William Stout, Illustrator, 'Pans Labyrinth', 'Predator', 'Return of the Living Dead'

0:00Jawad MirYou created an early design for Faun. When you're working with someone as visually specific as Guillermo, how do you bring your own imagination into his world? I know he's a very collaborative guy.

0:11William StoutGuillermo and I share a lot of friends, and they all kept saying the same thing. "Bill, you've gotta meet Guillermo." So I finally got to meet Guillermo, and we hit it off. And he came by my booth the next day and he bought two pieces of mine, two paintings, and he asked me if I would mind delivering them to his home. I said, "Not at all." The reason he wanted me to come to his home is he wanted to talk to me about working on Pan's Labyrinth. And so we were in the middle of talking about that and the phone rang. I'm hearing his end of it is, "Oh, yes. Oh, thank you. Oh, I'm, I am so honored. That is, that is just... But, I'm sorry, I'm, I'm gonna have to pass. I need to make my little Spanish film now." And they hung up. I said, "Guillermo, what was all that about?" He says, "Oh, that was Warner Brothers. They just offered me Harry Potter." Oh my God, this guy just blew off the Harry Potter franchise to make his little Spanish film? My esteem for him just shot sky high.

1:14Jawad MirAmong all the work that you have done, for some reason, and I think it has to do with the concept and the story, to… just talk to me about working on that film. Like, the illustrations, the concept, and all that stuff that you worked with Frank, and obviously based on Stephen King's book. I would love to hear some thoughts on that first.

1:34William StoutSure. Yeah. Well, Frank Darabont was a dear friend of mine. Is a dear friend of mine, and a collector of mine. And we've been friends for many years. And The Mist got the green light, and Frank called me and called some of the other, artists who had been, that he had been collecting. And he said, "Hey, now's the time for us all to work together." And I thought, "This is great." So I immediately, got the book and I read the story, and loved the story, and began sketching creatures immediately. And the next day I got diagnosed with, prostate cancer.

2:13Jawad MirOh.

2:13William StoutAnd, I had to tell Frank that I was sorry, that, I wasn't gonna be able to work on his film because I was being treated for prostate cancer. I was gonna have surgery. But by that time I'd already done three designs and, one of them got used in the film, which was the spider design. So my work on that film was just one day.

2:39Jawad MirThat's still good. I mean, I think i… that film... Well, s… first of all, sorry to hear about your prostate cancer. I'm assuming you're all good now.

2:48William StoutI'm fine. Yeah, it's all fine now. Yeah.

2:50Jawad MirYeah. And I just feel that sh… that movie, and you know, even if you worked on it a day it's okay because you read the book, you had some sort of a thought process to be able to translate that onto paper. Even though that book/film is about, you know, these creatures from other dimension or monsters or whatever, the bugs, giant bugs, the film is really about the monsters of within the human beings, right? Whatever sort of unfolds in that grocery store.

3:19William StoutYeah.

3:20Jawad MirWhen you were designing that one giant spider or multiple artwork that you did, h… was that sort of in your mind the human monster, the psych, you know, the n… the behavior of human beings in those, in that story, to be able to inspire that into the, not visually, but just the feel of it?

3:40William StoutI think that would've happened later since it was only my first day on the film. I was just, "Let's get some monsters going." And I used, the descriptions in the Stephen King story as my sendoff, as my base, as my start.

3:55Jawad MirGot it. Well, we'll switch from Mist to Predator. Let's talk about Predator. I'm assuming you worked quite a bit on that one.

4:02William StoutYes.

4:02Jawad MirYes.

4:03William StoutYeah. It was Rick, my friend Rick Baker who brought me in on that. When I first started in motion pictures, all my friends in the biz were mostly special effects makeup guys like Rick Baker and Rob Bottin.

4:14William StoutAnd, so we were dying to work together, and finally got my chance to work with Rick on The Predator. He called me in and I had a meeting with him and with, the director and the production designer. I think the production designer I think was John Bolone and, the director was, John McTiernan.

4:35Jawad MirYes. Die Hard, of course.

4:37William StoutSo I had read the script. They gave me the script and, at their first meeting, the director and the production designer pulled out a book of, H.R. Giger's work and they said, "You know, we wouldn't be unhappy if the creature looked exactly like this." And my reaction was, "Well, hire Giger. Don't hire me. If you hire me, you're gonna get something original. If you hire Giger, you're, you're gonna get a Giger piece, and if that's what you want, you should hire Giger." And, I stayed on and I started doing designs. So originally the film was called Hunter before it was called Predator.

5:12Jawad MirYes.

5:13William StoutAnd so I w… I was trying to come up with really original ways to look at this creature and to make it function in the film properly and stuff. And, at our second meeting, I was speaking with the director and I said, "You know, one of the great things about this screenplay is you're gonna get two completely different audiences to see this film." And he says, "Well, what are you talking about?" I said, "Well, you're gonna get the action/adventure crowd, of course. But with that great ending you're gonna get an entirely different audience to this film." He says, "What are you talking about?" I said, "Well, the ending. Well, Arnold kills the predator, and after he's killed the predator, he's looking down at the, at the body, the carcass of this creature. And he reaches down and he opens it up, and inside is this frail little alien." I said, "What an incredible commentary on man as a hunter who has to gird himself up with all this technological s… gear and stuff to go hunting."

6:15William StoutThis is, it's, it's a great analogy. A… and so McTiernan is… he s… I see he's thinking about it, and he looks in his script and he rereads it, and he rips those pages right out of the script in front of me. I said, "John, what are you doing?" He says, "Oh, we can't have that ending. That would mean that Arnold beat up a wimp."

6:38Jawad MirG… good point. I mean, I love the original ending.

6:42William StoutSo that's how I ruined the end of Predator.

6:46Jawad MirThat kind of…

6:46William StoutBut I think there's, I think eventually he would have re… realized what was going on.

6:51Jawad MirThat kinda reminds me of, I mean, when you're, as you're describing, like, you know, the little creature coming out of Predator, does something like that happen with, War of the Worlds, the Steven Spielberg one, 20 years ago?

7:04William StoutRight.

7:04Jawad MirI don't know if you've seen it.

7:06William StoutSure.

7:06Jawad MirIn the end, they, there's these little creatures that come out. So as you were talking to me, that sort of visuals came into my head. I actually spoke to, I don't know if you worked directly with him, because he was more on the production side of things, John Rosengrant, who, worked with the puppeteer and all that. And I talked to him about his work on Predator as well. And I've seen a lot of behind the scene features. So…

7:31Jawad Mir... Initially, the design of Predator was different. So when you…

7:35William StoutRight. Initially it was, it was based upon, the skeleton of a catfish.

7:40Jawad MirYeah. So when you see the…

7:42William StoutAnd that was fun

7:43Jawad Mir... When you, when you see the Predator invisible, you sometimes in some of the shots, the layout, the outline of the creature is not the same as what you see when it's revealed, right? Because they had shot some of the stuff originally with the older model. So were you on that? Did you come in after that to change that, or were you, where were you in that whole, that process of when that was happening?

8:06William StoutI was right in the very beginning. I was the, second guy hired. First guy hired was, Rick Baker. Second guy hired was me as far as the creature design. And, there's a saying, "Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan." And, there were several people who worked on the creature. I was the first one to work on the creature based, I had designs that originally based upon a catfish skeleton, then I did some variants on that. And then it was Bob Short who came up with those great, sort of mechanical dreadlocks that the creature wore. And there's a guy in Stan Winston's crew who came up with that great four-pronged mouth. So it was the work of several people.

8:53Jawad MirWhat was the inspiration behind creating that? Like, did you look at other creatures in the wildlife or maybe some other movies that you were inspired by?

9:07William StoutWhenever I do creature design, the first thing I do is I go through the screenplay, what does this creature have to do? How does it have to function? How does it live in this world? What, how does it move? In the case of Predator, it's in the jungle, so there's a lot of treetop stuff, so it has to be able to climb. So I have to design a creature that looks like it can climb. I'm always looking for w… ways to convey realism so that the audience believes that this creature really exists. And so that's, that's where I begin.

9:42Jawad MirNice. You worked on Pan's Labyrinth, with Guillermo bif… I mean, that pretty much was the movie that gave him a name that he has achieved now over the last, you know, two decades. And you created an early design for Faun.

10:01William StoutYes.

10:01Jawad MirWhen you're wor… when you're working with someone as visually specific as Guillermo, how do you bring your own imagination into his world? I know he's a very collaborative guy, but still he has this vision even to this day, even the film that I saw, Frankenstein, his most recent work. He's very visual. So how does that collaboration work in, at least in that particular case of La… Pan's Labyrinth?

10:25William StoutWell, with Pan's Labyrinth, it was, it was interesting. Guillermo and I share a lot of friends, and they all kept saying the same thing, "Bill, you've gotta meet Guillermo. You guys are like two peas in a pod. You'll hit it off so well." And we kept missing each other. And then at Comic-Con each year on Thursday night, Frank Darabont would throw a big dinner at the best restaurant in San Diego. He'd invite all his favorite artists, but occasionally he'd invite some of his film director friends as well. Well, at one of these, he seated me opposite Guillermo, and so I finally got to meet Guillermo, and we hit it off. And he came by my booth the next day and he bought two pieces of mine, two paintings. And he asked me if I would mind delivering them to his home. I said, "Not at all." And, so I drove to his home and th… you know, this is where he had this spectacular collection. My God, I was so happy to be able to take a little tour of all the stuff that he had. Later, it became a gigantic exhibition at the, LA County Museum of Art, which I think was probably the greatest exhibition that museum has ever had, w… just Guillermo's collection.

11:38William StoutSo he showed me his astounding collection at his home. In fact, he even ended up buying the house next door because he had run out of room to display his collection. And, the reason he wanted me to come to his home is he wanted to talk to me about working on Pan's Labyrinth. And so we were in the middle of talking about that and the phone rang, and he said, "Oh, sorry, I have to take this." And so I'm, I'm hearing his end of it is, "Oh, yes. Oh, thank you. Oh, I'm, I am so honored. That is, that is just…" So wonderful. But, "I'm sorry, I'm, I'm gonna have to pass. I need to make my little Spanish film now." And he hung up. I said, "Guillermo, what was all that about?" He says, "Oh, that was Warner Brothers. They just offered me Harry Potter." And I thought, "Oh my God, this guy just blew off the Harry Potter franchise to make his little Spanish film?" My esteem for him just shot sky high. I thought, "Okay, this guy's the real deal."

12:39William StoutAnd so he assigned me four different things to design. One was the faun. There was a creature that eventually got cut from the film called the nerve being. It's like a strange, almost like childlike, almost like fetus-like creature that as it approached, its body was sort of falling like sand. And it looks very benign until it gets close to you, and then suddenly it opens its mouth and a horse skull plunges out of its mouth and bites you. And then there was a... Originally, the toad that was in the film was going to not be a real toad, but was gonna be a carved out of stone toad that comes to life. And then he also had me design the main structure where the film takes place, and he wanted that based upon, Basque, architecture. And so that's, that's what I went to work on. Those are the four pieces I designed for him. And then eventually the faun went a number of changes with other designers.

13:46William StoutBut…

13:46Jawad MirThat's, that's incredible. I mean, I think a lesson in all this is even before you told me, excuse me, that he invited you to his home because he wanted to talk to you about Pan's Labyrinth. Now, if you or somebody else in a different state of mind would've said, "Well, why the hell am I gonna deliver," you know…... The art… artwork because, you know, the ego kinda comes into play.

14:12William StoutSure.

14:12Jawad MirAnd then who knows, right? So it's, it's a great lesson that sometimes, and not for that reason that you should do that, but you just don't know where things will lead you, and that's, that's so cool. I totally love that. I totally love that. Wh… when you're, when you're designing faun, t… just talk to me about the process of that. Like, what kinda different iterations that you went through and the evolution of designing that character.

14:40William StoutWell, the first thing that happened that really surprised me is that Guillermo handed me a sheet of paper with all of his sketches for all four of those things. Well, actually, he hadn't, he hadn't done sketches of the set, of the main place where they filmed. But he had, it was, his first sketch of the faun, a sketch of the nerve creature, and, a very quick sketch of the toad creature as well. So I had that to go on, and that's what I started to... I s… basically I started to take his designs and just what in Disney speak they call plus it up, just add to it and refine it.

15:26Jawad MirWow. I do wonder because I don't know if you've seen... I haven't seen all the Harry Potter films. I think I've probably seen the first three or four.

15:35William StoutYeah.

15:35Jawad MirAnd as the series evolved, it became darker. And I would imagine how would Guillermo handle it, like, more towards, like, in the part four, five, six or seven, because that would've been really a treat to see.

15:48William StoutYeah.

15:48Jawad MirBut alas, you know, he chose Pan's Labyrinth as the baby, so that's, that's awesome. But that would've been really cool experience.

15:55William StoutYeah, the, yeah, the first two it was down to, Chris Columbus and Terry Gilliam…

16:02Jawad MirYeah

16:02William Stout... As choices for a director, and I wish they had picked Terry. But the reason, the w… the reason they picked Chris Columbus is they compared, grosses of their films.

16:14Jawad MirYeah.

16:14William StoutSo it was a financial decision, which is a shame. I would've loved to have seen what Terry Gilliam would've done with that.

16:22Jawad MirI mean, they could've brought him later in the seven-part series. I know Steven Spielberg was, initially asked. He was supposed to, but then he chose Kubrick's AI at the time.

16:34William StoutYeah.

16:34Jawad MirAnd that was, that was something that it was... Because it's, you know, Chris Columbus and Steven Spielberg had worked together on films like Goonies and Gremlins, and it sort of up their alley.

16:42William StoutRight.

16:42Jawad MirBut of course, Terry Gilliam would've been, you know, fearing La… Las Vegas, fearing and, fear in Lo… in Las Vegas. That was, that would've been a nice, interpretation of Harry Potter.

16:53William StoutYeah.

16:56Jawad MirIn working on, Conan the Barbarian, Masters of the Universe, and Invaders from Mars. Actually, let's, let's, let's kind of reverse that. Masters of the Universe, it came out with a remake, right?

17:08William StoutRight.

17:08Jawad MirAnd you were involved in the original one. Just talk to me about the process of what were you involved in m… doing on Masters of the Universe. And then when, I don't know if you've seen the remake, and if you have, what were your thoughts in conjunction of the work that you did in, back in the '80s?

17:26William StoutSure. I haven't seen the remake, not yet. I've, I've pl… I've, I've heard some good things about it. And, I w… I was originally hired to storyboard, Masters of the Universe. And I hit it off with Gary Goddard, the director. We were right in sync. We spoke the same language. We had a sort of a code language. If he said, "Bill, I love this drawing. Can you Kirby it up a bit?" I knew exactly what he was talking about. He was talking about Jack Kirby. He's talking about making it a little more operatic. And so, I would, I was drawing storyboards, but at the same time I would, I would do some costume designs, some creature design. I'd slip those in, and just, Gary just loved that stuff. We had a pr… English production designer at the time, Jeff Kirkland. And, Jeff and Gary did not see eye to eye on almost anything. And there was, there was one day where, Gary was taking all the Mattel brass, on a tour of what we have done so far on the film.

18:38William StoutAnd, Gary is one of the best pitchmen in the business. He's a, he could sell ice to Eskimos. He's just a amazing guy. And he saved the best for the last, which was the art department. And so they'd seen everything leading up to this, and then they, he ushers them into the art department. N… now they are just, I can see it in their eyes. They are so excited. The film is becoming a real… reality for these guys. They are so pumped up. And Gary turns to Jeff for affirmation on this. And Jeff looks up and he goes, "It's not gonna be too fucking awful." Boy, burst that balloon. About two weeks later, Jeff quits the film. He recommends I take over as production designer. And, within an hour I was getting calls all, from all over town. I mean, Hollywood is such a small world.

19:34Jawad MirYeah.

19:35William StoutBut I was getting congratulatory calls from all over town. Before my family even knew I was the production designer, everybody in the business knew I was. It was amazing.

19:46Jawad MirSo, you know, was that your first production design gig?

19:50William StoutNo. No, my first production design gig was, I spent two years on an American Godzilla film that didn't get made.

19:57Jawad MirWow.

19:57William StoutIt was a dream project. Fred Dekker wrote one of the best screenplays I've ever read. I put together a dream art department. I had, Doug Wildey, the creator of Jonny Quest, and, Dave Stevens, the creator of The Rocketeer, doing my storyboards for me. Rick Baker was building me a gigantic robotic Godzilla head. David Allen was gonna do the stop-motion animation for the film. And Steve Chirkos had, from my designs, had done, the stop-motion animation puppet of Godzilla. But it was the right project at the wrong time. It was obviously gonna be a very expensive film. There was, oh gosh, effects in almost every shot. And at that time, four big budget films bombed at the box office, the most prominent one being Heavensgate. And so all the studios were like, "Oh, big budget? No way."

20:45William StoutSo it's just the right project, wrong time.

20:48Jawad MirDid you, do you still have work from that project?

20:52William StoutOh sure. Yeah. Yeah. It was…

20:55Jawad MirIt'd be interesting to see your vision of Godzilla.

20:59William StoutI would, I would do that film in a heartbeat. That screenplay was so good. It was just great. So then I got hired to,.. Well, I was working on Conan the Barbarian, and Ron, for the first two years, the art department of Conan the Barbarian was just two guys, me and Ron Cobb. And Ron's a very gregarious guy, threw lots of parties, and I would always go to his parties at his home. And then I'd usually bring something I was working on to show at the party to get feedback from people at the party. And always the first guy to look at whatever I brought was Dan O'Bannon, who was a longtime friend of Ron's. And what I didn't know was Dan was sizing me up as a potential production designer for The Return of the Living Dead.

21:49William StoutAnd he wasn't sure, he wasn't sure whether or not I could do high-tech stuff, high-tech design. And one of the pieces I brought in one night was a cover, a comic book cover I'd done for Alien Worlds of an astronaut sinking into the ground surrounded by all these little creatures. And Dan saw the suit that I designed for the astronaut, and he told me his first thought was, "Wow, Stout can do high-tech great." So he gave the producer of The Return of the Living Dead, Graham Henderson, a very short list of who he wanted as production designer. His first choice was Bernie Wrightson. And, his second choice was me. And Graham did his homework. He saw that I already had a string of film credits and Bernie didn't. And so he lied to Dan. He says, "Oh, Bernie passed on it, but I got Stout." So that's how I became the production designer for The Return of the Living Dead. And when I started working on that, Dan O'Bannon came up to me, he said, "You know how films have principal characters?"

22:51William StoutI go, "Yeah." He says, "I want you to design principal zombies. I want these zombies to look like no other zombie that's ever been made. I don't like the George Romero zombies wh… wh… where they just have little dark rings around their eyes. Give me something that the public has never seen." So the first creature I designed was the Tar Man, which has become a huge icon in horror mythology.

23:15William StoutAnd I went, just took it away from there. One of the frustrating things for me was because all my friends were s… special effects geniuses like Rick Baker and Rob Bottin, my hands were tied by the producer who owed the, our special effects makeup guy a favor. And, I was not getting the quality that I really wanted or needed. And eventually we had to fire that guy. And, I called up Rick Baker, Rick Baker and, "Do you have anybody from your team that you can spare me? I have some important designs that really need to be professionally done."

23:56Jawad MirSure.

23:56William StoutAnd he s… sent me this guy who looked like he was 12 years old. He wasn't. I mean, he was a, he was a, an adult, but it was, Tony Gardner. And, Tony did some great stuff for me. He did the Half Corpse, and he did the Split Dog. And, I started using Tony on all my films. He was just fantastic. Master of the Universe, he does, he built Gwildor's garden. And, he built, weapons for me for, the Martian weapons for Invaders from Mars. And Tony was great to work with.

24:30Jawad MirThat's amazing. You know, I'm, I'm gonna jump back to Predator for a second.

24:35William StoutSure.

24:37Jawad MirOver the years, they've tr… you know, they made Predator 2, which I thought was pretty good, but anything after that they made, in my view, was just pure garbage, right? Like, it was just absolutely terrible from a story and cinema standpoint. But now with the Predator franchise sort of getting a rebirth with Prey, Killer of the Killers, the, animation one and Badlands, the fact that you were sort of the pioneer, at least in the team of pioneers, of creating that character and almost 40 years later it's still living and if not been re… given rebirth in a very pristine manner, how does that feel to be part of that world?

25:19William StoutMan, I have, I have g… when I do convention appearances, I always have at least two or three people come up to me s… and say, "You designed my childhood," you know? Which is such a compliment to me. And the, and then to see what they've done with Predator, you know, the recent one where it, Native Americans became a part of it.

25:46Jawad MirYeah.

25:46William StoutThat is such a brilliant Predator film. It's so good. And, but it makes me so hap… happy just to see good movies, but to see good movies that I had sort of helped to spark early on, that's, that's a, it's a wonderful feeling.

26:02Jawad MirI would recommend that you watch Badlands as well as Killer of the Killers. It's, it's really well done. I mean, even in the original Predator, you know, the original Predator is, like, a monster. He's, like, a bad guy, right? But a lot of people love that film not because of Schwarzenegger, but because of Predator.

26:21William StoutRight. 'Cause Predator…

26:21Jawad MirAnd that is rare.

26:24William StoutYeah. The Predator has a code.

26:28Jawad MirYeah.

26:28William StoutAnd I th… I think people respond to that.

26:32Jawad Mir100%. I mean, I think one of the things, if you look at throughout cinema, not trying to draw a comparison, look at Godfather, you look at Untouchables, you know, any time the antagonist is given a little bit of a character or more than living, people are drawn to that. But when you just throw, like, an antagonist, like, you know, one-dimensional monster, nobody cares, right? Like, and it actually doesn't really put the protagonist in a bad place either. Like, then you have this battle between, you know, rooting for your protagonist, but at the same time you're enjoying the antagonist. So it's, it's very cool, that, you know, in Predator Badlands, the protagonist is Predator.

27:10Jawad MirAnd it's just done so well that, you know, again, I just thought I should ask you and mention that because that's really cool.

27:17William StoutYeah. I'll watch it tonight.

27:20Jawad MirHow did you get into all this world of creation and illustration? What inspired you?

27:27William StoutWell, the film bus… was totally an accident. I was an illustration major at CalArts. W… we used to call it by its old name, the Chouinard Art Institute. I think at the, when I was going there, I think it was the best art school in the country, if not the world. Ravi Shankar was the head of our music department.

27:46Jawad MirReally?

27:47William StoutEdith Head was in charge of the fashion d… design. She's won more Oscars for fashion design than any other person in the history of, film. Oh, gosh, when they have the ceramic sale, people from all over the United States would come to the ceramic sale. The head of the illustration department was Haw Kramer, who's the first president of the Society of Illustrators, and I was an illustration major. And, oh, the animation department was taught by Disney's nine old men.

28:18William StoutThis is, like, an embarrassment of riches. And yeah, so, the illustration department, I was an illustration major, they had a great policy which was if you got any real work on the outside, you could turn that in lieu of your homework. So my last two years of art school, almost everything I was turning in was real jobs, so it made the transition from academia to the real world seamless. It was just fantastic.

28:42Jawad MirThat's awesome.

28:43William StoutSo I was an illustrator. I always had my eye on making money, and I s… quickly found out that the most lucrative jobs in the, for illustrators were annual report illustration, which I was not qualified for 'cause I did not have sophisticated taste back then, and movie poster design. And so I was really hoping to break into movie poster design, but it was a really tough market to crack. And I ended up doing the very first merchandising of Star Wars. I did, 21 Coca-Cola cup designs for Burger King.

29:23Jawad MirReally?

29:23William StoutAnd George Lucas never forgot that. And when they decided to re-release American Graffiti, George insisted that I be the artist they hired to do the new poster. And the ad agency said, "No. We don't know who this guy is. We don't know if he can make a deadline. We don't know if his work is any good." they, believe me, they did not wanna use me at all. But George stuck, you know, stuck by me, and he insisted. He says, "You don't use Stout, you don't get the job." So they, he forced them to use me, and I came through f… flying colors. From that moment on, I had so much work doing movie posters. It was amazing. I ended up working on the ad campaigns for 120 films. Now, that is a completely separate world from the world of making films. Those two never intersect.

30:14Jawad MirYeah.

30:15William StoutAnd, yep, and so I had a friend, Bob Greenberg. He was working for Ed Pressman, and I was a big Robert E. Howard fan, and I'd read all the Conan books. And, Pressman was one of the producers on the Conan film, so I was interested in what was going on there. And Bob told me that Ron Cobb was the production designer. I thought, "Ron Cobb?" You know, 'cause I knew him as a political cartoonist. I knew he had done some of the creatures in the Cantina sequence for Star Wars, and I knew he had designed the Nostromo for Alien. So I was really curious, though, what he would do for Conan. But I was so busy doing movie posters, there was no way I could stop by the Conan offices to see what was being done. In fact, one week I opened up the calendar section of Los Angeles Times, and I had eight movie posters in that section. It was just a sheer coincidence and ti…

31:09Jawad MirWhich ones were they?

31:10William StoutI mean, wasn't p… Oh, man, I d… It was around 1978, '79, so.

31:16Jawad MirOkay.

31:16William StoutWhatever was done back then, I don't remember.

31:21Jawad MirThe, American…

31:22William StoutSo…

31:22Jawad MirSorry, go on.

31:23William StoutOh, yeah. So, I finally got a break in my schedule, but instead of going to the Conan offices, I went to downtown LA to the LA Convention Center because it was the ABA, the American Booksellers Association. Every year it was usually either in LA or New York, but it's every single publisher and editor in the United States all in one room. So for an illustrator like me, take my portfolio, I would go booth to booth to booth. I can collect enough work for the entire year. That was the plan. I walked into the lobby of the convention center, and the first person I ran into was Ron Cobb. And Ron said, "Bill, I've, I w… you are my number one choice of wha… of who I want to work with on Conan the Bar… Barbarian in the art department, but I have an agreement with John Milius, the writer-director. He has veto power over anybody I wanna bring into the art department. I have veto power over anybody he wants to bring into the art department. Would you mind leaving your portfolio for John to see? 'Cause I'd love to have you work with me on Conan."

32:25William StoutI thought, "Well, might be fun. M… ma… learn how to make movies." And, plus, figured it was, you know, just two weeks. And so I, the next day was a Friday, and I walked into the Conan offices and Milius was there. He looked through my book, and he remembered a story he had really liked that I had done for Heavy Metal. It was a Harlan Ellison story called Shattered Like a Glass Goblin.

32:51William StoutHe looked through the rest of the book, handed it back to me, and John's a bigger than life character. As he was walking out the door, he got to the doorway, he turned his head, he said, "Hire him." And so I walked into, Buzz Feitshans' office. He was our line producer. Buzz told me what I would be making on Conan, and I nearly fell off the chair laughing, 'cause it was about 10% of what I was making in advertising. But I thought, "Well, eh, it's just for two weeks. I can spare two weeks." And I later found out you're always hired for two weeks. They wanna find out whether or not you're an asshole.

33:23Jawad MirYeah.

33:24William StoutIf you are, once the two weeks is over, everybody parts, no hard feelings. So my two weeks turned into, turned into two years. When I started on Conan, Kathleen Kennedy was my receptionist. We were sharing offices with Steven Spielberg. So Ron and I would work on Conan during the day, and at 6:00 put our pencils down and just walk across the hall to Steven's office and kick around ideas with Steven for his next project, which was Raiders of the Lost Ark. So I thought it would…

33:52Jawad MirThat is so awesome

33:53William Stout... All would be like that. It was, it was a pretty unbelievable situation to be in. And plus, we'd get visits from George Lucas too, 'cause, you know, they were all buddies.

34:02Jawad MirYeah.

34:04William StoutSo…

34:04Jawad MirHave you ran into Steven, Kathleen, or George since then, or even the last 10, 20 years?

34:11William StoutGeorge just sent me a private invitation to, for an advanced preview of his new museum, the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

34:19Jawad MirYes.

34:19William StoutSo I, so I'll probably be seeing him, at that. That's, early September, I think.

34:26Jawad MirYeah.

34:28William StoutAnd let's see. And I got hired by... I got a phone call from Spielberg of several years ago, saying, "Look, I've got a job I think you'd be perfect for. It's, we formed a joint company between Universal, DreamWorks, and Sega." one minute.

34:47Jawad MirSorry, my apologies. I didn't turn my phone off. Give me one second. Sorry.

35:00William StoutSure. Sure.

35:00Jawad MirSorry about that.

35:01William StoutIt's okay. So Steven…

35:03Jawad MirSorry, go on

35:04William Stout... Steven said, "We've got this joint company, Sega Games, Universal Studios, and, DreamWorks. And we wanna design, video arcades, called GameWorks." And I said, "Steven, you got the wrong guy. I hate video games." "Really hate video game arcades. It's black boxes where nobody talks to each other." I said... And Steven said, "Exactly. That's why I want you. I want you to design a place that girls would come to, that your wife would come to, that you would come to."

35:38Jawad MirWow.

35:38William StoutHe says, "I see society fragmenting itself. There, people are, a lot of people stop going to the movie theaters. They stay home and watch movies in their home theaters. Design me a place that brings people together." I thought, "Oh, I can do that. That sounds like fun. That sounds great." So I was the chief designer for the first three GameWorks. First one was built in Seattle, then, Tempe, Arizona, and then Ontario, California. And so I spent, I think I spent about two years on that.

36:11Jawad MirThat's amazing.

36:12William StoutSo yeah. So I'd see Steven on a regular basis 'cause I was working right on the lot at, Universal, Stage 35. And, Stan Winston invited me to see the dinosaurs that they were doing for Jurassic Park. And in fact…

36:28Jawad MirYeah

36:28William Stout... One day I was working for Steven and I got a frantic call from Industrial Light & Magic. And they said, "w… w… we're working on Men in Black and we just spent nine months designing this big creature at the end of Men in Black, and we just showed this to Steven and Steven said, 'Eh, not scary enough.'" And so we're, we're in a panic and someone said, "Well, he loves Bill Stout's stuff. Call Bill." And so we're calling you. C… can you redesign this creature, but not too much because, 'cause we've already spent nine months on this. Just make it scarier. I said, "Yeah, sure." While I'm on the phone, I'm already starting to sketch and draw. And so the next day I fax them my designs and that became the big bug at the end of Men in Black.

37:13Jawad MirI know exactly which one you're talking about. I'm, I'm literally visualizing it in my head right now.

37:17William StoutYeah.

37:17Jawad MirThat is so, that is so awesome. It's, it's so interesting, you know, you talked about Hollywood being such a small community, and I've seen that too where everybody sorta knows everybody. But what's a great thing to hear is that, you know, when you're at a certain place in your life, 79, a while ago, right, almost close to what? 45 years ago, 46 years ago, and those same people are, you're still seeing them and talking to them. That must be a nice feeling aside from the career, aside from everything else, that people still are connected to you. Even, you know, Steven Spielberg is Steven Spielberg, right? So he still connects with you. How does that feel?

37:58William StoutIt's great. I mean, it's, it's the key to success in the business because it is such a small world. You really wanna maintain those ties and maintain the, those, friendships and relationships.

38:14Jawad MirYeah. No, it is. I just wanted to ask you one more thing, Bill, is that, for Return of the, Living Dead, right? Yeah, I think you talked about, I think you were talking about that already, but just to kinda go a little bit more beyond that. The zombies had individual personalities, right?

38:36William StoutRight.

38:36Jawad MirA… and as opposed to…

38:39William StoutAnd very different looks from each other as well.

38:42Jawad MirYeah. But the fact that they had individual personalities is because that makes them, for the lack of better word, unique and human even though they're not. Was designing those characters all, rather, was it like, were you designing them as individual characters or just monsters? I mean, I just wanna get the psyche behind that. Like, how did you approach that even though that's what you were told to do, right? Like, how did you bring that in onto paper? And kinda a testament to what Spielberg said about you too, like, you know, "That's what I want you to create, a world where people bring, are brought in together." So how do you deal, how do you put that on paper?

39:19William StoutI always start with the screenplay. What is the function of this creature? How important is the creature? How much screen time does this creature have? Is it just gonna be a flash i… or is it gonna, are there gonna be extended shots o… of this creature? If it, if it's just background creatures, I design a whole bunch of different zombies, that they could do quick makeups on. But for things like the Tar Man and the Half Corpse and the Split Dog, I got into very detailed, d… drawings and designs of what they needed to do, what they needed to look like. So it's, that kind of, approach works for me because, you know, you put your money on the screen, you know? I, if I don't wanna design a lot of zombies that are only gonna be seen for a second, I'm not gonna put a lot of work into them. I'll design them so that they don't look like each other.

40:21William StoutBut, fortunately I'm, I'm one of those g… guys that can work really fast and that's, that's a big advantage I have over a lot of designers.

40:32Jawad MirThat's amazing. You remind me of, I don't know if you know Simon Wells.

40:36William StoutNo.

40:37Jawad MirHe's a great-grandson of H.G. Wells. He directed Prince of Egypt and, he's a good friend of mine.

40:45William StoutHe, didn't he, didn't he, direct the remake of Time Machine?

40:49Jawad MirYeah, he did. So he's a really good friend of mine and he right now works at DreamWorks Animation and…

40:55William StoutOh

40:55Jawad Mir... He's the only dream animator, storyboard artist that has been there, whether freelancer or full-time, since DreamWorks inception.

41:03William StoutWow.

41:03Jawad MirAnd one of the things he tells me, he tells me the same thing. He's like, "I do it really fast." And I think that's a very good skill. I mean, obviously talent matters too, but the speed, and especially nowadays, matters too, so that's awesome that you are, you have that ability. And right now are you, are you open to projects that you're working on or is it just something that you're more kinda like small projects, freelance, or you've retired completely?

41:28William StoutWell, a little of both. I don't do a lot of production design anymore because, usually, it used to be every January I would be offered five films and if I agreed to do one of them, that meant I was agreeing not to see my family for two years.

41:49Jawad MirSh…

41:49William StoutThe only time I, if I was doing my job right, the only time I would see them is when they were sleeping 'cause I would be working 18 hours a day, seven days a week, and that's a big price to pay. I wanted to raise my sons and so I s… But unfortunately, movies are the currency of p… popular culture in our, in our society. And so when I would exhibit at Comic-Con or different science fiction and comic book conventions, people would come up to me and they'd s… say, "Are you working on any movies?" And if I said, "No," they would turn around and walk away. But if I said, "Yes, I'm…"

42:25Jawad MirReally?

42:25William StoutYeah. But if I said, "Yes, I'm doing this and this," they would stay and they would buy stuff. So, I started to take on small jobs like creature design. And so I would have the right answer for that. "Are you working on any films?" "Yeah, I just worked on a film called Predator and I designed the creature for that." They'd stay and they'd buy stuff. So those jobs only take about two or three weeks. So that would f… give me the right answer to their question, and it would free me up to do all the other stuff that I wanna do. And it would also, more importantly, free me up to be a good dad to my kids.

43:02Jawad MirThat's amazing. Your kids are older, I'm assuming?

43:05William StoutNow they're all grown up and I'm a grandfather, so.

43:08Jawad MirA grandfather, yeah. Yeah. Well, now that you have... You probably wanna spend time with grandkids, right? Like, I think that's…

43:13William StoutYeah

43:13Jawad Mir... A big deal. Yeah.

43:14William StoutYeah. Right.

43:16Jawad MirThat is such a cool thing to hear. I rarely hear that on the podcast, not because people don't, don't do that, but they rarely share. But it's such an important part. I was just watching a video today of this CEO who's a, was a life coach as well. He said that anything that keeps you away from your family is not worth it, right?

43:39William StoutYeah.

43:39Jawad MirHe was specifically talking about this.

43:42William StoutOh, yeah.

43:43Jawad MirRight.

43:44William StoutYeah.

43:45Jawad MirSo it's such an important…

43:46William StoutBlack Mirror.

43:47Jawad MirSorry?

43:48William StoutThe Black Mirror.

43:49Jawad MirThe Black Mirror, yeah, 100%. And it's very refreshing to hear that approach, and something that I'm realizing, too, you know, as you progress in life. But it's an important element for sure, and, I appreciate you sharing that.

44:06William StoutOh, sure. Yeah.

44:08Jawad MirI'm in LA very occasionally, regularly. If I'm... Should be in town in November or October. I would love to grab a bite or a coffee with you if you have time.

44:19William StoutYeah, let's do it.

44:21Jawad MirIt'd be, it would be an honor. Thank you so much for all the work that you've done, and I would love to maybe sometime in the new year have you come back on with a little bit more focused approach on something that you wanna talk about, whether it's the work that you do right now or small films that you're working on. That'd be really cool, too.

44:36William StoutOh, sure. Yeah.

44:38Jawad MirThank you so much, Bill. Appreciate it.

44:40William StoutAll righty.

44:41Jawad MirAll right. Thank you, sir.