walt Disney Pictures’ 2003 release, “The Haunted Mansion.”
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved

Whatever the case, don’t delay. Because there’s some real Hollywood
history coming up for bid today and you don’t want to miss out.