>>Bill Corsol: I can't remember a time where I wasn't obsessed with
movies and monsters
and this whole world. I can't remember a time where it wasn't, it didn't consume me.
My dad tells stories of me drawing portraits of people when I was two.
Not just scribbling. He was fond of saying he could see, I would draw faces
and he would be able to, he would say you could actually get the expression on the person's
face
when I was like two years old.
Having daughters now, I can kind of see how that's possible. I mean,
my two year old is now because of me I guess, obsessed with makeup.
She'll go in there and play in the mirror with makeup and everything, and mine wasn't
so much makeup at the time. It was more
drawing. I would draw everything. I drew,
I just was, at the time, it was Kiss, because we're talking about the seventies.
So, Kiss were kind of makeupy and I was into Kiss and I was into dinosaurs and monsters,
but for some reason I
remember watching old Sunday morning creature features
and that just really getting to me and I would draw Frankenstein and just draw that stuff.
Everybody has their movie.
Everybody has their Frankenstein or Planet of the Apes.
I remember being obsessed with King Kong,
but before that
I was obsessed with Young Frankenstein.
I can trace it to Young Frankenstein because I was 7 years old
and I went to a book fair in the 1st grade
and on the, in the book fair and on the tables of all the little paperback books
was a book and it was a little paperback book called Movie Monsters.
And it was, there was pictures of Dracula and Frankenstein and all the universal monsters.
And there was a picture of
Peter Boyle from Young Frankenstein.
This is 1974 when the movie came out so it was obviously like a tie in
with the movie.
And I had to buy the book.
It's like a dollar or 25 cents. I bought the book just to draw the Young Frankenstein,
but what was in the book was
how to put on your own little monster play
and how to do your own monster makeups to be in the play, and how to make up all your
friends as Frankenstein and Dracula, and
how to turn yourself from Dr. Jekkyl into Mr. Hyde with a red light and a red pen,
red makeup and I obsessed and I started doing that. I made myself a papier mache Frankenstein
head
and I did all that stuff,
and it wasn't until a couple of years later when I started finding the Dick Smith stuff
out and I started, I came across Famous Monsters in the magazine stand and that just
that just set me on my path,
but it was that little 7 year old book that I saw and I never turned back. I was obsessed
with it from then on.
>>Bill: The good news is I was part of a generation that
became aware of it when makeup and makeup effects really started to happen.
When Star Wars came out, I was like twelve,
and so that obviously blew me away.
What's great about a magazine like Famous Monsters is,
God bless them, they didn't only have an article on Star Wars, but there would be an
article on Rick Baker.
So you would read an article on somebody who did makeup and created the masks and everything,
and so I started just arbitrarily taking my G.I. Joes and sculpting,
I sculpted, I remember taking my Big Jim doll
and sculpting a gorilla
because I saw Rick Baker sculpting the King Kong, and I wanted to sculpt a roaring
King Kong head on my G.I. Joe.
My dad's a plumber. I come from a big Italian family all builders, contractors, plumbers
so that was the way I was destined to go.
But, my dad, God bless him, did not want me to be, he goes, "Look,
if you don't have to be under a trailer
covered in #### then you,
and you can do this and make money at it, then by all means,
be an artist.
He would read the magazines with me and he realized that this is a profession,
unlike my young brain. I just wanted to do it.
He's like you can actually do this for a living
And so pushed me to pursue it.
That was it. Again, I don't remember a time not thinking that this was what I was going
to do.
I remember thinking that if it didn't work out,
because it must be really hard to do it
and maybe I wasn't professional enough to do it or I would never get there,
that if I didn't do that my fallback would be painting movie posters
or cartooning. That would be my two.
Because they still involved movies.
And I remember telling in junior high my art teacher,
I remember telling him that, "Look, I think I'm going to get into movie posters because
I think there's this
weird profession where you can make monsters, but I don't think
I'll ever be good enough to do that,
but I think movie posters I could do
because it seemed like more of a real job.
At the time, they had painted posters which were awesome.
They don't have that anymore really.
>>Bill: The first time I got paid was,
I got to do for our high school, a big high school musical
for another high school,
some kid heard about me
that I did makeup
and for his part of the big high school show they were doing Thriller.
And so
he tracked me down and asked me to do a bunch of Thriller makeups
and that he would pay me
and I think, but it was maybe like $25 I got paid.
And I made a ton slip rubber
Thriller makeups like I had seen Rick Baker do in The Making of Thriller.
Yeah, I knew nothing about foam latex. That was way was past me,
but I did slip rubber sculptures and molds and just painted rubber and I did all these,
I did like 15 dancer makeups
and him, this little white Jewish kid, as Michael Jackson.
A Michael Jackson makeup, but it was awesome. I worked my tail off and I got $25 or something
like that.
Yeah.
I went to a performing arts high school
kind of like a Fame high school kids dancing on tables and what not
except I was doing all monster stuff and it was, I went to the art program and it was
great. I had 4
academics in the morning and 3 art programs in the afternoon and it was all college level
art.
But I was gearing myself towards coming out to L.A. and
doing makeup and I was offered many a scholarship to many an art school
cause I would enter contests and what not and I won a lot of contests, but
it was, there was a lot of scholarship stuff being thrown my way and I didn't want any
of them.
I turned down scholarships to Parsons and all these other scholarships that they were
offering.
I was looking for cash scholarships because I wanted to use them
to try to get into a makeup school
and at the time
there was only a couple
and at the time Fangoria did a big cover story or a big profile on Joe Blasco's school
and I realized I should go there because that's the only one I knew about really.
So, I interviewed and I auditioned and I sent all my portfolio at the time and I got into
Blasco's
and I did 4 months at Blasco's
and at the time there's no real placement in our business
for jobs and they were pretty good about that and the thing that I loved about the school
at the time
was that it was, every class I had a different teacher
and during beauty I had 4 teachers
and they were all working professionals.
Joe Blasco came in for a couple of things,
but a girl came in and she had just finished working on Back to the Future.
I was just, that was just awesome to be able
to be taught my somebody who was a working professional
because you could ask them questions and everything.
But, the truth be told, when I finished the school,
I got a call from the school saying we got a call from somebody looking for a makeup
artist for a movie
and it was a Burt Reynolds movie.
And they said send your portfolio
and so I sent my portfolio out and I got the job
and that was my first, my first professional job was a Burt Reynolds movie.
I was literally put in charge of all the makeup in the movie
except for Burt who was done by his consultant
who was a makeup artist because it was a non-union movie,
and it was done by his consultant, Tom, who had been with him for a long time,
and I was in awe because I loved Burt Reynolds and I loved being, it was on a real set. My
first movie was on a real set and I was 17.
I was doing makeup on this movie in Las Vegas.
Here's this young 17 year old boy. I couldn't even go in to half the buildings we shot in.
And I was in charge of makeup.
The very first night I learned my first real lesson as a movie makeup artist
and being prepared for anything
which the school luckily did
and then I got to set and they said tonight we're doing a scene where,
I didn't really know about breaking a script down or being prepared for this. I just brought
all my makeup.
I don't think I even saw a script,
but I got there and they said OK tonight's a scene where Burt's a bodyguard
and this young, this little weasley guy is going to defend his girlfriend's honor
by Burt's going to pretend to be a thug and they're going to get into a big fight
and the little guy's going to beat Burt up
and then halfway through the fight,
Burt's going to knock off the guy's toupee, the actor has a toupee.
OK. Great. All right. Fine.
Did you bring a bald cap for the stunt guy?
I went,
'Sure I did. Let me look.'
Luckily in my kit I had a bald cap.
And they're like you've got to make the stunt guy
who looked, who was 40 or 50 pounds heavier than the actual guy,
make the stunt guy look like the little weasley guy.
So, I threw this bald cap on him
and I even brought hair.
I laid the little fringe of hair around the back
and I felt so good with myself that I was, I came prepared
that the school had prepped me and I did my job really well
and he went out and rehearsed the fight with Burt for like an hour
and came back and his bald cap had all lifted up
and I quickly learned how to,
probably a good idea not to rehearse after you've put a bald cap on somebody.
So, I fixed the bald cap as best I could
and that just was the beginning of a night full of
wonder and learning.
And I realized at that moment I would take notes
so I started taking notes. I learned a lot that first night.
>>Bill: I'll tell you one thing that fascinates me about this business,
and that, and maybe it's true for all businesses. My dad used to compare plumbing
when I was living at home that he would compare plumbing to makeup
and the makeup profession. I go, "Dad, it's nothing like plumbing.
They're completely different."
He goes, "You know what? A professional
is just; it can be just like another profession. You're dealing with
clients. You're dealing with people who are paying you money." He goes, "You're
dealing with all different, I deal with all different kinds of people.
You're going to wind up having the same problems I have." I go, "Trust me. I'm
not going to be in a ditch
and I'm not going to be covered with ****."
Cut to working on a movie like The Blob
and I was literally in a ditch covered with ****
laughing to myself thinking, Oh my God.
My dad was so right.
I didn't have a housewife standing over me yelling at me. I had a director standing
over me yelling at me, but it was basically the same.
But, it brings me to
the biggest disappointments that I've had in my career
have led to some of the most amazing successful highlights of my career.
And quite literally, I mean,
I've worked hard to be as good of an artist as I can and as pleasant as I can and have
as good a
personality or a good attitude as I can project.
I pride myself on it, yet I've made enemies like anybody and
I've gotten people pissed off and I've gotten fired off of jobs.
Getting fired off a job, off of one job
led me, again, one of the lowest points of my career and thinking I would never work
in this town again,
led to me getting hired on another job which changed my career.
I got fired off of a movie
because of a series of events that just wasn't going my way and just one thing after another,
and I got
basically my hands tied behind my back and it didn't work out and I was out of a job.
I called up to complain to
my good friend, Ve Neil,
who then said screw those guys.
Come work for me on this movie I'm doing called Man on the Moon
and it's where I met Jim Carrey.
And if not for getting fired off that one job
I wouldn't have met Jim Carrey
and I wouldn't have stuck with Jim Carrey and I wouldn't have gotten an Academy Award.
So, it's amazing how
one moment can lead to and snowball to something else.
I often used to say to myself at the lowest points of my career, and like I said, there's
been a couple.
I just project myself forward. I'm like 4 months from now things are going to be better.
Things will be a little bit different because there are many low points
I guess in anybody's career.
More often than not 4 months later I would look back and try to isolate a moment and say
It's true. Things are so much better now.
Yeah. I always try to keep; I always try to pass that information on because it's pretty
important I think.
>>Bill: I've said it, I've lectured
in front of big groups of people,
artists and makeup artists
and inevitably you're always asked
what parting advice would you give young artists and
ultimately I don't think there's anything more important
than having a great attitude
and a good personality because I've seen
amazing makeup artists,
genius artists, sculptors, painters, designers
who you just cannot stand to be in the same room with.
And I wouldn't want to hire them.
They don't work well with people,
yet I've seen people
that are just a pleasure to be around and just awesome and fun
and they're OK
artistically. They get by.
But you know what? They work.
They work all the time.
And ultimately it comes down to who do you want to spend time with.
When I'm hiring on a movie,
I'm thinking of, obviously I want somebody who's going to do the work,
but I want somebody who I'm going to be able to like having around who the actors
are going to like.
Because there's nothing worse than hiring the best makeup artists, the best hairstylists,
and you bring in a bunch of actors and an actor will come up to you and it's happened
to me many times.
An actor will come up to me and say
"I don't want that person touching me
again.
I don't like that person."
And it's not a fun situation to be in and sometimes big actors.
So, that's something I pride myself in, and I work really hard at it, is keep the
good attitude.
Be flexible. Some people horror at the term production friendly.
But you know what? It's their movie,
it's the actor's face, it's the director's movie.
I'm there to do the very best work I can,
make it look as cool as I can, but give them what they want. I've worked for many people
who have just dug their heels in the sand and have said I'm doing what I want to do.
This is what's better. This is what's right and I'm going to do it this way
and they've made enemies of everybody and they don't work,
and they don't work again.
There's definitely a fine line you can walk
where you can do the best work you can
but give the people what they want and ultimately
it's why people go to the movies.
People want to see what they want
and I think having a good attitude is bottom line, is the most important thing