The Wrath of Khan’s smooth and sculpted chest, more like it.
You may have heard, thanks to our yakkety podcast, that Sean and I completed the Starfleet Academy Experience this past weekend at the Canada Museum of Aviation and Space. It’s a really cool exhibit in Ottawa until September 5th – after that, it could be in a museum near you!
We spent the day training to be Starfleet cadets. We majored in science, navigation, communications, and more. Everything was very interactive – we learned Klingon, plotted our ship’s course, selected safe planets to land on, shot phasers, and even got teleported. It was a grand day and loads of fun (our Twitter account @AssholeMovies was witness to it). But it got Sean in a Star Trek kind of mood, which is what inspired him to force me to watch Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan against my will.
I admit, ever since watching For The Love of Spock, I’ve been a little curious about the original series. The new movies are surprisingly tolerable to me, so why not? The original television series was cancelled in 1969. The first movie, with the same cast and characters, was in theatres in 1979, a full decade later. The Wrath of Khan followed in 1982: by then, Shatner was 50 years old. The movie is quite jokey about his age, his creaky old dotage actually, his need for reading glasses and a retirement plan but they went on to make 6 of these, chasing the series into star date 1991 (Shatner would also appear in Generations with Patrick Stewart in 1994). So yes, the Enterprise crew had aged. So had their enemies. Ricardo Montalban played villainous Khan in an earlier television episode (Space Seed) and was asked back for The Wrath of Khan. 
And he is the owner of that smooth and sculpted chest that kept me so enthralled. For the record, Montalban was in his early sixties when this movie was in production. It didn’t quite match the face that went along with it. Was the chest perhaps a prosthetic?
Montalban says no. He claimed that lots of push-ups did the trick. The costumers gladly put him in a plunging deep-V neckline to show it off. Khan was buff. Many of his henchmen were Chippendale dancers, so for a 60+ gentleman to flaunt his broad, oddly hairless chest among them took some doing. Good on you, Mr. Montalban. I salute your beautiful chest.
love that they filmed in real locations. Locations that I’ve partied at myself and may be luxuriating at as we speak (you may have noticed the Assholes are in Vegas). In fact, I know one young man by the name of Sean who is hoping that Think Like A Man Too is factually correct in at least one thing: that beautiful, topless women ask random, possibly attached men for help with sunscreen at the pool. Fingers crossed!
for Bell Biv Devoe’s Poison. Weird.
came out – gulp – 20 years ago. 20 years! To put that in context, filming at LAX was delayed because of a threat from the Unabomber. The Unabomber! And re-shoots were done on the day the OJ Simpson verdict was announced. And it was referenced in Aileen Wuornos’s (Monster) last words, as she was executed. That’s a long time ago. So long that the movie held two weird records: first, a record for most special effects shots that has since been pulverized a billion times, and second, for most miniature models to appear in one film. That second one really dates it for you, because CGI was so expensive and so primitive that models were still the way to go. A tiny 1\12 White House was built (about 10 feet by 5 feet) just so they could blow it up. And now because of advances in technology, this record will probably stand forever.
Smith into a movie star, but he was not the first choice or even the 10th to play the role of Steven Hiller. Smith was a last minute replacement for when Kirk Cameron dropped out. You read that right: Kirk Cameron. Bruce Willis, David Duchovny, Pauley Shore, Mel Gibson, Eddie Murphy, Charlie Sheen, and Yakov Smirnoff all passed on the role. Yakov Smirnoff, guys. Will Smith was lower on the list than Yakov Smirnoff. Although, there’s clearly a screw loose in the casting department – Kevin Spacey was passed over in favour of Bill Pullman since Spacey lacked movie-star potential, they thought.
Smith back (he demanded $50M) so the sequel will be Smithless. It’ll also be Mae Whitmanless. She played the president’s daughter in the first and her role has be recast. She’s been largely silent about being replaced but both fans and Mae’s friend Anna Kendrick have been outspoken about her perhaps not being “conventionally pretty” enough for the part. Perhaps she could call up Kevin Spacey for some consolation pie? Or better yet, Susan Sarandon, who was offered a substantial part but turned it down, having found the script to be “incomprehensible.”
Marty Scorsese. Those ungrateful buggers forced the crew to film only between the witching hours of 1 and 4 am, so as not to disturb the gamblers. They allowed not disruption to the business side of things but weren’t self-conscious about advertising with a large banner declaring “Robert DeNiro, Sharon Stone & Joe Pesci Filming the New Movie ‘Casino’ Inside!” I would call it shameless, except this is Vegas we’re talking about. I’m pretty sure you leave your shame at home.
Rain Man, and can also be seen dealing cards to Chevy Chase in Vegas Vacation.
Jarman: Sian and I were working on “Suffragette” — we were actually doing the scene outside the Houses of Parliament at the time. She mentioned that she had been given the script for “The Revenant” and would I be interested in doing the prosthetics. She has been Leo’s make-up artist since “Titanic,” and I have made prosthetics for him since “The Aviator.” We flew out to L.A. a week or so later to have our first meeting with [director Alejandro G. Iñárritu]. I have done a lot of blood gags on films like “Saving Private Ryan” and “Band of 
Brothers.” But it was the idea of taking that out of the studio environment and into some really harsh terrain and temperatures that really interested me.
lodge and that he has real ice in his beard — not paraffin wax — and frost nip on his face and lips — not prosthetics pieces. If it starts to look like make-up at any time, you could take the audience out of the immersive quality of the film; it’s staggering how Alejandro and (D.P. Emmanuel Lubezki) manage to make you feel like you are there in the film with Glass, not just watching him on the screen. You even start to feel cold so the naturalism of the make-up is integral and essential.
Impossible you say? To make this happen, the makeup artists used copious amounts of fake blood, created silicone neck equipment that could “bubble and bleed” and added wig lace that could be “stitched” back together by Leo’s cast mates. Poor Leo had to lie in freezing mud connected to dozens of blood lines, covered in cold blood for hours. But it looks damn real in the movie.
added cheek pieces, an upper lip, a chin, a nose piece and ear pieces, as well as lace eyebrows that were laid and lace sideburns. The whole baldcap was punched with strands of hair individually. We didn’t use any lace pieces on the baldcap. He had contact lenses made by the Reel Eye Company in the U.K. and vacuum-form pieces for his teeth that looked more gray and old-ish – really thin but pretty much like dentures with a 0.2mm thick plastic layer. It doesn’t affect his speech and you can tint and color them.”
stated. “In the trailer, I added castor oil, airbrushed with a Paasche airbrush. If you add castor oil to the Illustrator colors, it becomes a bit more flexible. Then, we added all of the fine details and sealed it with silicone caulking.” Silicone caulking guys – imagine sitting through that! (Well, technically, Matt and I almost can – if you missed the piece where we sit through our own makeup ordeal, 
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 