Steve Johnson Created Movie Icons Like Slimer in ’Ghostbusters’ Before Flaming Out on Drugs. A New Doc Traces His Art…

Director Nick Taylor spent years admiring the work of special effects artist Steve Johnson in a way that went beyond basic curiosity.

“He was someone who had a very special place in my heart, because I grew up as a lonely misfit horror fan,” Taylor says. “I didn’t have a lot of friends who were into the weird horror stuff that I was into, so I always felt like a bit of an outcast. When I saw ‘Scare Tactics with Steve and Linnea’ on TV, I saw this cool, handsome, very successful guy who’s into all of the weird stuff that I was into. It validated me … ‘Oh, I’m not such a misfit.’ There’s this cool guy who’s got a gorgeous wife who’s super successful in Hollywood, making some of the best movies, and he makes his living making werewolves and vampires and blood and all this cool stuff that I love. It made me feel less alone.”

Taylor was able to meet Johnson 20 years later at the Monsterpalooza horror fan convention, where he picked up a copy of the artist’s memoir “Rubberhead” and couldn’t believe what he read.

While Johnson was known by genre fans for his work on tons of hits like 1984’s “Ghostbusters” (where he created Slimer), the conceptualization of Doctor Octopus’s arms in 2004’s “Spider-Man 2” and the aliens in 1989’s “The Abyss,” he was never quite the household name of a Rick Baker or Stan Winston. The reason? A drug habit that not only helped him build some of his signature works, but eventually got out of control.

For example, when it came to landing on the final look of Slimer, Taylor talks about all of the different phases of designing the signature ghost.

“Steve kept getting notes, and was doing an 8-ball of cocaine every single day to stay up all night to keep up with the studio requests and demands to change this and that,” he says.

But eventually, the darkness caught up with Johnson.

“Steve had a very pronounced, very serious crash and burn in the ’90s,” Taylor says. “It was before the pendulum swung back, because there was the revolution of practical effects and then digital came by. There was an enormous amount of work that the practical effects artists did not get because it was replaced by digital.”

Despite career ebbs and flows, Johnson’s budding friendship with Taylor convinced him to sit down for a documentary.

“I read his book and said, ‘Somebody’s got to make a movie about your life,’” Taylor says. “‘And I think it should be me because this book was insane.’ Every single story about his time in Hollywood was about a major movie, a major director, and lots of drugs and insane scandal. Just this insane journey through Hollywood and some of the greatest horror movies ever made.”

Johnson agreed, and the result is “Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson,” a feature-length documentary showcasing the man and his art. The film, which is set to debut at this year’s Fantasia Film Festival, allowed Taylor to sift through all of Johnson’s work in order to help tell his story.

“I was given the keys to the kingdom for his archives. He had 40 years’ worth of material,” Taylor says. “Since it’s such a visual art form, he took photos of everything, every stage of everything, every video. The archives were stolen about 10 years ago, but he was able to recover them, miraculously enough. For the most part, they’re all intact. I had access to absolutely everything, and we pored through a lot of stuff.”

Despite the access, Taylor did have a unique challenge in interviewing his subject for the documentary.

“He’s always on,” Taylor says. “He very much has this Hollywood persona, and this raconteur, Sinatra, Hollywood vibe to him. It was hard to turn that off because he always was afraid that he’s going to be boring. So it was difficult to get him to open up, but we had a six, seven-year friendship. We became very close, and I would get a lot of very personal material when it was just me holding a camera on him, versus when we had our full crew. When the crew was there, ‘Hey, I’m on set, the lights are on,’ he would treat it as if he was being interviewed by a late-night talk show host.”

Taylor says that the more intimate moments allowed him to discover and share a more personal side of the creator.

“It seemed to be a driving force in his life that to be seen, he had to be exceptionally good at doing this one thing, which was create monsters,” Taylor says. “It filled a void, and whatever that void was, it drove him. And it ultimately drove him to the point of insanity in a few ways, unfortunately. But it was very revealing that this was what drove him, just not feeling enough. Ironically, the greatest monster he seemingly created was himself.”

Watch the “Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson” trailer below.