Special Effects Wizard Stan Winston Dead At 62

Dusty101 writes "Special effects maestro Stan Winston has died at the age of 62. Winston was responsible for many of the physical special effects in films such as The Terminator, Jurassic Park, Edward Scissorhands, and Iron Man. Winston died on Sunday, June 15, 2008, after a seven-year struggle with multiple myeloma."

He's Not Dead ...

... that's just a special effect.

Right? :(

Re:He's Not Dead ...

you know he's dead if he doesn't emerge out of a vat of acid/flaming wreckage/terrific, seemingly unsurvivable explosion to attack his nemesis one last time.

Very Sad

The man was truly gifted at his profession, one movie not mentioned and among my all time favorites is "Aliens" the James Cameron follow up to Alien.

"Aliens" is the first movie mentioned

"Aliens", for which Stan won his first Oscar, is the first movie mentioned in the first sentence of the Wired article linked to in the summary. All the other news sources I've read, BBC News, Los Angeles Times, NY Times et al, mention "Aliens" prominently. And you've got good taste: "Aliens" is also among my all time favorite films. I'm deeply saddened by his passing. I remember seeing an interview with him about 10 years ago, during which he took the interviewer on a tour of his vast workshops, and apart from the fascinating and voluminous collection stored there, the thing that struck me most about Stan was his incredibly playful sense of humor. I laughed out loud at his clowning around, and couldn't help thinking that he would have been a great deal of fun to work with. He will be sorely missed.

Re:

Sorry, I meant in the "Slashdot" recap where they only mention "The Terminator, Jurassic Park, Edward Scissorhands, and Iron Man".

Aliens was one of those rare movies that just combined so many great talents, Director, Production People, Actors, Special Eff

Re:

I couldn't agree with you more about "Aliens". I was (and remain) thrilled by this film, and I think that it's by far James Cameron's finest effort (my wife and her friends think I'm some sort of heretic because I despised "Titanic"). I have at this moment

Re:Very Sad

That would be funny. Ray Harryhausen was a pioneer in the field (and as far as I know still alive at 87) but in those days his art wasn't recognized for what it was, no Academy award nominations (according to IMDB) for special effects. Stan Winston had nine nominations (again Academy Awards) and three wins as well as multiple Saturn and other nominations and awards.

Just if any one else wonders.....

Multiple myeloma [wikipedia.org]:

is a type of cancer of plasma cells which are immune system cells in bone marrow that produce antibodies. Myeloma is regarded as incurable, but remissions may be induced with steroids, chemotherapy, thalidomide and stem cell transplants. Myeloma is part of the broad group of diseases called hematological malignancies.

Re:Just if any one else wonders.....

Moderation isn't a contest. It exists to make the comments more filterable.

Multiple Myeloma

Chances are he probably died from an infection(not actually the cancer). Multiple myeloma in late stages heavily suppress all bone marrow tissue(that means your red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets.) People with Multiple myeloma over-produc non-functional antibody side chains from malignant plasma cells. This impairs immune response and causes renal failure, making them extra susceptible to infections(more so than other cancers).

Re:

My Mom was diagnosed with it in November and was gone by March and it went down exactly as you described. While she was certainly on the short end of the scale, 7 years is a long fight with this killer. (My Mom was 62 as well)

One off topic thing that I lea

Hear hear

Here's to the guy who scared the crap out of me while simultaneously inspiring me in so many ways as a child.

sad news indeed

i am very disapointed by the lack of tact in a lot of these posts. I know this is slashdot, but a man died after fighting with a killer for 7 long years. if you are going to make a crude comment here, at least make it +5 funny, not the -1 stupid i have been seeing so far.

Stan, you will be missed.

Your skill and imagination were an inspiration to me through the years.

Re:

I agree, am artist like this is rare and his creativity and efforts will be missed. It has always impressed me that some special effects artists will spend days creating something that might only be seen for a flash on the screen. While watching a horror m

Re:sad news indeed

Oh yeah -- in addition, please don't trot out that tired old "We make jokes to deal with the pain of loss" garbage. Last year when a close friend of mine died, we joked at his wake, with his mother no less, about the choice of beer at the event -- Dead Guy Ale. THAT is joking to cope with loss. Most people here didn't know this guy. Your jokes aren't a coping mechanism, they're just the symptom of being an ass. Of course, if your jokes are funny and not disrepectful, bring 'em on.

Re:sad news indeed

Oh yeah -- in addition, please don't trot out that tired old "We make jokes to deal with the pain of loss" garbage...Most people here didn't know this guy. Your jokes aren't a coping mechanism, they're just the symptom of being an ass.

Knowing the man is irrelevant. It's not a competition to find out just who is the saddest about the loss and has therefore earned the right to make jokes. If you don't know him, you're going to have only one of three reactions:

1. You're not going to give a shit one way or another. There are quite a few people dying every moment and there's nothing special about that.
2. You're going to "know" him by his works. At which point, the most you might feel is disappointment that you're not going to see anything new by the guy.
3. You're going to "know" him by his works and you're going to relate to everybody else who has seen his work by making jokes that relate to (surprise) the stuff he has done. Which is what most people have in common.

It's not about being disrespectful, it's about being human. Being disrespectful would be to say things like, "I'm glad he's dead, he sucked anyway." Black humor is rarely disrespectful, and it's almost always better than hundreds of repetitive and insincere posts from people who never met the guy, his family, nor had any experience with someone who fought a "killer" disease for 7 years (I'm not implying you or the parent are insincere, but if I were to post something like that I most certainly would be. I have been lucky enough to have no idea what the man went through and I shall not pretend to know otherwise). People really need to stop being offended so easily. Furthermore, the more non-religious of us are unable say things like "Stan, you will be missed" because we don't think he can actually get the message.

As far what I have to say about the subject, I never knew Stan Winston, but I have always stated how impressed I was with special effects in his movies. Recent overuse of CGI has made it so that effects in Terminator 2 looked much more "real" than effects in contemporary movies, it was truly ahead of its time. He seemed to have a very good grasp of when to use CGI and when to actually build something physical, and how to blend the two effects well. Therefore, I'm in the category of people who will certainly miss his work. I can only hope others have indeed been inspired by the quality of his work and will carry on.

Such Great Work

I had just watched Aliens over the weekend after not having seen it for awhile (and recently suffering though the AVP:R). It was amazing at how much better the movie was since it didn't dump crappy CGI monsters into it. The Winston team worked hard to make realistic looking Aliens, not to mention all the models and the lifesize stuff like the load-lifter and the queen....*sigh*

Remembered like Mel Blanc?

I remember a cel coming out after Mel Blanc's death of a single microphone with many of the characters he voiced standing around mourning him.

Maybe something similar could be done for Winston.

From everything I've read about him, he was somebody that was generous, helpful and incredibly creative.

He will be missed,

myke

You know you've lived a good life when....

Your death can be reasonably symbolized by a red light flickering out in a velociraptor's eye.

Thanks for the magic.

Re:

You know you've lived a good life when they announce it on Slashdot....

Paying tribute to a Legend

I grew up completely immmersed in film and the worlds that Stan created. His contributions were always the most spectacular and most awe inspiring special effects work committed to celluloid bar none. Probably the greatest innovator in the field since Ray Harryhausen, he will be sorely missed.

R.I.P Stan

The films he worked on

I told my friends about Stan yesterday. And my friends are big sci-fi people. They had no clue who this man was, nor did they care. But the thing was, once I told them what movies he worked on, what creatures he created, they were amazed.

Before CGI, this was the guy to go to for special effects and creature creation. In my opinion, he had the privilege to live the high point of traditional movie special effects, and had the honor of working on the film that ushered in CGI(Jurassic Park). And the thing about Jurassic Park, this movie combined both the classic approach and a modern approach seamlessly.

Watching the interview on the JP DVD you can tell how excited he was to work on that project. The time he took with ILM to make sure a shot that had the actual built dinosaur and the CGI created worked seamlessly, shot to shot. To this day I load up the T-Rex attack scene and ask people to pull out the CGI shot and the non-CGI shot. Barely anyone can tell difference. Yet, I load up "i-Robot" and people just laugh at the compositing.

Last week I watched "Aliens", first time I have ever seen the film. I was blown away. The detailed model work was amazing. This was all pre-cgi also. The thing with Stan Winston, he knew CGI was the new hollywood tool, but just like Phil Tippett, he also knew his skills were not gone. There was still room for traditional effects.

He will be missed, and as more and more films use less and less traditional special effects. You can always look back and watch films like Aliens, Predator, Terminator, and tell your kids this is how they did it before we had computers. And one of the masters of the pre-computer era was Stan Winston.

An important man

I'm sure his imagination and labor has single-handedly contributed at least several percentage points to the GDP of the United States from Hollywood exports.

He's in heaven with Ray Harryhausen now

You're finally free from James Cameron's ego, beautiful traveler.

Wait, Ray Harryhausen is still ALIVE?!?!

And the saddest part was that it was unecessary.

The saddest part of the deaths of recent people from Tim Russet to Cyd Charisse is that they were entirely unnecessary. We have the cryonics preservation technology to ensure that although they may be dead from a technical standpoint -- viewing them as permanently dead is open to question. We need a restructuring of how we think about "death" and it probably requires re-educating every physician in the country.

You are not "dead" until all the information in your body has been converted to an unrecoverable state.