Welcome to Cormorant Uncut. You probably read a couple of weeks ago in the paper about

the death of Dick Smith, the legendary makeup artist. He worked on Little Big Man with

Dustin Hoffman. He turned Dustin Hoffman into a 121-year-old man. He worked on the Godfather.

He did an extraordinary aging effect on Marlon Brander to turn him into the older Don Vito

Callioni. He worked, of course, on the exorcist. And he won an Oscar for his work on Amadeus.

One of his proteges was Rick Baker, now very, very famous makeup artist, who said about Dick Smith

that he bridged the gap between makeup work and special effects work. There were very few

filmmakers who didn't work with Dick Smith. Ken Russell, of course, worked with him on

altered states. I often think that Dick Smith's work on altered states is kind of forgotten

about. Ken Russell and Dick Smith had a slightly fractious relationship partly because apparently

Ken Russell changed around the order of the transformation makeups that Dick Smith had done,

but I still think it's a wonderful film. And Dick Smith's work on it is absolutely terrific.

The most extraordinary thing about the exorcist, of course, is that everybody talks about the

demon makeup, about the way in which he transformed Linda Blair into this demonic manifestation.

But fewer people remember is that in many of those exorcism sequences, there is more makeup

on the face of Max von Siddharl than there is Linda Blair. Max von Siddharl was a middle-aged man

playing the aging father marine. He is now close enough to the age of father marine, but back then

he required a lot of makeup to turn him into the aging priest. There's also a wonderful story

about his collaboration with Marcel Vecu Tehr, who did all the mechanical effects and Marcel

Vecu Tehr and Dick Smith worked very closely together on that film. Dick Smith was a really extraordinary

talent. And when we made the fear of God, the documentary about the exorcist back in 1998,

we spoke to him about his work. I thought this would be a good opportunity just to remember the

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