♪ ♪
How do you do?
Mr. Lucas feels it would be a little unkind
to present this picture to you without just a friendly warning.
We are about to unfold the story of Savini.
A man of magic who sought to create art
after his own imagination,
without reckoning upon the nightmares
he would give to generations.
It is one of the strangest stories ever told.
It deals with the many mysteries of existence.
Life. Death.
Love.
Loss. Sorrow.
And happiness.
I think it will thrill you.
[Snarls, people screaming]
It may shock you.
[Gunshot]
It might even...
horrify you.
[Evil laughter]
So if any of you feel that you would prefer
not to place your nerves under such a strain,
now is your chance to, uh...
Well, we warned you.
[Choir vocalizing]
[up-tempo classical music plays]
♪ ♪
He's not your brother anymore.
That's a matter of opinion,
and I don't give a fuck about yours.
Okay.
What'd you do out there, man?
Well, and to be like you wanted me to smash you.
I'm not exaggerating, using colorful speech, Sheriff.
He bit my finger clean off!
♪ ♪
[Grunting]
♪ ♪
You, sir, are a perfect patsy.
Let me shake your hand.
To finish your brother's work.
♪ ♪
[Applause]
♪ ♪
[Gunshot]Aah!
[Screams]
♪ ♪
["Ode to Joy" by Beethoven plays]
♪ ♪
[Mid-tempo jazz music plays]
[Indistinct conversations]
♪ ♪
Well, any time you work with Tom Savini,
you better have your "A" game,
because he brings it all the time.
McBride: I'm a humongous fan of his.
I met him last night for the first time.
It was great.
And sometimes if you meet guys that you grew up with,
you see them, and they look extremely old,
and Tom looks like the same as he has always looked.
That's pretty incredible.
Nicotero: His relationship with George Romero,
and George's desire to shock the audience
was accented by Tom's work.
Tom basically made it possible for me
to make some of those films.
Tom's, like, a living legend.
Tom makes things that we can only
possibly imagine come to life.
Guy's doing the effects, and he's acting. He's a terrific actor.
I always admire people who did more than one job.
You can't say "horror movies" without thinking about Savini.
Everything I've done started because of one movie
and how I was influenced by my father,
my four brothers, and sister,
and I did it all while living here in Pittsburgh.
[Film projector whirring]
♪ ♪
When I was growing up, my dad could do anything.
He was a carpenter, a plumber, an electrician, a bricklayer,
and a shoemaker, and many, many more things,
all while working full time at the steel mill.
I imagine he was so good at so many things
because, being an immigrant,
he had to be good at many things to survive.
So I grew up thinking that you're supposed to do
many things well.
Before I was born, my mother had five children...
four brothers and my sister.
There's 13 years between me and my sister.
And she's the youngest of that group.
So I had four... four fathers, four big influences on my life.
Henry was the oldest one, and he was...
He was the... He was the smart guy.
He had books and books and books all over the place.
Music, art. He was a painter.
He was a tattoo artist and a sculptor. He was...
He was studying to be a mortician, so, as a kid,
I would see him sculpting a... a big Egyptian head.
I think he was practicing restorative makeup.
So he was a big artistic influence
and an intellectual influence.
The next brother was Sullivan.
♪ ♪
He influenced me as far as physical fitness goes.
He was a big, muscular guy.
He was in the Korean War.
Then there was Joe. Joe was a terrific dancer.
When he danced, the whole floor would clear,
and everybody would watch him.
He also had a great sense of humor.
He'd put wigs on and false teeth just to make us laugh.
And after him was Tony.
He's the only brother that stuck around.
He's the brother that still lived in the house
with me growing up.
I remember sitting and watching Hal Holbrook doing Mark Twain.
I mean, I was interested in Mark Twain because Dick Smith
had done Hal Holbrook's makeup.
So, he was a big influence as far as, you know, sitting around
and, you know, watching Mark Twain with me.
He was the guy that was into me being into makeup.
My sister was still there.
My sister had the burden of raising me.
She was in charge of me from morning till night, you know,
when she put me in the crib or in bed at night.
So my poor sister, you know, had no life
because she was raising me.
My dad was 50 when I was born, so when I'm 10 years old
and running around the house, you know,
he's a 60-year-old guy.
When I was a kid, Sunday paper was important
'cause of the comics, you know.
You had these great big color comics.
I used to watch my si... sister sit there
with a sketchbook and colored pencils
and the comics, the Sunday comics.
And by the end of the day, she had copied,
just by looking at them, in colored pencil,
the Sunday comics.
And you couldn't tell the difference
between the Sunday comics and what she was doing.
It was brilliant. So that gave me an appreciation
of being able to sit there
with a blank page and create something.
Tony was 28 when he died.
I was 12 or 13.
We're talking about 1959.
He died in the alleyway next door from a bullet wound.
Tony was going with a bunch of friends target shooting
and bought a rifle and had it sitting on the saw downstairs,
and my mother would hang clothes on the wire.
What we could put together is, he was reaching for clothes
and bumped it, and it shot him in the side.
And he come up here and combed his hair in front of my mother,
who was watching TV, to show her he was okay,
that nothing was wrong, you know.
He was gonna go next door to tell them
to take him to the hospital, but he passed out in their yard
and bled internally for about an hour
before they found him, you know.
I can't really recall how devastating it was back then.
I just have a memory of it.
A lot of bad things that happened in my life
I can't remember, you know, specifically.
It's almost like living in denial.
It's like don't... I don't acknowledge it
because of any pain that might be involved in it, you know?
I think that's part of my M.O.
My mother was a huge influence on me. I mean, I adored her.
You know, she's been gone for 40 years now,
and it's like, you know, every now and then,
it'll come back to me of how important she was in my life.
And she was the one who let me stay up all night
to watch horror movies after my dad would make me go to bed.
My mother would let me sneak back down
and watch horror movies on the black-and-white TV
when I was a kid 'cause she knew how much I loved horror movies.
She was the one where I'd be up in my room
and I'd make myself up as ugly
or some fuzzy kind of green werewolf
and come down the stairs as quietly as I could
and stand behind her
while she's watching television and just wait for her to turn,
'cause she... she could feel it, and then make her scream.
I, you know... I feel bad sometimes
of how bad I used to scare her.
But any time I wanted to go to the movies,
I always had enough money.
And my mother would take me.
I remember my mother taking me to see "Rodan"
and Godzilla movies at the Plaza Theater up the street.
♪ ♪
This is where I spent my childhood.
This was the Plaza Movie Theater.
I saw "The Creature from the Black Lagoon"
when it opened here in 1954.
Now it's a "corporate" coffee house."
It was a travesty when this place closed.
It was a... It was a movie theater up till five years ago.
It opened in 1917.
I was a kid going here in the '50s
and the '60s and the '70s. You know, even in the '90s.
You know, "Dusk Till Dawn," played here,
you know, when it opened.
But now it's gone.
Another house of magic is gone.
Watching television as a kid, "Father Knows Best,"
you know, all these sitcoms, I always wondered,
"W-Why is my life not like that?"
Thinking back on it, you know, we were poor, we had nothing.
The... I mean, thank God the movies were only 25 cents,
'cause movies were, you know, my escape into other worlds
and other families, other genres.
You know, I loved Westerns, but I mainly loved horror movies.
I saw a movie called "Man of a Thousand Faces"
in this theater, the Plaza Theater,
when I was 12 years old, and I flipped out.
[Dramatic music plays]
♪ ♪
Before seeing "Man of a Thousand Faces,"
I thought the monsters were real.
Frankenstein was real, the Wolf Man,
Creature from the Black Lagoon... They were really...
They were real.
That's why they scared me so much, you know.
I was so afraid of them.
But "Man of a Thousand Faces"
showed me that somebody creates the monsters.
In the case of "Man of a Thousand Faces,"
it's Lon Chaney.
But that movie was the catalyst.
That was the springboard for me
pursuing the career that I have chosen.
From that day on, I was reading about makeup.
♪ ♪
In the late 1950s and the early 1960s,
there was a renaissance of interest in classic horror,
mostly due to two different events,
one of which was the availability
to different local television stations
of a package of films called "Shock Theater,"
and this happened to coincide with the launching of a magazine
in 1958 called "Famous Monsters of Filmland."
I was 12, and I would gather all the 9-year-olds.
All my friends were, like, younger than me, the kids.
I would gather them around to show them,
and we would leaf through the pages of "Famous Monsters,"
and it was really like watching "Indiana Jones."
It was spectacular.
It was, like, a big thrill to see this magazine.
And then, of course, I would try to make them up
as one of the characters that we would see in the magazine.
So that was great fun, except they would go home
with cut throats and half their hair burned off...
not really, with makeup...
and the parents were not thinking makeup.
They were thinking, "Who did that?"
"Savini. Well, you can't play with him anymore."
So, Tom, he was a bit of a wild kid, you know.
Very rambunctious.
Always entertaining. He was an entertainer then, too.
Back in the alley, he had a bunch of kids back there,
and he was entertaining them doing one thing
or another, you know.
Tom: I was like the gang leader.
I was like the... you know, the... the...
the monster guy in the neighborhood.
That's what it was like, and I... And I shined shoes...
I was the only white guy shining shoes in my neighborhood...
to buy a mask or... or makeup.
I still collect masks from all over the world.
♪ ♪
So, that's basically my childhood till the age
of, like... I don't know... 14,
when a magician came to town, Dr. Silkini.
The ads in the local paper said,
"Live onstage, Frankenstein, Wolf Man, Dracula."
So, naturally, of course, I went, you know.
And Frankenstein was just a guy in a mask
that came out after the magician did a few magic tricks.
Wolf Man was a guy in a mask, but Dracula was some kid.
Some little kid my height, my age,
that stood there, you know, with the cape on,
and that was Dracula.
And I noticed that they picked this kid from the audience,
so I made sure I was in the audience next time,
and made sure they picked me 'cause I...
By that time, I had fangs,
I had a cape, had a makeup kit.
You know, I was Dracula in my neighborhood.
So, I made sure they picked me,
and this is when I learned about misdirection,
'cause I'm standing backstage with the cape over my face
and made up with my fangs, you know,
and... and I'm watching the audience looking at the stage.
♪ ♪
So I sneaked out and got as close as I could to them.
And it was... When it was time for Dracula's entrance,
I ran up to the front row and spread my cape,
and... and you could see the... the kids move back in horror.
I had scared them.
It was the first time I'd scared an audience, you know.
And they saw it, too, the people running the show.
So they no longer picked a kid from the audience.
I became part of their troupe.
So, that was my childhood. 14, I got my first job.
They paid me in chocolate milkshakes and silver dollars
to be Dracula in this traveling show.
I was in grade school, and this kid,
he put a cartoon on the bulletin board,
and it was a guy tying a package, you know.
And it used to be, you know, a... a thing
that you did when you were tying a package.
You would get somebody to put their finger on the knot.
Well, this guy's nose was so big
that he was using his nose to hold the knot, tying a knot.
And we all understood what that meant.
And he wrote "Savini" with a big arrow
pointing to the guy with the big nose,
and I didn't even know I had a big nose until then.
But from that day on, I was self-conscious
about my nose, and that affected everything.
That affected my attitude toward everybody.
I just felt inferior.
That sort of thing prompts young kids to be better,
or to prove themselves, okay?
So, I had something to prove.
I mean, part of making up for the inferiority complex,
which was a constant drive to me, even in high school.
You know, I had to be on as...
doing as many things as possible.
I was on the track team, I was on the wrestling team,
I was on the team that put parties together,
I wrote columns for the high-school newspaper.
But the greatest thing was the theater, being in the theater.
When you're on-stage in the theater and playing a part,
you're not you anymore... to them or to yourself.
You're the lead dancer in "Guys and Dolls."
You have a dancing solo with this gorgeous woman.
I mean, that's what got me adulation
from my peers in high school.
Before we made "Night of the Living Dead,"
we were gonna make a... a very sort of high-toned
little romantic film set in Medieval times
called "The Wine of the Fawn."
So we went around to high schools
to look at high-school plays,
and the young actor that we liked the best
was Tom Savini,
who was in a high-school play at the time.
So we talked about making this movie, and, of course,
the movie never happened.
And the big deal at the time was Saturday night.
Saturday Night "Chiller Theater."
You know, Bill Cardille... "Chilly Billy Cardille-y"...
would host and interrupt in the commercial spaces,
you know, the horror movies.
♪ ♪
I absolutely grew up watching Chilly Billy
on "Chiller Theater," and his crazy cohort.
It's so hokey now. I thought it was great then.
But when you look back on it, they didn't have any effects,
and it was him in a tuxedo in a...
in a dinky little television station up on the hill.
Tom: You looked forward to Saturday night
and seeing those horror movies, you know,
on... on "Chiller Theater." I, you know...
That's where you were.
Every Saturday night, you were guaranteed to be home
watching Chilly Billy Cardille-y on "Chiller Theater."
You know, I would make up friends and get in the car
and drive up to Channel 11
and knock on the big glass door with a monster on a chain,
and they'd come out, and they'd go "Oh, shit, yes!"
Come in here."
And they would put me on with Bill Cardille.
There was this young kid.
Turned out it was Tom Savini.
And he was very quiet. He still is quiet.
Tom: Eventually Bill Cardille would call me.
He said, "I'm appearing at a drive-in, you know, next week."
You wanna come? And bring some monsters."
Which I did.
Or there was a huge Halloween parade downtown.
There still is.
I would make up monsters and be on the float with Bill Cardille,
a big banner that said, "WIIC Channel 11," you know,
and I would do the Phantom of the Opera,
Werewolf, and Frankenstein,
and they would be on the parade with Bill Cardille.
So he would be surrounded by monsters, you know,
and he was a famous guy to everybody back then.
You know, Chilly Billy Cardille-y.
♪ ♪
In my senior year in high school,
the topic of conversation among everybody was
"What are you doing? What college are you going to?"
Well, I wasn't going to college. I had no plans to go to college.
My brother Joe was living in California,
so I just told everybody, "I'm going to Hollywood
after high school and, you know, be in the movies."
You know? Okay.
So, after high school, there's a knock on the door.
It's my brother Joe.
He had divorced his wife, and he had come back to Pittsburgh,
so that dream didn't happen.
I went off to some... I went off to Penn State
and became a dishwasher in a diner
that he was a cook at.
But then I met this girl, and she picked out the college
for me... Point Park University.
Picked out my major... journalism,
I did it for her, you know.
She was going off to Mercyhurst College,
and I had to be going to college if I'm gonna be with her.
Of course, as soon as she left, she met a football player,
and I got a "Dear John" phone call.
I was in college. There was this girl sitting there,
and she was, like, falling asleep at the table,
and I was at a vending machine,
buying a cup of coffee or something.
So I went over, and I put the coffee in front of her.
I said, "Here, you need this more than I do."
And that began the relationship with Charlene,
my first wife.
You know, we started dating. She got pregnant.
And I enlisted in the Army to support us.
That baby, her... her parents made her give up for adoption,
who, later on in life, 35 years later,
you know, I got a phone call from her
searching for her parents,
and when she found out it was me, it was amazing
'cause she was a fan of mine and here she is my daughter,
and she couldn't believe it, okay?
Her name is Audrey.
This blew my mind when she came back without the baby,
'cause that's why I enlisted in the Army... to support us.
♪ ♪
[Rock music plays]
♪ ♪
I didn't have it as bad as the guys in the front line.
Those guys would come into our base camp, you know,
and they... And they were scary.
There was something... something missing.
You know, the eyes are the window to the soul.
They were soulless.
These are the guys on the front lines.
They were seeing and doing the really horrible shit.
My job was just to photograph it when it was over, you know.
To exist in that environment,
you have to turn off your emotions.
And don't forget... I'm this little Italian kid,
you know, reading "Famous Monsters,"
and now suddenly you're... you're plummeted,
you're plunged into this real-life,
horrible situation of war, you know, where people are...
If they walked out of the woods, they want to kill you.
Your emotions don't just turn right back on.
You're forced to turn them off to psychologically save yourself
in that sort of an environment, and that's what I did.
I also felt a safety behind the camera.
And I also felt, looking at horrendous gore,
I mean, guys blown apart with grenades
and arms lying on the floor, you know, and head wounds...
You know, I remember looking at them like,
"How would I do that?"
These are special effects.
When you're in Vietnam, after 6 months,
you're entitled to R&R, rest and recuperation.
I went to Hawaii to meet my then wife.
But when I came back, they put me on the worst duty possible...
30 days of guard duty, which means there's the trees,
and if they're coming, you're the first contact.
So, it's 4 guys... me and Morales
and two guys asleep above in a bunker
made of sandbags with a roof.
And you would take shifts, 2-hour shifts,
and there were 7 of these bunkers.
In front of every bunker, there was a trip wire
in the front and on the sides,
so if somebody bumped it, a flare would go off.
If somebody cut it... they were spring-loaded...
a flare would go off.
Now, if you saw a thousand Vietcong running at you
from the woods, you had to call the command bunker,
and the officer in the bunker would come up
with a nightscope, and if he saw them,
he would have to call battalion to get permission to fire.
You were not allowed to open fire just randomly like that.
So, 3:00 in the morning, the Chinook helicopters would go by
firing 600 rounds a second or a minute or something,
and it was a wall of red
because of how many tracer rounds were going by.
And once that happened, you realized there could be
nothing out there anymore, and you could relax.
So, 3:00 in the morning, I'm on duty,
and my trip flare goes off right in front of my bunker.
And I immediately open fire with an M60 machine gun.
Morales unslings his gun, and he's opening fire.
The two guys above wake up,
and they're setting off Claymore mines.
Trees are falling over.
All the bunkers open fire in front of my bunker.
[Machine-gun fire]
♪ ♪
[Duck quacking]
And it was a duck, okay?
Now, you can see a caravan of jeeps coming from battalion,
and they're coming to me, 'cause I opened fire
without alerting the officer.
Now, a general gets out of the jeep.
I remember looking at the stars on his collar,
and I-I can't talk, I'm so nervous, you know.
He calls me down.
He says, "Why did you open fire?"
I said, "My trip flares went off, sir."
"Yeah, I guess I would've opened fire, too.
What was it?"
I said, "It was a duck, sir."
He said, "Did you get it?"
I said, "No, sir, the duck flew away."
We covered every square inch of dirt
out there with something... shrapnel,
a bullet, grenade, you know, but the duck got away.
So he said, "Alright, next time, challenge it,"
which means, you know, "Halt. Who's there?"
You know. Quack, quack!
Alright, so, they took me off guard duty,
and the rest of my time in Vietnam,
I was called the "Duck Slayer."
But the next night, we were attacked.
That line of bunkers was attacked.
I wasn't there. Guys died.
G.I.s died in those bunkers. A Viet...
My job was to go out the next day
and photograph the Vietcong bodies.
But the duck saved my life, as far as I'm concerned,
and that's why I never eat duck.
And the people were just beautiful in Vietnam.
Men held hands. It wasn't a homosexual thing.
It was a friend thing.
The countryside was lush, like Ireland or something.
You know, it was just, what... what are we doing here?
Why are we just bombing and destroying, you know?
I walked into a small village,
and there was a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant sitting there.
And, to me, it was like, "Aha!"
That'swhy I'm here."
It was business.
♪ ♪
When I came back from Vietnam, Lon was born.
We got stationed in North Carolina.
Coming back from Vietnam, you know, I was a zombie.
I... There was no emotion alive in me.
I had to turn off the emotions,
and it's something that you do for...
you know, to survive mentally.
A lot of guys, I guess, couldn't do that.
I mean, post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Maybe I had that. I don't know.
So, Charlene and I divorced,
and eventually she married a friend of mine.
They left and took Lon with them to Florida.
And, you know, back then, it was a big deal
because, you know, as... I visited Lon
and hung out with him as much as I could.
Lon: As I got older and, you know,
understood more about movies, and horror movies,
and my mom would tell me more about Tom,
and, you know, I wanted to know more about him, and...
so she opened that door up,
so I could communicate with him more,
and then we... You know, we got to know more about each other.
Probably towards the middle of high school
and toward the end of high school,
and obviously throughout my naval career,
much closer to him, you know, call him all the time,
talking, e-mailing once e-mail became a thing,
and, like I said, going to visit him at the conventions
around the country to be also with him then.
So, our relationship is not a close father/son relationship,
but we have stayed in touch.
♪ ♪
My marriage went in the toilet
because I was an emotionless person coming back from Vietnam.
And it was a movie.
It was a movie that brought my emotions back.
I went one night with my ex-wife to see "Midnight Cowboy."
And when Dustin Hoffman died in that, I went berserk.
I hys... was crying hysterically in the movie theater.
Part of it was the character that Dustin Hoffman was playing,
and that he died and it was a sad movie,
but I think most of it was, this was all pent-up,
you know, for a year or two, and this was the release.
I finally released all the emotion
I was holding back from Vietnam.
♪ ♪
I never thought about this until just this second...
What a fateful move that was, you know.
We walked... One night,
we walked into the local live theater,
the Fayetteville Little Theater, and a play was going on,
and that became my life.
[Piano plays, whistle blows]
♪ What else do the simple folk do? ♪
♪ That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory ♪
♪ Called Camelot ♪
[Singing indistinctly][Applause]
♪ ♪
In fact, when I got out of the Army,
a year and a half after we got there,
I stayed 7 more years.
There were 3 theaters.
I was the makeup director for all 3 theaters.
So, a typical night, any night, almost every night,
was me going and doing the makeup on everybody.
You know, if it was "Fiddler on the Roof,"
I was doing the beards on everybody
and then playing a part, doing the acrobatics, you know,
or changing and being... becoming a Jew
with the payots and the hat and doing a dance.
The bottle dance with the bottle on my head.
A typical night, you know, playing Charlie Brown,
playing Thoreau, playing Ben Franklin
after a 3-hour makeup job, you know.
So that was years of making myself up and everybody else,
but I always made them up,
and myself, for the mirror, not for the stage.
You can get away with murder on the stage
because of the... the distance the audience is from you
and the lights, you know, their effect on your skin,
but I always made up my characters
and every other character
so it was realistic to the mirror.
♪ ♪
I was in a bar. I don't drink,
but I was delivering signs to the bar that I had painted.
And there was an interesting-looking guy
sitting there with a big cowboy hat on and a... a beard,
and we started talking, and he... he was the art director
on "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things."
He said, "Yeah, we're shooting a movie shortly coming up"
called "Deathdream."
And I had my portfolio in the car.
I showed him my portfolio. 3 days later,
I was doing my first movie in Brooksville, Florida,
assisting Alan Ormsby on "Deathdream."
Now, the next film they did was in Canada,
called "Deranged."
But Alan directed that,
and then I was the key makeup guy on that.
And that was around 1972.
And then, like, 6 years went by.
I was just doing plays,
and then I decided to take advantage of the G.I. Bill,
'cause you only have 7 years after you get out of the service
to take advantage of the G.I. Bill.
So I-I came back here and auditioned
at Carnegie Mellon University.
Showed them my portfolio, and I went back to Carolina.
I was doing a play, and I got a... a telegram
that said, "We're pleased to announce"
that you've been accepted in the acting/directing program
at Carnegie Mellon University.
We're also pleased to announce
"that you will teach Tuesdays and Thursdays."
So I got a full scholarship
teaching at Carnegie Mellon University
and going to school as an acting/directing major.
And I heard that Romero
was gearing up to do another movie...
a vampire movie called "Martin."
We were gonna make "Martin," and, all set to go,
and Tom came off the elevator one day
and literally stepped off the elevator,
which was... opened right into our front office there,
and cut his arm open and fell down.
And at first, I didn't recognize him.
I didn't know what this was about.
But he jumped right up and said, "Remember me? I'm Tom Savini."
So, I wound up doing the makeup effects on "Martin,"
playing a part, and doing the stunts.
And then I went back to Carolina and was doing a play,
"The Lion in Winter," and got a telegram from George...
"Start thinking of ways to kill people."
And it was... He said,
"We're doing a sequel to 'Night of the Living Dead.""
Took a leave of absence from school to do
"Dawn of the Dead" and haven't been back since.
[Ominous music plays]
♪ ♪
Woman: Tom Savini is one of the best in the field.
His job is to scare you out of your wits,
and he's been quite successful at it.
In the '70s, when Tom Savini and George Romero
began working together,
they became heroes of independent cinema,
at least a good decade or more before independent cinema
became the sort of label that people would toss around.
These guys were real mavericks and auteurs.
Tom was really creating the whole on-screen genre
right there in "Dawn of the Dead."
Tom was there at the beginning of the modern horror movement.
I mean, it started with...
He'd worked with George Romero on "Martin,"
and then there was that one-two punch
of "Dawn of the Dead" and "Friday the 13th,"
which was sort of the big explosion
that started the whole splatter movement.
I mean, there had been films like "Halloween"
and "Black Christmas" before,
but it was really "Friday the 13th,"
which was a... sort of a quasi-independent film
distributed by a major studio
with Tom Savini's incredibly realistic effects...
It just started a whole new mini-industry
for the next 5 years.
On the way up to "Friday the 13th,"
we stopped at Dick Smith's house in Larchmont.
He was way out there.
And, you know, Tom and I were going, "Wow."
The ideas... You know, the lightbulbs were just going off.
And the most important thing was,
he gave us the blood formula,
because in "Dawn of the Dead," we just used 3M blood
and something from Germany,
and it just looked like red paint.
It was terrible.
And so, there it was,
the formula for making realistic-looking blood.
From then on, we had that, and so, you know,
that just changed everything, too.
People wanted to go to the movies because Tom's effects
and his work propelled him and elevated him into
sort of marquee status.
McBride: Growing up in the '80s, the, you know...
Horror was the genre I loved the most
when I was a kid, so I just think...
Yeah, he just found a good way to bring the gore and...
and cool effects to movies that I grew up on. It's awesome.
His effects, his makeup effects and everything, were just...
There was... There was a realism to it that now took the film
and elevated it into something that it wasn't
if those effects weren't there or if they were done poorly.
And I did feel like an assassin.
I would load up my car with my tools
and go to some strange place and kill people, you know?
And the teenagers loved it.
Like, in "Friday the 13th," the teenagers would come up,
you know, and, "How am I gonna die?"
They were so... They wanted...
They were so excited about how they were gonna die.
And the juicier, the better. The gorier, the better.
[Ominous music plays]
♪ ♪
Feldman: I'm sure there's probably very seldomly been
that much blood used in one death scene ever again.
I mean, I think it was, like, gallons and gallons of blood
that they used on that one scene.
Here, I am, like, a kid.
I mean, I think about this now,
and it's like, this is so deranged,
but I'm a kid, and I'm watching this thing
literally saw through this guy's skull, through his cranium,
and he's, like, laying on the floor,
and obviously it's not a real person,
but I don't even know that,
because, like, last thing I see is, like, you know, Ted White
walking around with, like, a machete stuck into his head.
And I'm just like, "Oh, my God, this is"
the most gruesome thing ever," and blood just spurting
everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.
The one thing that I do remember specifically
is that when Joseph Zito, the director, introduced me to him,
he introduced him in the context of, you know,
"We're very lucky to have this guy."
It's a really big deal that we've got this guy
'cause he's kind of, like, a legend,
'cause he created the first Jason,
and he's a big deal to the franchise,
"and your character is loosely based on him."
So I was told that, actually, in the beginning.
When I looked in the mirror and saw the finished product,
it was hard to believe.
And those of us that saw the film,
I believe, would understand exactly why.
I mean, the face was so contorted, with one eye
and the teeth and so forth.
It was a wonderful makeup job.
I-I was thoroughly pleased with what it looked like.
Berger: His tricks of the trade always fooled me, you know,
and that's what I-I liked best.
I just couldn't figure it out, and...
and everything he... he does is very simplistic.
It's... It's all magic essentially,
you know, and common sense.
And I think that's why...
I always expected things to be more complicated than they were,
and that's always what fooled me about Tom Savini's stuff, is,
I'm like, "Shouldn't... Shouldn't it be a puppet head"
and this and that?"
"It's just a wedge cut out of a... a fake machete,
and we pulled it out in reverse."
I went to do hair and makeup tests,
and it was very standard makeup, and I looked very attractive.
And it just felt very glamorous, and I thought,
"Oh, this is great."
But then Tom showed up, and the first thing I noticed
was, Tom was really good-looking.
The artistry that goes into this,
it isn't just about blood and guts and...
and bones and, you know, body parts and things like that.
It requires a genuine artistry.
He has an impressive body of work
because of his artistic talent.
♪ ♪
You know, I've always been in love with magic,
ever since my first job when... with Dr. Silkini,
watching Dr. Silkini do the magic tricks
and learning backstage
how he did them made me fascinated with it,
and that... Wanna see a magic trick?
♪ ♪
See how easy it is?
And then, of course, you know, that led to the way
I think about makeup effects.
As you know, my books are called "Grande Illusions"
'cause I think of makeup effects as magic tricks.
I'm doing the same thing a magician does...
I'm fooling you to think that...
to believe that what you're seeing is really happening,
just like a magician does.
So... So, illusions and magic.
And people have said this about my stuff,
"Tom is a stage magic person,
and he incorporates that into his effects."
I mean, he could pull things out of his butt, you know,
and at the last minute if we needed to.
There was a sequence where we needed to invent
a zombie that wasn't in the script
because we needed to cover a continuity error.
And so, okay, we said,
"We'll have a zombie jump out and grab this guy."
Then we had to kill the zombie.
So, you know, I said to Tom,
"How are we gonna kill this zombie?"
[Snaps fingers] Bing. I mean, within 5 minutes,
he came back with a screwdriver, and he...
and a soda straw painted silver,
so that the... the screwdriver collapsed into the soda straw,
and it looked like the screwdriver
went into the zombie's ear.
And it's one of the most effective moments in the movie.
Tom: Yeah, I mean, I had a... You know, I had a reputation
when I was doing effects for getting a lot done
with very little money.
And I was resourceful.
I could use, you know, household stuff.
So I had a reputation for... for... for getting a lot done,
and I think it was because of growing up poor.
You know, you had to use, you know...
make the best of what you had.
That was it. Make the best of what you had.
Tom was literally the one guy who became a household name.
I mean, there were people that you would never imagine
that would know who he was that knew,
"Oh, my God, Tom Savini. That's the guy that did"
'Dawn of the Dead.' That's the guy that, you know,
blew up a head with a shotgun," or... or this or that.
[Gunshot]So, I was doing one bloody movie after another,
and it was always gallons and gallons
of, you know, fake blood,
but I wanted to do the monsters and the creatures.
And... And... And I was lucky enough that "Creepshow"
came along, where I could do monsters like Fluffy,
characters like Nate's corpse.
And it's also interesting to look at Tom's body of work,
you know, going from stuff like that,
from, like, "Dawn of the Dead"
and then you look at "Creepshow,"
and that was really a giant leap for Tom,
I think, in terms of the amount of work and the type of work.
You know, Fluffy is... It was, I think,
the first, like, real creature
that he... he had to make from scratch, you know.
And... And there's a lot of great stuff in "Creepshow."
I think that's still...
If I had to pick my favorite Tom Savini movie,
I would have to say it would be "Creepshow."
♪ ♪
The thing I really love about Tom...
and I think everybody who's ever worked with him
loves about Tom...
is his boundless enthusiasm.
He absolutely loves making movies.
He loves doing his special makeup effects.
He just loves being there and... and... and...
and doing it in whatever capacity.
He did the special effects, and he really was like nobody else.
He was a rock star in that industry.
No one since has really achieved that status.
No one ever will.
I mean, he came onto the scene, and he just blew people away.
You just were like, "Whoa, this guy's a madman,"
and then when you find out who he is,
he's such a cool personality, that he has.
He's... He's just a cool guy, right?
He's the full package.
[Rock music playing softly]
♪ ♪
["Be Chrool to Your Scuel" plays]
♪ ♪
It was, you know...
You know, back then, everybody was pushing the envelope,
you know, to see what... what we could get away with.
Here... Here's a new medium, you know.
This... This video.
Well, what... Well, what can we do with it?
♪ ♪
Now, here we go. We get the whole new...
the whole new media to work with and a budget
and, you know.
So it's kind of like, let's see what we can do.
Dee Snider was the same thing.
He was another one of the guys that...
that went to horror movies every Saturday, you know.
So when he got Savini and everybody like that,
then it was... It was one of those things that all worked in
pretty perfectly.
♪ ♪
Tom: I was the King of Splatter.
That's one of the names they associated with me,
'cause I was doing "The Prowler"
and "Maniac," "The Burning,"
"Friday"... two "Friday the 13th" movies in... in the '80s,
"Part 1" and "Part 4."
And, you know, it was great fun.
I mean, I wasn't crazy about having this, you know,
'cause what happened was people thought that I loved gore,
which is not true.
People think I'm this hideous monster maker.
People who really know me just think I'm a pussycat.
♪ ♪
[Cheers and applause]Thank you.
My first guest tonight was here once before with some
of the most awful-looking horror film special effects
we've ever seen.
He's one of the most sought-after creators
of such effects in the entire movie industry.
His credits include "Dawn of the Dead," "Creepshow,"
"The Burning," and a whole slew of "Friday the 13th" movies.
Please say hello again to Mr. Tom Savini.
Tom, nice to see you again. Thank you
[Cheers and applause]
I used to videotape shows back when VCRs first came out,
and he was on the "David Letterman" show
talking about "Creepshow"
and some of the other stuff he had done.
I used to tape it and watch it over,
just watching his personality and how... how funny he was
and showing his innovations and makeup.
And everybody was just amazed, you know.
Even... And even showing him how... how he did it.
It was amazing how he figured that out.
He would talk about using things like Rice Krispies and textures
to... to give flesh a certain look and feel.
It was just, like, you know, just very, very inventive.
♪ ♪
You know, I never thought about it until you said that, yeah.
You don't see Rob Bottin or Rick Baker or Dick Smith
on the "Letterman" show.
And, you know, back then, I never thought of it.
I never thought about,
"Other effects guys haven't done that stuff."
That's interesting.
This is the first time I've even thought of that.
That, as a makeup effects guy, I was on the "Letterman" show
promoting "Day of the Dead," "Friday the 13th."
This is flabbergasting.
[Screaming]
[Laughter, light applause]
There you go. [Laughs]
Alright. Okay.
Okay. Alright.
Now, what... Now, what about...
I saw you have a tiny little daughter.
Would you let her go to see some of these awful,
disgusting films that you... you produce?
No. No.
Does she see all this stuff laying around the house?
Oh, they're on the dresser. She plays with all the monsters.
In fact, she's... Yeah. Oh, brother.
Lia: Growing up, my favorite movies
were definitely anything with a darker side.
"Interview with the Vampire," for one,
was one of my favorite movies as a child,
which was absolutely abnormal
because my dad took me to see it in the theaters,
and everybody's just looking around like,
"What... What is this guy doing in here with this little girl?"
Cooper: The first time I went to his house,
his little girl was only, 5, 6 years old?
Little pink dress and pigtails and the whole thing.
And she's showing me around the basement.
And her favorite thing was the anatomy book
or the book with all the accidents in it,
you know, the horrific accidents,
and... and... and the mutations and things like that.
"Oh, look at this one here! Look at this, this one here."
And I'm looking at her, going, "This is a movie right here.
This little girl in the basement."
Could be better in some ways, actually.
I wasn't as scared of a lot of things
that a normal child probably would be.
No boogeyman... my father wasthe boogeyman...
type things, so...
♪ ♪
Tom: So, I'm at the peak of the splatter decade,
which was my decade.
I had just had my daughter Katarina.
I'd married Nancy. My daughter Lia was on the way.
And I'm... I'm here in my dad's house, taking care of my dad.
My dad, it was just humorous to him.
I mean, after my first paycheck, my dad was floored
'cause it was more money than he was able to save
in the entire, you know,
32 years of working in a steel mill,
and he became very supportive.
He would come down. I would have 6 guys working in my basement
on "Day of the Dead," you know,
sculpting zombies, you know, creating all these appliances,
generic appliances for zombies, and he would come down.
You could just tell on his face, the big smile on his face,
that this was something totally alien to him,
but entertaining to him.
In fact, he turned... He turned his workshop in our basement
in the house into a workshop for me.
Built the tables, you know.
But he... But he was always like that.
Growing up, I would look at my dad
sitting in the living-room chair,
and I wanted so bad to go over there
and just tell him how much I loved him.
I never did.
But I remember so many times wanting to do that.
I would walk over to the door, look out the window, and say,
"Okay, I'm gonna turn around, walk over to my dad, hug him,
and tell him how much I loved him."
Well, it never occurred like that,
but it did occur the day before he died, thank God.
Went to visit him in the hospital,
and we hugged, and I told him
I loved him, I kissed him on the cheek.
He had pneumonia,
but that caused him to have a heart attack.
So I ran into the hospital with Nancy, my wife,
and we saw him sitting there,
and he kind of waved a little bit, you know,
and then we went and waited.
Half an hour later, the nurse came out,
the doctor or somebody, and said, "You know, he's gone."
We couldn't save him."
So I sat there with my dad, and they were there,
and they... We were all going to the house,
and I said, "I'll be there later."
And I just sat with my dad for, like, 3 hours.
Just sat with him, staring at him,
and recalling all the things that we did.
And I was able to study him, you know, having just died,
in how he turned gray and then...
first yellow, and then gray,
and it was only... You know, I just...
And I needed to do that
because when I left, this thing was no longer my dad.
I would just sneak around with a video camera
and videotape him from my bedroom in the yard.
You know, I have him in the winter,
you know, with a big coat on, digging up the garden.
As it got warmer, spring would come in, he'd have a sweater on.
Always smoking his pipe and planting stuff.
And then, in the summer, with no shirt, watering.
The garden was a big deal to him.
He grew cantaloupes and cucumbers.
This was all in our backyard, you know.
So I would videotape him doing that,
or, through the kitchen window, making, you know,
ravioli or something.
So I have hours and hours of footage of my dad
being my dad.
So whenever I want my dad, all I've got to do
is put in the videotape, and there he is.
♪ ♪
[Film projector whirring]
[Screams]
♪ ♪
[Zombie groans]
♪ ♪
[Screams]
Night of the Living Dead.
I keep reading, "Tom Savini's gonna be doing"
the very ill-advised remake of 'Night of the Living Dead.'
It's preposterous. It can't be.
"It's... It's... You know, it's a story. It's a movie."
Man: The screenplay is done, or it's in a first draft?
The screenplay is definitely done.
It's very... It's unique. You'll... He had...
It's the same original story with lots of twists and turns,
and characters do different things and have different roles.
I ran over. It was a Saturday.
I ran over to the production office,
and I happened to catch Tom.
I knew what he looked like. I knew who he was.
And I lit... I'd never done this in my entire career,
I literally body-blocked him and said,
"Man, you gotta... You gotta read me for this thing."
He says... He tried to act like he even wasn't making a movie.
He says, "What thing?" And I said, "Your movie."
He says, "You know about the movie?" I said, "Yeah, man.
If we work together, you're gonna know a lot of me."
He said, "Well, we're almost done with it."
I said, "You gotta read me."
And I jacked him up. You know, verify this.
I grabbed him, and I said, "You gotta read me."
He says, "You've got 5 minutes up here. Come on in."
What he didn't know was that I knew
most of the original dialogue verbatim,
and I knew who Ben was.
So he let it be known to me and everybody around
that this was the guy.
Tom called me up and said,
"Hey, I'm doing 'Night of the Living Dead, '"
and I'm gonna send you a script,
"and I want you to pick any part you want."
So I called Tom up and said, "Yeah, man,"
I want to play... I want to play Harry,
"the guy in the basement."
And Tom said, "Pick any part, just make sure it's Johnnie."
♪ ♪
Only: You know, I remember George telling me stories
of how he borrowed $100,000
to make "Night of the Living Dead,"
and then Tom remade it, and, you know, it's...
In... In my opinion, it's the most shocking film out there,
you know, so...
Well [Clears throat]
"Night of the Living Dead"
wasn't a very good experience for me.
For one thing, I wanted to shoot in this glorious cemetery.
3 blocks from my house.
I spent my childhood in this cemetery,
riding my bicycle through here, walking through here,
jogging through here.
I really wanted to use this, but, I mean, enh...
I understand the consideration.
It would've been a move from Washington, P.A., to this place.
It would've been... Maybe it would've been expensive.
But, also, I didn't know when the movie started,
that, 2 weeks into it,
I would be in the middle of a divorce, you know.
And that really wreaked havoc on my mind. I, you know...
You know, you really need all your concentration
when you're directing a movie, and even more so.
But I was worried about the divorce,
losing my daughter, you know, but I had to...
had to be there, and they kept slapping my hand.
George wasn't there.
If George was there, it would've been a blast,
'cause George and I, you know,
we click, we get along, you know.
And I really wanted to please George.
I wanted to impress him with what I was doing.
And the few things I did get to do, the censors cut it out.
Every exit wound... Every time there was a head shot,
they cut the exit wound.
So the movie was sterile compared to the bloodbath
that you might expect with George Romero
and my name on the film.
♪ ♪
[Gunshot]
So, the movie is really maybe 30% or 40%
of what I intended to do.
There were so many things that I didn't get to do in that movie.
An example would be, you know, when Tom goes to the gas pump.
I wanted him to catch on fire, and I wanted his flaming body
to go near the gas cap of the truck,
and... and that's what makes the truck blow up.
And there would've been a... a sequence in there
where his girlfriend is in the car, you know, and...
but he's on fire, so it's like, "Oh, honey, but you're on fire."
You know? Her boyfriend's coming at her on fire, so...
I thought that would've been cool.
And there were some suspense things that I wanted to do.
For example, my end game to the film,
when Barbara goes back to the farmhouse, you know,
was to have her see something in the upstairs window.
And she thinks it's Ben, so when she goes in the house,
she doesn't just go into the kitchen.
She goes right up to the attic, and thinking Ben's up there.
But when she goes up there, we see Harry.
And Harry sort of retreats behind this full-length mirror.
And now I have a two-shot of Harry and Barbara...
Harry for real, Barbara in the mirror.
So we stay on this shot as Harry retreats behind the mirror,
and her reflection raises the gun.
With her reflection in the mirror, she fires the shot,
the mirror, of course, shatters, you know,
and now we see Harry's point of view
as he's falling to the floor after being shot.
And the last thing he sees when he looks up
is Barbara's distorted image in the mirror.
And so, she says her famous line,
"Here's another one for the fire,"
and she sees them drag Harry and Ben out to the fire.
And they put Harry and Ben in the fire face-to-face,
and the end credits was them burning into nothingness.
♪ ♪
It's been many years later.
I'm getting a lot of great compliments about the film.
I went to a... I went to a midnight showing. I did a...
I went there at 11:00 to the Q&A beforehand.
I wasn't gonna watch the movie.
But I sat down and watched it, and it was good.
You know? It was good.
The acting was terrific.
Some suspense was there, you know?
Performances were good, I think.
You know, we turned... turned Barbara
into a Sigourney Weaver hero type.
People liked that.
Plus, you get this... You get to see a bit of a... a sequel,
you know, at the end of the movie.
So, in general, I've been getting great comments
about it being one of the better remakes that's out there,
and there's so many remakes, you know, so...
I'm proud of it. I'm happy about it.
I'm glad that I did it.
Todd: And Tom knew this story.
You know, he was a Romero student.
He sat at Romero's elbow,
so he knew what Romero wanted, and... and he got it.
And, plus, the zombies were well-cast.
He did a great job at that.
And the environment, you know, you couldn't beat it.
Tom: What kept me going was, I'd be,
you know, in the middle of the night,
4:00 in the morning, you know, freezing on a hillside,
you know, trying to direct zombies and things,
and I thought to myself, "A long time ago, around 1968,"
when George asked me to do the effects
on the original 'Night of the Living Dead, '
I couldn't do it because of the Army, you know,
and being in Vietnam and all that,
"but here I am directing a remake of it,"
so that... that kept me going, you know?
Plus, it was my first feature,
so, you know, I swallowed a lot of crap
just to make sure I got my name on a feature film,
and it was "Night of the Living Dead '90," you know.
♪ ♪
After, you know, doing movie after movie,
I always missed the theater, you know, as an actor.
The theater kept calling me.
The theater in North Carolina kept calling me,
so I went back and did "Deathtrap" there.
That was... That was so much fun.
You mean put them on?
Yes. I mean put them on.
Shoots himself.
Those wereHoudini's![Crossbow shot]
Clifford: Ow! Aah!
[Gunshot]
Sidney: R-U-H-L. Sidney.
I'm glad you know that much, yes.
His name... Clifford Anderson.
C-L... Aah!
[Screaming]
[Applause]
And then that led them to hiring me to direct "Dracula"
around Halloween time.
So it became, to me, a magic show.
I mean, I made Dracula turn into a bat onstage,
right in front of the audience.
The audience would go, "What?!"
How did you do that?!"
You know, Dracula walks into a doorway, lifts up his cape,
and suddenly there's a bat there that flies away.
That was so thrilling.
I made him disappear once, just disappear.
Like, 2 guys grab him,
and the cape falls to the ground, and he's gone,
and there's a carpet on the stage.
And, again, people were like, "Wha... What?!"
Magic tricks, grand illusions for me,
live, in front of your face, onstage.
And, later on, I got to do it again here in Pittsburgh.
So, again, you know, I did it at this little theater over here
on the North Side. It was Sydney Theatre.
And in the 18-year history of the theater,
my "Dracula" was the most money they have ever made
because it was a magic show.
You know, again, I turned Dracula into a bat.
I had Renfield come out from under the stage
into the audience before he made his appearances,
which made the women wearing skirts in the first row scream.
It was... It was a dream.
I'd love to do it again.
He actually had a shop on Butler Street in Lawrenceville
where I can think of, looking back...
I know "The Dark Half."
They did special effects there from "Two Evil Eyes."
A lot of that stuff was actually made there.
So every day after school, he'd come pick me up from school.
Right down to Butler Street and the workshop.
And got to see lifecasts and severed heads laying everywhere.
♪ ♪
Tom: I had my studio for about, oh, 15 years.
I remember there were tables and plaster
and slime and foam latex and gelatin everywhere.
At one point, there were 15 guys working there
on films like "Two Evil Eyes,"
"Bloodsucking Pharoahs in Pittsburgh,"
"The Dark Half," and "Mr. Stitch."
But it was also a clubhouse.
My friends and I would just hang out in between jobs,
and we would sculpt things for ourselves
and make toys and play pool
and just, you know, get together and have fun.
Gergely: I think working in Savini Land was probably the best job
I ever had in my life.
It was just...
the most amazing, amazing time when I look back at it.
It was just so much fun.
Tom showed me early on that you can have fun,
you know, 'cause Tom's really all about fun
and having a good time.
And, of course, when it's time to work, it's time to work.
But he's the first person to instigate
any sort of shenanigans.
And... And I always really appreciated that, you know,
and I always kept it in my mind.
I'm like, "You know what?"
It's always fun, you know, to work with Tom."
[Train whistle blowing]
The last film I did effects in, I think, was "Mr. Stitch."
Every time I did effects on a film,
I always tried to play a part.
Especially George's films, you know.
George cast me as an actor in "Knightriders."
Makeup effects, to me,
was my... to get my foot in the door as an actor.
I always wanted to be an actor in these films.
♪ ♪
[Man speaking indistinctly]
Marker.
- Action. - And background.
♪ ♪
Man: One more time. Check.
[Laughter, indistinct conversations]
I was a big fan of his even before...
When I was growing up, reading "Fangoria" magazine,
being a big admirer of him in the makeup world,
like "Maniac" and "Dawn of the Dead" and...
But, also, for his acting, like in "Knightriders"
and "Dawn of the Dead" itself.
That character was so great, the biker character.
So I was already a big Savini fan.
And when we went to go cast
"Dusk Till Dawn" we thought about,
since we were doing a genre mash-up,
of styles and genres,
why not mix up the casting, as well?
Get, you know, highbrow actors like Harvey Keitel,
but also bring in people like Fred Williamson
and, you know, Danny Trejo, and...
And Tom Savini sent in a tape.
Sex Machine. Hey, you!
Monkey man!
Anything you gotta say to them, you say to me first.
Watch out, girly.
Goddamn fucking vampires!
Hey, there's a fire over here!
Hey, I'm way ahead of you!
Hey, what's your name, girly? Yeah, me?
Sex Machine. Pleased to meet you, Kate.
Let's go stake these sucker fuckers.
Quentin and I were just howling.
We thought that it was such a great... his enthusiasm.
It was a different read than we were...
Than we kind of heard in our head.
He has just that wonderful Tom Savini vocal quality
that made... And he sounded so real.
It sounded like just, like, a really nice guy
just went against his type of this...
Kind of pictured him as a badass biker.
Tom Savini is badass, but he's also just very affable
and... and humble, and it sounded almost professorial,
the way he... he did the lines.
"Garlic. Holy water."
You know, he just sounded so... so casual about it.
We just thought it was a hoot.
Quentin and I just looked at each other and said,
"What, do you think we... We should cast him, right?"
Wouldn't he be great?
It's like, "Wouldn't it be great to have Tom Savini?"
We thought about how big fans we were of his.
The character you see on the screen
ain't far removed from the character in real life.
He is one strange dude, but a good brother.
When "Dusk Till Dawn" came along, you know,
Quentin Tarantino was a fan of mine growing up.
They called me on a Thursday.
They wanted the videotape in their hands
by the following Thursday.
I didn't get the script till the following Wednesday,
the day before I had to ship it.
So there was no time to memorize lines, so...
And I looked at the script, and I saw "Sex Machine."
And that... His lines were a lot more interesting,
and his name was a lot more interesting.
So I took his lines, and I wrote them on cue cards
and put them around the bedroom and did a motorcycle jacket,
you know, and... and I-I-I read the lines for Sex Machine.
And it looked like I was looking at different people
when I was auditioning 'cause I'm just looking
at the different cue cards.
Anyway, when they got it, it made Quentin and Robert laugh,
so they changed the body types and made Fred Williamson Frost,
and they made Sex Machine a small guy,
and I got to play that.
And, you know, when you're strapping a cock gun on
and shooting vampires with it,
that's a pretty memorable thing to happen in films.
Clooney was the nicest man I've ever met in my life.
I mean, look who I got to hang out with.
So it was the most fun you could have in a summer.
♪ ♪
Rodriguez: Now, here are some excerpts.
These are scenes that were cut out of the movie,
and this is one of my favorite bits.
[Snarling]
Tom sees a couple of bikers starting to turn into vampires.
Fucking vampires.
♪ ♪
Taking pictures of the bodies. He's having a lot of fun.
♪ ♪
And he's handy with a wooden stake.
♪ ♪
For pace, I'd cut out this one line, and here it is.
Sex Machine. Pleased to meet you, Kate.
You too.
Now let's stake these bloodsucker fuckers.
Okay.
♪ ♪
Now, that's what the MPAA wanted you to see.
The real Tom, the "Taking Care of Business Tom Savini,"
wouldn't do it that way. This is what he actually did.
♪ ♪
We shot lots of bits with Tom.
This was one where I decided,
"How 'bout if there's one bottle left standing in the bar.
And you use your whip to just, from across the room, break it?"
And take after take, Tom just nailed it.
♪ ♪
[Film projector whirring]
♪ ♪
You know, after my divorce with Nancy, we had joint custody.
So it was Lia, my daughter Lia, would spend a week with Nancy
and spend a week with me, you know.
And she was always reluctant at the end of my week
to go to that week, 'cause it was just simply more fun,
I guess, being at my house.
And Nancy had some problems back then.
But we went to do "Dusk Till Dawn."
Lia was 9 1/2 at that point.
And I was able to take her for 8 weeks with me,
and the idea would be that,
when after the 8 weeks during "Dusk Till Dawn,"
she would come home and spend 8 weeks with her mother.
Which was... Which fit in because, after "Dusk Till Dawn,"
I got another part in a movie,
"The Demolitionist," where I had to be in L.A.,
and, of course, Lia had to stay with her mother.
However, during the shooting, I got a call
from the... the Pittsburgh police...
"Your daughter was, you know, walking around,
looking for her mother, blah, blah, blah, blah."
So I called my friend of 35 years,
my boyhood friend, Pat Logan,
who was a policeman in Pittsburgh.
Called him, and his answering machine was on,
so I left him a message about what was going on
in Precinct Number 5 with my daughter.
And I called the police station,
and Pat was there in his pajamas
and took custody away from Nancy
and took it onto himself, and Lia went to live with him
until I got back from "The Demolitionist."
And it was assigned to me when I got back.
And that's how I got custody of my daughter
when she was 9 1/2 and have had it since then.
♪ ♪
What that meant was, you know, when I got full custody of Lia,
that I'm now, you know, a single parent.
I'm her, really, only parent.
S... And that affected, you know, my choices.
I remember, you know, Greg Nicotero approached me
before he started KNB EFX, said,
"Hey, let's go to California and use your name
and get jobs in and create an effects company."
I had my daughter living with me,
you know, when she was in school.
So a lot of my choices were based around not leaving home,
being there for Lia.
Yeah, so, I definitely remember there were times
where he was offered different things
that would mean complete relocation,
and there was a lot of things he couldn't do
because there was me and I was in school.
And, you know, I-I was able to miss school for certain things,
but, you know, to completely uplift me
out of Pittsburgh would've been,
you know, maybe traumatizing as a child.
And he made those choices based upon me in mind.
He definitely, I feel like, missed out
on a lot of different opportunities.
Tom: Going from movie job to movie job,
you know, you lived from paycheck to paycheck.
It was a... It was a struggle.
So, luckily, there were all these horror conventions
I could go to, and, you know, appearances, signings.
And I was living off that for a long time.
But, also, within those 20 years,
I was making, you know, alimony payments
and child-support payments, so...
it was a... It was a struggle.
There are a lot of people who are just...
just go from convention to convention.
And that's their living.
And that was me.
Tom Savini, one of the greatest guys
to ever grace the horror business.
One of the nicest guys to meet at a convention.
He's got a thumbs-up in my book.
I think he's legendary. His special effects,
I mean, just changed the whole horror-movie industry.
And then I met him today for the first time,
and he's just an awesome guy.
So, the difference between conventions back then,
when they were my lifeblood,
they were my... how I sustained myself,
and now is, I go there and enjoy the conventions.
I go there and enjoy the fans.
I go there and listen to their stories
and how I've inspired them.
I love the convention mood.
You're surrounded by people that are into what you do.
They're into the monsters, they're into...
It's like hanging out with your friends who love horror movies,
except there's 5,000 of them, you know,
or, in some shows, 20,000 of them.
So many times, me and my best friend,
Rob Lucas, would... would be setting up the convention,
and we would look at each other, going, "I love this."
We started a rubber band fight at a...
at a Comic-Con show once, right?
The next day, there was, like, 3,000 people with rubber bands.
[Laughs] Tom, you started it.
Doing conventions with Tom because we get crazy.
We have rubber band fights from across the room,
launching 4 at a time, okay?
[Laughs]
But, you know, that's part of the fun of the whole thing.
Basically we're big kids having fun.
Tom: The fans? You know, the fans are interesting.
They range from little kids, to, you know, doctors and lawyers,
and everybody in between.
But the fans either love you or hate you.
The biggest mistake you can make in life,
not just with fans, is to try to please everybody.
Those same people that are in love with Savini
and his work want to attribute him to be this monster.
This... This guy that... that really lives this...
where he's a family guy like me, you know?
It's funny what... what they want you to be,
and then what you really are.
It may be a blessing to be typecast as a villain.
You know, I have this face.
Most of my parts are villains.
It's a big surprise to people, when they see
"Perks of a Wallflower," for example.
Here, I'm... I'm a high-school teacher.
The first thing they... I say to them when they say,
"Hey, I enjoyed you in 'Perks of a Wallflower, '"
I say, "You didn't... Must've been a big surprise"
to see me in that, wasn't it?
No guns, no zombies, you know.
"You know, I'm not killing anybody." You know?
But it shows some diversity.
So, there is a blessing to being typecast,
'cause I will keep getting those roles, you know.
The curse is, maybe I won't be the lead
in a love story, you know, any time soon.
[Laughs]
When I say I don't do effects anymore...
and I don't... fans would ask me why I did that, you know?
The truth of it is, I mean, I've stopped.
My hands have been giv... My hands are a big problem.
There's so much pain in sculpting,
so one of the reasons I got away from doing effects
is losing the use of my hands,
and... and nobody knows that until now.
And even though I don't do makeup effects,
I do collaborate, and I consult with effects crews.
I just did "Red Ink" in Australia as a consultant,
and I collaborated with my buddy Gino Crognale
on Triple H's "King of Kings" crown for WrestleMania.
♪ ♪
I'd been approached a few times about starting a makeup school.
Jeff Imbrescia came at me full force.
I said, "Whoa." Signed on the spot
at the Baltimore restaurant down the street.
And then he bought the building and started the programs.
We had 24 students the first time.
Now we had 80 students come in last October.
We still get an average of 35
or, you know... or 30 on the off months,
which are February and June.
Tom talked me into just coming out, looking at the school.
And when I first came out here, it was an abandoned building.
It had been a convent, and it was totally gutted.
And I thought, "Okay, this is July,"
and the school's gonna open in October?
"I don't think it's gonna happen."
But he said, "No, no."
Don't worry, don't worry. It's... It's gonna happen."
So I-I gave it a shot, told him I'd... I'd give it a year,
and it's 11 years later, and I'm still here.
Tom: The work that is coming out of the students
is just phenomenal.
The students' attitude is, "This is school?!"
Because they're having so much fun doing this all day
and making their dreams come true.
And I think we're the number-one school for...
Well, there's a lot of reasons.
We have industry professionals as teachers,
we're the least-expensive school,
and our program is the longest school.
It's 16 months.
And it's a degree program.
My intention was to give back to other aspiring artists
because it was so hard learning how to do stuff, growing up.
Nobody shared secrets, except for Dick Smith.
I love how that made people feel,
to... to learn something
that's... that's a hidden secret for so many years,
and I wanted to make people feel the same way.
To see students on "Face Off" consistently
or, you know, making careers out of it.
You know, these are the guys that you know are like you.
I could have saw "Man of a Thousand Faces"
when I was 11 years old, and, well, the movie that I saw,
you know, and then watched "Rodan" and not be affected.
But I was affected by that movie, somehow, you know.
It made me passionate about makeup effects.
So when I see Kevin Kirkpatrick or Ian or Tate
or all these guys that are out making careers out of it,
they are the ones that had the same passion.
So I identify with them
and appreciate what it took to get that, you know.
Excuse me. Maybe you can help me,
I'm looking for Tom Savini.
♪ ♪
You want an extreme makeover?
You got it. Wow.
Very nice to meet you. Pleasure. Hi. Thank you.
So, listen, I have a 15-year-old
who, really, you are his hero.
He wants to be you.
And I found this in his room.
This is a drawing he made.
Is there anything we can do?
I think I can help you.
Narrator: In the makeup world, Tom Savini is a household name.
Pennington: Who's your favorite makeup artist?
Donnie: Tom Savini.
He... He did that?
Yeah. Yeah!
I really wish I could thank... thank him for all this work.
I think you might actually be able to.
Hey, come on in.
Meet Tom Savini. What's going on in here?
♪ ♪
- How you doing? - I'm fine.
We would like for you to come to the school and just hang out
with the students for a couple of days.
I would love that.
We know that you would love it. You might not leave.
♪ ♪
To me, my father is the epitome of never growing up.
Always has something behind the door,
ready to scare you, or a new toy that he brings home,
and it's the constant excitement that you see
when a child gets something that they're really excited about.
He's still that same person.
He's still just always looking for fun things to do,
different things, new things.
Tom: A lot of, I think, my creativity comes from being childlike.
It's not an insult if you said,
"Oh, you're acting like a child."
Oh, thank you so much. That's my goal.
My goal in life is to be the child again.
That's where creativity and freshness comes from.
I had children at... at... at a young age.
I was 21 when my son was born.
My daughter lives with me, and she's a gem.
Her son James is my familiar, my sidekick.
I don't have much to say about them
except that they are... They're what I live for,
where all my happiness comes from.
Lia: I was 16 when I had James, so, I mean, the fact
that he didn't have a heart attack
and handled it and just was very accepting.
I mean, now I couldn't imagine if James wasn't around.
And the relationship my father and I have,
he's taken on the responsibility of being James' father, as well,
and does everything that I remember I got to do
when I was young with James, with the conventions, and...
One of... I know one of my favorite things
growing up around him was, we were constantly
going to Disney, every year.
Disney's kind of, like, our special thing.
And James is now in that, as well.
Like, on the screen, it looks like he's, like,
a big, like, hero and stuff.
Like, he's very...
different.
He's just different on the screen.
But at home, he's just a normal person.
♪ ♪
This guy, Tom Savini, I loved his work
and followed him, and maybe I'll go to his school.
So I signed up, and I was in the first class.
I got to meet Tom there, of course,
and we became very close.
We actually really clicked and had a lot in common.
Now I can call him my best friend.
I mean, we hang out and do things
and travel the world together.
And... And I owe a lot to him.
If I had to choose one word for Tom, it would be "fun."
If I had one word to describe what working for Tom is,
it's "fun."
"Fun" or "chaotic."
Which is kind of fun.
I always say, "He's my best friend, he's my best friend."
It's weird.
It's one of those... It... He's more like a brother.
We won't speak for a year, and then we'll pick up
and call each other at the same moment on the phone.
That kind of stuff always did happen and still happens.
It's just the weirdest, you know, connection
that you have with some people. I don't know what it is.
Moseley: Again, over the years,
we've done a lot of conventions together.
I visit him in Pittsburgh from time to time.
I think Tom is actually, truly, a great guy.
I... Again, I wish he directed more.
He's a great actor.
And...
[Mock crying] I'm starting to cry now.
No, actually, I-I love Tom.
I love Tom Savini.
He's a gentleman, he's a man of his word,
which is very important.
He can look you in the eye, and you'll know
exactly what he's about and where he comes from,
and that's a rare quality.
They always say, "Don't meet your heroes
because you'll be... You'll be really disappointed."
And then, with Tom, it's the opposite.
You know, you met Tom,
and it made sense that you had become friends, 'cause you...
You've... You'd admired them for so long,
almost like as if you knew
you were gonna work with them someday,
without possibly knowing.
I mean, we're on two different sides of the country.
Cooper: I'd pick up "Rue Morgue" and I'd pick up
all the... you know, the horror magazines
and everything like that, just to see what's coming out
and what's everybody doing,
and always something about Savini in there, you know.
He's doing this, he's doing that.
He's really, um...
He's one of the actors in Hollywood
that is very, really athletic.
He's not, like, just bullshit. You know what I mean?
Again, it's like, you know, he's... he's a great actor.
I have a lot of respect for all the stuff that he's done.
With the... Even... the the mask stuff.
You know, I forget.
The prosthetics and all that, you know, makeup, you know.
That... But... But he's a great actor.
I-I-I feel that Tom doesn't get enough recognition
for what he brought to the industry
and the thousands of people that Tom influenced
in terms of wanting to be filmmakers...
not just special effects makeup guys,
but writers, directors, producers,
to make genre movies.
Tom: I just got an agent.
Everything I've done in my career
has been without an agent and from Pittsburgh.
My agent's got me some great television gigs.
A lot of TV stations, like the Epix network,
are showing horror movies all month.
So, for the Epix network,
I'm a "London after Midnight" Lon Chaney kind of guy,
with flames coming out of a crystal ball,
to introduce, as... as Lon Chaney
would in a silent movie,
with title cards... introduce the horror movies.
Most people retire when they're 65, you know.
That word doesn't exist in my vocabulary anymore, you know.
I don't believe in... Retirement, to me, means death
in so many ways, you know.
The death of ambition, you know, so...
And... And I can honestly say that's not true with me.
Luckily, I can take long breaks between that.
I can do a gig and then just, you know, play.
Go on vaca... I take long vacations,
you know, between jobs.
It's taken me... I don't know... 55 years
to appreciate the moment.
To live in the moment.
You know, if you sat in a chair and just made your mind blank,
the thoughts that come at you, and... and thousands of them do,
those thoughts are hurts from the past
and worries about the future.
So you're not really here.
You're thinking about 2 places that you have no control over
and that you can do nothing about.
You can't do anything about the past.
You can prepare for the future,
but you can't do shit about it, okay?
So you're in these 2 places, and you're not here,
and that's what I was suffering from.
I was suffering from not being able to live in the moment.
Now I can.
Now it's great. It's an easy thing to do.
♪ ♪
My life has changed quite a bit recently.
I got married.
I have 2 cats.
And I'm probably the happiest I've ever been at this moment.
And that's what's important, this moment.
I've been blessed with
having some interesting people in my life.
Not just in my career, but in my personal life.
♪ ♪
My daughter Lia, she's... she's so bright,
and she is so right and correct,
and... how else can I say this... good.
She's such a good person.
Lia: God, he's dealt with so much craziness from me,
and he's handled it very gracefully.
Oh. Amazing. Amazing.
He's my favorite... favorite guy in the world.
I probably could've... God, so many worse things could happen,
and he's just made my life amazing.
She's one of the bright lights in my life, and James, her son,
I-I don't know where to begin with how I love this kid.
He's also so good, and so right-on, and so smart,
and such an interesting person.
♪ ♪
And just recently my daughter gave birth
to another grandson, Carson,
so that's one more person that I share my life with.
And Jodii is the same way.
The things that she comes out with.
It's like a great... It's like listening to great music,
the things that come out of their mouths
and their minds that I share and connect with.
I-I think that people kind of like the idea
that there are... There are actual Addams Families.
I think Savini's family is probably very normal,
except for the fact that they scare the hell
out of people, you know.
And our family's kind of like that, too.
I mean, I still love movies. I still love working on movies.
I miss the theater.
There's so many things out there
that are really important to me and I love.
But the most important thing is, just today,
I'm walking through my house,
the lights are set up here to do this interview,
my wife is in front of the big screen
in the living room
dancing with this aerobics thing that's happening on television,
the cats are sitting there watching her,
and I'm like, "This is happiness."
But the most important thing is the feeling
I get from this moment, you know.
And the next moment that's going to occur
when I go down the house and, you know, grab one of the cats,
or, you know, kiss Jodii, you know.
I mean, this is really, you know, happiness.
And I... And I'm still living in the house that I grew up in,
so I've never lost my sense of home.
I have no complaints.
I'm really enjoying life.
♪ ♪
Did you hear all that?
I think that cop was Tom Savini.
♪ ♪
He's a solid guy.
He's a good father. Now he's a grandfather.
And I wish... Tom, I wish you all the luck in the world.
♪ ♪
I owe a lot of my career to Tom.
♪ ♪
That I enjoy it all, you know.
[Cellphone chimes]
Tinker Bell just came in.
I should turn that off, huh?
There.
Man: Make sure you use that.
- Tell you what. - What?
Let's see how close I can get to your lens.
With me holding it?
Yeah, of course.
It'll be cool.
- Oh! - Oh, my God!
- I bet your mic went down. - My mic?! Me!
Get out of the fucking way. We're shooting a documentary.
♪ ♪
I also don't like Tom very much.
And the reason that I don't like Tom very much
is, he treated me like shit the first time I met him.
I was living in Charlotte at the time.
Nothing cool ever came to fucking Charlotte, ever.
And I went up to him and I had the "Fangoria" magazine that had
"Night of the Living Dead" on the cover. I handed it to him,
said, "Big fan of your work, really liked the remake."
He takes it from me and goes,
"Oh, good. Worst experience of my life. That's great."
Hands it right back to me.
And I spent the whole rest of the day horribly depressed.
My illusions were shattered forever.
But then I got to know the guy years later,
and he's one of my best friends in the business,
and there isn't anything I wouldn't do for him.
So, what started off bad ended up real good.
But I never miss an opportunity
to fuck with him if I can.
What the fuck was that called? I directed it.
♪ ♪
Anyway...
And I went in, and Tom was in there,
and I said, "Tom, your girlfriend's outside."
She's trying to get in. Should I bring her in?"
He's like, "Oh, God, what's she doing here?"
Nah, just... just leave her out there."
They must've got into a fight or something.
Somebody claiming to be his date showed up,
and he just left her out there.
I thought that was pretty damn funny.
You know, one of my very best friends, Bob Savini,
is... What?
Oh, Tom Savini, yeah. Tom Savini.
One of my very best friends.
And in case that didn't work...
Oh, he kicked the camera.
Fucking moron.