·       LMC:What’s your favorite part of the FX business?

MA: Seeing other artists do their thing. Also meeting people in other areas of the industry. One of my favorites was when I was working on Planet of the Apes and Rick’s good friend Phoebe Cates dropped by to see what we were doing. She looked just as great as she did ten years ago.

LMC:What did you do on Apes?

MA: Various foreground and background masks. Some were prosthetics, some were foam masks and some were latex masks. 

LMC:You’ve done TV and movies.  Is there much of a difference creating for the different media?

MA: There is usually more time to spend on movie stuff. TV has to be done really fast.

LMC:Which type do you enjoy more?

MA: Movie stuff. With TV stuff I usually have to hand it off to the moldmakers before it’s really finished. I don’t like doing that.

LMC:Which other sculptors/effects artists do you admire and why?

MA: To list some is to leave others out so I won’t name names. 

LMC:What about your work with some music talents like Ozzy and Marilyn Manson?

MA: I didn’t get to meet Ozzy but I spent a fair amount of time with Manson. I was quite impressed by him. He was the opposite of the dopey, drunk rockstar one might expect. When I was sculpting Eddie for the Iron Maiden video Bruce Dickenson dropped by to check on the sculpting. He was a really nice guy. 

LMC:Do you have any interesting stories from your career to share? 

MA: One day when I was working for Rob Bottin there was some shop storage was being rearranged and all the original creature stuff from The Thing were laid out across the room. A bunch of us spent most of our lunch hour looking at the tattered remnants of one of the greatest creature features of all time. When we returned from lunch we saw real life horror taking place right before our eyes. Rob had some guys chopping and hacking all the stuff to dispose of it. Things were being run through ban saws and flattened with mallets so they would fit nicely in the trashcan. The mind of a genius can be dark, indeed.

LMC:I know a lot of people reading that need to go lie down for a while.  Depressing, simply depressing.

MA: We all shed a tear that day.

LMC:Do you think Hollywood is putting out their best?  If you were running the show, how would you change big-budget movies?

MA: Hollywood probably isn’t putting out its best. First I would lower their budgets. The more money they spend, the less creative they allow the movies to be. Then I would cut back on the overuse of CGI. CGI that’s anything less than amazing sucks. There’s almost no in between. I just saw Spiderman and the only  webswinging shot I believed was the one where he sets Kirsten Dunst atop the roof of that building after rescuing her. It clearly wasn’t digital. They really swung in on that one and you can tell. The greatest  use of CGI is when it’s used in combination with models or make-up.  

LMC:As CGI gets better and better, where will the real life effects fit in?

MA: Whenever the director insists on having the stuff there on set. There are a lot of directors who do. But the truth is creature making is a dying art. The numbers of artists are dwindling at a shocking rate.

LMC:Which direction is Hollywood going when it comes to horror/effects movies?  Is it good or bad?

MA: It’s gotten pretty bad for horror movies. Hollywood distills most of the material that makes a horror movie fun. If “I Know What You Did last Summer” was made in the eighties it might’ve been worth watching. Jennifer Love Hewitt would’ve been completely naked two minutes into the film, had a major sex scene halfway through and would’ve flipped out by the end and taken out the badguy with a chainsaw. As for CGI, it’s definitely hurting a lot of people here. Not just  us but stuntmen, set builders, even extras.  

LMC:Do you have an interest in high quality latex masks?   If so, do you have any artists in that field you really like?  What about favorite masks?

MA: I’m not really into mask collecting.