Locarno Diary #3: Phil Tippett, the "Mad God" of special effects

by Elisa Giudici

Being a prestigious European movie festival but not one of the crowded and powerful ones, Locarno is the perfect size to showcase the work of  artisans. Every year there are one or two guests who are legends in peculiar, unseen, less discussed niches of the movie industry. I am confident that meeting Phil Tippett, a legendary special effects creator, animator and supervisor, will be one of the most vivid memories of this edition of the festival.

Before Locarno and the opportunity to meet Tippett, I knew close to nothing about his career other than that he was a collaborator and close friend of Paul Verhoeven's. So much so, he said, that on the set of RoboCop they asked each other, with dry humour, who they were forced to be nice to...

Tippett on the set of "Robocop"

Back then Verhoeven was considered a frightful director to work with, because of his sharp mind and even sharper tongue. It is clear why Tippett was an ideal collaborator for RoboCop and Starship Troopers: he shares with Verhoeven, a particular sensibility and the same direct approach to work.

With a long, white beard and sleeveless jean jacket, Tippett seemed ready to return to his laboratory at any moment. From the very beginning he warned the press meeting with him about his bipolar disorder: sometimes he asked to be reminded of the question, and yet his descriptions of the Hollywood pre-green screen era were vivid and detailed. As with many movie craftsmen of that period, Phil Tippett taught himself how to do stop motion and create puppets and other props.

working on "The Empire Strikes Back"

As a young boy I was deeply interested in dinosaurs and biology. One day I saw King Kong on TV and I was impressed by it. I can be an obsessive, deeply focused person if I want, so at the age of 14 or 15 years old I started creating puppets for slow motion. At the time it was really difficult to find informations about the technics behind the animation process, so I had to figure out everything by myself. Unfortunately those puppets are now lost, but they weren't really good. At the time, I was not interested in spending time with my peers. I don't hate people, mind you, I just don't have so much in common with them.

Tippett manage to learn a lot, never giving up even when the learning curve was very, very slow. From his words it is quite clear what a perfectionist he is. He did not hesitate to judge other people's work to be mediocre (like the sculpting team he worked with Empire Strikes Again), but was also tough on his own. He kept saying that on the sets of the original Star Wars trilogy his work was below standard due to his lack of technical skills, but George Lucas ('a great boss to work with, protective of his team and shielding it from studio pressure, like Paul Verhoeven') was happy with it. Once he had to beg Lucas to do a second take on a particular scene, 'The schedule was so tight and George was happy with the first attempt, a mediocre one.'

The most emotional part of the interview was when he spoke about Jurassic Park, which was the beginning of the end of artisanal special effects.

Making "Jurassic Park"

Tippett was there when Spielberg and movie producers saw the first computer renderings of dinosaurs and decided to use them for the movies:

I knew everything was lost. I was able to work on the movie anyway because I knew a lot about dinosaurs, so much so I convinced them to replace famous but boring dinosaurs species with more interesting, obscure ones. After that movie I started working less: I was not interested in digital animation, I loved the hyper realism people like me, Joe Dante, and Paul Verhoeven aimed for.

His love for traditional stop motion still lives. In fact for the last 30 years he has being working on Mad God, an incredible cinematic experience like nothing else you will see.

Unique is a perfect adjective to describe this movie, in which Phil Tippett distills an entire life spent in the search for perfection in slow motion art. In the 83 minutes of Mad God only a couple of sentences are spoken, so it is safe to consider it a silent movie, relying only on music and images. The narration quality is impalpable and sometimes incoherent in its lucid way, as if it's a plot of dreams. Mad God is a nightmare for sure, one of a crazy, obsessive man (the last man, the end credits says), sending robotical, wrapped-up explorers with a map and a mysterious mission to complete in a particular hellish world.

The first 20 minutes are a long establishing shoot of this cruel world in which humanoid, faceless person are molded only to be burned or stomped on a couple of minutes later. The lack of a more specific plot is the only thing that keeps Mad God from being a masterpiece, but who needs coherence in a nightmare? The violent, almost sadistic fantasy with which Tippett adds cruel details to his murderous visions is astonishing, as well as the way in which slow motion is masterfully used (in combination with music, lights and camera movements) to create a world almost without colours or hope, where demons, monsters and death are everywhere.

Mad God is the only cinematic experience I've had that's been able to hold a candle to horror short stories written by Harlan Ellison. Could it be a sort of Fantasia of indie, super underground, slow motion productions? Maybe. I really hope Tippett will be able to direct another movie, with more resources, in less time, and maybe with a stronger plot.

Previously in Locarno Diaries
Day 1 - John David Washington as Beckett 
Day 2 - Heaven's Above and Hinterland

Comments

[thevoid99]

This is a guy who deserves more love for what he's done as it does piss me off that George Lucas would put CGI all over the man's work to make it more modern as it's just a bunch of bullshit.

[Dave in Hollywood]

How interesting. I just saw the Jurrasic Park episode of The Movies That Made Us on Netflix. (It's like a junk food version of film history.) The whole episode was really about the battle between old school and new in special effects. Tippett losing out in the "beauty contest" to CGI really impacted him and basically shut him down for weeks/months afterwards.