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MATTHEW BARNEY: There are elements to these 
projects that are autobiographical.

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I consider all of the things that 
I work with attractive to me.

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Whether they repulse me or not, I’m 
still very, very attracted to them.

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CHELSEA ROMERSA: I just feel like it’s 
at the basis of existence.

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To me it’s fundamental, like a 
rudimentary kind of understanding of life.

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RICHARD SERRA: I recognize in him a certain kind 
of energy and youthful exuberance.

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He’s a person who just wants to follow 
the imagination of his own work.

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BARNEY: A system that has an internal object.

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Freudian narratives, consumer and a producer.

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Violence. Sexually driven. NFL films.

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These are things that I think about.

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(theatrical music)

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–All right, just really quickly, guys.

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–The lights going to come up really quickly 
this morning because there’s no cloud cover,

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–And our shooting window's gonna be really narrow.

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–So we want to try and be 
as organized as possible.

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–Man: You're pushing it at 5:00 
in the morning, you're pushing it.

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–You know I'm not awake yet.

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Barney:
The cremaster

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muscle is a muscle which controls the height

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of the internal reproductive system in the male.

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It's been taken on here as 
a stand-in for conflict.

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–You're all set, be good.

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Barney:
The film

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was shot and lit like a classic zombie film.

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It'll start within the horror genre 
and then immediately move out of it

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into a kind of an art-deco kind of gangster genre.

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The horse is meant to foreshadow 
the fate of this betrayer

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and what he sees as a field of ten 
horses in harness running dead.

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–All right, you guys!
–We're ready for you.

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FRANK MCMAHON: Well, they're making a film.

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I'm not too certain what the film's about, 
but I guess this is a dream sequence,

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and that's why they have the horses 
with this spandex clothing on them.

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It was all choreographed, so we 
were all instructed where to finish.

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Luckily I'm going to win it.

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–Man: hey, Chels, it's Gabe.

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–Chelsea: hi, Gabe.

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–Do you know the next two 
horses after the two we have?

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GABE BARTALOS: I've done the prosthetic effects 
on the last four or five projects.

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It's always these strange calls, he's just 
calling to say hi, and then he's like,

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"Hey, you know, what if on the next 
project we were doing something like this?"

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And I'm like, "Oh, wow."

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So, this is actually the most ambitious 
stuff, at least in all the Cremaster series.

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Matt had real specific ideas about it.

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At a pretty funny breakfast, we 
brought out all our anatomy books

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and books of morgues and 
stuff, and I was kinda like,

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"Is this what you're thinking about?"

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What's really proven to be the engineering 
marvel is the spandex suits underneath.

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It's super-stretching spandex for direction, 
reinforced with zippers and buckles.

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Layers of skin are then sewed on and 
we dress it and tear it and burn it

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to make sure that they all look different.

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You know, they're all the same pedigree, 
but they all have their own identities.

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BARNEY:
Because these

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were full body suits that the horses were wearing,

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and they were absorbent, they 
were filling up with sweat,

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the horses were becoming fatigued and overheated.

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So we would do takes, a take, 
two takes, and the vet would say,

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"That's it, they need a rest. 
The suits need to come off them,"

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and that's what we would do.

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BARTALOS:
Matt is so hands-on with it.

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We're really just an extension of him.

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It's great for us, because it's 
all based in artwork, and that's,

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selfishly for me, what's fun.

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BARNEY: There's 10 horses, there's 5 
teams of 2, so each pair will be

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photographed in front of the same background.

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ROMERSA: All of us are artists.

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I think all of us, there's plenty 
of room in our heads or in our space

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to continue to think artistically in 
our own way, and therefore it seems to.

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There's a good product in the end for Matthew, 
and it's a good product for us individually.

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–So, the roof next.

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–We're ready for that shot? Okay.

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BARNEY:
For the scale of these projects, we're a very small group.

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Because of that fact, it's quite 
family— it feels a bit like a family.

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We needed a steward and we 
needed a presiding judge,

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and I called my father and asked 
him to play the presiding judge

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and he brought a close friend of 
his into the role of the steward.

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So it's two shots.

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First shot, the canister comes down to 
you, you open it up, you look at it, cut.

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–Actually, could you come forward again?

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–Yeah, that's better, looking up.

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–Three, two, one with the canister.

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ROBERT BARNEY: He has always been very focused,

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always had goals in front of him and 
would work very diligently to get there.

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–BARNEY: And cut, excellent.

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–You happy with that?

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–Yeah.
–Yeah.

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ROBERT:
I watched him at work,

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which was absolutely fascinating to 
see how he can put things together.

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So, Matt, where do you want to set up?

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BARNEY:
I'm thinking over here.

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ROBERT: It's both the artistic 
side and the business side.

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He seems to have both going for him.

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–ROMERSA: And cut.

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–BARNEY: Gorgeous.

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–Okay.

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–ROBERT: He didn't really show the 
artistic side of himself until later.

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Looking back, he wanted to be a plastic surgeon,

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and it's probably better he went into art.

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He just goes out and does 
things. I don't know what it is.

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He doesn't seem to have some of 
the fears that the rest of us do.

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He just seems to go straight 
at it and find a way to do it.

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BARTALOS: Today's our second day doing this makeup on Matt.

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For this makeup, Matthew wears a prosthetic 
of his lips blown open and the gums shattered.

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And then I use what's called pax, 
it gives him the strange skin tone.

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And then we model with airbrush 
the strange red veins on it

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to give it a kind of an organic 
life underneath the plastic feel.

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Usually, what I do is that.

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MAN: I think Matthew is picturing 
this as some kind of more formal thing

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like when you're watching the guy...

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BARNEY:
It's probably

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harder for other people to take 
direction because I look so ridiculous.

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MAN: so, Richard, I'd like to try 
a couple court paintings, you know,

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where you're kind of on ¾ and the 
hand is really deliberate in front.

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And the eyes are sort of off...

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BARNEY: As the story became about a 
conflict between a union of metal workers

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and a union of stone masons,

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Richard Serra started to make sense 
to me as a kind of chieftain character

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who could preside over the metal workers.

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–Like so, Matthew?

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–Looking good, nice.

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To be sure, Richard's been a 
major influence on my work.

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And particularly, the "Throwing lead" 
pieces that he did in the late '60s.

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SERRA: I think a guy like 
Matthew probably looks at my work

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and there's a certain kind of physicality 
that he recognizes in the work,

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where he feels his sensibility 
can link into that physicality.

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Albeit, he has a very, very 
different way of viewing the world,

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basically through images, not through models.

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–BARNEY: Little more torque 
on the upper body, good.

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–Eyes right in the lens, good. 
Take a quick look. It's weird.

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BARNEY: You know, in a certain way, a lot 
of the characters that I bring into this are

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asked to do things that really have 
to do with sort of physical feat

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rather than a kind of mannered, um…

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performance in any way.

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–Okay, let's do it.

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–MAN: let's lock it up, guys.

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–BARNEY: Three, two, one, 
start the boom, and action.

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The architect, who's played by Richard 
Serra, is shown throwing Vaseline

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on the top of level five,

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in really exactly the same way that 
he threw hot lead in the late '60s.

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Of the types of work that I 
gravitated towards in art school,

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those were the first pieces 
that I think I truly understood.

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–And three, two, one, and action.

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Characters like Harry Houdini, Gary 
Gilmore, Norman Mailer, and Ursula Andress,

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in certain ways…

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have a kind of physicality 
in common about the way that

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violence is sublimated into form somehow.

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Which is for me what "Throwing lead" is.

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And I think that, as a theme, is sort 
of central to what my project is about.

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I think we're just trying to get it 
right, you know, for the scene to work,

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without passing any judgment on it, really.