Author: Jonathon Norcross

SARATOGA SPRINGS — It was disgusting. It was horrifying. It was a shocking display of violence that any sane person would hope to never see in their life. But the crowd loved it.

The Saratoga Film Showcase’s special effects panel and demonstration, held at Saratoga Arts on Jan. 24, was a highlight of the three-day festival.

The discussion about all things hair and makeup on film sets included Clifton Park resident Annemarie Bradley, an Oscar-winning hairstylist who has worked with Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, and Lucy Liu, among others; Jackie Hughes, a Hudson Valley-based makeup artist who specializes in horror films (among them, “Terrifier 2,” which earned nearly $16 million at the box office); and RJ Young, a special makeup effects artist from Upstate New York.

It was Young who both grossed out and delighted the audience with a live demonstration of his work (thankfully, the fake blood squirting out of his volunteer subject’s facial wound didn’t make it into the crowd).

Below is a condensed and edited transcript of the panel discussion, which included talk of everything from Lucy Liu’s latest project to a 16-foot-long flesh tunnel womb.

Spencer Sherry (moderator): What is something that you find that directors sometimes aren’t aware of, that maybe you would like them to have a little bit more knowledge of before they call you and ask you to do an effect?

Annemarie Bradley: How much time it actually takes… A lot of times, they wrote something, but they don’t exactly have a vision of how they want that to happen. So, when you tell them, ‘It’s okay, this is great, and we can make anything happen, but sometimes it takes a long time,’ and they don’t really have the time or want to make the time. So, a lot of communication goes into that. I always tell people, it’s like boiling water. Just because you want it doesn’t mean it’s going to boil right away.

SS: What are some things that are more expensive than people think that they are? And then what are some things that are maybe a little bit more accessible?

RJ Young: Well, for example, the prosthetic that I have on [the volunteer subject’s] face is a foam latex piece. That’s usually a lot cheaper than, say, a lot of people now use silicone, which is a lot more translucent on the face. You don’t have to paint it as much in so many layers. But that is expensive. Silicone is a lot more expensive than foam latex. In the next month or so, I have to make a 16-foot-long flesh tunnel womb. The budget that they gave me is really low, not enough for what they want. They showed me an artist’s drawing of what they want. I’m like, well, the budget that you give me, you’re not going to get exactly that, by any means, but I try to make it out and make it as best as I can. I usually end up fabricating a lot of stuff out of foam, like the flesh tunnel would be mostly made out of foam and spray foam, mattress foam, stuff like that. And you just paint it and just add as much as you can to it, to make it look as organic as it can.

Jackie Hughes: I do a lot of low-budget things where I kind of get hired as the triple team of beauty, hair, makeup and effects. So that’s when they’re really trying to stretch a budget. But most of the time, I’m the first effects person that they’ve worked with. I was just recently on something, and I told them that blood is not cheap. Good blood is not cheap, especially if you want to spray it on everything and get it up and not have it stain… This production didn’t believe me. They showed up with a gallon of blood that was like 30 bucks when I told them I wanted a $200 gallon. And then I showed up with eight different types of my own personal blood, just to prove to them, you go use that and watch all of my expensive blood actually work. It’s things you don’t realize. Some blood has to be mouth safe. Some of it has to be safe if it gets in your eyes. Some has to dry. Some has to drip. Some has to come out of carpet.

SS: Where do you get your inspirations and pictures from?

JH: I have my friends and family, when they get injured, take pictures. People get really excited if you show up to a set and you’re like, ‘I have real reference pictures,’ they’ll always pull up some crazy gashed head thing that they did to themselves years ago. But Spencer’s favorite story that I’ve told is I was talking to a boy on Tinder, and he sliced his hand open at work. I was like, ‘Can you send me the picture?’ He did and then he stopped responding.

SS: Do [actors] call you when they book a job? Do they leverage that in their contract and say, ‘I’ll do a movie but I’m bringing Annemarie with me?’

AB: Yeah. I’m going to start a job with Lucy Liu that’s called “Superfakes” and it’s starting February 2 filming, and she asked me in August and invited me to come to her home and just talk about the movie and [she] wanted to make sure that I’m not busy or that I’m not going to take another job before that job happens. That’s normally how it happens. And if it’s someone new, it’s a recommendation from either another actor or a makeup artist that’s worked with them before, sometimes a producer.

SS: Is there anything that you haven’t gotten to play with yet or build, that you’re just waiting for someone out there to write a thing as an excuse to do it?

RJ: I would like to do a werewolf transformation at some point.

AB: I would like to do a really fun period piece. I could be the department head and design all the hair.

JH: I so badly want to break into sci-fi… I also want to make a mermaid tail.  

SARATOGA SPRINGS — It’s been a busy fortnight for the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC), which is gearing up for its historic 60th season.

James Taylor, a six-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, will take the SPAC stage alongside his All-Star Band on June 29, Live Nation recently announced. Taylor is perhaps best known for his originals “Fire and Rain” and “Sweet Baby James,” as well as his renditions of “You’ve Got a Friend” and “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You).” His 1970 album “Sweet Baby James” nearly cracked the top 100 of Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list. His eponymous debut album was released by The Beatles’ Apple Records, and its track “Something in the Way She Moves” inspired the creation of “Something” by The Beatles. Taylor’s latest record, “American Standard,” won a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album.

Rapper Pitbull has sold more than 25 million studio albums worldwide and has amassed more than 15 billion views on YouTube, arguably making him one of the most popular musical acts on the planet. His debut album “M.I.A.M.I.,” released in 2024, was executive produced by Lil Jon, who will open for Pitbull during their joint SPAC performance on Sept. 2. Lil Jon’s hits “Get Low” and “Turn Down for What” have each garnered hundreds of millions of plays on Spotify (not to mention inspired countless meme videos).

SPAC also recently unveiled its official 2026 season artwork, designed by Shawn Carney (The New York Times Style Magazine, Wall Street Journal). As part of his creative process, Carney dug through SPAC’s archives, sifting through boxes and filing cabinets filled with thousands of items, such as newspaper clippings, booklets, ticket stubs, and posters.

“I wanted the artwork to acknowledge SPAC’s rich history without being a throwback,” Carney said. “After all, SPAC doesn’t just live in the archives—it’s very much alive today and flourishing in all sorts of new ways. Standing among the piles of paper however, it occurred to me that perhaps the illustration could be paper itself. That led to a more tactile approach, and I began sketching forms built from curled, hand-shaped sheets. The final design is intentionally tactile and handcrafted. My hope is that the artwork reflects the craft, labor, and human touch behind sixty seasons of live performance. It also highlights the subtle and poetic side of the venue and the experiences within its gates. The design feels classic and timeless, nods to SPAC’s history, but leaves open space for more of its future to be recorded.”

Additional announcements related to SPAC’s 60th anniversary season—including performances, special events, and commemorative initiatives—will be revealed throughout the year.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” the latest TV installment of the ever-growing “Game of Thrones” cinematic universe, premiered on Sunday to largely positive reviews. Author George R.R. Martin, who penned the novellas that served as the show’s source material, seemed delighted with the finished product.

But Martin, for well over a decade, has been constantly pulled in different directions, tasked with overseeing multiple film and TV projects while also chipping away at several long-overdue books. His busy schedule has been a source of frustration for the acclaimed fantasy author, who lamented in 2015 that he would be unable to return to Saratoga Springs.

In 2007, Martin was in the Spa City for the World Fantasy Convention (WFC), held at the City Center on Nov. 1-4. According to a pair of blog posts he wrote, Saratoga seemed to make a lasting impression on him.

In one March 2015 post, Martin announced that his packed calendar would prevent him from attending that year’s WFC in Saratoga. But he said that at the 2007 convention, he “had a great time. A terrific town, a wonderful con.”

A few months later, Martin again expressed regret over missing the 2015 event. “The last WFC in Saratoga was great fun, and I loved the city, and the train ride up the Hudson from NYC,” he wrote.

It would seem Martin made some lasting memories while here in Saratoga. In a 2022 conversation with fellow novelist David Anthony Durham, Martin reminisced about the first time they met, at the 2007 WFC.

“He displayed his courage because we were doing a mass autographing where all the authors sit all around the ballroom, and people line up to do them, and he was told by all his friends not to sit beside me,” Martin recalled. “But he did sit beside me anyway. A fearless fellow, and then we got to talking.”

The WFC hasn’t been held in the Spa City since 2015. Last year it was in England. In 2014, it took place in Niagara Falls.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Sweet Remains—a folk-pop trio that has amassed more than 65 million streams on Spotify—will play a sold-out show at Caffe Lena on Jan. 22. The last time they played there, on July 11, 2025, they also sold out the famed folk venue. In other words, they’re kind of a big deal.

The group’s history is rich, with each band member having his own compelling origin story. One of those band members, Greg Naughton, spoke with Saratoga TODAY ahead of Sweet Remains’ stop in the Spa City.

Naughton seems to have been surrounded by artists and performers from the moment he entered the world. His father James Naughton starred in the “Planet of the Apes” TV series, won two Tony Awards for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical, and played Meryl Streep’s soon-to-be-ex-husband in “The Devil Wears Prada.” Greg’s wife Kelli O’Hara is a Broadway superstar and eight-time Tony Award nominee.

Greg himself has worn many hats, including filmmaker, actor, and musician. But as his directorial debut, “The Independents,” a 2018 film about The Sweet Remains, seems to indicate, music may be his greatest calling.

Saratoga TODAY’s interview with Greg Naughton is presented below in Q&A format, edited for length and clarity.

Saratoga TODAY: I guess now you’re coming up, maybe in the next year or two, on two decades with Sweet Remains. What keeps all of you coming back together? Is there some kind of secret to keeping a group intact this long?

Greg Naughton: The reason I started to write [“The Independents”] is because I was fascinated by this relationship I have with these two guys, which is more like brothers/spouses than other relationships I have with any other men. You have to have all the same things. You got to negotiate. There’s plenty of times, when you spend a lot of time with each other in small spaces and in each other’s creative space, you’re going to have hurt feelings. You’re going to have conflicts… We have a very similar sense of humor. I think that’s the main thing. Anytime things get difficult or uncomfortable for us, we just have a way of breaking through that with humor. It keeps it fun. If it wasn’t fun, we certainly wouldn’t be doing it. There’s enough to getting on the road with a band and trying to get into clubs in the snow and the whatever, and all of the details of that wouldn’t add up unless you were having fun.

ST: When you go into a studio, do you go into it trying to achieve something specific? Are you looking for a certain sound or hoping to accomplish a certain objective? What’s that process like of creating a new studio album?

GN: It has varied, and I think quite often, as with even writing a song, we go in with one objective, and it finds its ways around the preconceptions that we had and becomes something else. Most of the albums didn’t stick to a strong sense of, ‘We’re gonna make this kind of album this time.’ We have a couple of ideas for the future where we might try and stick more strictly to a certain thing. Like, what if we did a rock and roll album? These are pretty folk-rock, more roots, acoustic-oriented [albums]. That’s been our main genre and main output. But what if we did a rock album where it’s really rock and roll, and did it as a collaboration with another group that we like that does that sort of thing? Or, what if we did a kids album? We all have kids. Well, [Brian Chartrand] doesn’t have kids, but we have between us seven kids in the pan at this point. So, those are concepts that, we haven’t quite done them yet, but [they’re] things I would personally be excited to do at some point.

ST: Your upcoming show at Caffe Lena is sold out already. And I see you sold out the last time you performed here in July. What is it about playing these folk houses that kind of jives with your group?

GN: [Caffe Lena] is a special room. That room has defied the march of time… Since the pandemic, for sure, a lot of clubs like that one have not made it through. There’s a lot of reasons why a club like Caffe Lena shouldn’t make it. It’s kind of too small to make good money, I would imagine. But, I find that there’s a real enthusiasm with the audience there for being in that room and being that intimate with the music, which is infectious, I assume, as much for the audience as it is for us. That, and probably somebody who runs and owns the place cares and has managed to keep that alive.

ALSO COMING SOON TO CAFFE LENA:

The Dust Bowl Faeries will return for their second appearance at Caffe Lena on Jan. 25, playing with their new drummer and debuting new songs. Infused with dark humor, theatrical costumes, and mystical lyrics, Dust Bowl Faeries perform songs spun from the very fabric of faerie culture and lore. Hailing from the Hudson Valley, Dust Bowl Faeries present original songs nuanced by tango, flamenco, Klezmer, Balkan, and Romani swing music. Singing saw, accordion, bass, acoustic guitar, and drums combine to create the Dust Bowl Faeries’ unique sound.

The Wolff Sisters—a sibling-fronted Americana outfit from Boston—will perform at Caffe Lena on Feb. 5. Their gig in Saratoga is the first in a string of shows they’re playing around New England this winter. The group recently released their latest single, “Where Am I (To Call My Home)?” on all platforms, and just released a live music video to accompany it.