If you think movie actors are hard to deal with, try directing bugs. The tarantula won't sneak into a slipper in Arachnophobia. The bees swarming around Matt Damon in We Bought a Zoo might sting him. The mosquito won't sit still. The fly won't clean itself.
So to get insect and arachnid stunts done, the biggest shot-callers call Steven Kutcher, a 68-year-old entomologist who has worked on over 90 movies in the past 30 years. (His big break was feeding rye grass to 3,000 African locusts on The Exorcist II.)
There's a reason he gets so many gigs. "My work looks like it's supposed to look," he says. "If you see flies walking around a sandwich onscreen, that's what it really is—flies walking around a sandwich."
Getting creatures to hit their marks requires cleverness, though. To herd the spider in Arachnophobia—not a tarantula but a Delena cancerides—Kutcher built mazes out of ultrathin vibrating filament that was invisible to the camera. For Damon's encounter in We Bought a Zoo, he used house bees, young workers that rarely leave the hive. When displaced, they tend to zip around harmlessly to get their bearings. (A queen bee later guided them back into cages.)
Kutcher's powers would make a supervillain proud. Need a mosquito to sit for a close-up? Chill it in a cooler first. Need a fly to clean itself? Dab honey on its feet and head. Can't find a red and blue spider to bite Tobey Maguire? Use a tiny gurney to restrain and paint a regular one. "My hands are very delicate," Kutcher says. "I can pick up these tiny things." Better him than us.
