Naked Lunch (1991) - Part 3: Cloquet and Fadela

Continued from the Part 2 article which focused on the Mugwumps.

One of Naked Lunch's main 'shock' moments is when the businessman Yves Cloquet, played by the late Julian Sands, transforms into an insect-like monster and devours a man alive.

The sequence was inspired by CWI's research on spiders for the previous year's Arachnophobia; namely from how spiders eat their prey, by slowly sucking their fluids out. Jim Isaac said, 'When we described it to David he really liked the idea of incorporating that same feeling into the scene. It was sexual and horrific at the same time.'

Early maquettes for the Cloquet transformation.

CWI fabricated two puppets; one for the transformed Cloquet, and one for his victim Kiki. Isaac explained, 'We spent a fair amount of time doing drawings,” stated Isaac. “It was a difficult look to capture and we went through a real evolutionary process. We brainstormed for a couple of weeks and David finally decided he wanted Cloquet to look as though he was transforming into a centipede — although his face was still recognizable as the actor Julian Sands.'

A lifecast was done of Julian Sands so that the Cloquet puppet beared his likeness, but it was Jim Isaac who was lifecasted for the Kiki puppet; as the Kiki puppet was shrivelling up, there wasn't a need for it to look like Joseph Scorsiani, who portrayed Kiki in his other scenes.

Kelly Lepkowski explained how the Kiki puppet's shrivelling effect was done; 'By laying texture underneath the skin, we could put a vacuum on it and make it look like flesh was being eaten away. We put two patches on him - one on the side of his face and another up on his head - that got sucked into big crevices. The patch on the top of his head also traveled inward — we could pull on a cable and make it look as though his face was starting to collapse and disfigure. It was a quick shot so we only had to time out two or three seconds of action for that.'

Both the Kiki and Cloquet puppets were operated from underneath the set floor with poles. Jim Isaac explained, 'David assured us that he didn’t intend to linger on that scene for long. He just wanted something to give the audience an impression quickly. So we concentrated on the look of the characters more than trying to make them mechanical marvels.

(...) The whole rig was over six feet tall so it was a cumbersome thing to operate. There was just two-way movement on each body and both of the heads were mechanical, with eyes and necks and jaws that moved.'

The sequence where Monique Mercure's Fadela rips open her skin, revealing Roy Schneider's Benway underneath, was also CWI's work. Lifecasts were taken of both Mercure and Schneider in order to sculpt the appliances in their likenesses.

The first stage of Fadela's transformation required Mercure to wear a false prosthetic chest, under yet another false prosthetic chest! Isaac explained, 'Monique wore a fiberglass piece strapped to her body with Benway’s foam rubber chest glued onto it. The chest was fitted with bladders so that we could make it breathe.

Then, over that, we attached a prosthetic piece of her chest — the one she rips open. It was split down the middle and connected lightly with K-Y jelly so that when she grabbed both sides of the skin it would open easily.

With all of these pieces on her — the man’s chest and the female chest prosthetic — she was obviously several inches thicker in her torso than she would normally be. But because she was shot from just one angle in the front, it wasn’t apparent.'

An issue that CWI faced with the effect was that Schneider's head was larger than Mercure's, resulting in a slightly ridiculous image as Isaac remembered. 'Early on when I knew we were going to have to do this gag, I kept hoping that they would cast a small Benway and a large Fadela — but it didn’t work out that way. So we had to cheat a little bit and expand the positive of Fadela as much as we could.'

Wim Van Thillo, mould supervisor on the film, explained in detail. 'I expanded the mold of Fadela until we could get Roy Scheider’s head to fit inside it. I experimented with it in my garage, submerging the silicone mold in kerosene. Silicone will expand twenty-five or thirty percent uniformly — after that it starts to distort.

I’d immerse the mold in kerosene for about forty-five minutes, then take it out and I’d have an enlarged mold. The only problem was that it compromised the strength of the silicone. We could still use the mold, but it really progressed the aging process. I went ahead and used it and made a rigid foam casting. I did a clay press inside of that and gave it to Stephan and he just sculpted it right in. Then we took a mold of that and ran a skin.'

The Fadela skin was meant to look fakey, as if it was just a costume. Gregg Olsson, who painted the Fadela pieces, said about it, 'Rather than painting it to look like flesh. I went into shades of pale gray — the same color we’d used for the mugwump. So there was some consistency in these things.'

Another minor concern was that Benway should be smoking a cigar, even with the Fadela skin on. 'We had to blend this prosthetic around the cigar or leave room for it so that when Scheider got on set he could insert it.'

Of course the most important part was Scheider himself, who was not able to see from inside the Fadela prosthetic while saying his lines. Isaac commended Mercure and Schneider's performance in the scene, 'They played both sides of the gag so well that they really sold it. No matter how well we do our job, it always takes the actor to make that kind of effect believable.'

Isaac looked back on the show, and ultimately why it had been chosen by Chris Walas. 'Naked Lunch was the first script we’d read in a long time that had everyone excited and that is the deciding factor for us as a company whenever we choose to do a show or not.

We don’t really make decisions based on how big an effects movie it is or how good we are going to look. We try to pick projects that we can be enthusiastic about, with scripts and directors that we like. That has been very important to Chris from the beginning.

We were really glad that we took this particular project because it was exciting to be involved with something that was not just an effects movie.'

Isaac also praised David Cronenberg and how he handled the project. 'David is so patient with this stuff, we never felt pressured or rushed. He wanted it done right, so after every take on any of the creatures, he'd ask me if I liked it. and if I didn't we did it over. Another director might say, ‘Look, I said *I* liked it, let's move on!' He trusted my judgement a great deal. He knows the important thing is that when he's in the editing room, he has to have the footage.

He really is an expert at getting the most out of these creatures. He knows how to shoot them, and he knows their limits. David listens to people. He's not at all insecure. He knows this is his vision, so if I make a suggestion for a shot that might be interesting, or something a creature should do. he knows I'm not pushing into his territory. I'm just trying to help make the movie better. It was really a great pleasure to work with him.'

Sources:

• Cinefex #49 'Borrowed Flesh' by Jody Duncan, 1992
• Cinefantastique Vol. 22 No.5 (April 1992)