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Blasco is a name that may be unfamiliar to most make-upbuffs, but
Blasco is no stranger to the business. In fact, he is one of the pioneers
of today’s, "State-of-the-art" prosthetic make-ups, having
been taught the processes by the man who invented the formula for
the rubber that is used for this technique, George Bau. Blasco was
also probably the first to employ air-bladders to achieve the unique
effect of bulging skin in David Cronenberg’s They Came From Within.
 He
became interested the field of make-upat the age of seven, when his
aunt Nancy took him to the drugstore and bought him a copy of (what
else?) Famous Monsters of Filmland. “I was fascinated from the start,”
says Blasco. “The minute I saw Jack Pierce putting the finishing touches
to Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein, I knew that was what I wanted to
do.” When Halloween rolled around, his aunt (ever the instigator)
bought him a boy make-upkit. “Talk about ‘making a monster’,” laughs
Joe, “I made up the entire neighborhood, not to mention my family.”
By the fourth grade, Blasco had found Richard Corson’s book, Stage
Make-up, in the school library and kept renewing it until he graduated
on to high school. “I didn’t know that there were places one could
go to actually buy books like that,” Blasco recounts. “I mean, I’m
the kid from a small farm town (North Irwin, Pennsylvania, 30 miles
outside of Pittsburgh) and it never occurred to me at all. When graduation
time began to come near, I got kind of panicky because I thought all
this information would be lost to me since I wouldn’t be able to use
that library again.” To avoid losing his source, Blasco brought the
book to his geography class every day for the last week or so of school,
and proceeded to copy—word for word—the entire book of stage make-up.
“The make-upbook fit neatly inside my geography book, so my teacher
couldn’t see what I was doing. She thought I was doing homework!”
Blasco still has the sheets of paper filled with Corson’s words. When
Blasco finally got to high school, he met a friend, Frank Bolkovac,
who wanted to be a cameraman. Together they made their own 8 mm films.
One of the little movies, called “Vandar,” a horror yarn, was an hour
long and had sound. Blasco wrote, directed, did the make-up, and acted
in it, and Bolkovac shot it. Joe, being the go-getter type, arranged
to have it shown to the student body, and sold tickets to it with
all proceeds going to the school's scholarship fund. There was even
a write-up in the local news paper about it to generate publicity.
As
it turned out, a local TV director had come by to see Blasco’s movie—and
liked it. |
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 He invited Blasco to come to the studio to be interviewed on a talk
show. Blasco in turn invited the principal of his school, and an administrator
from the school district to come with him. The whole town was impressed
with Blasco’s enterprise and talent; another TV director in Pittsburgh
was impressed enough to have Blasco come on his show, Chiller, a weekly
horror/science fiction movie showcase, and do a make-upevery week,
showing how each was done. By this time, Blasco’s talent was quite
obvious, and it won him a scholarship to cosmetology school. After
graduating in 1965 he got a job with Max Factor, who sent him to New
York, and then, at last, to Hollywood. Says Blasco, “When I got there,
they wanted to send me around the country as a representative of the
company, but I didn’t want to leave Hollywood. My body began to rebel
against the pressures I was under, and I broke out into the worst
case of acne I’d ever had in my life. Needless to say, Max Factor
decided I wasn’t exactly the best representative for cosmetics, so
they didn’t send me.” Blasco quit his job with Factor and put his
last hundred dollars down on an apartment. “I had given the landlord
the first and last month’s rent,” says Blasco, “so that meant I only
had two months to find a job, or go back to Pennsylvania.” Blasco
saw an ad in the paper for a job as a phone solicitor, and decided
that was an opportunity to earn some money and to get in touch with
those folks that he really wanted to work for: movie studios and make-uppeople.
“I spent most of my time calling the studios and setting up appointments
to meet people the whole six months I was there.” He was supposed
to be trying to sell magazines. However, he did
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