To the Batcave as the Damn Dirty Geeks welcome Academy Award-winning creature creator, makeup artist, actor and director Tom Woodruff Jr. to our podcast to discuss his amazing career and his earliest influences that started him on his filmmaking journey.
Tom has amassed a huge career in high profile films with his creative partner Alec Gillis, who together created Amalgamated Dynamics Inc./studio ADI, a leader in practical creature, makeup and special effects. A very brief list of Tom's credits include: STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK, ALIEN 3, PREDATOR, JUMANJI, SPIDER-MAN (2002) and most recently BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE.
Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis own Amalgamated Dynamics Inc, one of Hollywood's top creature design, makeup and special effects studios. Tom not only makes some of your favorite movie creatures, he often performs as them in the creature suits he creates, including the Lead Alien in both ALIEN 3 and ALIEN RESURRECTION, the title creature of the original PUMPKINHEAD, and Bernie the gorilla in ZOOKEEPER. We discuss the particular challenges of suit performances in such films, and how his acting experience in these suits begins in the creature design phase bringing these aliens, apes and monsters to life on the big screen.
This episode starts off with some laughs about Tom's excellent replica of the original 1966 Batmobile from the classic TV series starring Adam West as Batman (see photos in the gallery below). The show had a huge influence on Tom's childhood and it was an early gateway into genre entertainment that we continue to remember fondly today in our careers. Tom also belongs to the ever-expanding group who credit KING KONG and PLANET OF THE APES as highly influential on his life and career -- it almost seems to be a theme of the DDG podcast, go figure.
Atomic batteries to power... turbines to speed... prepare to listen now!