15 Questions With Stephen Pugh
"I’d love to go back to the Bruin in Westwood on the Friday night when The Matrix opened."
It’s Emmys season, and while television is not this project’s primary focus for obvious reasons, there’s so much talent behind the camera that are campaigning for an award this year. This isn’t sponsored, just highlighting some great artists who have been working in the industry for a long time and deserve their flowers. Starting with Stephen Pugh, a seasoned VFX artist, delivering Emmy-contending work on Netflix’s Nobody Wants This. Stephen masterfully crafted over 240 shots that elevate the show’s comedic timing and visual clarity, using Adobe After Effects and collaborating with editors and post-production leads Bianca Ray and Mariel Paniagua to execute seamless cellphone video burn-ins, split-screen composites, and meticulous cleanup. Keep reading for Stephen’s answers to the moviegoing questionnaire.
Name: Stephen Pugh
Location: Los Angeles
Occupation: VFX Editor
Links: Stephen’s Work
1. What’s your favorite day & time to go to the movies?
I don’t go out to a lot of movies anymore, so when I do it’s one of two very specific times - a weekday or matinee where I’m secretly hoping for a nearly empty theater, or it’s Friday night’s 9:00 showing where I’m looking for spectacle and explosions.
2. What’s your favorite movie theater?
I haven’t been in years, but as a youth I used to go to the Nuart in Santa Monica a few times a year, and always loved it. It reminds me of a smaller version of the Loyola Theater in Westchester, where I grew up. I remember my mom dropping us kids off on a Saturday morning and coming back to get us after two or three movies had finished.
3. What’s your go-to movie theater snack & drink combo?
We’re fairly traditional - popcorn, soda, and a hotdog.
4. What’s your dream movie theater snack & drink combo (if noise and sound weren’t an issue)?
Oooh, that’s fun! I could probably murder some popcorn shrimp if they came up with a tray to hold them with dipping sauce…nothing that would need a knife and fork, though - my mind can’t connect a table and a cinema screen.
5. First movie you remember seeing in a theater?
Ooof….definitely Jaws in 1975, but maybe the animated Robin Hood before that?
6. Last movie you saw in a theater?
That may have been Deadpool & Wolverine - it’s been a hot minute since we’ve gone, what with the industry being as quiet as it has been of late.
7. Is there a movie you wish you could have seen in a theater?
I’d love to go back to the Bruin in Westwood on the Friday night when The Matrix opened. That was an electric evening, I went with a bunch of friends and we spent hours afterward at a coffee shop talking about it.
8. Please describe your ideal movie theater seat.
Centered left to right, maybe ⅔ back from the screen. Maybe a recliner with easy-to-operate controls (I’ve seen some NASA-level complexity), provided it doesn’t hinder the patron behind me. Hang on, it’s the ideal movie theater seat, so there’s nobody behind or in front of me!
9. One thing you would change to make movie theaters better?
Shoot, I suspect that any *one* thing wouldn’t move the needle much - keep them big, I think that the “cram more rooms into the multiplex” wave has definitely hurt. But to really bring back the golden age of The Cinematic Experience would require changes to the studio system and probably the economy writ large, and that is definitely not my specialty!
Maybe an invention that teleports you to the lobby if you turn your phone on. And yes, I would end up in the lobby once or twice before I learned to adapt.
10. Where do you stand on intermissions?
I haven’t been to a movie with an intermission in decades, but if the movie is good enough at a runtime requiring one, then I don’t mind. My wife is a concert cellist, so I’m used to a leg stretch in the middle of a program.
11. Is there a trailer you’ve seen before a movie recently that stuck with you?
I was psyched to see the trailer for Beetlejuice 2 (fair warning, I TOLD you it had been a minute since I had been in a theater). I really enjoyed the first one, so that was good to see.
12. What’s a movie you’re looking forward to seeing?
I suppose it would be too confessional to admit that I still haven’t seen Beetlejuice 2, but that’s on me. I’m hoping to get to Sinners while it’s still in the theaters.
13. What’s your dream combination of director and lead(s)?
I’ll watch anything creepy that Jordan Peele shoots, and I love seeing people play against type so…I don’t know, maybe have Ayo Edebiri and Kristen Wiig defending Jason Statham and Tom Hardy as absolutely unheroic scientists in a remake of Carpenter’s The Thing with Peele directing? This is why I am not a writer!
14. If you could live in a movie, which one would it be?
Something from the Star Trek universe, where we’ve figured out how to get along as a species. That’d be great.
15. Why do you think people should continue seeing movies at the movie theater?
There’s an unmistakable energy that you get to experience when you’re with a group of strangers united by shared entertainment. Laughing together, cheering together, maybe even groaning together in shared lament over an absolute dud, these are activities that can bridge all sorts of divides.
“There’s an unmistakable energy that you get to experience when you’re with a group of strangers united by shared entertainment.” YEP