Tomb
What it’s like to get fitted with claws and fangs
Doing the hands was easy. The arms and torso were a snap. Even holding still while they did the head wasn’t too bad but when they did my legs I passed out.
Let me start over. Way back in the early 1990s an enthusiastic group of my fellow university students were making a monster movie and they asked me to take part. I eagerly asked them if I could play the monster. At the time I was working for Scheme-A-Dream (an oddball company that provided costumed performers for special events) and had plenty of experience performing in bulky mascot costumes and masks. The idea of getting all uglied up and snarling at the camera really appealed to me. The filmmakers thought it over for a few days then said “okay” and scheduled me for a handful of fitting sessions in which plaster casts of my body and face would be made.
Making plaster casts involves hours of getting gunk slathered on oneself while trying hard not to move. The gunk then dries and hardens gets gently removed from the skin and serves as a mould for the latex rubber monster costume that can then be custom made to fit the performer. This was to be a full-body costume but there was no need to do the entire body all at once; rather I’d be fitted for the hands on one day the torso and arms on another etc. The pieces would be made separately; monster hands monster pants monster shirt and a nice big monster head. (The feet were to be shoe coverings that didn’t require sculpted casts of my tootsies.) Sounds simple!
The artists who began covering me with plaster of Paris were still learning their craft but had enough experience to be aware of a few pitfalls. They knew for example to coat my skin with a layer of lubricant to facilitate removal of the hardened cast. After all the plaster form isn’t much use if I can’t get out of it without breaking it. They also provided me with nostril tubes so that I could breathe during the head-casting procedure (phew!) and asked me ahead of time if I was claustrophobic. That’s an important thing to know about somebody you’re about to encase in plaster.
Everything was going swimmingly until we got to my legs. A bicycle seat had been built in the centre of the studio so I could seat myself with comfort without making my legs inaccessible. I had purchased some brand new underwear since that was all I would be wearing on my lower half during the fitting. Most of the session went quite well as I chatted with colleagues in relative comfort while the gunk was applied. After a while I began to feel unwell. My stomach felt upset and my breathing was becoming shallow. I was just contemplating asking somebody to bring me something to be sick into when suddenly I was on the floor looking up at several concerned faces.
I have absolutely no memory of falling down; I just went from being vertical and nauseous to being horizontal and refreshed. I glanced at the now-empty bicycle seat and asked a very stupid question. “Did I fall?”
My followup question was “How long was I out?” and the answer was five seconds. Just long enough to slide down to the ground. It seems that I was messing up my circulation by sitting motionless for so long; a hazard that none of us suspected or prepared for. As soon as I was down my circulation returned and I woke up feeling totally fine. I got back on the bicycle seat and the fitting resumed without further incident.
In the end the monster costume was completed and I thought it looked impressively fearsome but it had structural problems and I never did get to wear it. But the process was great fun and it’s neat to think that there’s a plaster cast of my face somewhere out there; perhaps stored away next to some plaster legs marred by minor fall damage. Today monster costumes are still being made in Calgary and appearing in short films such as The Hunt ; you can read about the making of that particular monster movie elsewhere in this issue.
