Tony Gardner, the Farrelly brothers’ longtime special makeup effects supervisor, had the responsibility of joining Damon and Kinnear together – literally – at the hip. Gardner created a prosthetic that held the two actors together when they were clothed, and another that worked when the script called for the characters to be shirtless.
“When I first spoke to the Farrellys about the film, it was all about technically proving the concept was viable,” says Gardner, who in 2002 turned Gwyneth Paltrow into a 300-pound woman in “Shallow Hall.” “Peter and Bobby said, ‘Show us that we can make this movie.’ The logistics of two connected bodies moving different ways, and attaching all of the muscle groups together, made this the most difficult makeups we’ve ever done.”
Gardner created a series of harnesses that held the actors together while still allowing them freedom of movement. “Once we decided to go the harness route, the first issue was who would be on what side and what was going to be their body posture,” says Gardner. “We put them in different conjoined configurations and tried different connective shaped masses. Ultimately, we had Bob and Walt face away from each other with one body moved slightly in front of the other.
“With the body positioning finalized, we did body casts in the posture of the way we wanted them to stand, to see how their bodies would impact one another. From the body casts we made duplicate fiberglass bodies, then made the harnesses that would hold them in a specific pose."
After weeks of trial and error, Gardner and his team were ready to test the apparatus. “We put Matt and Greg in the everyday harness they would wear underneath their clothes, and applied the prosthetic make-up over the sub-harness which was made of fabric and netting gear. We put them together with a five-piece overlapping giant torso prosthetic make-up piece. Matt and Greg were watching it all go down in a mirror, and the process fascinated them.”
Gardner continued to refine and improve the harnesses, while Damon and Kinnear trained their bodies to move as one efficient unit. Prior to the start of principal photography, they rehearsed at the home of actress/author Carrie Fisher. “We strapped ourselves to a stunt man and practiced our movements,” says Damon. “We went through all the physical tasks we had to perform in the film including working the grill, which we did in Carrie’s kitchen.”
From the first day of production, Damon’s and Kinnear’s creativity impressed the STUCK ON YOU cast and crew. “You could see the wheels turning and they came up with character nuances and tics we never would have thought about incorporating into the story,” says Peter Farrelly. “They really opened up a whole new aspect of the movie.”
Adds Bobby Farrelly: “Matt and Greg could have played it where they’re sort of the same person and are finishing each other's sentences, but instead they played Walt and Bob as completely different guys whose whole is better than the sum of the parts.”
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