Locarno Diary #3: Phil Tippett, the "Mad God" of special effects
Monday, August 9, 2021 at 4:46PM by Elisa Giudici
Being a prestigious European movie festival but not one of the crowded and powerful ones, Locarno is the perfect size to showcase the work of artisans. Every year there are one or two guests who are legends in peculiar, unseen, less discussed niches of the movie industry. I am confident that meeting Phil Tippett, a legendary special effects creator, animator and supervisor, will be one of the most vivid memories of this edition of the festival.
Before Locarno and the opportunity to meet Tippett, I knew close to nothing about his career other than that he was a collaborator and close friend of Paul Verhoeven's. So much so, he said, that on the set of RoboCop they asked each other, with dry humour, who they were forced to be nice to...