“What happens to creative people after a long period of not working in your chosen field is you [fear you] won’t be heard again,” explains Steve Johnson in “Rubberhead: The Life and Monsters of Steve Johnson,” a particularly cruel fate for the makeup artist who was known for making noise. “Nobody has cared what I’ve had to say and hasn’t for 12 years.”
There’s reason to listen in Nick Taylor’s compelling profile of Johnson, in no small part because he’s telling a larger story than one about himself. While an expected quick-cut introduction to Johnson includes greatest hits such as Slimer from “Ghostbusters” and the sea creatures of “The Abyss,” the mention of him alongside legends in the industry such as Rick Baker, Rob Bottin and Dick Smith strikes the perfect note when perhaps his skills earned him a place in their company yet the average cinephile wouldn’t recognize the name, a fact that Johnson seems to blame on the advent of digital effects that overtook the film industry just as he should’ve been cementing his status in the late 1990s.
Instead, he earned another reputation when he developed a drug addiction, making plenty of money to feed his habit when could regularly earn a million dollars on a blockbuster job, as well as having the pressure to perform that made it feel like a necessity (as it’s explained, the many sleepless nights required to develop Slimer required plenty of cocaine), yet Johnson doesn’t appear worse for wear in any physical or psychological sense, only desperate for work and unlikely to find any when beyond being followed by his past, the number of productions that could use him seems to be shrinking, if not in overall number, in size. (It is a genuinely tragic moment early on when Johnson makes a drive up to director Tom Holland’s house early on in the film to learn that neither of them will be making a low-budget horror film after a budget squeeze leads Holland to think better of spending long nights in Lake Arrowhead, preventing a professional reunion of the “Fright Night” collaborators.)
While timing is working against Johnson now as he tries to mount a comeback, his entry into the industry couldn’t have been more opportune, offering Taylor a chance to dig into the true heyday of practical effects with a gregarious guide as Johnson lived out the dream of reading Famous Monsters of Filmland as a kid and eventually finding himself in its pages after pleading his way into becoming an apprentice for Baker and Bottin on films such as “American Werewolf in London” and “The Howling,” respectively, and eventually starting a firm of his own. “Rubberhead” really draws out the wonder in what could be achieved with the right materials and ingenuity, illustrating how the term “makeup” couldn’t possibly encompass the kind of work that the true artisans were achieving as they fused ideas about mechanics and prosthetics together. Taylor wisely is able to use the trial and error required of innovative effects to appreciate the work and imagination that goes into them as well as the stamina, contributing to a feeling on Johnson’s part that mistakes were acceptable as long as you could deliver at the end and he would do whatever it took to get the right result.
Ironically as Johnson never tired on the job, it appears he wore out his welcome and perhaps not much should be read into the fact that few former collaborators sit down for interviews when when directors and fans can still be seen flocking to speak to Johnson at horror conventions, but having the similarly disgraced John Landis as one of the few that appears for an extended chat can lead to certain conclusions. If Johnson truly harmed anyone but himself beyond blowing deadlines, it’s not evident from the film, not counting the heavily pierced volunteer who offered himself up for crucifixion at one of Johnson’s infamously outrageous parties and he draws sympathy when not only as former boss Richard Edlund says of him, he has a “notorious smile you couldn’t get away from,” but the biography of the craftsman comes at a moment when there’s currently a real feeling of contraction around Hollywood, with the fear of AI taking away jobs that long were the province of passionate and talented professionals such as himself.
For better or worse, it falls on the candid Johnson to tell his own story, able to express a narrative simply in how he’s able to speak about things when he developed a self-confidence from his own mentors to share great behind-the-scenes stories without a hint of holding anything back, but making it easy to see how that could coarsen into an arrogance that made it difficult to deal with others or see himself clearly. Through Johnson’s experience, “Rubberhead” becomes a great look at a particular time in Hollywood overall when he really was part of an exciting creative moment and a professional ladder still existed to build a successful career and it’s a particularly brilliant gambit on the part of Taylor and editor Joseph Krings to have those he gave an opportunity to ultimately come to contend that he may have misread his obsolescence when they all remain gainfully employed doing practical effects in the digital era. In the end, it becomes fascinating to consider that Johnson hasn’t lost his touch for convincing demons, perhaps even fooling himself into thinking that the true threats to his career have exclusively come from the outside.
“Rubberhead: The Life and Monsters of Steve Johnson” will screen again at Fantasia Fest on July 26th at Salle J.A. De Sève.