Lizard Boy: That Thing is Somebody's Child A great deal of work goes into the birth of a new screen monster, and with the title-touting LIZARD BOY, filmmakers Paul Della Pelle and Adonis Cruz have put in that work trying to unleash their creation upon audiences worldwide. When Tuesday, August 30 rolls around, LIZARD BOY will hit the streets of North America thanks to a distribution deal the San Luis Obispo, CA-based filmmakers struck with Cinema Epoch. And everyone will be able to set eyes on what Dr. Gino Conti declares to be "…my son." The evolution of LIZARD BOY started in the form of a short story Della Pelle was considering writing about a reptilian man finding his way to current-day Earth through a space time warp. But as Della Pelle worked on the story with his Picture Stable partner Cruz, the story morphed into what can now be seen in the finished film; a take on the bleeding edge science of cross-species genetic engineering, and homage to the likes of Frankenstein and some of the great fright night features of the past. Early in the film, we see a news story referencing bioengineering lab T-GEN, that creates "spider goats"; hybrid goats infused with silk producing genes from spiders. The spider protein enriched goat milk is then used to create incredibly strong fiber for the military. LIZARD BOY borrows this unbelievable sub-plot from real genetics labs that actually create these freakish animals to make bulletproof vests and other industrial items. The story then focuses on the efforts of one of T-GEN's geneticists, the aforementioned Dr. Conti portrayed by Pete Punito, the lead member of a group of scientists doing genetic research for the company. When the government takes an interest in their work and gets directly involved in the person of Agent Richard Hoffmeyer (Damon Gregory), Conti, along with his scientist cousin Frankie (Mark Strano) and fellow researcher Julie (Rachel Riley) try to keep their work out of less than scrupulous hands. Yet Gino has another secret. After failing with his girlfriend to conceive a child, Dr. Conti went to his expertise, fusing his own DNA with that of a giant hybrid lizard, and LIZARD BOY was born. The script completed with the help of Bruce Brown, Della Pelle and Cruz went to work on creating the look of the creature. "It was kind of up in the air," Cruz said of physically creating the character, "but we had some ideas from different movies like ENEMY MINE and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, there are lizard-like creatures in both of those." Wolfgang Peterson's 1985 ENEMY MINE featured Louis Gossett, Jr. as Jeriba, a lizard-like being designed by Chris Walas and of course EMPIRE featured Bossk, one of the bounty hunters employed by Darth Vader and the Emperor to track down Han Solo. Della Pelle was thinking in similar lines. "Originally we thought "well, we'll just make it the classic lizard man. I think there's this early episode of STAR TREK where there's this creature, the Gorn."" The Gorn was featured in "Arena" from the first season of STAR TREK in 1967. With those references in mind the filmmakers started working with make-up artist Arthur Goldiner and graphic designer/sculptor Dave Banta, and LIZARD BOY really began to take shape. "Dave worked up a sculpture of what he thought it should be like," Della Pelle, the film's director, said, but it was more lizard-like than they wanted. When they came across Sam Jinks's sculpture THE YOUNG FAMILY on Patricia Piccinini's Web site www.patriciapiccinini.net, they knew what they were going for. Jinks's piece shows a mother human/dog mutation laying her side as her babies feed. Mutation was the answer to the Lizard Boy conundrum. Through genetic manipulation, Dr. Conti creates a being crossing human genes with that of a Komodo dragon, from there, Carlo, the lizard boy, is hatched. Jinks's sculpture conveyed in image what was already down on paper, so with this new inspiration, creating the look moved forward. "Arthur was like "no, it should be more mutated, more elephant man,"" Della Pelle said of the creation process. "Then Dave mutated it more, and then he kinda went too far." Della Pelle said the creature went a little grotesque before it was brought back down, but the third time was what they were going for. So, while, the look for Lizard Boy had a somewhat scaly first imagining, the final product is a more organic look, a true, unique morphing of breeds. Once the design was agreed upon, the mask was created, but on a tight budget, there could be only one. Cruz stated that the mask was incredibly durable and even though actor Steven Zeigler was asked to perform numerous fight sequences, the mask made it through the two weeks of shooting plus some pick up dates in great shape. "Arthur cast (the mask) in silicone instead of foam rubber, so it would have translucence to it, so light would shine through the ears and stuff like that," Della Pelle said. The application process for Zeigler wasn't too bad, and Cruz stated that it was actually pretty quick, but one issue did arise. "The first day we used a solvent-based adhesive, and Steven freaked out," Della Pelle said of the first day of shooting with Zeigler in the mask and the skin-reaction Zeigler had to the spirit gum. "But he put up with it enough and we got the mask on the first day." After that a latex-based adhesive was used. That was the only real hang-up for Della Pelle, Cruz and company during the shoot that featured actors from Los Angeles and the San Luis Obispo area. The editing process was also fairly smooth sailing, but then came the digital effects; putting the functioning lizard tail on Lizard Boy. "When it hitched up is when we got to the tail shots," Cruz said. Lizard Boy is very much a man, but also very much a reptile. He loves MMA fighting, wears a t-shirt featuring his favorite band, Chrome, and pulls his pants on one leg at a time, though he does have to work around his long tail. Insert joke here. "I believe there were 48 (tail shots) of varying lengths and difficulty," Cruz said, though to Della Pelle it felt like double that. "That process probably took about three months." As the film's director of photography, Cruz worked hard to deal with what would be seen in regards to the computer-generated tail, pre-imagining the final product on set. "We had a brown stump of a tail coming off the Lizard Boy, with a red tape on the end to use as a track marker," Cruz said. And since Cruz ended up doing a great deal of the tail work himself, his knowledge of the project from inception was of great use as well as his and Della Pelle's determination to produce a quality product. "Basically, you take a reference track into (Poser) and track the tail to that stump, covering it, so, that's one pass." Then the hard part came, the masking of areas on the screen to allow the tail to move naturally with Lizard Boy's body. They did receive, though, some outside consulting and assistance. The strength of the material attracted veteran visual effects supervisor Jeff Goldman (King Kong, Sin City, Snakes on a Plane) and lead compositor Mike Bozulich (The Mist, Pan's Labyrinth) who worked on such key shots as creating a glowing, embryonic Lizard Boy inside a plaster egg and handling the vicious amputation of a man's arm in a misunderstanding leading to a Lizard Boy attack, along with other digital gore shots. As the camp horror of LIZARD BOY was in the process of production, unbeknownst to Della Pelle and Cruz, Vincenzo Natali was in the process of producing SPLICE up in Canada. In a complete coincidence, the films share many, well, story chromosomes, if you will. "I was pretty intrigued and fascinated by the fact the subject matter dealt with in the two films was so similar, and that they were made at the same time," Della Pelle said. "Of course he had a multi-million dollar budget, we had 2-for-1 pizza and a Discover card. It makes you wonder if maybe the time was right for that topic to be explored in that way." The film contains many staples of the genre, and the filmmakers have no problems admitting to its B-movie roots, fright with humor, a dark edge, and that all happens to be part of the fun of the film. Contact Picture Stable LLC 4955 Davenport Creek Road San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 805-549-0935 http://www.lizardboy.com http://www.facebook.com/LizardBoyTheMovie ### If you'd like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Paul Della Pelle, please email him at paul@picturestable.com