Film Society pays tribute to Stan Winston

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Director James Cameron speaks at the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue about his longtime friend and collaborator Stan Winston in a tribute to the special effects guru in 2009 at a Malibu Film Society fundraiser. “The Terminator” was screened afterward, in which Winston and Cameron worked together. 

James Cameron speaks of the joy of working with special effects man Stan Winston, and their lifelong friendship that developed from their working together on films such as “Terminator” and “Aliens.”

By Jonathan Friedman / Special to The Malibu Times

He has been gone for more than a year, but the presence of makeup and visual effects movie wizard Stan Winston is still felt in the film industry and among his friends in the Malibu community. Academy Award-winning director James Cameron spoke about his longtime friend and colleague on Saturday evening at the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue prior to a screening of “The Terminator,” which was the first of numerous collaborations between the two film geniuses.

“He inspired so many people working in visual effects today, it’s immeasurable what he has left behind,” said Cameron about Winston before a sold-out crowd that included former Winston colleagues and proteges, other Hollywood celebrities and Malibu locals.

The Malibu Film Society hosted the tribute to Winston, who died last year at age 62 from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the white blood cells. Winston’s family donated the film projection equipment that was used for the screening of “The Terminator,” and will be used for the Film Society’s future movie screenings.

Cameron said he was cautious before meeting Winston 25 years ago because he had been told the man was “a little crazy.”

“When I met Stan, I realized, ‘yes,’ he was crazy,” Cameron said. “He was exactly the kind of crazy that I was looking for. The kind of crazy that is the stuff of brilliance, of a guy who has the flame … Stan had that flame, that passion.”

During that eventful meeting, Cameron showed Winston his drawings of what he wanted the Terminator character to look like. And they both decided it should not be a man wearing a suit, but rather something that looked like a mechanical endoskeleton that could be inside a person. The Terminator was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, but toward the end of the film the robotic Terminator sheds Schwarzenegger’s body and Winston’s now famous ruthless, man-killing machine is revealed. The life-like Terminator was created through large-scale animatronics, which is the use of electronics and robotics in mechanized puppets to make them appear to be alive.

The two movie minds “instantly hit it off” during that meeting, and thus began a relationship that revolutionized what we see on the screen.

“I feel so blessed and honored to have had Stan as a friend,” Cameron said. “I would have been happy to just be friends with Stan. We were friends for 25 years. To have been called a lifelong friend is really outstanding. It’s really an honor. And his family is my family.”

Winston and Cameron worked together on several projects, including “Aliens” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” for which Winston earned three of his four Academy Awards. Winston won his fourth Oscar for his creation of the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park.” The dinosaurs were created through a mixture of animatronics and newly created computer-generated imagery, or GGI, by George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic. Cameron said, while working on “Jurassic Park,” Winston realized how CGI would be a new way to bring creatures to life. While some makeup artists stubbornly refused to accept the new technology, Winston embraced it and brought CGI specialists to his company. Cameron and Winston also later created their own digital visual effects company, Digital Domain.

“He didn’t draw the distinction of how things were going to actually be accomplished,” Cameron said. “He just wanted the end result. He wanted to see the cool creature. He wanted to see the cool character. He didn’t care how you did it.”

Cameron continued, “People think of Stan as a makeup guy. But they have to really broaden their horizons and think of Stan as an artist who would use any means … to get those images in his head … out some way.”

Many of the people who worked for Winston from the early years continued to do so up until his death, and they founded a company called Legacy Effects, which continues Winston’s vision. Several of them were in attendance on Saturday.

“That doesn’t happen in our business,” Cameron said. “The loyalty that he showed them and the respect that he showed them was returned to them with loyalty and respect.”

Cameron also noted that Winston was an activist, who campaigned to bring the same respect for makeup artists that is given to screenwriters and cinematographers “because they bring such an important part of the magic to what we do.” He added, “Stan has left behind not only the work itself, for which he has been awarded and celebrated, but a culture that is his legacy. It’s a culture of respecting the artists, of creativity, the can-do spirit that you can always solve it, that you can always get that thing that’s in your head up on the screen.”

Winston’s widow, Karen, also spoke prior to the screening. “’The Terminator’” was an appropriate movie to show because “it expresses a very, very meaningful time in Stan’s professional life as well as his personal life,” she said. “He made a lifetime friend, meeting Jim Cameron. And Jim set the bar so high for Stan. It was always the most difficult work, and challenging work, but the most rewarding work too, to work with Jim.”

Malibu Jewish Center Rabbi Judith HaLevy called Winston one of “God’s playmates” who continues God’s job of creation. She said Cameron was also one of “God’s playmates.” HaLevy went on to note how significant their films are to modern society.

“These are as much a part of our conscience of who we are as human beings as Adam and Eve,” she said. “They are our very own scroll. They are the holy writings of our very own time. And they are as familiar to us at this point as any Bible story … That’s the work of very special playmates. And when the playmates find each other, then the joy really is brought to the world.”