Any horror fan or a fan of science fiction probably knows the name Jaremy Aiello. And if you don’t know the name then you know the work. That’s because over the years, this prolific sculptor, makeup artist, Emmy Award Winner, and yes, even a bit part actor, has been in pretty much anything you might have seen You can scroll down to see his entire IMDB listing below the article, some of which include AMC’s The Walking Dead, Oz The Great and Powerful, Django Unchained, two Star Trek films, and the Mortal Kombat movie.

HorrorBuzz was invited up to Mr. Aiello’s secret laboratory of fiendish creations at Long Division Entertainment to chat him up on his history in the business of monster making. Driving through the winding, hilly streets of Encino, I imagined how the interview would go. As an interviewer you try to mentally assess things ahead of time so you know how to gauge where the subject might want to take things. Would this be a hard interview or an easy one? My mind attempted to picture what Aiello would be like, after years in the industry. Would he still have a passion for the creation of monsters and the surreal? Would he be a nice guy or someone bored with talking to the media about his latest sculpt? Would he be approachable or aloof, not really wanting to offer too much info? I had to tell my brain to stop and just let things play out as they would.

Arriving at the offices, I was greeted by Joel Hebner, an imposing, yet surprisingly friendly 6-foot tall guy with piercing eyes and jet black hair. He led me back into the workshop where Jaremy Aiello was furiously tidying up for the interview. Aiello smiled, greeting me with a hearty handshake. Apologizing for the “mess” he explained that for a workshop, this was actually very clean and orderly. I explained I knew my way around a workshop and not to worry. We laughed and he began to relax, collapsing into a chair and relating to me what had happened for another, previous interview. He had spent hours cleaning and when the reporter arrived it was the first chance he had to actually sit down.

Aiello was nothing like I had expected him to be. This guy, who is fiercely talented, is well-connected in the industry, and had a credits list that went on forever, was a bright-faced, skinny dude in his 40s who was still excited about monsters and movies. He grew up in central California as an art and theatre nerd, in the closet, influenced by the likes of Spielberg, Lucas, Savini, Carpenter, and every other creative genius in the movie business. Aiello studied every issue of Fangoria, attempting to learn the craft of monster creation and effects and settled into a role behind the scenes creating glorious monsters. It is only recently that he has begun to speak to people about what he does.

Noting the difference of being in front of and behind the scenes, Aiello points to Joel, the guy who greeted me at the door. “He’s actually the Call of Duty guy, he’s on the cover of Call of Duty.” said Aiello of his friend. Hebner hands me a card and BOOM, he IS the Call of Duty guy. Aiello has him here at the shop, using him as a model for sculpts which they will be getting to after my visit. “I was actually into acting first,” Aiello said, “I was Linus in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown when I was in high school, getting standing ovations and stuff. That was cool!”

Confessing what led to him going behind the scenes, Aiello reminisces, “Yeah then I was cast as the lead in Cabaret but got fired for making fun of my acting teacher.” We laugh and I ask how one gets fired from high school. “Well, I got fired from that role. My drama teacher was lecturing the class, he would always sit facing the class. I was behind him making fun of him and he suddenly turned around and saw me. He looked at me and was like, ‘Jaremy, get out, you’re fired!’ ” We all laughed and Aiello trims up the story saying, “Yeah so that was the end of my acting career, but it really, it all started with acting.”

Settled into the shop, surrounded by examples of Aiello’s detailed creations, I was curious; Where did this start? What inspired a young kid growing up in the shadow of San Francisco to become a creative genius and prolific creator? “Well, it was really, the movies from the 80s. The movies with makeup effects, monster effects, effects in general. Ghostbusters, Day of the Dead, Legend, stuff like that.” Aiello said, “I was also really inspired by The Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. I think that’s where I got my affection for makeup there because I was like, what is that? How did they do that? I just liked how things were animated when you applied it to the face.”

Like a lot of people that grew up in the 80’s Aiello was also inspired by the film E.T. He said, “The creature in E.T. really impressed me too and I was young enough to where the movie to me was just, you know, WOW! But I went into this weird depression after I saw it knowing that nothing that magical would ever happen to me.” Aiello reasoned that if he couldn’t have an alien best friend land on Earth and fly on a bike, he would get as close to that world as possible by becoming a part of the magic of filmmaking.

Growing up in central California, however, proved to make things a little difficult. Where Jaremy happened to be growing up, nobody knew how to teach what he was looking to do. “It’s funny because my art teacher at the time was like, ‘This is weird, I don’t know how to teach what you want to know.’ Then he said, ‘Okay, I have an idea. You figure out how to do what you want to do, and I will grade you on that’.” So, before Google, Aiello was poring over books in the library and studying issues of Fangoria to learn.

However, it was a fateful meeting at the California State Fair that plunged Aiello into the professional world of makeup and creature design. While walking through the “Industry of California” Hall, he came across a booth that was supposed to be featuring the work of legendary artist, Screaming Mad George. The booth contained nothing but a chair and a TV showing highlights of the man’s work. When Aiello asked the girls at the booth what had happened, they explained that every single piece that they were to exhibit that day had been stolen when their van was broken into the night before. All of the pieces loaned to them were gone. Aiello offered to run home and bring back his entire collection of makeup art by George. They accepted and he saved their exhibit.

Aiello kept in touch with the girls from the fair and and later, while working at the GYRO World of Terror (Global Youth Resource Organization) in Mountain View, a man named Chris Biggs approached him. The two girls at the fair that Aiello had helped sent Biggs to speak with him about possible work. Biggs let Aiello sleep on his couch for a few weeks while they worked on a Megadeath music video. Soon after, Biggs was hired to work on Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country and he brought Aiello onboard full time. The rest is movie history.

Aiello went from shop to shop, working on multiple projects until finally landing at KNB EFX in 2004. “I think my first job for Greg (Nicotero) was Land of the Dead, another zombie flick.” Aiello recalled, “I was working there while they did Grindhouse. Now those movies were fun. The script was weird but it’s a fun watch.” Referring to the actual script, he said, “The script was not very descriptive about what the zombies (Planet Terror) would look like, they were just called shapes. We had a lot of freedom and were just coming up with some crazy stuff.” Aiello and his team were handed reference photos of the most bizarre and grotesque flesh diseases and let loose. They created a cadre of carnage and flesh lesions that director Robert Rodriguez would just choose from to use.

I asked Aiello how Rodriguez was to work with and he answered, “Robert was COOL! I mean that was a crazy set to work on but he had everything in check.” Referring to a particular scene in which they did specialized makeup on Quinten Tarantino, Aiello said, “I got to watch Robert really work and do his thing. They would film something and he would literally be editing it right there. He just looks at it, and could even say ‘Okay we need another shot of him from this angle or that angle’. Robert was awesome.”

Then, in 2010, Aiello was working in KNB when a little project came through. That project was called The Walking Dead.

Sculpting one of the most iconic living dead monsters ever created, Aiello created The Bicycle Girl. Definitely a highpoint, he continued to work on the series for years but felt the need to grow further and decided to try his hand at producing. He successfully pulled off two films that made their way to Sundance in 2016 Sleight and Carnage Park. Producing, making movies, is a surprising amount of stress and work. Laughing, Aiello said, “I mean now I know why Jim Cameron wants to pull his hair out on Avatar or Titanic. I mean, I’m no Jim Cameron, that was probably a bad analogy, but you know what I mean.”

Looking back, the long journey from small town fanboy to full-on filmmaker has taught him a lot.  “I remember, I was on set and this one guy was explaining this. He said, ‘On set, everything is always fucked. You could freak out and react and make everything the top priority but that’s not the way to do it. That shows that you care, but it’s not productive.” said Aiello, ” The trick is in how you handle an f’d up situation that will keep you working forever. Once you have that down, you are good.”

Wrapping things up with Aiello I asked, what it was that got him through those moments. You know the ones.  The times where things got a little too stressful, when things weren’t going right on a project or a piece of sculpting. The darker artistic moments where you are the loneliest. Jaremy thought for a minute and said, “What pushes me through is probably the love of the process. I’m one of the few people in the world that can actually say I LOVE my job.”

The lesson? Jaremy said, “Don’t let the bullshit of the business affect your love of the art.”

Words to live by for any aspiring filmmakers and artists in general. Now get out there and create.

Jaremy Aiello’s IMDB credit listing.

• Annabelle
• Dolphin Tale 2
• Maquette 1:1000
• Machete Kills
• Oz the Great and Powerful 
• Django Unchained
• Hitchcock
• Fright Night
• The Walking Dead
•  Tell It to the Frogs (2010)
•  Guts (2010)
•  Days Gone Bye (2010)
• The United Monster Talent Agency
• Predators
• The Pacific
  • Home (2010)
  • Okinawa (2010)
  • Iwo Jima (2010)
  • Peleliu Airfield (2010)
  • Melbourne (2010)
• Shutter Island
• Where the Wild Things Are
• Terminator Salvation
• The Haunting Hour: Don’t Think About It
• Underdog
• The Reaping
• Masters of Horror
  •  The Washingtonians (2007)
  • The Black Cat (2007)
  • We All Scream for Ice Cream (2007)
  • Sounds Like (2006)
  • Pro-Life (2006)
  • Haeckel’s Tale (2006)
  • Pick Me Up (2006)
  • Sick Girl (2006)
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
• Species III
• The Village
• The Cat in the Hat
• Running on Karma
• Gigli
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
• The Country Bears
• Rose Red
• Monkeybone
• Hellraiser: Inferno
• Battlefield Earth
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • Pangs (1999)
  •  The Initiative (1999)
  •  Wild at Heart (1999)
  •  Beer Bad (1999)
  •  Fear Itself (1999)
  •  The Harsh Light of Day (1999)
  •  Living Conditions (1999)
  •  The Freshman (1999)
• Dharma & Greg
• The X-Files
  • Travelers (1998)
  • Schizogeny (1998)
  • Kitsunegari (1998)
  • Emily (1997)
  • Christmas Carol (1997)
  • The Post-Modern Prometheus (1997)
  • Detour (1997)
  • Unusual Suspects (1997)
  •  Redux (1997)
  • Redux II (1997)
• Star Trek: First Contact
• Space Jam
• Dark Skies
• Independence Day
• Hellraiser: Bloodline
• Mortal Kombat
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country