an Article by Chuck Wagner

In Kevin Smith’s new film DOGMA, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon portray two banished angels with a plan to get back into heaven — which might destroy the universe in the process! But while on earth, they sometimes get around on wings — animatronic wings designed by Vincent Guastini and the artisans of Vincent Guastini Productions.

“I heard about Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier doing a bunch of effects films on the Internet,” Guastini recalled. “I didn’t know anything about DOGMA whatsoever, and I sent them a press package on me, and I got a call from Scott Mosier, the producer. He said they were doing this film called DOGMA. I was actually a very big fan of theirs, because I did see CLERKS and MALLRATS, and CHASING AMY was just getting released and getting good reviews.”

Kevin Smith is based in Red Bank, New Jersey and Guastini is based in New York City. Vincent Guastini Productions is the first company of it kind on the East Coast of America doing makeup and creature effects for many of Hollywood’s main stream films and has been in business for over ten years. In the film, Affleck, Damon and Alan Rickman (who plays Metatron, Prince of Countenance, the Mouth of God), wear wings.

“The challenge of the movie was that they wanted to see angel wings that, first of all, were better than the angel wings in other movies, and that could do a lot more stuff. This was something I had never attacked before.”

And the competition?

“Definitely BRAZIL and, although I’m not going to put anybody else’s wings down, Kevin was not a big fan of MICHAEL [the John Travolta film where Travolta plays the archangel Michael] wings at all. He didn’t think they moved much and you really didn’t get to see them all until, maybe, the end. The advantage with BRAZIL was the person’s arms actually fit into the wings, which helped manipulate them. In the case of DOGMA, we didn’t have that luxury whatsoever. These wings had to not only move, they had to flap, they had to fold, and, I think it’s the first time that animatronic wings like these have been made where they can do all those functions in one full set.”

This is as opposed to having several sets of wings, with each capable of performing only a few of the functions required by the script.

“The one set of wings did everything,” Guastini said. “We had two sets of those, one as back-up. Alan Rickman and Ben Affleck had to wear those, and they were very heavy — about 60 pounds. And then on top of all of that, we had sets of what you might call, ‘stunt wings’ and ‘shoot-’em-up wings’ and what we called the ‘opened, sprung-out wings’ for when Ben Affleck comes swooping down from the top of a church steeple.”

So what mechanism was used to drive the movements? Electric motors?

“No. Completely cable. They’re controlled by operators. We had to make armor, also, for Ben Affleck when he’s in the wings. With every set of wings that was on him, even the animatronic ones, there was a certain type of armor that had to go on him to accommodate the harness that went on the back.”

And there were more things than angels…

“We had The Golgothan, also known as Noman or The Shit Demon, who is a character made from all the evil excrement in the world. This is one of the minions that Jason Lee — who plays the demon Azrael in the film — sends after Jay and Silent Bob.”

Jay and Silent Bob are recurring characters in Kevin Smith films. In fact, Kevin Smith IS Silent Bob. Jason Mewes plays Jay. Here they play prophets — with Alanis Morissette as God!

“I go by the title of Special Makeup Effects,” Guastini explained. “What that entails is I design and create make-up effects entailing prosthetics, make-up, etc.”

But some engineering-type work comes with the territory.

“The main frame of the wings is made from aluminum — milled and machined parts. On top of that frame is a spandex-type of material stretched over the frame. The feathers on the outer edges of the wings are sculpted and vacuum-formed from plastic and individually glued on.”

The Golgothan was altogether different.

“The Golgothan is a suit, about six feet, two inches in height. Bob Panetta, a stunt guy under the supervision of Gary Jensen, wore the suit. Mark Smith was the model for the suit. We sculpted it based on him, but when we did tests, we discovered that the suit was too much of a strain on him and we were afraid he’d have a heart attack and die on us! That’s when we went with Bob Panetta.

“But it’s a foam-latex suit with a spandex inner suit, with an animatronic, radio-controlled head. The thing did have to talk, laugh, smile among other expressions. It couldn’t look like a big, rubber suit, even though it’s a hard concept to make a shit-monster look believable. But I’m pleased at the way it looked in the film. There’s also an animatronic version of Ben Affleck which we did, in which the head and heart would blow up — which is what happens if a mortal hears the true sound of God’s voice. I also had to make a fake George Carlin [who plays Cardinal Glick] that gets dropped out of the sky and smashes to the ground. And I’d also like to thank key crew members Greg Romoundos & Ken Walker, who were responsible for the engineering of the animatronics for the wings that brought my design to life.”

Guastini is currently up for several possible films.

“I’m also designing for Hal Hartley’s first monster movie called MONSTER. It’s sort of a remake of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST with a little KING KONG here and there. That shoots in Iceland. The creature is sort of like a big, mythological demon that can feel the pain in the world. He can’t die. He’s been around since before the dinosaurs. He’s sick of what the world is and his goal is to try and be killed. But then he falls in love.”