LMC: What did you do on Titanic?

MM:  I was down in the Extras Building.  It was a building covering about two acres that handled makeup, hair and wardrobe for up to 1100 extras a day. There were between 9 and 25 of us that worked.  The average was about  a dozen of us or so. During the South Hampton scene at the beginning of the film, there were 25 of us that worked for  9 hours without a break to get 1100 people done! We started at about 4am.  Most of the film was shot at night.. our schedule was normally 4pm to 6am or sunrise, which ever came later.

LMC: Wow, sounds like hard work?  Did you enjoy it?

MM:  I had a wonderful time on Titanic.  The makeup  crew I think was the only department that could say that… some departments lived daily through a nightmare. 

LMC: Pulp Fiction?

MM:  Pulp Fiction was a tiny job for me.  I did the prosthetics for the Ed Sullivan Character in Jack Rabbit Slims. I’d done his makeup in San Diego and he wanted all new pieces for this. I made them.

LMC: How does being the dept head on films differ from being one of the FX guys?  How much added stress does that bring?                    

MM: I love being department head.  I’m very organized (though you wouldn’t know from the look of my shop) and I’m sort of nosey, so I like to know what’s going on.  I tend to be good at anticipating and I try to get directors and producers to answer questions before they become a problem.  I ask questions far enough in advance and buy what’s needed to pull things of without it becoming an emergency as often as possible. Most of the movies I’ve worked on as Department Head have been small enough so that I can do some of the FX too..so I’ve had the best of both worlds. When you do just the Effects, very often you’re treated like a bastard step child.  Unless it’s a bigger film, if you only come in for a few days to do some prosthetics or blood effects, you’re given the corner of the trailer that none of the full time makeup artist want to work in, or you’re put in a dressing room in a honey wagon.. that’s the worst..  I did two days on a film last summer  working with no running water and a trailer with tinted windows that discolored my perception of the makeup. 

LMC: Talk about some of your films where you were Dept head.

MM: Poor White Trash, with Sean Young, Jamie Pressley and Jason London. That was a fun one. We shot it in Southern Illinois in the summer.  100% Humidity and over 100 degrees.  I was so happy Jamie Pressley didn’t sweat much, she always looked great.  The Return of the Thief of Baghdad was so interesting that First Hold Magazine published the diaries I kept while I was  making it.

LMC: Neat, what did you write in the diary?  Anything juicy?

MM: It was ALL juicy. I held nothing back! I hated the producer and never held it back. He was a hack and as incompetent as a producer can get.  My contract was broken over and over and he was still mad when I quit 4 weeks early.  I flew there with only a one way ticket! The day I got my return ticket, I booked a flight home. About 5 of us quit within a week of one another. I did find out about 6 months later that one of the lead actors was furious at me for deserting him and leaving him with a makeup crew that didn’t speak English. I felt sort of bad, but you ultimately have t look out for number one. If  you can get last years issues of First Hold. It’s all there.

Able Edwards was one of my first department head experiences where every day was a joy! I had a great director, great actors, and a crew producers that worked their butts off!

LMC: What has been your favorite show/commercial to work on and why?

MM: That’s like asking a dad which is his favorite kid!  They all have had moments, good and bad that made them interesting.

LMC: Let’s hear a juicy behind the scenes story.    

MM: Hmmm… I don’t normally tell stories like that. Trust from your actors is your career. If I told something scandalous, it would be so easy to lose that trust.

LMC: Any embarrassing moments?

MM: Yes.. I just finished a film where we used up over a gallon of blood in two days. I was using some air powered squibs because the film couldn’t afford a pyro guy.  The first take, I pressed the release on the air powered squibs and they just sort of gurgled… not really a bullet hit at all, more of a bullet gurgle.  The next take was better.

LMC: What is your favorite aspect of working in the makeup/FX business?

MM: The opportunity to work with really great people doing something creative… what else could one ask for in life? There are people that can make life more miserable than not, but I’ve been lucky that there are fewer of those and more nice people so far.

LMC: Everyone hears about the fun and excitement about doing FX.  Talk about the flip side to that.

MM: You mean the terrible hours? The lack of time and money to do most jobs properly? The times you get an actor into a complicated prosthetic and then they are not used for hours and hours, if at all? Or when you’re half way through an actor’s makeup, and the director screams to have them on set?  I haven’t experienced any of that.

LMC: You do a lot with hair?  How did you get into that specialty?

MM: My best friend in San Diego, Pam Stompoly worked for San Diego Opera for years. She needed help ventilating wigs and I was up to learn how. Though I like making wigs and styling hair,  I always swore I’d never ventilate hair for a living, and now I’m tying Cat suits for Cat in the Hat.  So much for Sacred Vows. My stint at Freeze Frame taught me loads about styling hair. So has life in theatre. Learning to style Period hair is very different from being a regular hairstylist…. I’m glad I can do something many makeup artists can’t.  It puts me higher up on the food chain.

LMC: Do you enjoy it now?

MM: I’ve always liked doing hair, I just like doing prosthetics more.  In many ways, I’m actually a more competent hairstylist. It seems to just come out of my fingers sometimes. I did some amazing hair on a film called The Source (coming direct to DVD in about a week) I also did makeup for that film.  One day I did 64 makeup and hair changes! It was a long day. I loved that cast too! There’s a guy in that film named Matt Scollon who is an undiscovered talent.

Page 3