Dressing Up the Grinch

Nov. 24 -- If Hollywood F/X guru Rick Baker has his way, actors get claustrophobic and sweaty — and sometimes downright neurotic — when they don his costumes for films.

Baker’s intricate, convincing work can currently be seen in Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and he’s hard at work creating authentic ape costumes for director Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes remake, which is due out next May.

Sampling the GoodsBaker says figuring out how to clothe the Seussian oddities in Grinch was harder than doing the apes. “Not only did we have more people to do for the Whos, we didn’t know what the hell they were,” Baker relates. The Whos, those pleasant, joyous characters who anger the sour Grinch with their holiday singing, were made up to look angelic, yet cartoonish.

Grinch has received much attention for the physical (and likely the emotional) discomfort its star, Jim Carrey, endured, including thick yellow contacts and a heavy bodysuit. Let’s hope the apes fare better.

“[For] almost everything I do,” Baker says, “the first test is on myself. I did the same thing on The Grinch. I wore the suit all day, videotaped it, and looked at what I thought worked and didn’t.”

Carrey, Baker claims, set a record for an actor wearing full appliance makeup: 90 days of filming. “I love makeup, and there’s no way I could sit for 90 days without going nuts,” he admits. In order to prevent Carrey from passing out from heat exhaustion, “[The crew] refrigerated the soundstage. All the Whos had wool suits and padding. We had to wear our winter clothes.”

Saving Planet Simian Mark Wahlberg is going to be as naked as the censors allow for the highly anticipated Planet of the Apes redux, but as far as the film’s ape characters are concerned, it’s going to be Baker’s show.

Apes have always been good for Baker, a five-time Oscar-winning makeup maven (for An American Werewolf in London, Harry and the Hendersons [his favorite], The Nutty Professor, Ed Wood, and Men in Black) who promises to outdo himself with the new Apes.