This is David McCallum and you're listening to Gilbert Godfrey's amazing colossal podcast.

Hi, this is Gilbert Godfrey. This is Gilbert Godfrey's amazing colossal podcast. I'm here with my co-host,

Frank Santopadre and we're once again recording with our engineer, Frank Ferdarosa. And our guest this week is an

Emmy and Oscar-winning visual effects and special effects artist and the senior visit visual effects

supervisor and creative director of industrial light and magic. You may have heard of it. Reading this man's list of credits is staggering and overwhelming. But what the hell will take a crack at it?

Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back, close encounters of the third kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET, the extraterrestrial, Willow, the Abyss, Terminator 2 Judgment Day, War of the Worlds and Jurassic Park, just a name of you.

Among his many achievements was spearheading ILM's move from models and miniatures to CGI for Terminator 2 and helping to usher in a brand new age of computer-generated imagery with the CG dinosaurs of Jurassic Park.

He's been nominated for 15 Academy Awards, winning nine of them, giving him the most Oscars of any living filmmaker. He's also been honored with a lifetime achievement award by his peers in the visual effects society and he's won of only three.

Special effects artists to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame joining Stan Winston and his longtime friend and hero Ray Harryhausen.

Please welcome to the show one of the most significant figures in the 20th century cinema and believe it or not, a man who claims he enjoys this very podcast.

The legendary Dennis Mirren.

Hey, thank you so much. Who's that? Yes. Yes. Dennis. It's actually true. You listen to the show. I'd listen to the show. Yes. I've heard, I probably are least three quarters or more of the shows. Wow. Geez.

We're not easy. Your way your numbers are way up there now. We're thrilled. Now we didn't believe it was true. We were talking. I'm.

I came across equinox on TV. And at first I thought, well, this is going to be some awful crap. And I'll watch five minutes of it. And I wound up watching the A. It's a fun movie. How did that come about?

Well, it came about because I had some time between my freshman year and sophomore year in college summer. Right. And I said, let's make a movie. It was like Mickey Rooney, right? And Judy Garland. Literally that was it. And I borrowed the money for my grandfather who put away some money for college for like if I could get into USC. And I couldn't get into it because of my grades.

I took the $3,500 and was with two or three or four friends made that movie all in 16 millimeter. And this is started in 1965 and we finished the 67. And full of a special effects. It was just a way of getting effects out there because I was sort of tired of just neighborhood kids and friends and people in school looking at them. I said, I want everybody to see this work. So what do you do? You just make a movie.

And it wasn't very good, but it was okay. And I had some good stuff. And I sold it a couple years later to Jack Harris who had done the blob and 4D. And he bought it and put another like $40,000 into it, you know, which is eight times that what I put into it or something. Fix the sound up, shot some new scenes. And that's the version you saw that was in the theater.

Well, you got three fans of that movie right here. I'm going to introduce the third. The third one the gentleman sitting to my right has done this podcast before Michael Jacquino's here. Hey, Dennis. How are you? Fine. Fine.

I'm ready to see you. Only one Oscar. Just one. I know. I know. I know. The man has nine. I know. I know. It's a run away. He's got he can start a bowling alley with this.

Do we see one behind you? Do we see those behind you, Dennis? You're on the shelf. You know, no, no, it's a bunch of stuff there. But there's one Oscar up there and one C3PO. Okay.

That's all. And a lot of Vaders and other things I've got around. But mostly Oscars are like all over the place. And do you have the monster from Equinox up there?

I'm not up there. It's on the floor. If you want to, I can get it. If you want to see it. Really? But it's a we insist you actually have it. Okay. Hold on.

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