Mike Marino nonetheless remembers how he first met legendary make-up artist Rick Baker.
“It was on the very first make-up commerce present,” he tells Baker, grinning on the reminiscence. Marino thinks it was the late Nineties. “I used to be 20 or one thing. I confirmed you my [portfolio], and also you seemed via it and actually appreciated it. You identified just a few drawings: ‘That is actually cool, that is actually cool.’”
The 2 males are on a video name — Baker from his residence in Los Angeles, Marino in a West Hollywood resort — catching up and reminiscing about previous instances. Marino, about 25 years Baker’s junior, received into make-up due to heroes like Baker, working with the seven-time Oscar winner for the primary time on “Males in Black 3.” Ever since, they’ve stayed in contact, their paths converging in recent times due to a ceremonial passing of the torch — or, relatively, brush. When Eddie Murphy began prepping “Coming 2 America,” the long-hoped-for sequel to the 1988 hit, Marino went up for the job. However after Marino was employed, he had one situation.
“I stated, ‘I’m not going to do that job except Rick Baker says that it’s OK for me to do that job,’” Marino says. In spite of everything, it was Baker who created the make-up for the unique’s vivid aspect characters whom Murphy and Arsenio Corridor delivered to life, together with the wisecracking old-timers on the My-T-Sharp barbershop. The unique “Coming to America” started a fruitful partnership between Baker and Murphy — they subsequently collaborated on the “Nutty Professor” movies and “Norbit” — and now that Baker had retired, Marino sought his blessing.
“I've a lot respect for Rick,” says Marino. “It was his designs, and it was his work. And Rick stated, ‘Sure, it’s cool. Simply do it and kick ass.’” (“I used to be impressed and pissed off on the identical time,” Baker says, laughing, about Marino’s make-up on the sequel. “‘This f—ing man’s exhibiting me up.’”)
There was no such audition course of when Baker got here aboard “Coming to America.” “Eddie was like, ‘You’re the man that is aware of faces and stuff — simply make it look nice,’” recollects Baker, who gained the primary aggressive make-up Oscar for “An American Werewolf in London.” When Marino is requested if it took time on “Coming 2 America” for Murphy to heat as much as the “new man” — albeit a veteran who’s labored on “The Irishman” and the duvet of the Weeknd’s latest album “Daybreak FM” — he smiles. “I believe he known as me Rick a pair instances.”
The 2 artists commiserate over the “Coming” character who gave them each essentially the most bother: Saul, the opinionated Jewish man, performed by Murphy, who hangs out on the barbershop. “Doing a practical individual make-up is the toughest form of make-up to do,” Baker says. “And to alter a race like that — I imply, Eddie is clearly a Black man and Saul was a Jewish man. I used to be a bit misplaced once I first began, however my father-in-law, who’s not Jewish — he’s really from South America — was the proper age. I life-cast him and sculpted the brand new face on Eddie.”
The problem was solely compounded for Marino, who had to determine how these colourful codgers would have aged because the final movie. (“They need to have been lifeless,” Baker says, chuckling.) But it surely wasn’t simply the characters that had gotten older. “So far as Eddie’s face and Arsenio’s face, they’re completely different now,” Marino notes. “I may by no means get them to appear to be Rick’s makeups. They nonetheless look remarkably younger, however their faces and their shapes are completely different, their posture’s completely different. Plus, Eddie’s hair within the authentic was larger.”
Marino thinks one of many causes he landed “Coming 2 America,” just lately named to the Oscar shortlist for hairstyling and make-up, was that he’s lengthy preached Baker’s gospel about practical make-up. “Rick at all times stated, ‘If it seems to be actual in individual, it’ll look good on movie,’” Marino says. In flip, Baker credit his mentor Dick Smith, the godfather of film make-up, liable for the look of movies reminiscent of “The Exorcist.” “I used to be so amazed once I noticed Dick’s work,” recollects Baker. “It was far past anyone else’s so far as the truth. You possibly can inform that he cared — he wasn’t simply doing it as a job.”
A number of the expertise round capturing the barbershop scenes has gotten extra subtle because the authentic film. For “Coming to America,” filmmaker John Landis really used Baker’s father-in-law as a stand-in for Saul on digital camera when Murphy’s different character, store proprietor Clarence, was talking. (“There have been no results, no break up screens,” says Baker. “If anyone ever sees the movie once more, they need to look ahead to these photographs.”)
Within the sequel, director Craig Brewer included motion-control to seamlessly meld the completely different characters in the identical scene. And though Marino makes use of silicone, whereas Baker relied on foam latex, the fundamentals of make-up haven’t modified a lot.
“It nonetheless takes a very long time,” says Marino, who notes that every character’s make-up requires a number of hours. “I imply, you’re really bodily doing one thing on somebody, and also you’re doing such elaborate stuff. There are completely different supplies, nevertheless it doesn’t actually make it sooner.” Nonetheless, it should be bittersweet for Baker to look at one other artist take his work and run with it.
“It’s bizarre to see characters that you just designed 30 years in the past alive once more, however you didn’t do them,” Baker admits. However he feels nothing however delight for Marino, who dreamed about becoming a member of this occupation ever since assembly his idol a long time earlier.
“I used to be comfortable to move it to Mike,” Baker says. “I knew he was going to knock it out of the park.” He laughs. “Or I might’ve beat the s— out of him.”
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