Halloween Set Visit Exclusive – Interview 9 of 9

On the set of the insane asylum.

Staci Layne Wilson: So, what is going on with the masks in Halloween? I hear varying stories, so I want to get it from the source.

Wayne Toth: Our main goal was to try to make our masks look as much like the mask in the first movie as possible. But there's also a little change in the story that results in the mask that Michael wears as an adult being decayed and filthy. It was kinda nice, we actually got to add our own little touch to the character.

Staci: But is it still like the first one? Any explanation as to whether it's William Shatner's face, or...

Wayne: No, no. That's a whole story from the first movie and that happened to be the mask they used, but it doesn't have any bearing on anything here.

Staci: Really? You're not going to have like a little Star Trek nod... beam me up, Michael?

Wayne: No. [laughing]

Staci: So he finds it underneath the house?

Wayne: He has it when he's a child this time and he buries it before he's sent away to the asylum. When he gets out he digs it up. It was buried underneath the floorboards in the Myers house which is why it looks the way does.

Staci: Does it fit properly, or is it a little too small...

Wayne: Well, luckily for as big as Tyler is he's very proportionate... he doesn't have a giant head. We didn't want to make it look like we made a giant mask for a big guy. So we just kept it a standard size and it just happened to fit him ...you know, he's a big guy but he's not freakishly big so we didn't want to make it look ridiculous, like he was bursting out of everything.

Staci: How's he liking the mask?

Wayne: He's happy to put it on but he's also happy to take it off after a take. No one wants to wear a rubber mask all day long.

Staci: Right. But it's not really like all-encompassing, is it?

Wayne: Mmm-hmm.

Staci: Oh, it is?

Wayne: Yeah, it's a full head latex mask with hair on it.

Staci: What kind of considerations do you make for little things like breathing?

Wayne: Just the typical stuff you'd have in a regular latex mask. That's what it's supposed to be so any extra holes or anything like hat would be fairly obvious. So it just has everything: nose holes, ear holes, all that stuff that a standard mask would have.

One thing we had to do in this movie is as an adult Michael has long hair and we see him in some of the scenes in the asylum and other places without any mask at all and sometimes with one of the face masks that he's making the whole time he's in the asylum so it was a problem when we first did our camera test that when he put the mask on over the wig, which is kinda big and long, it would distort the face and it would really make the mask too tight. It was all puffy and too full looking so what I did was on a few of the masks I just glued hair along the inside of the bottom of it like those old biker hats, gag hats, and it just saved a lot of time and trouble for him not having to wear the wig and the mask but it still looks the same, you can see the hair coming out of the bottom.

Staci: This is maybe more a question for a psychologist, but I'm sure you've thought about it: Why do some masks work for villains, and other ones don't? Like the hood for the Zodiac killer... that's not scary.

Wayne: I think, in terms of Michael Myers, just the fact that it's sort of generic-looking and kind of feature-less in a way...there's nothing to it really. It's just a man's face or a symbol without any harsh lines or anything like that. Just for whatever reason that's creepy, you know whether you see his eyes or not it's just kind of unnerving because it looks like someone looking at you but you have no idea what they're thinking because they're completely expressionless.

Staci: What other things are you doing on this film? There's got to be a lot more to it than the masks.

Wayne: Yeah. I actually got to... One of the other featured masks I made is the one he puts on in the asylum before he gets out so he has different masks that he's made that are designated for different moods or whatever and the one particular mask is basically his killing mask and when the time comes that's the one he puts on in the asylum and goes on his rampage and escapes.

So it was kind of neat to come up with another iconic-looking mask for Michael Myers. It looks nothing like the others. Aside from that, he kills a lot of people. So we've had a lot of blood gags and I think the body count is like 16 or 17 people in the movie and a lot of them are stabbings and whatnot, so I've been busy carrying my tanks around and pumping a lot of blood.

Staci: How involved is Rob when you're actually in the stages of making these masks and designing them?

Wayne: He's really involved. I've worked with Rob for a long time, and we get along really well. We kind of have the same sensibilities when it comes to how things should look. So we have kind of a quick dialogue and an easy communication when it comes to things like that. He has a really good eye, he knows what looks cool or when something looks wrong. Especially tackling something like this, where everyone knows what it looks like. There's always a little fear that it might take a little tweaking or this and that but we actually nailed it on the first mask and he really liked it.

Then we did the rotted version of the mask which he's super happy with so it worked out well. But it's kind of fun working with someone like Rob in a sense because some directors don't even really know what they're looking at or maybe don't care that much or don't understand so it's kind of nice to have a challenge. I mean you can't just skate by. Some people might look at the Michael Myers mask you buy in the store at Halloween and say, "Oh yeah, that looks just like it," when in reality it doesn't. It's kind of a watered down version. It's nice, and keeps you on your toes.

Staci: Do you remember the first time you saw the original Halloween and the effect it had on you?

Wayne: I remember seeing it when I was a kid. It didn't have a profound effect or anything like that because by that time I had seen... I had been into horror since I was a little kid so I had seen a lot by that time. So it didn't change my life or anything like that, but it's a great classic film which still holds up today.

Staci: How do you think this version will stand with fans of the original?

Wayne: Yeah, anytime you mess with a classic you're never gonna please everybody. Because especially for this franchise there's die-hard, die-hard fans. I mean there's several different websites with message boards that constantly have people on them whether there's a film coming out or not, they just love this character. Anytime you tamper with something like that you know someone is going to grumble about it.

But in the end I think this movie might change people's ideas of what a remake can be. A lot of the ones that came out, like Amityville Horror, The Omen, and those, were so similar it was like they were trying to redo the same movie as closely as possible but it's never going to live up. Some of those movies had amazing actors and for their time, they were perfect so to do something like that almost seems pointless. But this movie, just to take the germ of the idea and build upon it, I think it makes it more interesting.

Hopefully people who really like this franchise will like this one a lot because it gives you more of what they like about it, I think. It gives you more of a back-story and it just makes it a little more interesting because as good as the first film is, it's really simple. There's not much to it when you really take it apart. It's just got great acts here and great music and great camera work.

Staci: So today, you think audiences want more answers?

Wayne: I would agree. I would. If I heard about this movie and I wasn't involved and I heard it was just a straight remake, like shot for shot as close as possible to the original, I would have no interest in seeing it personally. But if there's more to it and it looks neat, which it does, I'd be there.

[end]

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