Month: March 2026

Film #27: Predator (My notes on Predator begin September 20, 2021)
Film #28: House (My notes on House begin September 24, 2021)
Film #29: United Artists (My notes on my logo designs for United Artists begin September 26, 2021. The art director on that Tony Seiniger project (and most of my Seiniger jobs) was David Reneric)

Film #30: Date With an Angel (1985; released 1987)
Directed by Tom McLoughlin
Production Designed by Craig Stearns

Angel Designs by William Stout

I believe Raffaella DeLaurentiis recommended me to Martha Schumacher (later she became Martha DeLaurentiis), the producer of the film. I was part of a small circle of fellow production designers, of which Craig Stearns was a member (and neighbor). Others included Ron Cobb, J. Michael Riva (Marlene Dietrich‘s grandson), Dennis Gassner (I worked with Dennis on The Hitcher), Leslie Dilley and Rick Carter). We traded stories, shared problems and occasionally asked each other for advice. These were all good guys trying to navigate through the perils and pitfalls of the movie biz.

What’s a production designer? How is he (or she) different from an art director? The production designer is responsible for everything you see on the screen except for the casting and performances of the actors. That responsibility includes set designs, prop designs, special make-up effects, costume design, set dressing, special effects and more. The art director works under the production designer, usually handling the art department’s scheduling and budgeting chores. The first time the title of “Production Designer” appeared in a film was for William Cameron Menzies‘ work on Gone With The Wind. Menzies had directed a third of that classic film — but Victor Young, who had directed the other two-thirds, refused to share the directing credit for that movie. Faced with this dilemma, producer David Selznick created the “production designed by” credit for Menzies (who, by the way, directed and designed the original version of Invaders From Mars).

There are three kinds of production designers: One kind has a background as an architect (this was the dominant background for most production designers in the 1940s through the mid-1970s); the second type can really draw and paint (this was my background, as well as the background of Menzies, Ron Cobb and master swashbuckler designer Anton Grot); the third kind is adept at collaging his ideas, as well as hiring illustrators to capture the production designers graphic intentions. Rick Carter is an excellent example of this third kind. I consider Rick the brilliant King of the Visual Metaphor.

I had met the Date With an Angel director Tom McLoughlin earlier through my excellent director friend, Mick Garris.

I was asked to come up with designs for the angel in Date with an Angel, especially designs for her wings. I was adamantly opposed to using the old cliché of white dove wings — way too corny and obvious. I came up with what I thought were a few interesting alternatives to dove wings.

I thought a combination of insect and butterfly wings with feathers would be unique, magical and interesting. I got one of my art department production assistants on Masters of the Universe to pose for me. She was a surprisingly good model, a natural when it came to posing, and she had great facial bone structure.

I loved the results, mixing white feathers with white butterfly wings…elegant, beautiful and unexpected.

The production went with the white dove wings (of course). 🙁

Martha inquired about purchasing this original to give to Dino DeLaurentiis as a gift. I quoted her what I thought was a very fair price ($2000). I thought I was being reasonable, but I guess I asked for too high a price, as she passed on the purchase.

This is one of my favorite fantasy pictures. It’s very simple (which is nearly always tough to do), with a strong, magical, romantic mood and design. I’ve still got the original. You’d have to offer me a lot more than 2K to purchase it from me now, even if I wanted to sell it — which I don’t. It’s one of my favorite pieces.

Let’s wrap up Invaders From Mars:

What do I like best when it comes to working on movies? Honestly, it’s the stories I come away with from working in this wacky biz.
Here’s my absolute favorite Show Biz tale:

We had contacted the United States Air Force with hopes that they would help us out with the loan of various military vehicles and equipment. We hadn’t heard back from them. As our shooting date began to loom, I began to get worried. I finally called them up.

“I’m just making sure that the Air Force is on board with helping us in the production of our movie,” I said.

“We’re sorry,” the Air Force official informed me, “but the United State Air Force cannot cooperate in the making of your film.”

“What!? Why? You’re the heroes! You defeat the Martians and save the day…save the planet, even!”

“We’re sorry, ” he answered, “but it is the official position of the United States Air Force that there are no Martians and there are no UFOs.”

“Are you kidding me? That’s your reason for not helping us?”

I hung up the phone.

Our storyboard artist, ex-Marine Keith Crossley, handed me a business card.

“Call him.”

There was a name on the card plus a job title: United States Marine Corps Public Relations Officer.

I called the number on the card and explained our situation.

“Send me a script,” he replied.

“You will have a copy of our script within an hour. I am handing it to a production assistant as we speak. He is on his way to your office.”

This time, I didn’t wait. I called the following morning.

“Did you read our screenplay?”

“Yes, son, I did.”

“So, are the Marines going to help us out?”

“Son — you will have the full cooperation of the United States Marine Corps in the making of your motion picture.”

“So, the Marines don’t have a problem with Martians or UFOs?”

“Son, it is the official position of the United States Marine Corps that the United States Marines have no qualms whatsoever when it comes to killing Martians.”

And that’s the true story of why the Marines are in our movie and why the Air Force isn’t.

Of all the designs I did for Invaders From Mars, which did I like the best? It’s the design I did for the film’s cast and crew souvenir baseball-style shirts:

A black and white version of this design became my Christmas card that year:

Miscellaneous Invaders From Mars designs:

The boy’s parents get controlled by the Martians when the drones implant a needle in the back of the parents’ necks.

I thought it would be funny to create a big ol’ gigantic machine that would be the device to inject the teeny-tiny needle.

The machine above is what made it into the film. Now I had to design the Martian needles:

How about some Drone weapons?

…and a Martian alphabet:

As you can see, I came up with a variety of ideas for the interior of the Martian Spaceship, from organic to geometric.

This fairly organic/Art Nouveau style is pretty close to what finally ended up in the film.

I even designed the Martian floor patterns (see above).

There weren’t any soundstages large enough for the big Martian interior sets, so we rented a gigantic airplane hanger down in Long Beach. It may have originally been the hanger that housed Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose — I don’t exactly recall. Ours was the first movie to use that hanger to shoot in — but ours wasn’t the last.

Here’s the set under construction:

As you can see — it was vast.

Continuing, with Invaders From Mars:
I created several different designs for the Martian spaceship. I was finding it more and more difficult to please Tobe Hooper.

Despite being one of the nicest guys I have ever worked with, he turned out, ultimately, to be that most impossible of clients:
“I don’t know what I want — but I’ll know it when I see it.”
Well, then, the possibilities are potentially endless. As you can see below, I went full-spectrum on trying to solve this problem and please Tobe.

I loved this idea (above): The Martian ship is an organic creature. The Supreme Intelligence and the Drones inside of it are like the bacteria cultures living in our bodies.

The designs above subscribe to the film’s use of copper as part of what makes the Martians tick. My storyboard suggests that the ship could be malleable in form.

I like drawing storyboards to visually explain what I would like to have happen in the film. It was John Dykstra‘s crew that created the on-screen effects of the ship arrival based on my designs.

My Invaders From Mars Martian Supreme Intelligence designs:

Ultimately, it was Stan Winston‘s crew who designed the Martian Supreme Intelligence. Here’s my version of their final version:

Today’s entry is all about Martian Drones.

Even though director Tobe Hooper loved the backwards suit idea, he still wanted to see other possible Drone designs. Here is what I gave him:

More Invaders From Mars…
No, I passed on an evening with Ms. (Karen) Black.

I had met Dale Dye, our military advisor, when I was working on Conan the Barbarian. He was the editor of Soldier of Fortune magazine at the time and a friend of our writer-director, John Milius. Although Dale and I were at opposite ends of the political spectrum, we hit it off. We admired each other’s talents and intelligence. Dale had decided to stop fighting in foreign wars as a mercenary-for-hire. He told me he did not want an anonymous death on some forgotten field of battle.

He had served in the U. S. Marines with our storyboard artist, Keith Crossley. Keith had shoulder-length hair and a pretty jolly disposition, very old-hippie-ish.

“What was Keith like as a soldier?” I asked.

Dale’s answer surprised me.

“Keith was the bravest soldier I ever met,” Dale replied. “He would not only go right up to the enemy’s front lines, he would improvise enemy clothing once there, pointing out interesting butterflies along the way, and then cross the enemy’s front lines and enter deep into enemy territory.”

Dale and I discussed fear, death, and fighting. He said that death in the field was not like one sees it in the movies. When someone is shot and killed, he looks like a marionette puppet whose strings have just been suddenly cut.

Dale told me he had little fear on the battlefield (probably because he was a consummate professional). What really scared him? He told me it was trying to break into Hollywood as a military advisor. That was unknown territory for him. This was early on in that aspect of Dale’s career. He has done just fine since; I see his credits all the time. He’s a member of SAG-AFTRA now as well, as he usually gets small speaking parts on the films he works on.

Okay…Let’s talk design.

I began designing the Martian Drones. My pal Rick Baker told me about a suit design idea he had been dying to use. The problem with most monster suit designs is that you can always tell there is a human inside, because of the configuration of the human body.

“What if…” Rick asked, “you designed the suit to be worn backwards?”

Great idea — and that idea of Rick’s was used in designing the Martian Drones.

Tobe loved the idea, which I presented to Tobe and Stan Winston at Tobe’s home. Then Stan(who, with his team, was building all the Martian creature suits) decided to go even further. He added a Little Person in a backpack facing forward and operating the Drone’s mouth and arms from inside the suit.

Continuing with Invaders From Mars…
First, RIP Chuck Norris, who just coincidentally happens to be mentioned in today’s posting. I used to see him during the early days of the San Diego Comic Book Convention. Very approachable, a really nice guy.

Our storyboard artist on Invaders From Mars was ex-Marine Keith Crossley. Keith was different from the storyboard artists I was used to. He was not a designer or composer of shots, so to speak — but he was a helluva ideas guy, catching errors in the script and figuring out ways to make the film and its story much better. Because of this special talent of Keith’s, Tobe had hired Keith for several of his previous films.

Keith clued me in to some of Tobe’s codes. Here’s one of them:
If you presented Tobe with an idea for the film and he, after hearing the idea, had no intention of using it, he would say, “Could do, could do…”
But if he liked your idea and decided he was going to use it in the film, Tobe would say, “Can do, can do…”

Keith had a huge crush on actress Karen Black — but Karen only had eyes for me. When we were together in a room full of people, she would act as if she and I were the only two people in the room. Me being happily married, her blatant attempts to seduce me fell on intentionally deaf ears.

Menahem Golan, president of Cannon Films, decided it was time to direct another film. He chose to make the Chuck Norrisaction film, The Delta Force. Since Menahem was the president of the company, he thought it proper to have a huge black-tie opening for his film once it was finished.

Yes, you read that right: A black-tie opening for a Chuck Norris movie. The Cannon Films company building had four or five parking levels. The night of the premiere, Menahem arranged to have top Los Angeles chefs preparing the premiere’s food, one top chef per each level (!).

Every Cannon star and director was in attendance (Charles Bronson, Sylvester Stallone, Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, etc.) — including Karen Black. I attempted to avoid her, when, suddenly, I saw her at the other end of the parking level my wife and I were on.

I caught her eye. She immediately made a beeline for me. When she got to where I was, she began talking to me, her face about an inch from my face — my wife just a foot away from the two of us.

“I’m having a party at my house after this. I’d love for you to come.”

“Who’s going to be there?” I asked.

“Just you and me…” was her reply.

Film #26: Invaders From Mars (1985)
Directed by Tobe Hooper
Written by Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakoby
Production Designed by Leslie Dilley
Martian Production Design by William Stout

I was about to make some big film career mistakes.

Mistake #1: I should have asked the Henson family and Warner Brothers for a weekly financial stipend and then started to really crank out the designs for The Natural History Project. I was doing the designs, but I wasn’t getting paid. I think that would have put us well ahead of The Land Before Time.

While I was doing the unpaid work on the NHP, I was offered work as the concept designer for the Cannon Films remake of Invaders From Mars.

Mistake #2: Feeling a little unsure of myself in regards to taking on the Natural History Project, in essence, all by myself, I asked for advice as to whether or not I should take on Invaders From Mars to get a bit more film mileage under my belt. Instead, I should have turned Cannon down and fully plunged into my Henson project, spending Warners Brothers money like a madman to increase their commitment to the project. I was still licking the multiple wounds I received from working on The Return of the Living Dead. My confidence, when it came to my being a proper production designer, had been shaken.

I was advised to take the Invaders From Mars gig. Shouldn’t have done it.

Invaders From Mars was my first movie for Cannon Films. They were a wild outfit, to say the least. At that time, of all the major studios, Warner Brothers had the most films in production (6). As I recall, Cannon had 64! Like Roger Corman, if you were a young filmmaker, you could get an audience with Cannon’s president, Menahem Golan , make your pitch, and get a “Yes” or a “No” on the spot. If he said “Yes”, you got your shot, a chance to make your movie. Not much money, but there it was — like I said, an opportunity for you to make your film.

I miss those days.

One of the reasons I took the job was Dan O’Bannon‘s name on the script. I love Dan’s work and was looking forward to seeing what he would do with this remake of a low-budget 1950s sci-fi classic. To my dismay, after I had signed on, I read the script and discovered that Dan’s version rarely deviated from the original.

I worked closely with Les and Tobe. Les Dilley was a great art director — but not the best production designer. I soon realised a big part of my job was saving and improving Les’ designs. My design confidence quickly grew as I realised I had the taste that Les was lacking. He was great at scheduling and overseeing construction, but when it came to creativity and taste…

I ended up designing nearly all of the film’s Martian stuff, in essence, becoming the movie’s Martian Production Designer. I also found the David Gardner house, a house in the Paramount Ranch, originally built for the 1948 Cary Grant movie, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. My confidence in my abilities came back like gangbusters. That was one really good thing that resulted from my taking the job.