Death Becomes Her

Robert Zemeckis’s film is, by Industrial Light & Magic’s own account, the first on which human skin texture was computer generated. The head turned back to front took three passes: Streep walked backwards in a blue hood, her face was shot separately against blue, and only the twisted neck between was a digital model. Ken Ralston refused from the start to recreate the actress’s face in the machine. The hole through Goldie Hawn’s middle combined a makeup piece on her costume, a simple torso element and frame by frame rotoscoping. Streep did not enjoy it. In Entertainment Weekly in 2000 she called the process her first, last and only, said the performer stands there like machinery and compared the days to the dentist. The ending shot first was thrown out: in it Ernest fakes his death with a bartender’s help and the two women find him happy years later, until a test screening made Zemeckis judge it too cheerful and cut the subplot. It won visual effects at both the Academy Awards and the BAFTAs, the Oscar its only nomination. A good fit if you watch the composites knowing the face was never synthetic, only the neck. Not for anyone who finds the damage repellent rather than funny, since the hole and the neck stay on screen to the end.