Buster Reverend
animatronic designer of the shark in "Jaws"
Highlight Bits & Quotes
8The Green Berets of Animatronics: Robotic Breasts and Monkeys
Jeffrey Funk reveals his high-tech work on Bruce Almighty, specifically designing robotic breasts with 100 pistons each and a monkey that rips through a human body, earning him legendary status among the panel.
"Upwards of a hundred on each breast and they expanded"
"You made boobs and an asshole dream job"
"It got caught in the asshole who could have guessed that classic asshole closing too quickly"
Uncanny Valley and Bedroom Mandrakes
Noah Victrola defends the 'weirdness' of robots by comparing them to public defecation, while Dottie Jones explains why she only builds mechanical babies with her toes to maintain professional distance.
"If a human being is taking a dump in the middle of the street I don't freak out I say that's somebody doing something weird"
"I use my feet on purpose so that I never have to feel the feeling of holding a baby"
"I want to be childless I want to be able to go to the beach without hiring a babysitter"
The Rainforest Cafe Grind
The panel discusses the low-budget horrors of working at the Rainforest Cafe, where soda fizz corrodes the mechanical animals and the pay is essentially cents on the hour.
"The fizz from the Coca-Colas would get in the air and was corroding the gorilla"
"I'm a milkshake man through and through"
The Great Animatronic Escape of Upstate New York
Jeffrey Funk reveals that he released the animatronic animals from 'We Bought a Zoo' into society after learning they would be replaced by CGI, leading to a rhinoceros terrorizing a Wawa.
"I decided to take it within my own hands to release them onto the set and out of it."
"There was a rhinoceros that absolutely terrorized a Wawa."
The Accidental Genius of the Jaws Shark
Buster Reverend admits she has no idea how she built the shark from Jaws, describing a fugue state of building at 4 AM that resulted in a fluke success she can never replicate.
"People ask you how did you make the shark from Jaws and you say I don't know."
"I don't remember if it was the blue cord or the red cord."
Gears, Pistons, and Pain: The Jurassic Park Incident
Jeffrey Funk recounts his origin story as a PA on Jurassic Park who was trapped inside a Triceratops for three days, learning animatronics by matchlight while acting as the creature's lungs.
"I was inside the Triceratops on my back with my feet pressing out and in."
"If I had designed this, trust me, its asshole would have been able to expand."
The Shark's Sexual Awakening
TJ Thibodeaux reveals the secret to fixing the broken shark animatronic: he had sexual relations with it, which successfully 'turned it on' for the production.
"I know what happened with that shark. I fucked it."
"I fucked it and it turned on."
Roundtable Introduction: The Masters of Mechanical Puppetry
The panel of animatronics designers introduces themselves, ranging from a creator of 'hot' Avatar aliens to a woman who builds wriggling mechanical babies with her feet to avoid maternal attachment.
"I make it so that the blanket wriggles around a little bit so my animatronics are little itty bitty babies"
"I built the one and only shark in Jaws haven't been hired since"
"When you see an owl it might not be an owl it might actually be an animal"