HALLOWEEN HOLLYWOOD STYLE
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Here in Lake Arrowhead we are part hicks, part Hollywood. Since we are a short hop, skip and a 90 minute jump from LA, lots of Hollywood types call this mountain home. In fact, I once took you on a tour of Lake Arrowhead by boat and pointed out all the celebrity homes. So when it comes to Halloween there is a house in Lake Arrowhead that every local kid makes a beeline for. It’s the home of my friends, Cindy and Tony Gardner.
Cindy is a fellow member of what we have termed our Well “Red” Book Club. She is one of those superhero women that is president of the PTA, on the school board, and if there were such a thing, she’d be the President of Halloween. That’s because Cindy is married to one of Hollywood’s most successful and prolific makeup and special effects designers, Tony Gardner.
HOCUS POCUS Makeup Effects Designer & Supervisor Tony Gardner and Billy Butcherson (Doug Jones)
Tony has designed and created effects for many feature films, including the films Zombieland, 127 Hours, Hairspray, The Addams Family, There’s Something About Mary, Seed of Chucky, and Shallow Hal to name just a few.
Tony with Gwyneth Paltrow in Shallow Hal
Tony with Chucky
Together, Tony and Cindy Gardner do Halloween Hollywood Style better than anybody else on this mountain. For example, the model Tony built of the Hocus Pocus character Billy Butcherson lives in Tony’s living room this time of year. He is so lifelike in person it’s eerie. His eyes look like they are staring right through you!
This year Cindy invited our Well Red Book Club to her “Nightmare Before Christmas” home for our monthly meeting.
Instead of us all reading the same book, this month the plan was for each person to read an autobiography of their choice, and then come to our Halloween Hollywood Style Book Club meeting dressed as the character from their book. Didn’t my friend Ruth do a fantastic imitation of Tina Fey on the cover of her book Bossypants?
My friend Natalie read Ellen Degeneres’ autobiography called, Seriously, I’m Kidding.
Dining at Cindy’s ghoulishly decorated table…
we consumed devilish eggs and drank a besieged blend of old vine varietal wine and some Crooked Path Cabernet along with other frightful Halloween fare.
For dessert there was devil’s food cake and pumpkin cutout cookies, served along with a healthy portion of bones, brains and worms.
Tea and coffee service was simply swimming with spiders.
Everywhere you look in Tony & Cindy’s home there is a fright night horror show going on. Tony took a blowtorch to this Christmas tree, turning it into a real life Nightmare Before Christmas right in his living room.
And instead of gifts under the tree there are snakes, skulls and spiders.
Even the family’s black cat is dressed for the occasion.
Skeletons hang from sconces…
and stand like sentries in see-thru coffins.
while gargoyles guard the Gardner’s ghoulish grounds.
Tony even made this incredibly lifelike head of his own likeness, and it sits bodiless in his dining room. Now that’s creepy!
Want to see some of Tony’s handywork on the job. Check out Chucky in the trailer below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGhU3D8eBLs
So there you have it: HALLOWEEN HOLLYWOOD STYLE
Happy Halloween!
Photos courtesy of Tony Gardner and Laurel Leidner.
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