Where Are 8 Dead Heads Funny? Try a Duffel Bag

The film title “Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag” can’t help but conjure up certain images. And the man charged with making those images lifelike tells a tale worthy of a movie itself.

The Orion Pictures film, which opened last week and stars Joe Pesci, George Hamilton and Dyan Cannon, is the directorial debut of Oscar-winning writer Tom Schulman (“Dead Poets Society”) and was produced by Motion Picture Corp. of America, an arm of Orion.

But it’s the actual heads that form the crux of the film. They were the creation of makeup effects wizards Greg Cannom and Keith VanderLaan of Greg Cannom Creations Inc., a Valencia-based company that won makeup Oscars for “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (and was nominated for “Roommates,” “Hoffa” and “Hook”).

The lifelike nature of the heads created as much of a stir off-screen as on-screen, particularly overseas. When MPCA Co-president Brad Krevoy toted the head models around at the Cannes Film Festival last year, trying to entice foreign distributors to buy rights to the movie, some of those buyers got more realism than they bargained for.

“We had given some copies of the heads, about 15 of them, out to key buyers. When they headed home they were stopped at customs,” Krevoy says. “We started fielding calls from customs all over the world. Buyers were calling me saying, ‘Brad, I’m in a holding cell, I’m in jail. Please call the embassy and tell them it’s OK, it’s just a movie. . . . Get us out of here.’ ”

Krevoy made the calls. “I told them I would do it if the customs guy promised to go see the movie,” he said. “The reaction is a testament to how real these heads are and how good the makeup effects team is.”

Pretty soon Krevoy and company will find out if those worldwide promises are kept.

The heads are the central focus of the film, which is about hit man Tommy Spinelli (Pesci) hired to deliver the severed heads of eight mobsters to a godfather who needs proof that a job has been completed. Spinelli runs into trouble when his duffel bag is swapped with that of a college student flying to meet his future in-laws.

The heads come in just about every contorted, tortured expression, color and hairdo Cannom could conjure up.

Making them is a complicated process. First, Cannom says, his team has actors come in so molds can be taken of their heads. Before their faces are covered with a fast-setting silicone, each actor works out the death expression the head has to have in the movie. Then silicone is slathered on the actor and, VanderLaan says, the actor has to hold the expression for about 15 minutes.

Then another version of the mask is made and all the flesh tones are painted in. “It goes through about four to five [paint] washes because we want to make sure the light is reflected through the texture of the mask [material]. That’s what gives its lifelike quality,” VanderLaan said. That has a lot to do with the gel--a trade secret--used in the mask.

“What’s interesting about these heads is that if we really made them look like dead guys, the way people really look, nobody would believe it when they saw them on screen,” Cannom adds. “The audience would just think it was some bad horror job.”

After the human condition is touched up on the faces, from freckles to age spots, Cannom says eyelashes, facial and head hairs are applied one by one. The eyelashes and facial hair are all human hair, imported from Europe, usually France. Most of the wigs are human hair, but some of the coarser mops are made from yak. When the buyers get the imported hair, it is usually black or dark brown and needs to be bleached and dyed.

“This project was fun because you had to come up with so many different expressions for so many different dead heads at one time,” Cannom says.

And why eight heads?

“I kept wanting to do this comedy about a guy going to meet his future in-laws who he knows don’t like him,” Schulman says. “Then he runs into this terrible problem. I kept thinking, what could be the worst thing that could happen to him along the way? Well, he could be accused of murder. But how? Finding a head in his luggage. Well, one head would have been a drama or a thriller. Two or three, that would have been horror. Now eight heads in an overnight bag--no, a duffel bag . . . in a luggage mix-up . . . on an airplane. . . . That’s comedy. That’s the ticket.”