Flesh & Blood & Bone Podcast Episode 1

The first episode of Tony and Kyra Gardner’s new podcast series “Flesh & Blood & Bone” has been released. Tony Gardnerthe mastermind behind many makeup and antimitotic effects for a variety of horror films such as: Seeds of Chucky, teams up with his film and music video director daughter Kyra to delve into the secrets and anecdotes they have to share about working in the industry. Explaining the purpose of the podcast, Kyra said:

“And we wanted to start this podcast because I went into the film industry and I direct and it was so nice to have a dad who was in the industry and could give me advice or just tell stories that were super interesting. And lots of them.” The stories he tells are really fun. So I wanted to share that privilege and those stories with other people, but also give you the perspective of someone who’s been in the film industry since the ’80s, a long time ago. Someone who’s just starting out, and we can give you give both people the perspective of different genders.

During the podcast, Tony shared a story about that college course, including the time a director spoke to the group about a new film they had been working on. Although he didn’t mention the director by name, the elder Gardner noted that one scene they were shown featured a singer in a nightclub.

“And I remember the director saying she started out like a local personality and was really good and super talented. I have a feeling she’s going to be really big one day, and she’s called Madonna.”

In the same class, Gardner had to write a paper, and he quickly decided that the paper was his best ticket to meeting some of his heroes, including people like George Lucas and Rick Baker. Therefore, the theme of his work was “Use of Mechanical Effects as Character.”

RELATED: Kyra Elise Gardner’s ‘Living With Chucky’ Acquired by Yellow Veil Pictures

Tony Gardner had to land some important interviews

Having a paper, a thesis, and a list of people to meet was one thing. Actually interviewing people in the days before cell phones and Zoom calls was another matter. To secure interviews, Gardner had to do it the old-fashioned way, by driving to the cities where their stores were located and looking them up in the phone book.

“How many Rick Baker’s are there in North Hollywood?” Gardner wondered. In answer to his own question, there were many of them, and he just had to guess which one sounded like the people he was looking for lived there.

“So I was able to arrange a meeting with Carlo Rambaldi and Steven Spielberg, and the meeting with Carlo Rambaldi actually went as planned and was hilarious because he pretended to speak English. It was pretty funny. And then the Spielberg thing.” I just kept getting canceled, and I went to the office so often that I ended up becoming friends with the secretary, Kathy Schweitzer, for whom I acted as a cat sitter after school.

During one of his attempts to contact Steven Spielberg, Gardner struck up a conversation with him Gremlins Star Zach Galligan because he was the only person there you could talk to. Gardner didn’t realize he was talking to an actor until Galligan was called back to the set of the 1984 hit. When Gardner tried to contact special effects wizard Rick Baker, he first met with his father, Ralph Baker. However, this meeting ultimately paid off when Rick Baker later called Gardner and, after a brief conversation, offered him a job.

“He says, ‘You’re everywhere. You want to do music, you want to do theater, you want to do effects and you want to do films’ and he says, ‘It’s only a four week job, but maybe after that.’ “After four weeks you will know that this is one of the things you want to do or not.”

The job involved driving around collecting supplies for a little music video called “Thriller,” a story that Gardner promises to tell next week in the second episode of the podcast. In the meantime, you can watch the rest of the first episode on Kyra Gardner’s YouTube page or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.