Monster in the black lagoon. Have their own pantheon, torefo, one of disneys first animators, actress, illustrator. Every thing about Millicent Patrick was larger than life. The greatest honor of my life so far to tell her story. If youve rid the book you know, read the hard cover version you know there are pictures because millicent lived a visual cinematic life. I have a treat for all of you. Photos never seen before. I have hundreds and hundreds of them i wasnt allowed to pub in because we could not fit 700 photos in the book and would sort of like to take you through telling you about mill sent and why she is a trailblazing artist and one of the most important women weve ever had in the Film Industry and why we dont know her any longer. Id like to take you through her life a little bit with awesome photos. So, see if i can remember how to do this. Yes. Thats delete. Sorry. Heres my girl. So Millicent Patrick began life, grew up in a place call the hearst capital. If cribs was a tv show in the 1920s, Hearst Castle would have been on it and this is what it looks like. The summer home. One of many. A man named rm r William Randolph hearst. Incredible media mogul, one of many amazing homes, Charlie Chaplin and Winston Churchill used to hang out at the ranch, as they would say. And Millicent Patrick grew up here because her father named camille rossy, superintendent of construction ten years here. This is where she started life. Like i said, everything in millicents life was bigger, more bomb bank than anyone could dream. She grew up here. Her and her siblings hung out. Used to play here. Her dad was getting into fights and trying to figure how to make this thing. So millicent always was a great artist. Amazing pianist when she got into Community College she decided she really wanted to make a go of art. She decided to go to apply for a scholarship to go to an institute. This one here told im allowed to swear. Making sure no children. Someone with a complete badass. In a year after women were allow youed to vote she opened an art school in Southern California about to change the face of art schools. Incredible. Ran the school with an iron fist and artistic flare. I want to share some unseen drawing of millicent. Thats her modeling. Really cool thing about this institute not just it was created by an absolute melbert. Really, really good at working with students and teachers and lecturers trying to get more cool people in for her school. And one day an artist came to her from up and coming movie studio and wanted to make animated films and really wanted to get his artist trained in a special way you because he had a vision for how to change how animated films were made and how they looked. The man called walt disney. Youve probably heard of him. Probably early days in the world of disney. He had no money to train the animate aers but knew they needed to be trained differently. Not a time period to take an animation course at school. You need to train as artists in a special way. Going to all the art schools around Southern California. He asked i cant pay you, really want to bring my students here. They all said no. Except for our lady melbert. You know what . Bring your students on down. Well figure something out. Pipeline formed bethis institute and disney. Literally in a buick, disney would drive students down to here and wait for them while in class. Hang out around the school. How this pipeline got formed, because he got to see the best talent at the institute. That included Millicent Patrick. He started hiring animators and artists from here and while his animators were hanging out learning things there, sometimes instructor would come up and help him work on his film. A close connection there. He met millicent. Looking at her art. Millicents art was very, very special in a way that she was able to really convey a lot of movement in just a few lines. Thats perfect for animation. He said, please, come work for me. He hired her originally to work in place called the ink and paint department. Interested in womens history at disney, suggest you buy a book by Mindy Johnson calmed ink and paint. Early days of disney, a lot of different steps to animation. Dont take a drawing and wave it in front of a camera. A lot of things to do. Animators were all men. People taking those animator drawings and inking them on to clear felt to be shot with a camera and painted, they were 100 women. This was a massive building on the Disney Studio lot staffed 100 by women. In fact, men werent allowed in the building for a multitude of reasons. No. Intraoffice dating discouraged at Disney Studios. Millicent was so talented. Started as a painter, became an anchor and people noted her skill conveying all this movement and became one of the very, very first animators at disney along with martha james and loretta scott. Doing a drawing of something you might know. Pretty cool. You can see, see the style of these, from snow white. First thing mill sent worked on ambitious new film disney wanted to do, even by todays standards. Fil film executer, everyone classic music. This is the early days after animati animation. They wanted to elevate the art form. Thats how fantasia was born and milicent was hired on to be in the special effects tomorrow. This was a different movie. People had never done anything like this before so they needed new ideas of an mississippi stating. Themts a look at pastel in these nshots. How many have seen it . Great film. Totally holds up. But you cant animate with pastel because its chunky and chalky and its going to melt all over the place. Terrible. So he need ed to figure out how to paint in way that looked like pastel. Ta da, the pastel effect. Thats what milicent patrick did. If you learn to look for this soft, pastely effect, milicent and marcia james were hired to do that in the studio. There were a bunch of different sequences they were working on. Before i show you this next slide, sort of a big reveal in the book, so when i was a kid, i read a lot of books and a lot of people now im a huge horror fan and i have been for a long time and people want to know, you look like a nice lady, why are you into all this weird stuff . Besides the fact i look very weird. I tell them when i was a kid, my grandfather show ed me fantasia. Its a fun kids movie. Choo choos, dancing broom, until it got to the night on Bald Mountain sequence and all of a sudden, game changer. It was the first time that art made me feel something that powerful. Even though it was terror, it really affected me and i knew something was different and it was the very, very first time that art affected me in such a way that i thought about it afterwards. I have really bad anxiety. Always have. It was the first time i was afraid of something real. If you have anxiety you know what a vacation that is. And i was hooked. I fell in love. So when i found out that milicent also animated chernabog, my favorite animated monster, it blew my mind and made feel i was on the right path. Also, fun halloween october fact. One of the models was go see. If you rewatch the pill m and see his hand and arm movements, you can see it. I have gotten to see that picture. Couldnt print it in the book, ive tried, but him as chernabog is incredible. This is the first film milicent worked on as an animator. Loretta scott, the blond, she was the first credited female animator. As youll see in the book or you know if youve read it, credits back then in movies were really difficult. With animated films were even more difficult because there are hundreds and hundreds of people who work on animated films and when youre talk iing about who the first female animator is, was that the first person who drew a drawing, who saw a drag of hers on the big screen, a a film that was completed . Such a weird, gray area so i dont ever feel comfortable because its not like a big leaver you pull and it says mill cent was the first woman to do that. The footage comes out of something thats where im going to stand. But loretta was the first woman credited on screen as being an animator for bambi. A lot of amazing female power houses back then in the disney world. There was a lot of turmoil happening at disney. So milicent only worked through for a couple of years before a union strike and her struggle with migraines caused her to quit disney and she never worked with animation ever again. So what she did do is take advantage of those good looks of hers and become a model and she was very, very good at it. She lived in los angeles at this time, which is a great place to get into this industry. A lot of pipelines for taking Beautiful People and putting them in front of various cameras. She was very, very good at it. She had the looks. A very charming person. She loved being in this world and so how she segwayed into modeli modeling. She loved art. One day while she was waiting after a trade show that she had just modelled at, literally waiting on the corner waiting for the bus, a hollywood producer came up to her and i mean, i cant make, a lot of this stuff about milicents story, oh, did you make that up for the book . No, cant make it up. Asked her if she wanted to be in the pictures. She said yes. So she started a lot of work on the universal, columbia, pair mount ba paramount back lots. She stood out in whatever scene she was in because she was very, very beautiful. How she got back into the Film Industry. She was still modeling, which she really loved being in front of the camera. She got her first taste of this while she was still working at disney. How many people have seen or heard of a film call ed the reluctant dragon . Its sort of a big commercial for Disney Studios thats disguised as a movie. Those of comedian during that time as disney and it just shows him. The whole plot of the film is him trying to go to disney to pitch walt disney, god, what a nightmare now. Can you imagine . Youd have to dig a hole underneath Disney Studio lots to get in. Hes trying to find disney. Try iing to pitch them his idea for a film, but as he depose through the studio, you see various clips of short films and you see him on the studio lot. In the background of one of those scenes where a group of animators sketching an elephant is milicent patrick. As she got into the world of background acting and just agenting in general, she fell in love. She loved the life of it. She was a really Big Personality and while she was onset, if you were an actor yourself or made a film, you know theres a lot of down time. The phrase, hurry up and wait was probably invented on a film set. So while she was doing that, she was doing a lot of sketching. Still doing a lot of art. It was still her biggest passion. And one day, she was waiting in the make up chair and one of her favorite things to do was sketch portraits of her costars and she absolutely loved doing it. She had showed all these, it was a Universal Studios fill. And she had all these great sketches. She showed them to the man who ran the make up studio there, bud westmore. If you know, you know, if you dont, you dont. Bud, im always surprised that theres never been a film or a series made about the family. Bud ran the universal make up studio there. Monster shop. I mean beauty make y aliens. Anything to put on a face that was make up. He came from the westmore dynasty of makeup. Think the mob, but with lipstick. This was a true dynasty. His father invented the idea of a makeup department. Back when george came to hollywood from the u. K. , they didnt have that. So all the actors and actresses put on the makeup themselves. Didnt always work because there was no quality control. He barged on to studio sets and said hey, what if i did this, that way, it would look consistent from scene to scene. Oh, that sounds like a good idea. He said ill do it, got hired and started the idea of a makeup department. He had a bunch of sons and all of them went into makeup. It became a dynasty. There was a point in the 40s and 50s where there was a westmore brother heading up every studio makeup wise. You dont want to pi is ss off the westmores. They were from paramount to eagle lion, warner brothers, they all ran the Makeup Studios there. Catching the eye of a westmore was a big deal. He really wanted to hire milicent. The thing about bud and the rest of the westmores, they were beauty people. They had their own book. Have you ever taken a quiz in a magazine, what eyebrow brush should you use for your face shape. If youve ever dispaired because of you have a round face like me, blame them. They had a massive salon on sunset boulevard. House of westmore. Everyone rich and famous went there. So they were not monster people. Not horror people. Not alien people. Not creature people. Bud needed someone who could do more character stuff. He was doing a lot of the add manipulate wo admin work. He needed someone with talents very different from their own. So he saw milicent and said absolutely, im going to hire you. She became the first woman to become hired bay makey a makeup department. She was incredible. She was the first one. This was a very interesting time in hollywood. The mid 50s. Went to being afraid of europe to being afraid of space. We were starting to be afraid of the russians. Nuclear war, the skies. Spaceships and aliens, so all of a sudden, we had this new thing called Science Fiction and all of the classic monster movies that universal had really built as the backbone in the 30s were dracula, wolfman, frankenstein. But all of a sudden, the kids wanted the scifi. That in itself was a new thing because all of a sudden, they had a new audience that they had never had to cater to before. Very terrifies. Still terrifying. Teenagers. They had this Massive Group of teenagers who had pocket money. Who had time. This is when the suburbs were a thing. Milicent went from designing beauty makeups which she had been doing for a while at ew universal and they wanted her to design an alien. So they took this very, very beautiful woman. At this time, she was still doing background work. She was still doing acting. But she was transitioning to doing more and more work on the universal lot. More pay. I dont know if it was more fulfilling, but a lot less waiting around. So they came up with this idea of o a movie they wanted to do called it came from outer space. The treatment was written by an author that i love very much and many might now. Ray bradbury and it was actually very thinly veiled anti mccarthy movie, but wrote treatment for this. You know hes verbose and not always detailed. So he gave milicent essentially this block of text that a had the word nebulous in it and milicent had to design it. But she did. She designed the fail yalien fo. It did well for universal. Their first Science Fiction movie. It became a classic. Still cheesey. Made in as many 1950s scifi movies are. I would describe it as an eyeball left in a bag that has legs but back in the 50s, that was really scary. There were a lot of people frightened by it. She was very creative and innovative with her designs and had come up with all these different ways to figure it out. Came up with this massive page full of design which bud saved and used later. Well get to that much later. It was called, not creature from the black lagoon in the beginning. Had a much stupider name. They went through many names for creature from the black lagoon, but this monster was going to be completely different. Theres a reason why its still wellknown and really iconic. Hes the only universal classic monster thats never been remade and no, you cant count the shape of water because its not universal. Shape of water would not exist without creature from the black lagoon. Hes the only monster that had to go underwater, the only one to be played by two different actors. The only one that was out in daylight. So milicent had to up her game. He had to be complete. Detailed. There was a lot of technical elements to the design. And she nailed it. She really, really did. Its still one of the most famous monsters today. I mean even people who havent seen the movie, they see a picture of creature and they know that is creature from the black lagoon. The reason why i think milicents design has stood the test of time is one, because she had that disney training. With just a few lines, she could convey a lot of movement, emotion. Theres a lot of people now who are used to hightech makeup and cgi and they see the film and they think, man, is that a makeup, articulated mask . No, just one piece of rubber, but because of the way milicent designed it, the two actors were in the suit and moving the head, it looks like a makeup. The other thing i think besides that, that disney training, was her incredible empathy. Milicent designed this monster wanting people to feel for him. So when you look at him, i mean, youre scared by him. Theres a lot of kids who ran out of that theatre, including alice cooper when he was a kid, but you want to understand him. He looks just human like enough. And it is very, if you ever watched a lot of cheesy scifi movies, you are aware. It is very difficult to make a monster like this that doesnt look silly but nobody was laughing at creature, except for bud. He did not like this design. He thought it wasnt going to hold up. He thought it was a ridiculous idea to put a monster like that out in daylight. He thought it was going to be, no pun intended, but a flop. And they still went to the movie. Everybody, the producers loved it. Everyone else thought it was going to be great. People started taking notice. They started doing test screens and didnt have to edit anything. People loved the fill film and loved the creature. That was the big thing. They absolutely loved the creature. Heres bud westmore himself displaying sents design with milicents drawingings and yes, those drawings, those original drawings of creature fans while whale. No one knows what happened to them. I hope theres a collector in the middle of nowhere somewhere that has them and he will fall into a volcano and they will be released into the world, but no one knows where they are. They dont know if they still exist. Unfortunately, i would give my any toes, any amount of toes to even just see them. But this is milicent and bud working in the monster shop. So all of a sudden, universal realized they had a hit with this film. So this was where milicent would work every day. She marched in there every day in her heels and pearls and beautiful dresses because she love d to dress up every day an she was just like totally cool with being the only woman there. She was unapologetically feminine, unapologetically herself. She loved the work. Loved working with this team. She loved the designing. She even loved bud. They apparently in the beginning got along very, very well. Actually, here she is right now adding paint to the suit when, they had to test it under water so this is from a shoot, the infamous tank test. Where they were testing it in a water tank on the universal lot. So this film, they started coming up with ideas to promote it. Just like today. Milk shakes at mcdonalds. Ridiculous toys. No social media back then, but since the dawn of time, Universal Studios and other big movie studios have tried to come up with ways to sell their movies. So universal was how are we going to get people the like this movie, come see it. They come up with these whacky ideas and one of the last ones was someone on the universal Publicity Team thought hey, we have this beautiful woman and shes very charming, shes very gracious. Shes very well spoken. Why dont we, and she designed this thing. Why dont we send her out on tour and promote it . The beauty who created the beast. Shes the perfect promotional platform. And everyone was like, oh, yeah, this is fantastic, so the wheels started turning on this. This is where bud westmore comes in. Because back then, when you saw a movie, the couple of title cards you saw in the beginning of the film, that was all the credits. Right now, if you go see a film, especially the neumar vel movw , theres a tenminute end crawl. Every person whos thought about the movie has been credited. Thats not how things were back then. So bud is the head of the universal makeup department. He got sole credit for everything everybody in the department did. Back then, there was no imbd, no twitter or anything to check. So people werent even thinking about that. The public wasnt going hey, the key grip on this was not given any credit. People didnt even know. So even though he was not doing the designing, sculpting, molding, he got credit for everything and that suited him just fine. If you havent read this book, youre like, wow. This woman is amazing. Did all these cool things. This trail blazing woman. She doesnt she have a star on the hollywood walk of fame. Why dont we know who she is . This is why. He kicked up a huge fuss at universal. Weve got some plans in place. Well rebrand the tour. Instead of the beauty who created the beast, shell be the beauty who lives with the beast and shell take care of all the universal monsters. She got to go from creatures creator, roommate, or like babysitter i guess, somewhere in there. She got demoted into this like motherly role, which is not a bad thing, i guess, if she was creatures actual mom, but she designed him. And i dont know if she knew what the tour was supposed to be, but when they pitched back to her, she agreed. After years of trying to shun their monster movie background, they brought all those masks off the vault and were like, okay, we want to show off our monster movie pedigree. So milicent was slated to go all over the country with all these masks. The one shes wearing on her head is one of the masks from dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde. She did do other monster movies while she was happening and she was going to display them. Yes, i am the beauty who takes care of them. Brushing out the wolfman, spritzing creature with mist, i guess. I dont know what she needs to do there. But so she was going to go on this massive promotional tour all over the country. And the movie came out while this was happening. And before she left, she had a meeting with bud and the people at universal and she had to swear, had to promise, that she would lie to everybody that she did not design this. She had a script that she had the read from. Had a chaperon with her to make sure she stuck to the script. Every interview she did, that said, that bud westmore was the credit for the person and she had some of the other names of the people who worked on it. Jack kevin, chris mueller, but she was not allowed to take credit for her own work. She agreed because this was the 1950s and this is what was expected and they were going to pay her very well. She did negotiate for a higher salary, so good on you, milicent, but she had to lie. So she went off on tour and did all kinds of radio interviews, magazines, newspaper, tv spots. Ive tried to find them, never have been able to. People were dazzled. People fell in love with the creature. She started getting fan mail because she was so friendly and smart and interesting and passionate about the way she talked about her work and creature. You could just tell because she absolutely loved him. The problem was people started to figure out really quick that maybe it wasnt bud who designed this. Maybe this woman who worked as a designer was the designer. I dont know why bud thought he would be able to like sweep this under the rug. People started figuring it out and doing pieces not about the movie, but about her. She was such an electric, interesting person and back then, there was such a huge dichotomy between this beautiful woman and this monster. Isnt it crazy, this beautiful woman designed this monster. Crazy, almost like women are people. People were fascinated by her. So she started to eclipse some of the creature buzz and back home at universal, bud was mad. So mad, he followed her progress across the country and would find out what newspapers and radio stations and magazines she spoke to and demand to know what she said. What they were going to print. He was furious. Even so, this was all happening without her consent. She was still sticking to the script. Still being chaperoned but people were so interested in her and figuring out she designed this and were printing this without her say. Not her fault. But in his mind, as soon as she went off on her own, even chaperoned, she was taking all the credit, even though it was her credit to take. So while she was off having the absolute peak of her career, bud fired milicent patrick and she never worked behind the scenes on a a film ever again. She came back from her tour, to los angeles and the film she was working on, another classic film called the silent earth, she was pulled from and never worked on a universal movie ever again. Thats why you dont know anything about her. There was no internet. After this, bud now realizing he had the opportunity to take credit for this. Ah, yes, creature, my best friend that i designed all by myself. Ah, yes, wonderful. That was it. No way to check. Even know she still received fan mail for years because people remembered her and were excited by her and there were girls and women all over the country that were so inspired by her. She disappeared. For dsix decades, nobody knew anything. Didnt even know if she was still alive. And because of that, nobody cowell f could follow in her footsteps. When i first saw milicent patrick when i was 17 years old, a a really interesting thing happened in the 90s. Imbd and the internet started up so all of a sudden, all these photo that had never been seen and these cool facts that hadnt been shared, we had the internet. We could put them on Message Boards and yell about them on social media. So stuff started to come out and hard core film nerds started talking about these things and creature became a beloved film and people always wanted to know more about how he was created. Just a shot, a picture of her onset. Working on her work. Im sort of the black sheep of my family, not because im goth. I didnt have siblings into horror, so i had to teach myself. So when i was a teenager, im a ravenclaw, so i did my research. Shoutout. Im in a ravenclaw heavy space right now because were in a library. I wanted to do research. Start with the universal classics. So i watched all of them. Fell in love with the wolfman, whos still my husband. I got to the creature, which is the last one, and i fell in love with him. For you know, the same way a lot of people did, but i fell in love with him, i loved julie adams and that bathing suit, but i fell in love with that movie because i felt like crewtuature. I felt like that walking through the halls. Like how he swims under people, i feel like that. Even though im dating a hot person. I empathize with him so strongly. I wanted to know everything about him. I went online and wanted to know who made him, who designed him and i was scrolling but google image search and i found this photo of a Woman Working on the monster suit and up until that point, all my heroes were men. Jack pierce. Rick baker. Dick smith. All of these masters of monster makeup. Theyre all dudes, fine. But there were no women. I never even thought that i could be in that world. I was super content to be a monster fan, but i never even thought that i could do that. Because i didnt see the way. It was all populated with people who didnt look like me until milicent. She was just doing her job. Under the picture, it said milicent patrick, animator and designer. That was it. There was no wik paid area page. Nothing about her. Just some scattered photos and very unprofessional blogs, but that was it. It was like someone poked a hole in this wall and all of a sudden, i could see through to the other side. She became a beacon for me. Several years later, i became a horror filmmaker and she was the only role model i had and i clung to her. Even though i had no idea, didnt know anything about her. So i am cover ed in tattoos as you might see, and i decided to get a tattoo of milicent patrick to remind me every day that i belong nd the horror Film Industry no matter how much people tried to make me feel like i didnt belong. I knew that i did because milicent did. So i got this tattoo of her and a few weeks later, i was at a party and a literary agent friend of mine was like is this woman . She designed creature from the black la logoon. What happened to her . No one knows. He was like that would make a great book. Yeah. That would make a great book. I said, but im not a writer. He said, well, ill send you stuff for a nonfiction proposal and you can figure it out. And so i thought, nobody knew anything about her. So i just started and now if youre holding the book, if you have it in your hands, i ended up finding everything. I got all the details, most of the details of her life, her death, her career, her personal life. And she remained my hero throughout all of it. And youre probably wondering, this is great. You know. This wonderful woman, she blazed this trail, but it was 60 years ago. Why does this matter, you know . I had friends of mine who were not monster people while i was working on this and pouring all my savings and time and moving to los angeles for it. Why are you doing this for this woman youre not even related to, you dont know anything about and they worked on this monster movie back in the 1950s. Why does it matter . Because what part to milicent patrick still happens and its happening as i speak right now. It has happened to me. It has happened to every single woman i know in the Film Industry. To every single woman i know in every single industry ever. Whatever you do. The system and the problems that caused milicent to lose her career are in place right now. 60 years later. Its been 60 years and we have still not had another woman design a monster for a major motion picture. 60 years have gone by and we still do not have a monster designed by a woman. Just had a ton of really cool monster movies that came out. New predator movie. New godzilla movie. Still, none designed by a woman. She was hidden an girls like me didnt know we could do it, too. We just went through another oscar season for 2018 and wouldnt cough up a single woman to nominate for best director, let alone all the other things and milicent was white. She had all the advantages that any white lady could ever have and she still got crushed. So if you were sad for milicent, be sadder for all the other women out there who are black. Who are gay. Who are trans. Who are disabled, who are fat, who are anything that society doesnt want you to be and couldnt get where milicent was. Couldnt even get their foot in the door. Thats why her story matters so much right now. Thats why we need to tell these stories. Thats why we need to remember these people and show women that, its so great that were living this me too era. I started writing this book before me too happened and then it happened and my editor was like how fast can you write . I was like, i dont know im going as fast as i can. I was like oh here we go. It was great. Wonderful. Those are two, im so happy about both of those. Thank god for d dell touro. Sorry, get really excited. What was i talking about . Yes, were pushing to have more female editors and directors and comic book writers, any type of field that you can imagine, but what we really need to know is that weve always been here. This is not a new thing for girls to be interested in monsters and comics and art and film. Weve always been interested in it. We might not have always felt safe enough to say that we were. We might not have always felt safe enough to be in spaces where those things are celebrated. We might not have felt okay with sharing those thing, but weve always been here and milicent patrick is living proof of that. She shows that we have a legacy here. Girls need to be writing these comic books. Theyre the ones that have to fwrap l with them every day. And if we dont let them make these movies and design these monsters and be up on screen and be behind the camera, we cant show people how to fight the monsters. Cant show them how to win. Thats why milicent patrick is so important and why its been my honor to tell you about her today and now, were going to open it up to questions. Okay. I was just wondering wondering if ive heard anything from the westmores. Funny story about that. So it took me three years to write this book and throughout those three years, i tried very, very hard to get in touch with them. I emailed their museum multiple times, no response. Until i finished the book and im a huge cocktail nerd. Big burden drinker, and i was, me, i was going to me and my exboyfriend were driving down to a los angeles liquor store chain and i was going through the checkout line and buying my normal usual puddle of buffalo bourbon, probably should have dedicated the book to buffalo trace. I was looking for my creature pin, the guy checking me out says oh, you like creature from the black lagoon. My boyfriend gets excited. Oh, somebodys going to try to explain creature to mallory. I go, oh, yeah, big creature fan. He goes, my great uncle designed that monster. It was one of those like freeze frame moments where i was like, theres several ways i can respond to this. But the book wasnt out yet. We were still like i had a chance to put stuff in the book. So i thought, okay. Suck down the volcano of hatred. Try to get information out of this guy. So like i squeak out, all right. Whos your uncle . Anyone named bud westmore . Oh, you are a creature fan. My boyfriends like, this is going to be good. Im like, for sure, know who he is. He designed creature. Oh, yeah, hes the one. I was like, you know, im writing a book about the creature from the black lagoon. I would love to talk to you because i havent been able to get in touch with any of the westmores. He was like, oh, absolutely. I gave him anymy email address. He must have looked me up because he never emailed me. Every time i see him, hes like, somethings down here. I think its poetic justice that the heir of bud westmore serves me my bourbon. That ones for you, milicent. All right. Next question. But no, still to this day, have never heard from any of them. Screw them. Although i will say before i answer your question, michael westmore, ive heard is a very nice person. Still works in the field of makeup and is a fantastically talented person, but he has never tried to get in touch with me. Okay. Twopart question. Yeah, i saw shape of water as you were talking about that. Sounds like its the heir to creature from the black lagoon. It is. Its basically creature from the black lagoon fan fiction. Because dell touro watched shape of water when he was a kid, he wondered why creature didnt end up with julie adams. Fair question. He always wanted to write a world where that happened and thats sort of where shape of water came from. If youre interested in that, i have a great quote. Actually, the only man i quoted in my book, my friend, mike hill, designed that and i have a great quote from him about milicents design work and how it affected him in the book. The second is the side bar. Whats your thinking of hereditary . Fantastic movie. Any other questions . Yes. Is there anything you regret putting in or leaving out . When i started writing, i was very protective of her. Shes my hero. She means lot to me. When i started hearing things about her that were not plat flattering and nice and made her look like a bad person, i struggled with putting those in the book. I wanted to protect her. I was working so hard to have the world know about her. I wanted everyone to love her and to accept her and like i feel like for the past three years of my life ive been carry ing the wan banner of milicent patrick and trying to get people to accept she designed the creature because there are still people who think she didnt. I love talking to those people. I hope they fall in a manhole. I still get asked that in interviews. I realized i was judging her just like i didnt want her to be judged. Women are worth writing about even if they up, even if they make bad choices. None of those choices took away from what she did. None touched them. Shes still worthy. Shes a human being. Then it became important for me to write about her as a person and it made me feel okay with myself and made me stop judging her and myself. I realized if i got to put that stuff there, maybe another woman would feel that way about her or someone she knew or looked up to or down to. So, ultimately, i didnt take anything out. I left everything in there. Even the bad parts of her life. That kind of brings up an idea though. Is this a question . It is. What you think about be acceseparated from that work, w the me too era, this has been a big problem. Whats your idea . Milicents dead. Sorry, spoilers. Actually, it was wasnt sure if she was dead or not. One, i dont think she did anything in her life that was, milicent never assaulted anybody. Spoilers, i guess. If it did, we would be having a different conversation. I think we need to be responsible as consumers. Were living this me too era and people are like what do we do as people . Its very, very complicated and theres a lot of gray areas, but no, we cant separate the art from the artist. We really truly cant and if theres somebody that you dont believe in, stop giving them money. If someone, if you find out that a comic book artist assaulted a woman, dont buy his comic book because youre not giving him any money and youre showing the publisher that shouldnt hire people like that. I really truly believe we need to start. Cant be like oh, well, theres nothing we can do. You put your money where you want things to happen. If youre living a place and theres a director or someone working on set that you dont feel comfortable with, dont give them your money. Dont talk about them. Dont give them space on your social immediate yachl media. On the flip side, i wish there were more female directors, find those online and give those your money instead. We have so much power as consumers that people dont realize. And i think that that we cant just live in this world where were like, oh, well, its art. Art reflects what you make or what you make reflects who you are. And so i really, really think we shouldnt be like, oh, well, guys like woodyal allen, its fine, theyre classic artists. Well how many women out there werent allowed to be artists. [ inaudible ] harder question because i have two different. Exorcist ware wolf in london, the original wolfman and the shine iing. Threepart question. Which version of the thing . Oh, come on. Theres only one. A movie, a war movie that can scare me. What would be your recommendation . That can scare you . Thats an impossible question because horror is so, so subjective. Its like picking out your underpants for you. Someone can try, but its the most subjective thing we have and why its one of the most important generas. Its funny that its looked down about. Stephen king is the most popular author in this country. Surprise, folks, hes a horror author. If you want to see societys fears or what theyre thinking, watch the horror fi ms of tfilm that time, where we can explore extreme ideas and be really political. Wow, its just a who movie. So whats scary to you might not be, like im really afraid of snakes. Fehr terrified. So to me, a horror movie is like a discovery channel. It is a trick question and im calling you out on it. I cant pick. [ inaudible ] yes. Okay. How many, i have no idea what time it is. So okay. [ inaudible ] the first a dapation of work is monster high. Is that like bratz dolls . Barbies are very like monsters. Why do we need to make them scarier . Have you seen the sculpture of what she would look like in real life . Like 67. We dont need to make her scarier. I dont feel comfortable saying that because ive never seen them. Right now, we are living in an embarrassment of riches for young girls for horror stuff. There are so many middle grade novels and comics and cool movies that are fine. Monster high, i dont know. Ill look them up later. One of the most endearing parts of the book i want to say thank you already. Was when you met her family. Thanks for spoiling the entire book. Just kidding. That is the biggest spoiler. I just think theres an interesting, im just curious if you could talk about how what it feels like to invest so much in a person that youve never met then meet. To meet the people who you know are blood relatives. Are you married . Take what you felt when you met her family and amplify it by a million. Thats what i felt. Because not only was i trying to get down them to like me so they would tell me about milicent, looking like i do strange lady that came into their home. It was so much pressure. I was very nervous. I wanted them to like me. I never even showed them the tattoo i have of her. Im assuming they must have seen it. Im still in contact with them. We never talked about it. Just like i havent with my own. I didnt want them to think i was weird or obsessive. Evnow, i have another unknown, unsung woman that worked on a very, very, maybe bigger than creature, monster movie and im hesitant to do it because im not ready to go another biography. When you do a project like this, you are an external hard drive for another person. I am the world expert on milicent patrick and right now, and it was so much pressure to convince them of the, the sincerity of the project and to hope they would open their hearts and home and their archives to me. And i dont know what, if they had anything, it was like a really fraught experience for me. I was very nervous. Covered in tattoos. Tried to make myself look as norm as i possibly could, when you look like i do. They are incredibly kind. They are so sweet. Fun fact. I change d all their names in te book to characters from the wolfman. No ones ever picked that up, which i find funny, but theyre all renamed. The it was tough. I get really emotional about it because i miss her. Ever since i stopped writing book, shes not in my head every day. She was like my buddy. I have a framed, i have this photo and this one above my desk, which i had to move because im working on a new project, and id be like, okay, milicent, were going to do it today and saying goodbye to her was really tough. When i started work on my new project, i was like, im sorry, i have to move on. I need to feed myself. Everything in this book was a highly emotional experience. Youre cheating. You had lunch with me today. Do you think theres any new information about milicent that will come out . Funny you say that. From the last time when i did the, when i facetimed into the Library Book Club thing, one of milicents husbands daughters contacted me on facebook. So i still have to email her boack because im still touring and stuff, but no, really, enough, i thought that this book was going to come out, people were going to come out of the wood work. Millions of people were going to be knocking on my door, but not that many, actually. I did a signing in reseda, california and one of her best friends agents was there because, and he was very excited. He had known her. I gave him my email address and he never emailed me. I dont know why people dont like emailing me. Talk to me, people. Ive had a lot of people who thought they had new information about her, but it has not been new information about her. Every signing i do, some guy comes up to try to tell me facts about creature from the black lagoon as if i dont know. Very weird. So far, nothing, but im hopeful when i talk to this woman who really wants to talk the me, that i will be able to get some new information. But so far, nothing. If you read the book, if you have read the book, you know there are a couple of places where i couldnt fill in everything that i wanted to. But im never going to stop looking for information. Just because im done writing this book doesnt mean shes not still my hero. Im still wanting to find everything about her. I hope someone comes out with this massive treasuretrove with all of her creature drawings. A guy who doesnt want to share with the world will get abducted by aliens and we can all benefit from his basement collection, but so far, that has not yet happened. Im crossing my fingers for it every day. I want to thank you all so much for coming out and listening to me talk about milicent and i hope what you take out of this, i hope she affects your life in some way. I hope if youre trying to do something in your life and you think you dont belong there, you know that youre wrong. Thank you. Youre watching American History tv. Every weekend on cspan3, explore our nations past. Cspan3. Created by americas Cable Television companies as a public service. And brought to you today by your television provider. Weeknights this month, were featuring American History tv programs as whats able every weekend on cspan3. Tonight, a look at civil war objects. Historians held a series of online talks this summer about artifacts featured in that you are joint publication, the civil war in 50 objects. They discuss a pike by john brown and a model of lincolns hand. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern. This week and every weekend on cspan3. Author Paul Goldberger discusses his