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Independent Eyes:
Fred Stuhr
by Michelle Klein-Häss
The first thing you think about when you enter the space where
Fred Stuhr did half of his work on the rock band Tool's new video
"Prison Sex" is that you have suddenly walked into a scene in a David
Lynch movie. There are dolls and pieces of dolls on workbenches all
over the rooms, save for the one set up for the actual filming. A
medium-sized mutt, Gertie (a dead ringer for Brownie/Lazarus, the dog who was
in the news in March 1994 for being prematurely buried) runs in delighted
circles in front of you. Her circular motion is dictated by the fact
she has only one eye and is in constant rotation to keep her remaining
eye trained on you.
Stuhr was born and raised in Pasadena, California, and he has
chosen to maintain that picturesque Los Angeles suburb as his base of
operations. But the first time I spoke with him, he was working in a
space that Tool's guitarist Adam Jones had rented for the purpose near
the band's studio.
As I conducted that interview, neither one of us had any idea
that within a few days after we spoke, the space would be damaged
beyond repair by the Northridge/Reseda Quake of 1994.
"We were actually filming "Prison Sex" when the quake hit...
about 5 of us working on the video. The quake struck, and we all
bolted out of there. The studio was sketchy to begin with...this old
brick building in Hollywood. If it wasn't for the fact that it was so
scary, it would have been beautiful...I saw all these transformers
blowing up all along Hollywood Boulevard, sparks shooting out
everywhere....We only went back into the building to grab the
materials for the video and move them back to my studio in Pasadena. I
was working on another video, the Hendrix video, in my own studio, so
I had to take a whole day to move the stuff for that out of the way
and set up to finish the Tool video."
And yet, despite that setback, the video was completed and
began airing in late February on MTV and The Box. It's a beautiful but
terrifying piece of work, which consists primarily of a small, broken
doll being menaced by a larger creature which looks like a cross
between a woman in a tight black-leather bondage suit and one of those
big-eyed aliens that UFO abductees invariably describe as passengers
of those ships.
"The song's about child molestation...confronting the horror
and pain of going through such treatment. But the visuals are open to
interpretation, which is something I prefer. You can read into them
whatever you want."
Stuhr began his career as an animator when he went to school
at Art Center School Of Design in Pasadena, but the roots of his
dedication to his chosen art form run much deeper.
"Ray Harryhausen really blew me away..."Seventh Voyage of
Sinbad," "Clash of the Titans"...those were all really inspiring.
I did a lot of drawing as a kid. After learning to draw well, and a
few home experiments with film and video, I knew I wanted to combine
both arts and become an animator. I don't like to noodle endlessly
over a drawing, I don't have the patience for it...but I love working
with my hands. Puppet animation, claymation...that was what excited
me then, and it still does now."
At Art Center, Stuhr made two student films, one which caught
the eye of the rock band Green Jellÿ. Stuhr, still living at home with
his parents, shot their video "Three Little Pigs" at his parents'
house with only the help of his friend and schoolmate Al Evans, who
still works with him today.
"["Three Little Pigs"] is a silly song, so I did silly visuals
for that....I did practically everything on that. I sculpted
everything, and [Evans] was there to primarily help me build sets and
stuff."
Ironically, it was that "silly" video that caught the
attention of Adam Jones of the rock band Tool. Jones and Stuhr met,
and an instant rapport developed. By the time Stuhr was hired to
make the band's first video, "Sober," they had become friends and
collaborators.
"I became friends with Adam, and he was really hot to make a
video. It amazed me how much we had in common, how many things we were
both into. He had worked at Stan Winston Studios, which is a Hollywood
makeup and Special Effects firm, and was in his own right a great artist, great sculptor.I had sketchbooks, Adam had sketchbooks, and we'd sit around
discussing stuff for hours. We narrowed it down to three or four
characters, and those made it into the video."
Like "Prison Sex," "Sober" is a dark, hallucinogenic video.
An old, decrepit man in a decaying building finds a box, slices it
open with a knife, and suddenly begins seeing horrifying visions. He
hides the box, but like the legendary box given to Pandora, the
visions released do not go away but get more and more horrifying. It
is hard to describe the action in the video because the images, like
those in "Prison Sex" are so open to interpretation. But the
innovative techniques involved are not only fascinating, but easier
to describe in print. For example, a striking scene when the old
man, levitating in a slat-back chair, suddenly falls over and his face
melts into a puddle.
"It's really simple how the chair levitates...you never see
all the chair, and the spot the camera movements miss is where I put
the post to hold the chair up. The melting face was done in real
time...that was Adam's idea. What we did was use the same mold we cast
the old man's head in, and instead of the plastic we used gelatin...a
really squishy kind of gelatin. Adam then painted the face with makeup
to make it look like the old man doll's head, then when the cameras
rolled, we hit the thing with a heat gun to melt it."
"Sober" wound up breaking things wide open for Stuhr. Not only
did it allow him to make the second video, "Prison Sex" for Tool, but
he has gotten other offers. The opening sequence for the short-lived
Chevy Chase talk show was one project he did in the wake of "Sober,"
and he is just now in the process of completing a video with veteran
video director Wayne Isham for Jimi Hendrix' song, "Are You
Experienced?".
"Yeah, MCA Records re-mastered and re-issued the Hendrix
albums last year, and so they called on Wayne Isham to put a new video
together for it. Isham liked my work, and particularly liked this one
bit which was on my demo reel. It was this piece I did with this
zombie-like figure trudging through a red desert...sort of like the
landscapes the Viking probe took on Mars. The figure had a head that
looked like a bird's skull, yet at the same time looked really
Egyptian...sort of like the god Horus who's got a hawk's head. I did
the piece just after "Sober"...it was a personal piece.
"They really liked the character, and asked me if I could do
something more with it. So I began writing a little scenario for this
character...that he was on a journey, just seeking. It turns out he's
on this pilgrimage to a shrine, where Hendrix's spirit lives in
ghostly form. The character enters the temple, and inside he
encounters an obelisk...a monument to Hendrix. A flame burning before
the obelisk comes to life, and the flame actually is Hendrix' spirit,
making contact with the birdman character. (Author's note: Hendrix
would've loved this scenario!)
Anyway, the budget kind of limited things, so we aren't able
to do the entire scenario. But a good chunk of it will be there. I'm
right now working on new footage for it, and what's going to happen
is it will be worked into existing footage that was shot for the
original "Are You Experienced?" video...the first version that Isham
did 10 years ago. A lot of the same archival footage of Hendrix will
be used. So in a way, this is a remake of a video, done to promote a
re-mastered re-issue...it all works out great!"
And there are more offers on their way as well. Some are even
for feature-length projects, which Stuhr has mixed feelings about.
"I've been considering it...but I don't want to jump into
doing a feature. I like the video format...five minutes long. At this
point in my career, I'm still learning a lot. I've got a lot of
learning to do before I even think in terms of a feature. It would be
a bummer if I spent a year of my life working on a feature and it all
turns out wrong. I've got a lot of practice to get under my belt
still. The videos and little spots are great for that. I just want to
be that much more prepared when I finally get my shot at doing a
feature."
(This article first appeared in Animato! Magazine, Issue #29, Summer, 1994.)
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Page last updated 1/15/1998
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