The director of Pumpkinhead (yes it is a guilty pleasure, only because it’s so bad but just such cool creature effects).

You pick a movie you loved in recent history, since the early 80s,and more than likely, if it involved a monster, his hand was in there somewhere.

Because he was a genius.

Is a genius.

He was a man bigger than life and taken too soon.

There was so much more he could have shown us.

He was the facial basis for the Wolfman, who did have nards, and it is still the coolest looking werewolf I’ve ever laid my child or adult eyes on.

Watching that movie recently, the wonder I had as a kid was not lost. Sure it wasn’t as funny as I remember. Sure it didn’t age that well.

But it was Monster Squad. What more could you ask for?

“People who are afraid to go to horror movies are generally afraid their whole lives. People say to me, 'Do you have nightmares?' I never have nightmares! And I go to movies and see the most bizarre things in the world, and go... Wow that is really sick, how fun is that! And I don't have to carry it around. I think that's very healthy.”

I follow the same boat as Stan.

I am capable of putting terribly gruesome images in people’s heads, gross things that no one would ever in their right mind ever want to have in their heads, and I can put it there.

I know people so afraid of spiders that just the hint or the joke of one in the same room as them, they jump for the sky.

I know people, and have seen movies with people like this, so afraid of snakes that they cry and whine like little babies.

I know people afraid of public bathrooms, people in enclosed spaces, and it just gives me a slight chuckle.
I don’t think I’m invincible, I just don’t get easily scared.

And here’s why: When I was four years old, my gonzo dad and I watched two movies together. The first two movies I ever remember (and this will age me as well, and if you’re offended by how old I am, go to hell).

Torn in half.

Blown up.

Seared with acid.

Hit by massive tree trunks.

Heads exploding.

And there I was, with my four-year-old eyes, opened to the wonders of Hollyweird and the brilliance of Stan Winston.

He worked on Manimal, Leviathan, Congo, Predator 2, The Relic, Small Soldiers, Instinct, Inspector Gadget (coincidentally the film that made me want to dabble in screenwriting and directing as it was such a bastardization of everything I cared about growing up and lead to additional bastardizations like Transformers and GI Joe).

Lake Placid, AI, End of Days, Jurassic Park, The Thing (best horror movie ever made), the Terminator films (still only consider there to be two with no television shows), Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Iron Man, Big Fish, and the list goes on.

His hands were in so many of my favorite films of all-time, it was a complete blow to the stomach to see this genius struck down at the age of 62.

As witnessed with his work on Iron Man in the effects of creating the clunky first armor and working on the rest, you knew his work was only getting better.

You knew there was nothing this man couldn’t do.

And now, his genius is gone.

And the world of Hollyweird should take a deep breath and be saddened by this.

The man with more class and ability than most others was there.

There are things to take from the loss of genius and I hope that somewhere someone in Hollyweird is thinking about this.

When a genius like Stan Winston is lost, there is no way to fill his void. But there are ways to remember him. And the best way is to follow his method.

Follow his open-mindedness and grow.

Hollyweird has an insane problem with looking to the past and what worked before and just redoing it.

Winston and a few of his counterparts have always looked to the future.

They embraced the or, the weird, the strange, the dark, the disturbing, and they’ve touched corners of our lives with their insanely real effects work and monster work in films that we have all known and loved.

The best thing to take from Stan Winston is what he did for Hollyweird. He was all the best parts of it.

Yeah he worked on crummy movies and did insanely good work on them. But he was there, for the most part, doing his thing, doing his best with what he was given, and doing a damn fine job of it.

I had the luck of meeting him, briefly, in Chicago back around 2002 at a comic convention.

He was walking the floor and appeared to be looking for a friend or family member. I didn’t keep him too long, but I stopped him just long enough to tell him what an honor it was to meet him and how amazing his work was and what it had done to my life.

I am certain he got that all the time and people were always telling him this wherever he went, but he was kind enough to shake my hand, thank me for telling him that, and smile.

He was kind enough not to walk away in the sight of a gawking fan and think I was weird and not want to be anywhere near me.

He was kind enough to accept me as a human being.

To accept my or and my weirdness. Now we just need to accept his, accept the fact that he is gone, and do our best to keep the or alive and keep Hollyweird from tarnishing his good name and remaking the best of his films in terrible fashion.

If they’ll all but put a moratorium on remaking Orson Welles and Hitchcock films, films with the touch of Stan Winston should be allowed to stay exactly the way they are and be preserved as such.

And that will always include Monster Squad.

“You have to understand that rightly or wrongly, I consider myself an artist and I consider the work that we do art. In helping to tell stories by creating these characters. I came out as an actor. I am not a technician. I am a techno-ignorant, but I love creating characters and telling wonderful stories. Thinking of myself as an artist doesn't allow me to think of size having to do with importance.”

*Most quotes belong to Stan Winston unless otherwise noted.