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Thursday, June 30, 2005

FANTASTIC FOUR MOVIE: MICHAEL CHIKLIS AS THE THING

For Michael Chiklis, there wasn't going to any thing but the real Thing.

In playing the orange, rocky-skinned member of the Fantastic Four, Chiklis didn't want the character to be computer-generated like the movie Hulk. And he was determined to bring across the human elements of Ben Grimm, regardless of any prosthetics burden.

"That was a huge issue for me," he said from the set in Vancouver, British Columbia last October. "I felt very strongly that I gave myself 100 percent to this. I really wanted it to be a costume, because I felt that if it was just CGI, then you would lose the humanity part.

"The other question was, can we make it so it looks and feels like the original character? And that's the extraordinary thing that these guys have accomplished. Even when I'm in the 60 pounds of make-up, the prosthetic, you see it's my eyes, it's my face, and it moves along with my face. I think it's a pretty big accomplishment, to marry the technical with the emotional, the human."

"It was one of the biggest decisions we had to make on this movie," director Tim Story said. "And we made it very early on so that we would have all the time necessary to really get The Thing right. Unlike The Hulk, for example, beneath all that rock is a human being who has human feelings. He talks, he has conversations, he even has romance, so we felt it was imperative that an actor Œgenerate' this character rather than a computer. Although he looks like a monster, it is Michael's performance that makes The Thing believable as a man."

Chiklis knew there would be physical demands, but he had no idea the psychological toll wearing the costume would take. He jokingly likened it to "being in the seventh circle of Hell."

"Initially, it was really, really kind of frightening for me," he said. "I'm not a phobic person or an anxiety-ridden person. But I had a full-on anxiety attack the first time they put me in. And I think it's because once they put the hands on me, I can't get out on my own."

The anxiety got so bad that Chiklis, doubting he could fulfill the role, consulted a psychiatrist. He said he felt fine once he was "in the moment" or talking with Story or the actors. But once he was alone in the suit, the anxiety would creep up.

"I didn't know if I could do it," he said. "She helped me get the right mind-set."

It took three hours to transform Chikis into the Thing.

Costume designer José Fernandez, creature effects supervisor Mike Elizalde, visual effects producer Kurt Williams and many artists, sculptors, creature designers and technicians at Spectral Motion worked together for months to create The Thing suit.

The Thing was generated from initial renderings and maquette sculptures by Fernandez, research and development by Elizalde's team at Spectral Motion, and the practical on-set application by key effects makeup artists Bart Mixon and Jayne Dancose. The suit is made of latex and, in some areas, measures five to six inches thick. According to costume designer Fernandez, it was a real "pressure cooker."

"Imagine a normal wet suit," Fernandez said, "and compound that thickness by a few more inches. That gives you some idea of the weight of the suit. However, unlike The Thing's costume, your head can be exposed in a wet suit in order to let heat escape. Michael was literally capped off when he was inside and there really was nowhere for the heat to go. Kudos to him because he cooked in there and cooked hard."

The suit team developed a system to cool Chiklis down by removing one of the "rocks" on the top of his head and inserting an air conditioning hose that blew cool air into the small gap between the actor's skin and the Spandex lining inside the suit. They also had a special slant board constructed that would allow the actor to lie back at an approximate 45-degree angle. Affectionately dubbed "The Rack" by Chiklis, the slant board was not only more comfortable for Chiklis to relax on in between takes (since he couldn't sit or fit in a typical director's chair) but it also allowed the makeup and wardrobe teams to access the actor from head to toe and to re-apply or touch up the prosthetics on set.

Even with his state-of-the-art, one-of-a-kind suit, The Thing was enhanced for certain situations, with computer generated effects.

"Our real job with The Thing character was all about enhancing the integration with his environment," Williams said. "For instance, when he jumps onto pavement, that pavement would crack under the weight of all that rock. If he brushes by the corner of a brick building, some of those bricks might be loose enough to fall off due to sheer force. Of course, if he scratches an itch on his face, you'll see a little scrape on the rock and a bit of dust. When he makes an extreme move, we've created even more dust coming off his body, as if the rocks are grinding together. The practical suit may have weighed 60 pounds but we augmented him to appear like the two thousand pound rock that he is."

"It was horrible and I talked about it a lot," Chiklis said. "But it was worth it when you see it on the screen. It's something special."



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