st218

MOVIE FEATURE

visit jbhifi.com.au/stack

On working with director Paul Verhoeven “Paul Verhoeven was really a mentor to me; we had the same world view,” says Tippett. “We would talk philosophically and considered ourselves as existential Buddhists,” he adds whimsically. “I like where Paul’s mind went. He’s an artist and he doesn’t care if his films make money, and they’re all one of a kind. Starship Troopers , I had the most fun on that, and RoboCop .”

STACK chats with special effects master Phil Tippett about his long-gestating dream project, the experimental and nightmarish animated film Mad God . Words Glenn Cochrane I f you’ve seen Jurassic Park , RoboCop , Starship Troopers or (ahem) Star Wars , then you’ll be familiar with the work of special effects wizard Phil Tippett, the man whose stop motion animation raised the bar within the film industry and set a new standard. In 1980, Tippett created a new technology production process. This magnum opus is a nightmarish vision – a stop motion odyssey devoid of dialogue and abundant in horrors. STACK caught up with Tippett and picked his brain about Mad God in an attempt to wrap our own feeble minds around his gluttony for the grotesque.

StarshipTroopers

the 20-year evolution, Tippett sheds further light on why it took so long. “The computer graphic revolution hit and that occupied all of my time. I had to go to production meetings and be on the set, and then had lengthy post-production times [on many projects]. But in the evenings or on the weekends, or if I was on location, I would draw storyboards and creature designs. “I did that for 20 years along with reading Freud, Jung, and Milton and Dante,” he adds with a wry smile, “and books on archaeology, palaeontology and human evolution.” Such influences are undeniable, with the world of Mad God being one of hellish fire and brimstone that’s occupied by mutants and other ghastly creatures. Telling the story of an assassin descending upon a city in a state of decay, Tippett’s fantasy is a tapestry of the macabre. Grotesque alchemy abounds at every turn, and in place of a comprehensive narrative is an overall expression. The film is a mood piece and a series of thoughts, some biblical and others philosophical. On this, Tippett is amused at the different responses that the film has garnered from around the world. “There’s definitely a religious side to it, but it’s definitely not Christian. And many – if not most – of the European interviewers were really aware of the biblical context. They noticed Dante and Milton, but in the United States that never happens,” adding with a laugh, “we’re not educated over here.”

called Go-Motion – an evolution of stop motion – that incorporates motion blur into the animation, giving the images fluidity and a greater augmentation with the live action surrounding them. The first example of this method was in The Empire Strikes Back , and it’s a technique that has been used in countless films since. The arrival of CGI in the 1990s sawTippett’s career shift from the craft he held close to his heart into a new era of digital animation, with films like Jurassic Park , Tremors and Starship Troopers adding to his long list of credits. His latest film is Mad God , a labour of love, which arrives after a long and arduous 30-year

When we offer the compliment that Mad God was brain food to us, his response is swift and puckish: “I think you mean brain DAMAGED food!” Casting his mind back to the late ’80s, Tippett explains how the seed of the film first came to him, and what led to it being a decades-long endeavour. “It was 1987 after we finished RoboCop 2 that we started, but it all began before that, years earlier, when I was trying to figure out a movie to make. “What I ended up with was kind of like a Mobius or Richard Corbin kind of a thing, and at the end of

the day, I just didn’t like it. So I started working on this thing that I didn’t know what it was, doing drawings and watercolours. Then eventually, after we shot about three minutes worth, it turned into 20 years.” From those initial concept drawings to

• Mad God is out on Dec 7

16 DECEMBER 2022

jbhifi.com.au