Our Favorite Genre Props With Ryan Condal and David Mandel
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The stuff that dreams are made of. Hello, welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson. That's Mallory Rubin. And we're here today for a very special little episode of House of R. We've got some special guests. We'll talk about that in a second. Or maybe, you know what, I'm just going to do it right now. Listen, here we are today. Talk about film and television props.

And I, we've already sort of recorded this. We're recording this intro after. So I'm just going to tell you, this was a blast. Genuine treat. We had two wonderful guests in the form of House of the Dragon showrunner, Ryan Condal and Veep showrunner, David Mandel. And they host a podcast, Stuff That Dreams Were Made Of, where they talk about film props. And so they came with this little like crossover event. They came over here to talk about some of their favorite film props, our favorite film and television props from genre and sort of beyond. And they were like,

I learned a lot and I had the best time talking about stories that we love. Mallory, how are you feeling about this episode of our podcast? Ready to spend a lot of money. So much money. I need to take a breath and make sure I'm prepared to proceed thoughtfully through my own life. But yeah, it was incredibly...

It's illuminating and enriching to hear Ryan and David, who make so many of the shows that we love and also just know so much about film and television and the industry, to teach us, like, just casually dropping incredible kernels of insight and wisdom about the history of the improv. And also the incredible things that they own. It's just, like, enviable. Yes.

truly enviable flexes across the pod. So that was all really fun. And then just, you know, to celebrate so many of the different worlds that we love to visit through the idea of like the prop, a piece of memorabilia, a collectible as a gateway into a place we love to go and then love to visit together was just so fun. And I really, I genuinely had a blast. Like I'm eager to go to some of these places

They mentioned us. Yeah. And yeah, look into some of this. And I have, as you know, no willpower and I'm not really capable of exerting any self-control and I tend to get really addicted to things really quickly. So I'm not sure this was wise for me to be exposed to this, but I had the time of my life. Truly great. Sorry to ruin you financially, but here we are.

talk about our favorite film and television props with Ryan and David. Before we get into that, let's just do quick bits of business such as programming reminders. Yes. Okay.

the penguin is wrapping up, which means that Mallory and I will be back with the penguin finale, you know, medium-ish dive at the top of next week. We also have our first, maybe not our last, but at least our first dip into the world of Silo season two. Rob Mahoney is going to be joining me next week on the pod to talk about Silo. That's very exciting. So that's what's happening over here. But overall,

And I would just like to say my, I, her absence is not about my absence has nothing to do with my enthusiasm for the show. It's just scheduling conflict. Can't make it very sad to miss it, but looking forward to season two of silo and can't wait to hear. Can't wait to hear. It's entirely possible that in the new year, when the season wraps up, Mal and I might be depending on what's going on. Um, Mal and I might be back, but Mal's the one who got me into silo. So, uh, but Rob is picking up the mantle and we're very appreciative of him for that. Um, uh,

over in the ringerverse the midnight boys pew pew have a very special penguin finale extravaganza event for you because my understanding correct me if I'm wrong is that a video and audio podcast from the midnight boys their finale reactions will go up

You've heard of instant reactions before. This is an instant reaction. The very moment the Penguin finale wraps, you'll be able to hear from and watch the Midnight Boys give their reaction to the Penguin finale. So that is very exciting over the Ring of Hearts. Also, the Mint Edition crew, Steve and Jomie, are still covering Arcane. So if you're excited, you're into Arcane Season 2, they are covering that over on Mint Edition.

So that is very exciting. A lot of fun stuff happening on both the ringer verse and house of our Molly Rubin. How can folks cover and make sure that they don't miss a single moment of any of that? Yeah, here you go.

Follow the pod. Follow House of R, follow The Ringerverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're at it, subscribe to the new Ringerverse YouTube channel. You can watch full video episodes of House of R and Midnight Boys on Spotify. You can watch video pods on Spotify. Check it out. You can also, of course, see our video episodes on The Ringerverse YouTube channel. While you're at it, follow The Ringerverse on the social media platform of your choosing. We are on Instagram, TikTok,

Twitter. Send us your emails. You got your phone in your hand already. Hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com. The inbox is open. Send us your thoughts on the Penguin finale. Send us your thoughts on the Silo premiere. Send us your thoughts on Dune Prophecy. We're mere days away from covering that. As we have stated on every recent podcast and will continue to state until we have had the pleasure of watching this film, send us your Craven the Hunter thoughts.

You said we were mere days away from Dune Prophecy and I got a little chill. I know. The year is evaporating and I am consumed by anxiety, but very excited to watch Dune. Send us your two thoughts. If you've got thighs o'clock thoughts, let us know.

Last but not least, your spoiler warning. Guess what? Spoilers from all of television and film. I don't know. We didn't get into too many like plot specific things of like of things you don't know about. You know about Lord of the Rings. You know about Game of Thrones. You know, like it's pretty bit broad, basic stuff here. So I don't think I don't think you should be too worried. But I just want to just in case let you know. All right. Let's just let's bring on our very special guests.

So what are we even doing here today? We are very excited to have two very incredibly special guests. Ryan Condal, VP of House of the Dragon is here. Hi, Ryan. How are you doing? Hi, guys. Very good to see you. Welcome back. Love to have you. And first time in the pod, it's Dave Mandel, who has worked on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld, and Veep.

David, thanks for being with us. Thank you. The pre-podcast shows. That's kind of... I worked in the pre-podcast era of television. I know. Exactly. If I could turn back time. Well, you know, Curb has gotten some... Curb lasted long enough. You're right. Curb lasted long enough. Yeah, exactly. My seasons. My seasons of Curb. It was like, you're podcasting? What?

But speaking of podcasting, these two fine folks together have a podcast called The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, all about props and prop collecting. And so we just wanted to get together, talk about some of our favorite props. We've got two experts here and then two...

Rank amateurs in Mallory Rubin and yours truly who just looked around for things we thought looked cool. And that's what we'll be talking about today. But we've got some experts here as well. And I was just, I just wanted to ask you before we sort of get to the list and ranking, maybe starting with you, Brian, like how did you get started collecting props? And when did you decide to turn that hobby, passion, obsession, whatever you want to call it into a podcast?

I mean, I've kind of been a collector all my life, and we do talk about this on the podcast. It's sort of people that we think are sort of born collectors. There's a switch in your DNA that gets filled, possibly going back to when we were hunter-gatherers or something. Something that's been corrupted and changed in the human brain. So, yeah, I collected baseball cards, comic books.

little pewter, those pewter sort of fantasy, you know, things that you would find in shops when you went on vacation in the Northeast. All sorts of stuff like that. And then...

uh, as I, uh, my disposable income went up, I started collecting kind of prop replicas of things that I loved as a kid, um, that I didn't think it was possible to ever own. I didn't think it was possible to own a lightsaber. So I went online and figured out, um, there was this manual sort of floating around of like how to build Luke's lightsaber out of the Graflex three cell, the, uh, the old flash gun, the thirties flash gun, uh, when, you know, when they would, the

big reporters would have those big cameras. The thing on the handle that would fire the flashbulb is Luke's lightsaber with a bunch of things stuck on it. But when you see it, it's like, oh, that's the lightsaber. So I tracked that down and figured out how to build that. At some point, I had somebody build me an M41A pulse rifle from Aliens with all the original parts, including the gun parts that went into it. And that was insane with the working counter. And it was crazy. So I had a bunch of this stuff. Terry English, the wonderful armorer in...

uh here in england and cornwall that built all the armor for uh excalibur and for first night also built the armor for the marines uh the colonial marines and aliens so he built me a set of hudson armor uh that was like specced to hudson so it was the it was it was not fit for me it was like fitted for you know bill paxton in 1985 and um but hand painted and done all the you know hand sort of tooled and rolled the way he did it and i loved all that stuff and then

In 2009, I was in my early days as a screenwriter, and I was living in L.A., and Battlestar Galactica had just ended, and there was this big auction that NBCUniversal put on at the Pasadena Convention Center or something for the end of the show. And as they do now, this is more –

uh, prevalent now, the big show finishes and they will sell off all the assets. Game of Thrones just, you know, did one that was hugely successful, but this was sort of unheard of back then. And everybody was going and I knew a bunch of people that, um, from sort of nerddom that were original prop collectors. I was sort of kind of teetering on the edge of it. I went to the auction and I bought a Viper helmet and it like

blew a switch in my brain because I couldn't believe that I was holding something from the show that I love so much and it lit up and it had the character's name inside of it. Uh, and it just, um, it just changed me. So like sort of with over the next like three months, I sold everything that I had to fund the beginning of like my next obsession. So this was about 15 years ago. So it's been 15 years in, um,

Right around that time is when I met Dave. I think I was transitioning into original prop collecting. I was a new resident to LA, and Dave was this very famous writer-collector.

And he was kind enough to extend an invite to a complete stranger through a referral, a friend of ours. Giant mistake. Giant mistake. Look where it's gotten him. Giant mistake, yeah. And I went over and saw his amazing, incredible collection and talked only about

uh, props with him and never said, will you please read my screenplay? And I think he, um, respected that and allowed me to keep coming over and we just became friendly and we're sort of into all the same stuff. So that, you know, that's how it kind of, you know, pro original prop collecting sort of quickly led to the foundation of our, uh, relationship and, and friendship.

As it is now. It helped that Ryan never wrote a spec Curb Your Enthusiasm. There is nothing worse. There is literally nothing worse than a spec Curb. So that was in his plus category. I do think it did help that I was a drama writer and not a comedy writer because Dave is just so annoyed by other comedy writers that I think he was like, okay, cool. He's never going to ask me to read his dumb Seinfeld script, even though Seinfeld ended...

10 years ago. Which Battlestar Viper helmet? Whose call sign? Yeah, yeah. It was Nacho of all people. So there were a bunch of, there were a bunch of Apollos in there. Yeah. A bunch of them. I remember a bunch of the main characters. There were Starbuck helmets in there. And I was sort of like,

I just want one Viper helmet. And I knew enough about how this stuff worked where I was like, they probably just interchanged all these things. So there's probably the label in there is the last guy who wore it. And Nacho, he's in like one episode. So he's like, that's probably an Apollo helmet that just got labeled. So I waited and all those went kind of high. And then I just jumped on Nacho and I got it for a couple of bids. And it was a smart purchase.

Smart move. Strategic. I like it. Dave, what's your obsession origin story and how did you... Yeah, I mean, it is sort of the same thing a little bit, which is, you know, like I have kids now and my kids were really little. I had one kid that was constantly lining up everything, you know, like lining up the, you know, like kind of like, I've got this one, I've got this one, I've got this one, I've got this one. And that's the collector. And then I had the other kid that just didn't give a shit about any of it. You know, yeah, toys are great, but...

No need to line them up. And the liner uppers, those are your prop collectors, basically. I collected a whole bunch of different things in my life. But when I moved out to Los Angeles, I moved out in 1995. And I moved out to work on Seinfeld. And when I was working on Seinfeld...

I was, I also kind of coincided with coming to LA, getting to pop into these like great Los Angeles, like bookstores and stores like in Westwood that would have like props in them. These places are all gone and these really wonderful, like Larry Edmonds bookstore, but all these like really like Hollywood bookstores that would have like

original scripts or really cool books I'd never seen. And I went to San Diego Comic-Con for the first time and I just started buying the stuff I wanted. So first I, I did all the Star Wars toys. And at some point when I literally had them all and they were all mint in the package and you know, all of that kind of nonsense, um,

Um, one day in toy shop magazine, there was an article, not article. There was an ad in the back for a little sort of phone auction for an actual return of the Jedi storm trooper helmet. And it was sort of like, this can't be real. And I won the auction based on like, I get to bring it to somebody to show it to them to make sure what it is is real. And they were like, that's fine. Um,

At the time, Steve Sansweet, who was the big Star Wars collector, wrote many books, lived here in LA. I brought it over to his house and matched it up with his. And I had my first Stormtrooper helmet and I was, I was off to the races. Uh, yeah. And it was just, uh, first, how many do you have total? Uh,

At the currently I have two at my two from Star Wars at my height. I had a Star Wars and two different Jedi ones. I guess I had three at some point. Yeah, but you've had four pass through your hands now. Yes. I guess I've had four technically at different times. So yeah.

Dave had an incredible Stormtrooper helmet collection because he sort of had all the versions. So he had the first one that he got was a Jedi helmet. It was sort of a normal Jedi helmet that had yellowed a bit because the plastic that they made it out of just went exposed to oxygen. They all yellowed, basically, yeah. Then he got this amazing one that George Lucas put into auction after 9-11, right, Dave? It was a 9-11 charity fundraiser? Yes, it was a big fundraiser, and it was a lot of...

but there was two actual props in it. There was a Stormtrooper helmet and there was a stunt Darth Maul prequel lightsaber thing. But that's a prequel, so nope, close your mouths. No one cares. It's a prequel. Those movies are awful. But Darth Maul's

Saber is not awful. Darth Maul is a patron saint of this podcast. Best of the worst. Best of the worst. Okay, fair enough. We care a lot about Darth Maul here, though admittedly mostly from the animated version. Best of the worst. Best of the worst. Anyway, and I got the Stormtrooper helmet from that. And then at some point later on, an actual helmet from Star Wars that screen matched. And that's a thing we're going to talk about maybe later.

perhaps more about as we're talking about props. Screen matched is when you can actually, and this has really happened with 4K media, where you can freeze a frame of the screen and see some, usually defects, sometimes a scratch or a paint chip or a specific stitch or a weird button or whatever it is, where you can literally go, that's my prop.

And I have the storm trooper helmet from the there's one set for stun scene in star Wars where you can go that paint chip on like the lower chin is that one and you can watch it. There's two different storm troopers. They, or I don't know whether they move the guys or different guys put the helmet on. It's in the wide shot. It's standing in one spot. And then the closeup, it's a different spot, but basically it's,

that's my helmet. And that is the screen match. If we can leave your listeners with one thing, that is the ultimate in prop collecting, the screen match. And that's the one I have, yeah. What's the meme? Tough to see someone else living your dream? I'm just like, this is

This is very Mallory-coded, all of this. I just have a bunch of plastic merch that I Googled and bought, not the authentic article yet. That's where we started, too. The honest answer is one day I had lots of plastic things, and even Ryan had two where people were making them as close as possible, and then one day you find your first prop. The other thing that's wonderful about props...

just to be a bit of an evangelist a little bit is, yes, obviously I can see there's a Thor hammer behind your head up there on the shelf. Obviously, it'd be incredible to have a Thor hammer. There's no doubt about that. However...

from a movie like Thor, you might be able to get an actual call sheet from the movie. You might be able to get some sort of piece of pre-production art. There's a lot of levels to props. And so you might be able to get a drawing or something of the hammer. You know what I'm saying? So yes, obviously you'd love to have the hammer, but you can kind of get into it on a lot of levels and kind of work your way up in kind of a cool way. So wherever that fits in. I think I would go for Stormbreaker so that I could just walk around shouting, he needs the axe!

Max! Max! The handle! Save Mjolnir for someone else. Yeah. I just, what I didn't realize I was doing today and putting this podcast together was potentially opening up a financial problem for Mallory Rubin. No, this is fine. I've made my peace. As you know, Jo, all I really spend my money on right now is DoorDash and sneakers.

So I'm ready for something new. For whatever it's worth, and it is sort of funny, when I was building my collection, it was especially right after Larry David left Seinfeld. And when Larry left Seinfeld, we went on to like basically a seven-day week schedule to kind of try and make up for Larry being gone. And so literally, we would do like, I don't know,

38 days in a row and take a Sunday off. And then we would do 56 days in a row. So I was basically at the office. All my meals were at the office. I lived in a rental apartment and I drove a leased car. And basically I just took all that sort of, I'm not doing anything. I'm not going anywhere. I don't have a life. And it was just like, what,

what can I during my two minute break on, you know, the 89th day in a row, what can I buy? What collectible can I buy? So, yeah, anyway, this is, this is genuinely aspirational in every respect. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll share this in, in 15 seconds to, to set a baseline for where I am with this. Uh,

And in our home, we have a space that I believe the people who built the home intended to be a wine case. Yes. And I keep swords from Game of Thrones and lightsabers in it. Well, you should. Very good. You don't know. Maybe that's what they built it for. Maybe they weren't wine drinkers. It's definitely how we repurposed it. At the prescribed French temperature. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Yes, we're always thinking about the temp control in there. And how to decant the story. It depends on the color lightsaber. So yeah, is it a red? Is it a red? Or is it a purple? Yeah. Exactly. We'll see how my kyber crystal is singing to me at a given moment. One of the things that we were curious to ask you both about as well is, obviously, you are –

not just an enthusiast of all of these stories, of all of this memorabilia of the collectibles, but you're making shows that then inspire that passion in other people. And so what has this relationship to collecting and to obsessing over the props changed or unlocked or amplified about what you love about the actual core text, about what you love about the universes that these items are a part of?

Well, I think, I mean, I think this stuff, the reason that, you know, just going back to the beginning, the reason that Dave and I love this stuff is because it is the storytelling. And I think we've talked a little bit before about how movies are, it's a strange medium because it's really, it's intangible.

It's just there's a bunch of electrons being thrown up against the screen. So, yeah, you can take home the movie poster or the VHS cassette. Whereas if you love a book, you can go out and get the first edition. If you love a comic book, you can go out and get an original piece of comic art, which Dave also has a giant problematic collection of. That'll be a different podcast, but yes.

But with movies, the only tangible things that survive is the stuff they use to make the movie. So it can be call sheets, scripts, all that, but it can go all the way up to a stormtrooper helmet. But I think with the props, it is the storytelling, particularly when you get into things like

you know, Indiana Jones grail diary from last crusade, which, which I have. I mean, that is so much of the, but that, that is the, that is, it's so much of the storytelling in that movie. And my love for that movie is so wrapped up in that piece that I think when, you know, at least for me, I can't speak to, you know, Dave doing comedy, but when I, you know, when I, on house of the dragon, um,

you know, Damon's sword, dark sister is such an, a key part of him who he has as a Targaryen. There's all this Targaryen history wrapped up into it because Visenya, who in many ways is the most interesting figure in Targaryen history, uh, first carried, you know, carry the blade. And I think it's how that P how the love that you lavish on the making of that piece and trying to create an iconic silhouette, that'll be recognized hopefully for decades to come after, after seeing the show, uh,

So much of that is wrapped up into the things that people love about the story, the book Fire and Blood, the show. And then the icon, the weapon itself, carries that in a way. So I think for me, the things that I love are because when you look at it, you think of the thing that you saw in the movie theater and loved so much when you were a kid. And it's the last surviving physical thing.

of this wonderful piece of storytelling. So for me, it carries a lot in doing this professionally now. And as you can imagine, I spend lots and lots of time in all these workshops figuring out what I'm going to steal. I was going to say, I should point out that if you are going to be in the industry and also collect props, making comedy set in Washington, D.C. as opposed to something with swords, armor,

dragons and or even space lasers and whatnot is really not helpful i will simply say i have a lot of busts of abraham lincoln if anyone is interested i would say like taken directly yeah just desk blotters the occasional pin and whatnot it all has great meaning to me but uh yeah not quite as exciting you know it's funny with the great prop people that i have worked with in

in the world of like, even like on Veep, we had a wonderful prop person. Her name was Gay Parello. And one of the things that was incredible about her was we'd have a scene

and would say something like, Selena is looking through her photo album or something like that. And she's pointing to a picture of her father or something like that. And that would be in there. But I would flip through that photo book. I would, I would go by the, I would go by the stage and I would see her that night, the night before putting in all these things. And she would have gotten pictures of Julia as a child. And she would have, you know, she would have

played off of references that we put into the story about how Selina likes horses and all of these things. And so the entire photo book, even though we may or may not cut into it for a second, is filled with this rich history of the Selina Meyer character. And when you sort of see a prop that gets that level of care, and even if it's a photo album or a sword or some other book, there's a prop coming up from the...

Princess Bride, obviously incredible movie. And it's Count Rugen's torture instruction manual from the Pit of Despair. This is going up for auction at Prop Store of London, which is coming up next week. And basically, it's incredible. And there is a page that you get to see with the stuff stuck into them. But there are so many other pages that were done and created that...

You never got to see because there is such a deep backstory, both to Count Rugen and his pursuit of torture and all of his research and what he's been working on. And that's when a prop just transcends and isn't just a representation.

Of that moment that I was a kid watching the movie in the theater that I'm trying to recapture because all collecting is nostalgia. But also, I guess the respect that the creators of that both movie, the prop person, whatever, have for the world that they're working in. That's just where it's pretty incredible. Those things come together. Yeah. I love that example. I mean, it makes me think about the fact that the.

To your point about that screen match idea, it makes me think about the freeze frame Zoom in Reddit-obsessed era of people who say, watch House of the Dragon, and there's an illuminated manuscript or book that Rhaenyra is reading, and we're like, enhance, enhance. What does it say? It could be us. It could not possibly be us. I don't know who would do that. Maniac. Yeah.

I've heard you guys talk on your podcast and have in sort of some of my writings about this industry. There's a distinction, and it's not always an easy distinction between the props department, the set deck department, the costume department, or props versus something like memorabilia. And I can promise you that Mallory and I

probably have confused some of these departments in our picks. But is there any clarification you want to offer before we sort of get into our list about what belongs in what categories? Or does that matter? Clarification that we will hold in our minds in the future but not be bound by for today's exercise. Fair enough. Some of my greatest entertainment walking around a movie set is finding those little sort of gray areas where people are like,

Is this Green's department or is this set? And watching them sort of because they're all lovely people, but they're also super territorial and tribal. So it's like, this is a special effects rig. This is not production design. Get out of the way, sir.

But generally with props, it's anything the actor is going to interact with in a storytelling way. So if there's a bunch of books on the table, that's all set deck until the actor picks the one up and opens it. So when Rhaenyra opens the illuminated manuscript to the page that you've seen, that is a prop made by the props department. All the other stuff there that is probably, sorry to ruin the illusion, is usually just a bunch of old Bibles because that's what we use because those are...

because Ryan hates the Bible. Okay. There we said it. Okay. Sorry. House of R Ryan hates the Bible. Thank you. No problem. Um, uh, not controversial at all. Uh, uh, I'm trying to get you viewers, man. The show needs viewers. Oh no, I guess, I guess, I guess it doesn't actually. Yeah. Um, but, uh,

But once Rhaenyra is looking at that book, then it's a prop and it's been gone over by the props department. And that usually too is a Bible that they have mocked up some hero pages inside so that she can turn pages and it looks like the whole book is done. And going back to your earlier point, Joanna, I mean, I think in the old days –

You like when the Princess Bride book was made. There were probably a couple of pages in there, and I've actually seen that one. It's very cool. And whoever made that did go to some extent. But you'll see some of it is kind of gibberish and nonsense. Whereas now, because of the Reddit 4K era, everybody has to make these things that stand up. So with our pages, the writers are writing them often. They're being translated into Heidem Valerian by David Peterson, our Valerian translator. And it's being meant to...

stand up in some way to to that analysis and also rewarding that sort of you know sixth dimension view for the you know three crazy people that are going to freeze frame it blow it up and then translate it that's typically the distinction and then anything that anything a character wears is a costume uh costume piece so helmets are costume pieces um that

That may or may not come into play today. But it does blur. And by the way, if it's a scene with a book on a table and no one said in the script she's going to pick a book up in the table, it starts off as set deck. But then the actor decides to pick a book up and start going through it. And all of a sudden, that's where everybody kind of like gets on edge. Like, wait a second. She wasn't supposed to pick the book.

up and now it's kind of a prop only it wasn't supposed to be a prop and everybody's very nervous because all of a sudden now we got a match to that and all of those things so there's a little blurry but that's the basic gist of it it's like the director throwing an extra speaking line and it's like oh god now we gotta make him a sad guy gotta pay him dude that dude just made a thousand dollars

Which he could use to buy one of the items we're going to talk about. There you go. Potentially. So, wow, look at this. We've come full circle. On that front, in addition to listening to your wonderful podcast to learn more about this, what starter kit of advice would you offer up to the bad babies, the house of our viewers and listeners who are...

in delving further into this perhaps budding hobby. The holidays are coming up, right? This is part of why we thought this would be a fun time to do this.

How should people approach this? Maybe finding the best replica or if they are really ready to spend some serious coin, what's the best way to dip a toe into pursuing the genuine article? Any starter kit advice? Also, just any strategies to keep in mind? This is something that we've been interested in listening to the pod is when you guys get into the strategy of how to approach maybe going after a particular article.

item, a lot that has multiple things that you could make your peace with maybe landing on one versus the other, which you were hitting on already a bit today. So it's a big wide world. How do people start? Boy, that's a really good question. Well, the first thing's first, and we'll get to maybe the replica stuff last maybe just to talk about props. There's basically two ways to acquire a prop. You're going to buy something that has a price on it, or you're going to bid in an auction.

Auction, anything can happen. So let's put auction to the side for a half a second. There are some wonderful prop websites. A favorite of ours is propstore.com that has an inventory that changes daily of, you know, and usually smaller, more reasonably priced props. You're not going to find a

Stormtrooper helmet for sale on that website. But you are going to find maybe a really cool patch from something or an interesting book or piece of paper or sometimes, by the way, even a book cover. One of the first props I ever bought was from Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas, a Joan Wilder book cover. The Joan Wilder?

Wilder? The Joan Wilder, exactly. Because basically they just made book covers and then stuck them on books. That's how they would do all those store displays of her bestsellers from Romancing the Stone. And so you might see something like that on there. And again, by the way, a Joan Wilder book cover, if you're a fan of Romancing the Stone, that's an effing great prop. So there are these preset, pre-priced things that you can purchase. And I think you can go slowly and go that way.

Auctioning is a whole other world because obviously we're starting to talk about there are smaller items, but the ceiling is going to be higher and obviously it can go crazy. And so you kind of want to be careful. The two big auction houses are Propster.com and Heritage Auctions, ha.com. They do a couple of auctions a year.

Like I said, there are some big ticket items. Heritage this year did a huge Planet Hollywood auction where stuff went wild. It was basically all the things you used to see in Planet Hollywood. Right now they're doing a giant –

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers from like all 38 seasons of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. And I don't care, but it's really, you know, cool and colorful and the people that care, care. And so when you're going into an auction, I guess one of the things I would say is, is

think about your number because auction fever is a real thing and I have done it myself. You're there, you're bidding and you've said to yourself, there is no way I will ever go over $1,000. And then it's all of a sudden you hear yourself going $3,000 and it's like, who said that? You know what I mean? So stick

This is how I ended up spending $58 on Juan Soto in a baseball option. Stick to your numbers. Stick to your numbers. You've got to stick to your numbers. Yeah. But well, actually Juan Soto probably was, that was probably wasn't. I actually felt okay about it. It's a keeper league though. So it's sort of indefensible at a keeper league.

But anyway, that's a conversation for another time. Different podcast also. So I do think stick to your numbers. And what I honestly suggest, which doesn't help you with this holiday season, is I would almost start picking up old catalogs, looking through, maybe looking up what some of those numbers went for. Pick up a current catalog. Watch an auction. Watch one where you're not bidding. Get a sense of how it works, how it feels. Scout the competition. Exactly. I like it.

even if it's not competition, even if you would never bid on it, just, you know, feel it out. Like get, get an understanding of where these things go and get a sense of like, that's something I'm interested in. Wow. That's way more expensive than I ever thought. Or that's something I'm interested in. That's more reasonable than I ever imagined. I could buy something like that. Uh, so there's a little bit of advice I think for jumping in Ryan, what else you want to throw in there? Well, when is it, when is this episode airing guys? Do you know yet?

Today. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, on November 14th, Prop Store is doing a live auction. That's their day one. So it's a four-day auction. Day two is music. They have a bunch of music memorabilia. But all the kind of

you know, a and a plus pieces go on day one. And that's where you'll see a whole storm trooper costume be sold for many hundreds of thousands. Yeah. I mean, let's be honest. Yeah. Duster from the good, bad and the ugly, um, the, the, uh, Wesley's mask from princess bride. It's all in that original Ray Harryhausen drawings and maquettes from his stop motion stuff. Uh, Liz Tate,

Liz Taylor, Cleopatra outfits from Anthony and Cleve. I mean, just crazy stuff. Yeah. Really wonderful things. It's getting like shaky as you describe it. But log in. I'm like really excited.

Log into PropStore.com and you don't even have to register. You don't even have to be a live bidder. You can just watch the auction. There's a live auctioneer there. It's happening. If you're in town, you can go. It's at BAFTA here in London. You can watch the live auctioneer. Do I hear 1,000? Do I hear 10,000? You'll see paddles go up. People are on the phone. You get a real sense. It's exciting. It's cool. Everybody in that room is a giant nerd with a spending problem.

So it's just a fun, it's a fun community to be around. You can see how it works. Days three and four, which will be the 16th and the 17th will be more reasonably priced items. There will still be some things that shock you, but there will be things that sell for a thousand dollars as opposed to a hundred thousand dollars. That's where you can get like a Batman 89 crew jacket, uh,

original production draft of the Blade Runner screenplay, things like that that are in there that are probably still, you know, hundreds or thousands of pounds, but they're not tens of thousands of pounds typically. I didn't know this was this. All worthwhile to watch. And then I would just plug, just because it's one of the most insane things that's come up, at least since Dave and I have been doing the podcast, in December, Heritage is, December 7th, I believe, Heritage Auctions is auctioning off an original pair of the Ruby slippers, uh,

like the ruby slippers. There's a pair in the Smithsonian, but like this is another pair. This is actually the sister pair because the pair in the Smithsonian are two mismatched shoes. They're from two, they're two different sets. And this is the other mismatch.

So technically, the left goes with the right and the right goes with the left. But not only that, they've got a witch's hat also from Wizard of Oz. Okay. And a full- Joanna. I love witch stuff. Witch stuff go. A full wooden hero Jumanji board from the original Jumanji with all the pieces and the dice and everything. All the dice and the pieces. Yeah. It's incredible stuff. So that's at ha.com at Heritage. Check that out. And obviously, that will go for slightly more than $1,000.

So just if you're planning, if you're budgeting for the end of the year. The slippers, there's pre-bidding that you can do on these things, which I never really get because save your powder for the day, guys. Keep your cards to the vest. There we go. The ruby slippers are already in the 800,000s. It's already gotten. That's going to go pretty nuts. In the millions, yeah.

The guy that stole the ruby slippers, this is the pair that went missing a couple of years ago from the Judy Garland Museum. They were stolen. The guy that stole them stole them because he was told they were covered in real rubies. And that's why he stole them. And then kind of got them and realized, oh, those are just kind of like sparkly bangles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so those are pretty much all of our questions. Sorry, anything you guys want to say on the replica front? Yeah, there's, I mean, there's, you know, especially the big, what's the word I'm looking for, the big stories that we love, like have multiple vendors, I guess is the easiest way of putting it. So, you know, there are people that specialize in swords. There are people that specialize in certain kinds of prop replicas.

A good friend of ours, someone we've had on the show a lot, is a guy named Tom Spina. He has a company called Regal Robot, and they do a lot of Star Wars and indie stuff, and they make wonderful replicas. They just announced...

a replica version of Belloc's staff from the ceremony that, you know, when they're opening the art. And it's funny because the actual staff is also coming up for auction. But again, that's going to be a big ticket item. But this

This staff that they have, they went to the archives, the Lucas archives, they scanned it and all that kind of stuff. And they've made an incredible replica. So Regal Robot is an incredible company. Ryan, you're probably better with the sword stuff than I am. Yeah. Just a couple to rattle off.

Paragon Effects, I'm really into. They make really nice stuff. They have a Batman license. They have a Blade Runner license. Jurassic Park. They have a bunch of interesting stuff going on. But their stuff has been... Because I can't help myself. Their stuff has been really, really ace. They made a neuralyzer for Men in Black that fully functions and works. And you can set the date and...

Like it flashes and it's amazing. So check that out. EFX has a really, if they're still around, EFX has a really nice. Sometimes these companies come and go. They come and go because it's a hard, it's the margins are tiny. But EFX, even if you're looking just on eBay, EFX made great Stormtrooper helmets, really beautiful stuff. And then there's RS Props, right, Dave? That's the one that has all the original, like original lineage. So they have molds. This is all again, Star Wars. If you want a Stormtrooper helmets as close to the original sort of,

set lineage RS props is one to check out. And then I would just send them to this forum called the replica prop forum, the RPF. And that's a place filled with, uh, it's a, it's a zany sort of old school BBS kind of internet BBS, like pre Reddit, pre Facebook, all of that, that goes back almost 25 years. I was a founding member. I was original member signed up when, when,

when the thing because it was it was there were these forums on AOL that used to exist and it sort of moved on to the sort of proper open garden of the internet and a bunch of us just kind of migrated over but there you'll find like Adam Savage hangs around there and there's a bunch of people that actually make stuff that aren't licensed but sometimes they're making the best stuff and they'll do a run of 30 or 50 or whatever and there's a there's a junkyard there where you can

buy and see what's for sale. There, there's a project run thread where you can see, Oh, who's making the hocus pocus book, the fully functioning, you know, turn the pages, blinking eye, hocus pocus book from the movie. Really, really cool stuff going on there. That's unlicensed, but is some of the best stuff that you will, you will be able to get out. But I will say, and I, without casting any sort of an aspersion on replicas, because replicas are wonderful.

If you think you do want to get a prop, and I know it's tough because obviously the prop you might be able to afford is less spectacular looking sometimes than the replica you can afford. But sometimes think about though,

the 10 replicas you just bought over the last two years can start to equal a decent prop. And that is the one thing I will say. And, you know, Ryan has sort of said, and he definitely still has replicas. I have one or two, but at some point you do look around and kind of go, wow, these are incredible replicas. Someone did an incredible job on this, but here's this tiny little thing. I have a

I have a little Amity police patch from Jaws. I have, because I don't have a lot of, I don't have giant, huge Jaws stuff.

I literally have an Amity real estate sign that was on the lawn of one of the houses that Chief Brody walks by in Jaws. It's not a shark. It's not the orca. It's not anything incredible. But I would – and I stare at those pieces, and I love them. And I guess what I'm sort of saying is –

Think about if you're getting up to your, hey, two replicas, great. As you hit 10 and 20, maybe start to think about props. That's, I guess, all I would say as, again, an enthusiast of props. This sounds like a conversation I'm currently having with myself about whether it's finally time to invest in a nice espresso machine rather than buying 19 iced Americanos and cold drinks every single day. If you started to actually keep records of it, you would start to surprise yourself. Yeah.

Oh my god, I'm excited, Mallory, for your espresso journey. Okay. Are you? We're about to get into our list. And the rules of the list are there are barely any rules. Again, Mallory and I are rank amateurs. We're racing for pink slips. Sorry, go on. Exactly. We're pulling from...

all sci-fi fantasy genre films uh and television uh if you so prefer talk about our favorite props one last sort of like nomenclature thing i want to highlight uh that we've that's come up a couple times that just want to define for people who aren't as aware the idea of the hero prop and the hero prop uh which we mentioned a couple different contexts is um correct me if i'm wrong guys uh the thing you you could have a number of swords uh

And some of them are rubber, but the one that is like most camera ready and like castle forge steel and whatever it is, that's the hero prop. That's the one that's going to be probably in the closeups as well. Sort of ultimately the hero prop there. It's going to be something that there are multiples of, and this is the best, maybe the single one made of metal, the one that, you know, is hand carved. And you can think about that. It's for swords. Um, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know, the, uh, the,

The medallion. The headpiece of the Staff of Ra. There are ones that were used for the close-up where you could really see the writing. And then obviously there are a whole bunch of other ones where it wasn't for the writing. And they weren't metal. And they were hollow. And again, just think about what they're being used for a little bit. Yeah.

And I will say the following. A hero is incredible. Don't get me wrong. But something used on a set is, to me, equally good. I am a fan of, if you can say this was used on a movie, I'm a pretty happy person. I would honestly say, yeah.

Okay. So we're doing five categories today. We're doing weapons and we've all mentioned lightsabers at this point. So do we all pick lightsabers? Or do we all say... Well, no, I mean, this is what was funny. I sort of tried to actually go like, what if I don't just answer every answer with a Star Wars prop? Because I just felt like... Let me tell you something. I did not do that. So these people were getting some

the middle from yours. This is something you can rely on Mallory for. We will all overthink this and Mallory's like, yeah, but no one said Luke's lightsaber, so here I am. And if you like, we can do a Star Wars answer and then another. We can do two answers for everything. Star Wars answer and then something non-Star Wars is maybe the way of doing this, but yeah. Go for it, go for it, yeah.

Yeah. So we're doing weapons. We're doing vehicles. We're doing MacGuffins. We're doing wearables, which might anger the costume department. And we're doing wild cards is sort of what we're here to do today. Mel, anything you want to say? And we're just all picking favorites. Yeah. Right. Joanna would not.

let me do a draft because, you know, for similar reasons to why I'm no longer invited to play fantasy football with my friends, you know, I'm too competitive and not fun to play with. So we're just selecting. And that means, in theory, I believe, that there could be overlap between lists. Is that something we want to allow?

Unless we were to say that if one of us names something, then it's off the table so that we don't end up with four lightsabers. Some of us might have backups and some of us might not. So then we got to add live. We got to add live. Okay. And if any person on this podcast, it could be any of us. Could be anyone, uh, mischaracterizes something, uh,

has somehow lost the thread on the rules of the exercise. This will be a safe, nurturing, supportive space. This is about sharing our passions today. I do apologize. Before Election Day, this was going to be a safe space. That shit's gone now. No, we need it to be a safe space for them. I'm sorry. There are no safe spaces left. I'm sorry. This is our refuge. I apologize. I apologize. Who I love with my whole heart, who's one of the kindest people in the world. Yeah.

But is also one of the most brutal people to create lists with. I don't know what's wrong with you. If you misname a prop, if you mispronounce something, whatever, you are going to be deported. I'm sorry. Yeah, you're off the podcast. You're out of the country. No, no. Literally deported from the United States of America. De-citizenized. Yeah, I'm sorry. It's just – There's an auction in London. I want to hit next week. Welcome to 2024. 2024, sorry. See you at the – See you at BAFTA. Okay. All right.

House of ours. Should we start with weapons? Favorite genre props. We're going to sort of rotate who's, who goes first in each category. So we're gonna start with weapons and we are going to start with Ryan Condal. Ryan, what is your weapon? My answer is the hero blade runner gun. I, I, that is, that is iconic. There was only one of them, which is pretty surprising given the size of that movie, but there's,

There's only ever been evidence of one. And every, it's every time you see it, not surprising just based on how troubled that production was and the budget was to, to, to build. Um, I have a stunt, uh, one of the rubber stunts with the Amber grips on it, which is lovely as, as does Dave. Um, uh, he mocks me because I weighed his before I bid on mine to make sure that they were, they were correct. Cause I was, I had questions about it and it was within a gram, um,

of so I knew the casting material was the same and everything. It was actually very exciting. And Dave still mocks me. But among my top three favorite movies, it's at points it sits at number one, certainly my favorite science fiction movie. I love that piece. I actually have this crazy replica of it. That's made from all the original gun parts that went into that. So there's a revolver, there's a receiver from a rifle and it takes like a actual like gunsmith machinist to put all these things together. And even he, you know,

30 years after the film was made was struggling with modern equipment to figure out how to do it but it's great and glorious i was actually happy right you got didn't you get to hold it at some point yeah yeah i i i know the guy who owns the original i was at the auction when it sold i was on the floor i was like a brand new i was like months into collecting and i was like there's my favorite piece and it's going up for auction and watched it watched it hammer down for at the time which was in

an insane price and now you're just like, oh, I'll have three of those. But yes, that's my answer. My runner-up was my Conan Atlantean sword, but I already own that. So I've picked things that I don't have versus just saying this is my favorite thing that I... But that would have been my answer when I started out collecting, but I have one, which I'm very proud of. Wow. All right, David, your turn. Well, I actually...

had written that down myself as my answer. Really? I was trying not to do a Star Wars thing. Okay. I was purposely trying not to do Star Wars, but I wrote that down. But now I'll...

What should I pick? You can definitely talk about Star Wars on this podcast. I know. I know. It's just so – don't get me wrong. Yes, a lightsaber. Of course a lightsaber. You know, a hero metal light. You know, a hero actual metal lightsaber would be wonderful. Yeah. Which one?

I personally would probably go Ben Kenobi's from the original movie, but yeah, I mean, that would be my favorite. I was sitting here thinking, just because we were talking about the Princess Bride earlier, I was thinking about Count Rugen's The Six-Fingered Man's sword. I was thinking about a sword, just to think of a sword. I also, and it's sort of a weapon I always wanted, and in all the years of all the auctions, and there have been a bunch of props from...

from the Lord of the Rings movies, I always loved Gandalf's staff. I just, that would be like, that was, you know, sort of a weapon. So I'm kind of, yeah, I would that like an actual, like,

from Peter Jackson, you know, something where you knew this is right or whatever, boy, I would go for that. That's, that's the piece I always wanted from Lord of the Rings. Sorry. Yeah. I'm all over the place. Yeah. No, I would just like to state for the record, as we amend the rules, a living document in real time, that if Ryan or David mentioned something as a runner up, we are still allowed to pick it. Yeah. Yes, ma'am. All right. Um,

She says, considering whether to pick Obi-Wan Sly's name or Gandalf's fan. You're up, Jo. No, I'm out. Do you want to go? No, no, no. I mean... No, I don't. Because I don't think you're going to pick the thing I'm going to pick. No, I'm not. So I feel comfortable letting you go first. Um...

I spent a long time to prepare for this podcast. I did spend a lot of time on the, that's a book light subreddit. Have you guys spent time on there? Which is, it's a subreddit. There's just people posting props and usually sci-fi things along with the actual thing that they repurposed into it. So it's like, this is a price scanner. This is a book light. This is a, a,

you know, a metal step on a dentist chair, like that they use as a door opener, like all that sort of stuff. It's a really funny, I was almost going to pick like one of those for each category, but I decided to go.

The year is 2001. The film is Brotherhood of the Wolf, which is not a film that a lot of people talk about, but it has one of the coolest production designs ever. As I've told you, my husband has a gigantic framed movie poster for this film. It's a sick movie. And there is a sword in that film that is made of bone.

uh, something that would not hold up if it were ever hit with an actual sword, but that's okay. We don't need to worry about that. It's made of pieces of bone that when you flick, when Vincent Cassell in an incredible wig and corset flick, like flicks his wrist, it turns into a whip. The pieces of bone separate and there's chains between it. It turns into this like whip. It's one of the coolest things I've at most metal things I've ever seen in my life. That is a great prop. Um,

it sold recently for 2000, mere 2000 pounds because nobody respects brotherhood of the wolf the way that they should. Um, but this highly impractical, actually,

actually kind of silly. It's got like a curve to it. Allow us just to say that there is nothing better in prop collecting than when you love a movie that nobody else cares about. It is the greatest thing in the world because you just, it's just like, what? I just bought everything from that movie and nobody, you know, for a dollar? Incredible. So there, you know, when you're not

just shopping in the Star Wars aisle. It's a glorious thing. So excellent pick. That used to be Return of the Jedi, but that all changed a few years back. That's true. Okay. This is hard. Why did I write down 15 things for every category? Okay.

A promise I made to myself is that I was going to be true to myself and pick things that I just genuinely really love, even if they're painfully obvious, particularly to listeners of this podcast. And so for Weapon, to the surprise of no one listening today, I will be selecting my favorite fictional weapon, Longclaw.

And I have a long claw. I have like a good replica long claw. But if I could get a long claw from Hardhome or a long claw from...

Beyond the wall, specifically when Jorah and Jon have it between them and Jorah says, may it serve you well and your children after you, I think I could die happy at that point. I don't think I would need much else in my life. Maybe an Orioles World Series. I would like that still. But other than that, then I would be content.

So what that sort of really quickly, one of those two things would have could happen. And I think more, it's more likely the Orioles world series, but keep going. Next year's our year. Next year's our year. Got to ink gunner to that extension. Let's see what happens with Corbin Burns and free agency, but I'm feeling good. Okay. Ish. Um, I've heard that somewhere before, but I can't remember where this was the year. Yeah. I did think this too, too many pitching injuries. We'll talk about it more offline. Uh,

Everything that Longclaw represents, you know, Ghost is my favorite character in the story. So the Pommel, the Ghost Pommel, I just love. But everything, the tie to Jon, the tie obviously to House Mormont, and then everything that it represents about

and belonging to more than one house and how that connects then to something like the moment when Jon will tell Theon, like, you don't have to choose. I just love everything about it. So to get a real longcloth from a Thrones production would be the highlight of my life. I wish I had done something like...

you know, like newlywed game style where I wrote down everything I thought Mallory was going to pick. You are going to know it. I'm not going to, I assure you, I will not be surprising you a single time. Cause I was, I was like, it's all either going to be Ben Kenobi's lightsaber or it's going to be long. So my, my runner up is, but, but,

I don't want to offend our guests today, but I'm not too proud to say this out loud. I would go for Sith. I would go for Revenge of the Sith because I wanted to be from the Mustafar with Anakin. I do. And I would look at it when I acquired it and I would say, you were the chosen one. And I would feel great. Well, that one's actually, that's acquirable because those have actually been around. So for whatever that was. Nobody cares. No one knows where the Alacanis one is.

Did you guys pay attention? There was that giant Game of Thrones auction about a month ago. Crazy prices on all the long claws. Yeah, it was... I got to hold a couple of them for fun, but just, oof, those went crazy. So Alec Guinness' lightsaber has been a great missing product? Missing, yeah. Gandalf's staff, also a top three contender here for me, and I think I would have gone specifically like...

I think I want to Gandalf the gray, I completely agree with that. I would also take a Gandalf the gray hat, which I realized is not, that would be wonderful. Yeah. Uh, the, uh, Sir Ian McKellen, uh, donated his staff to a bar here in, uh, in London. So there's, it's sitting up over a bar. Which bar do you know? I don't remember the name. I think you can easily Google it. I'm guessing it's something in the theater district, but just to guess. Yeah, probably. Yes. Uh, yes. Um,

But he apparently took home a Glamdring, a hat, and a staff. And multiples, too, because I think he got stuff from The Hobbit. But yes, Ian McKellen has stuff. Amazing. Okay. The next category is a vehicle. This is a ship, a car, whatever you prefer. A boat. That's probably the wrong department, but that's okay. Let's start with David.

So I wasn't sure, so I'm going to give a double answer here, whether you meant an actual car like you could get into and drive, like a movie vehicle. Seems like not a prop, perhaps. Right, but I guess sort of is, but kind of a prop. Or if you meant like the miniature model used in the like sort of special effects, whatever. So I'm going to give you two answers, which is, number one, if I was to actually get like an actual, like,

like movie car, the 66 Batmobile is the greatest thing ever from the Adam West Batman show. We are on one mind today. So that I just absolutely love. And in terms of screen used sort of miniatures,

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I apologize. To me, anything ILM, anything ILM, Star Wars original trilogy, but specifically the original film, I would have to go for probably, it's up at Lucasfilm, the six-foot Millennium Falcon. That's my, I'm going to go steal that item, I guess. But yeah, I don't see either of those things ever happening, but that's the one, yeah. So sorry for the Star Wars answer. I apologize.

I have a Lego Millennium Falcon. It's the same. I have a Lego Millennium Falcon and I have three Lego Millennium Falcons in the box in the closet just in case. Just in case. I am an adult, an adult human. My entire living room, the shelves are just full of Funko Pops and Lego Star Wars helmets all over.

All of them. I think they're supposed to put like plants there. I don't know. Maybe like vases or something, but just Legos. Just Legos here. Great. This is my vase collection. Okay. I'm next because I made the order in all these categories. We're just like shifting by one essentially in every category. I am picking the Ornithopter from Dune 2021. Damn it. And I love, I love

all the times that Denis Villeneuve was interviewed about the Ornithopter because he was talking about like how much he wanted to be faithful to the description of the vehicle in the book, but how, but also as with most things in Dune, a franchise that Mallory and I adore, he wanted to sort of obey the law of physics as well. So they landed on this dragonfly design. And I just think it's one of the sickest sci-fi vehicles that has ever existed. The way that they,

that he wanted it to be, you know, sort of like a glass bubble in the cockpit. So you could see the desert all around you when you're inside of it, that they built several, that they hauled one up in the air on a crane, you know, and there's so many versions of this, which would be, they would just do it in, in CG. And the fact that they actually built these and then built versions, they could take apart so they could put the camera wherever they wanted and all that sort of stuff. I just love that.

That is just really brings you into the world along with a lot of, I mean, the production design and props work on doing this. Absolutely incredible. Yeah. And what I love, sorry, this is, I guess to his credit is he knows how incredible that is. And yet he never lingers on it.

Do you know what I mean? Like he's not, at no point is he kind of like, look at me, look at me, look at me. It's just kind of in the world. Like you might as well be like watching Apocalypse Now or something. It's just kind of the vehicle they're in. Yeah. Anyway, absolutely. I love that. Joe, I thought you were going to pick a TARDIS. I did not pick a TARDIS. I'm shocked. I felt for sure you would pick 10's TARDIS.

If I were to pick one, it would be 10s because that blue is the best blue of all the blues. I knew that. I know. Okay. Oh, boy. I have some choices to make. So Batmobile 66 off the board. Ornithopter off the board. No, that's all right. This is about community building and sharing passions and also beating each other to the finish. It's about all of those things at once. I am really torn between two things here. I don't know what to do.

Do you want Ryan to go and to come back to you? I feel like there's a really good chance Ryan picks one of these, actually, and that I'm going to be pissed. I don't think so. I think I've got to answer that. That's true. You probably have both of these. Even my co-host is going to be a little thrown by. All right. I know what I'm going to pick. I'm going to pick...

Is this where I want to use my Star Wars pick? There's no rule about that, Mallory. You can use Star Wars for every category. Go for it. I have set an internal rule that I will be visiting multiple fictional universes here. Will I actually adhere to that rule over the course of this podcast? Who can say? I can't decide between Luke's X-Wing from Empire...

And I would want it covered in Dagobah funk. Oh, you want a full swampy one? Yeah, we're all swamp town. I want to be like, you know, cleaning it as Yoda and Obi-Wan's force ghosts imply that my training is more important than my friends. I really want to be in that moment. Or do I want, and this is a really difficult choice for me, I'm considering picking Starbucks Viper from Battlestar.

Which is... This is a classic Molly Rubin smuggle, by the way. You're witnessing in real time. I'm going to go with Luke's X-Wing from Empire. Okay. Yeah. I might do a Battlestar. I might make a Battlestar pick later. I have a few Battlestar contenders on the list today. Okay. I'm going Luke's X-Wing. I'm going Luke's X-Wing from Empire. I'm going Dagobah.

This would be amazing. I would put it behind me and it would be there every time I did a podcast. Would you have it hovering? Would it have to be hovering off the ground? No, you want it just half in the swamp. You'd have to build a little display swamp. In your podcasting swamp? I think so. I'd have to figure out how to make that cat friendly so that...

It would work in my home, but I think I could workshop that and make it happen. So yeah, okay. I feel good about my pick. Mallory, did you ever try watching the original Battlestar? Did you watch that too? Yeah. Years ago. One of the things, just design-wise, wherever this fits in, I don't know if this was interesting to you, but so much of the Star Wars crew kind of just moved over and worked on that show. Eventually, they got sued and stuff. But basically...

The original Vipers, so the Starbuck from the original show. I'm going Mark II from the Ron Moran. But the original Viper is basically an X-Wing. I mean, it's designed by Ralph McQuarrie and built by Joe Johnston and all those guys. So the original one is very similar anyway. Yes. Yes. Ryan Condal, what do you got?

89 Batmobile. 89 Batmobile. No? No, because I knew that that was the expected answer. And I just bought a Batwing, Dave. So I've ticked the 89 box. Every time we come to ride, he's just going to flex something on us. I just bought a Batwing. I've got Conan's sword. Like, whatever. Okay. Yes. No, that's my most recent acquisition. Very exciting. It's the six-foot studio scale, the one-of-one Batwing. It's enormous. I don't know what I'm going to do with it. We're going to keep it. It's a great idea.

It's in a crate somewhere. It's not coming here. It's, it's waiting for my eventual return to the U S I don't know. The answer is, I don't know. It was an impulse buy and I didn't have to think about it. And I said, I'll worry about that for five years. Um, so I'm actually going, I'm going totally different. This is a film that I've long loved. Uh, things only ever come up from the sequel. They never come up for the original. Uh,

the DeLorean from back to the future one. Um, uh, as a screenwriter, uh, that is a perfect movie, a perfect script, a perfect story, not a wasted moment. There's not a false beat in that whole thing. It's so tied up just perfectly. And that itself being the science fiction piece from, from the movie, the, the, the story of DeLorean and its failure and the gullwing doors and all that, uh,

It's just awesome. And I actually, I was lucky enough, a good friend of David's and mine, the great Rob Klein, who's guested on our podcast a number of times, former Disney archivist, now archivist for Sid and Marty Croft, has been a collector for like 35 years, I mean, since he was a kid. Grew up in LA, so he actually did a lot of the early pre-internet collecting when you had to go bang on doors and write up crew members and actually be local in Los Angeles where all the movie shows were being made.

They restored the A car, the hero, hero DeLorean from the first film years ago with a bunch of fans did it with the permission of Universal. It had been rotting on the Universal lot. It had been like rusting and rotting. Ironically, they'd been sitting out there for years and a bunch of collectors went and said, you know, that's the original car. And they're like, no, we would never treat the original car like that. That's a replica. And they're like, no, here it is. And they showed them basically the VIN number and they're like, oh, okay.

So they let all these fans come in who knew down to the zip tie cables, the kind of cable that was used that it had faded in the sun because it was out in the sun. So they knew the right kind of plastic that would fade that way in the sunlight. It was down to that sort of cuckoo nonsense. Amazing. And they fully restored it back to its glory. And now it's a universal product.

But it kind of tours around and it's, it's, it's wonderful. It's perfect. I got to see, I went into the garage. Uh, they were working out deep in the Valley and I got to go see them working on it before it was finished. And it was just walking around. That thing was an experience. It was amazing. Would you want it with the Mr. Fusion on it or not? Um,

I think yes, because I just love that beat at the end of the movie. And Mr. Fusion is sort of its own thing. I mean, I think I definitely want the first movie because I do not care for the second two movies. But yes, I think I want the one from the end with Mr. Fusion. Yeah, I learned this on...

Is that a Booklight subreddit that I believe the Mr. Fusion on the DeLorean is a Krups coffee maker that they repurposed for that. That does sound right. Yeah, it's a Mr. Coffee. Mr. Fusion is a Mr. Coffee. No, no, I think it is a Krups, but I think you're correct. Amazing. A DeLorean. Incredible. I remember the first time I saw not the DeLorean, but a DeLorean in a parking garage in Los Angeles, and it was just like –

It was stunning. Stopped me in my tracks. But then also I was like, how do you park that thing so that you don't get trapped in your sort of like your wing doors? Right? Anyway, okay. Next category is MacGuffin. And I just want to like quickly and nerdily say that there's like a couple schools of thoughts about what a MacGuffin actually is. There's like the Hitchcock school of thought.

which he thought it was something that is important to characters, but not the audience. And it could be anything. It could be microfilm in North by Northwest documents, briefcases, Maltese Falcons, military secrets, whatever it is. George Lucas says that it's a thing that's important to the audience and the characters. So like the one ring, the arc of the covenant, horcruxes, et cetera, et cetera. So that might seem like an odd distinction, but it's just sort of like when I did a podcast episode about MacGuffin's

I think last year. And it was just sort of like, what is a MacGuffin was actually kind of hard to nail down. All definitions are welcome here on this particular exercise. I kind of want to debate this a little bit because I'm not really, I, I guess to me, the second it's important to the audience, it's no longer a MacGuffin, I guess in my, in my mind. So I guess I stick to the more Hitchcockian definition, but I would also say that some of those things that,

I don't know. Does the audience really care about Horcruxes? I mean, I'm not sure. So, yeah. I don't mean they don't like it. I'm not talking about like. I'm just simply saying...

it's an it's an they have to get them but I don't know but but Dave do you think the Ark of the Covenant is a MacGuffin I do I actually do I think I think the Ark of the Covenant is a MacGuffin I don't know R2D2 in a way or at least the plan is an interesting one to do but at some point he and the plans be

become one because like you it's not like they take the plans out of him at the beginning of the movie and are walking around with the capsule so what is she putting into him are those polaroid photos what i like to think of them as like old like three-quarter floppy disks like an early macintosh yeah she's blowing on the magnet strip i think i i kind of like i agree well i kind of like the idea of a macguffin being something that like we the audience don't really even understand

like what's in that briefcase. It doesn't really matter if we know, but it matters. I do love the MacGuffins that you never get to see. Obviously the Pulp Fiction one, which someone may have on our list. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I think of in the Hitchcock, Hitchcockian sense. It's like the, the, you know, the wine bottles from notorious. It's like, you don't, you almost don't even know what it is until they, they, they get to it. Whereas the arc is the movie. Yeah.

And it's almost like it's super consequential because it's what the movie is about. I mean, I think we're splitting here. I consider them all MacGuffins because it's the item the movie is about that everybody's chasing around. I just wanted to get in front of that debate in case anyone wants to well actually anything. I think it's good for us on this pod to be open to including the MCU era.

interpretation of a MacGuffin. Would you like to start with it? Whether I'm tipping a pick or not. Molly, would you like to start with an Infinity Gauntlet or something? A MacGuffin is something that shows up only in the after-credits sequence? Is that that definition? Initially in the after-credits sequence. And then... Yeah. Am I first for this category? What a thrill. I'm actually...

not going to pick the infinity gauntlet. I think if I had gone second and the other, the thing I'm about to pick up and taken, I would have picked the infinity gauntlet. To be clear, there's no real rule that you can't double up, but go ahead, Mallory. I will be picking the

with gladness in my heart, the Holy Grail from Last Crusade. Oh, excellent. This is a joy. I can't believe I got to go first in this category. I have to assume that of the many things that will come up today, this is something that you can both impart a ton of actual knowledge about. But, you know...

This is like the proto-McGuffin, and this is the thing I think that most people would say. Yeah, that's a historical McGuffin. Yeah, it's a historical literature McGuffin. Yeah, here we go. And then the way that it's manifested across film. So I'm obviously going with Indy. I like the idea of having the Holy Grail that has been in Harrison Ford's presence and having that in my home. Yeah.

Mal, you and I have never gone to a thrift store together, but if we ever have the joy, you will find me in the cup section looking for a wooden cup of which there usually is one. And I will hold it up to my delight, but not to the light of the person who's with me to say the cup of a carpenter's son. Carpenter's son.

Very good. Did you guys see that they actually excavated Petra, which is the temple from the – it's the exterior of the Canyon of the Crescent Moon where they go into the movie set. But they excavated it and they found Petra.

They found a bang on from the movie under Petra. And it's an ancient Petra-ese cup. But Google it. It looks like exactly the Holy Grail cup from Indiana Jones. I don't know. It's bizarre. Wow. Ryan Condal, what do you have for this category? I bounce back and forth between two very old and very obvious answers. But I think...

We discussed it earlier in the podcast. I don't care. I'm going ruby slippers. I love them. And if life were a little different, I think I would be up there just holding my nose and just saying, I don't care. I'm coming home with these. But unfortunately, I have children and a wife who's going to judge me more harshly than she would on a normal day when I'm buying this stupid stuff.

So I think I'll just take my children to visit it when it tours through London. But I just love it. That movie was super important to me as a kid, and I watched it. It was like I watched...

The Wizard of Oz from 1939. And then every other thing that I watched was in 1977 or after. So there's this whole missing 40 years of film to me that I, I, I tracked down as a, as a teenager and then as a college student. But, um, I just, I mean, I ran that video cassette out and it was the one that my parents taped off the CBS when they would run it. So it had all the CBS commercials cut into it. And it's just, I, the, the, those, they're incredible. And, and, um,

the you know seeing you know seeing now I think this will be the third set that I'll be in the presence of because I've been I've seen the one in the Smithsonian there's the Academy Museum has a pair and now this will be the the third of the ones that Kent Warner dug up there's a great book if you guys care called the Ruby Slippers of Oz written by Reese Thomas you can find it on Amazon it's

It's sort of, you'll find probably a used copy versus a new one, but it's the whole story of the guy who tracked down the original ruby slippers when they were missing, when MGM didn't know where they were. And there's this costumer from the 1960s who had access to all the stacks and everything and tracked them down.

the funny part of the story is they were putting together this big auction. It was this big auction when the MGM studios was selling off everything in like 1970. What was it? 1972 or three, something like that. Right. Is that right? 70, I think. Oh, 70. Okay. And,

So he finds them and then, of course, realizes there are multiple pairs. And it was before people understood how movies were made. So they put a pair in the auction and then basically they didn't want to say, hey, there's six of them or whatever it was. So he kind of kept some and all these things. And then what ended up happening is they go into auction.

And then a girl who had won a prize in 1939 goes, well, wait, I have these too. And people were just like, what do you mean? There's two pairs. And of course, there's six pairs. And on it goes. Yeah, it's a fascinating story. But it reads like a thriller. Like a

It's really, really cool. Oh, fun. This is a very topical pick on the heels of Agatha all along. The ruby slippers have been on our minds and something we've discussed quite a bit. Mallory knows that when I was a kid, I watched The Wizard of Oz so many times that my grandmother made me a Dorothy outfit and I had a basket and a stuffed Toto and ruby slippers. Cosplaying since day one. Yeah, and I used to sit and watch The Wizard of Oz.

I also had it taped off CBS so I could like recount for you the Campbell's soup commercial and the ivory soap commercial and all the other commercials that were because we didn't like know how to use the fast forward button. I don't know. I would watch all the commercials. It's part of the movie. It's part of the whole thing. So yeah, exactly. That's an amazing pick. Uh, Dave, what's your, what's your MacGuffin?

I was going to go Maltese Falcon. It's something we've talked a bunch about on the show. It's the name of your podcast. Yeah, it's my favorite movie. The podcast is stuff dreams are made of. And I do love it. And it is incredible. And there are a couple of them out there. And God, if I... I think...

If I were going to go crazy and buy something insane that would make my wife divorce me, it would be that. That would be my ruby slippers. We need to wait until they come up in the same auction, Dave, and then we can both go. Blame the other guy. At least I didn't buy the ruby slippers. What I really love is that you two are both basically doing what Thor does when everyone is pursuing the Infinity Stone MacGuffins. This is your families can be tough moment. Right.

right here. Very meta. Well, much cheaper though. I was going to say a movie that I absolutely love. One of the suitcases from what's up doc. So I think a more reasonable purchase perhaps, or at least more gettable perhaps in my lifetime. Uh, one of the suitcases from what's up. And if I could get the one that had the rocks in it with the, the tuning fork, I'd be extra happy. But anyway, yeah. So there you go. Oh,

Uh, an iconic San Francisco movie. I love that. Thank you for your barrier representation. Um, I will also be, I was also thinking about doing the Maltese Maltese Falcon because it's, I was going to pander to you guys, name your pockets, but, um, I will also pick a briefcase and I'll, I'll pick the Pulp Fiction brief. The Pulp Fiction one is wonderful. I just, I think in terms of, uh,

you know, the prompt was sort of like, let's do sci-fi fantasy. I have no problem with Factivus veering off of that. But the thing I love about Pulp Fiction is that that is not a sci-fi fantasy film until you get to this glowing briefcase that maybe or maybe not has a soul inside of it? Question mark? Like, I love that aspect of it. And...

To me, that is the quintessential MacGuffin because like people are after it. That's something I think we sometimes think about when we think about a MacGuffin and we, the audience don't need to know. They see what's inside there. We don't see what's inside there. And I think that's just sort of like, it's important to the plot, but not important to explain to us what it actually is. And that to me is sort of quintessentially MacGuffin. So.

Pulp Fiction briefcase. My theory, I was just going to say, is it's not a soul. It's actually just Marcellus Wallace's light-up briefcase. It's a book light. Yeah, subreddit, that's a book light. No, I mean, it's such an easy, practical effect too, right? You just open it up and a light goes on. It's really good. It's his light-up briefcase. He has a lot of important papers in there he needs to read. Or Ritz crackers in the way of Kramer. The Kramer.

All right. The next category is wearable. I will go first because I know that I broke the rules based on the definition we understood earlier. So I'll just get it out of the way. I broke the rules. I'm sticking to it. I am going to go for my wearable prop. It's something the folks at Weta made for Karl Urban in Lord of the Rings. It is Eomir's Helm.

from Lord of the Rings and Karl Urban has at least one I watched him sort of on video take it off his mantle question mark Karl put it in a case but

But anyway, um, like show the camera, you know, like the horse hail horse hair, um, sort of plume at the top, the sort of, uh, Sutton who Anglo-Saxon, uh, vibe of it, all the details that are on the back that you never get to see. Um, and just the amount of care that Richard Taylor and all the Weta folks put into making that. And just like how, um,

What an extreme over-the-top look that is and how Eomir just completely carries it off and how it really quickly establishes for us

The Rohan culture, the Rohan vibe, it's one of the first things we see. The horse's head on the nose cross piece there is just, I think it's exquisite. Great, great pick. Why is that breaking the rules, Joanna? Is that not costume? You said helmet was costume. That's okay. Well, it's wearable, right? Okay. It's fine. Okay, great. You're good. I broke no rules. Instant world building piece. I mean, it's a really wonderful piece. Ryan. Ryan.

I have... This is my least interesting answer, at least for anybody that listens to the podcast and knows me. I...

I'm going to, excuse me. Cause I'm going to flex again. I figured Dave would be talking a little bit about his collection. I thought Ryan, I just let you be a big asshole. I wasn't trying to, I wasn't trying to avoid it. I don't know. It just conversationally. I'll, I'll mention some things. I don't know what you guys can call this. The house of the house of our welcomes. The stuff dreams are made of colon. Ryan's a big asshole.

Great for us. Yeah. Perfect. My, my, my political team will absolutely love that. No. So I'm, I'm fortunate enough after years and years of collecting and hard and diligent work. One of my two favorite actors, the other one being Arnold Schwarzenegger. The one I'm talking about is Harrison Ford from his sort of sci-fi sort of sci-fi fantasy trilogy. I'm lucky enough to own a, a, a,

a hand prop from all three of his, his movies. So I have, I have a whip from Indiana Jones. Uh, I have the grail diary. I count more of the whip. I have the blade runner gun from blade runner. And I actually have a stunt Han Solo slash Luke Skywalker blaster from empire strikes back. Um,

I also have costume pieces from Blade Runner and from Indy, but the only thing I'm missing is Star Wars. So to complete my sort of Harrison oeuvre, I would need a wearable from the original Star Wars trilogy. So if I'm really doing fantasy fantasy, I'm going to pick the one that I know Dave would pick, which is the parka from the Ice Planet of Hoth.

Oh my God. And that would complete my Harrison set. Do you have like a Harrison way? I thought you were going to pick, you've got a, you know, just in case folks are listening and not watching, or I don't know how the videos are cut. You have a Batman cowl behind you. Is that, what's the story of on that cowl?

That's one of the ones from 89. There were probably 30 to 40 of them because I think every time, basically, there's one for every time, at least one for every time he had to put on the costume on set because it would just get ripped and torn just based on using it. This was a used one that kind of survived production. It's been sympathetically restored and sort of permanently mounted to a Michael Keaton life cast to keep its form and shape.

but it's wonderful. And behind me, actually, you can see my Harrison deal. Mallory, how are you feeling seeing that? Mallory's number one is Harrison Ford. Consumed by jealousy. Consumed. He is my favorite. That's a great way to display the whip, too. Watch us on video, guys. Okay, David, what do you got? You can watch full video episodes of The House of R on Spotify. There you go. Thanks, Mal.

And you can watch Stuff Dreams Are Made Of on our YouTube channel. So there you go. Where we show lots of props. I mean, yeah. I mean, Han Solo, it's so – I mean, I guess I could go now just to the vest and the white shirt and the pants, which I love from –

From the original trilogy, from Star Wars, so incredible. Have those ever been around? Has anybody ever seen any of that? No. Rumor that he kept a set for himself. Oh, okay. That makes sense. I'm surprised Jedi hasn't turned up. It's not a surprise that Star Wars, just because Star Wars, but I'm surprised with Jedi that none of that stuff's turned up. Pants that Harrison Ford wore? Yeah.

With that great, like the spy. Would you rather the pants, the pants that he wore in Indiana Jones, the pants that he wore in Star Wars, any of the, or the pants he wore in witness. Oh, you know, I'm picking booth with this. Let's go. Really? I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about. It's a great movie. Yeah. So I kind of want to pick that. I want to pick Han Solo, but you did just pick Han Solo. Um,

I do have in my collection, I have a Raiders set. I have a hat, jacket, shirt, whip from Last Crusade. Asshole. There you go. But honestly, and it's been on my mind a lot lately, separate from you asking the question, I would love to get a head-to-toe screen used

uh, preferably from the first movie, but I'll, I would take the second movie as well. A Christopher Reeve Superman suit from either Superman, original Superman or the second Superman, but like head to toe, the full on, whatever many, many years ago, I had part of a Superman suit. I had basically, uh, the torso, which was basically, it was cool. It had the, the Superman symbol on it. Um, but it didn't even have the, uh,

the red shorts. It was just, it was just sort of a kind of like a blue leotard basically. And I kept looking and looking to try and find the other pieces and I never did. And to this day, I've never seen the loose pieces to complete it. So I did let it go at some point. And I feel like the only way at some point or another, someone's going to auction one off and I just going to have to, I guess, buy it. But that would be a dream, a super, a full Superman suit from Christopher Reeve. So yeah. Incredible. Great pick. Yeah. Boy. Mallory Rubin.

This was the category that I had the most things written down for after weapons. This is really hard. Okay. I am going with Mithril. The Mithril coat from Fellowship.

I love that this is handed down across the story. It makes its way from Thorin to Bilbo to Frodo. I love a moment like, I think there's more to this Hobbit than meets the eye when Gandalf's saying that and how that obviously taps in thematically to something so much larger about what the role of a Hobbit can be in a story like Lord of the Rings. That's my pick. It would be an absolute thrill to

to have the Mithril code. I almost went with a reference to that. I almost went with the little Beskar chainmail that Din made for Grogu. You know, the shirt! You got the shirt! But I'm going with the Mithril. No one picked a stillsuit. I thought someone might pick a stillsuit from Din.

And, you know, like, you can pick it, like, pre-pissed, right? It doesn't have this, like, I feel like Greg in Succession talking about the doggy bags. They don't come pre-poofed. Like, you could never be fine. You want your X-wing covered in swamp funk, but you want your still suit pristine? I don't want a still suit to be a used... I want it to have been worn in the film, but not to the point that Gurney is singing, my still suit is full of piss. I want, like, somewhere before we've gotten to that point,

Pre-song. Pre-song. Pre-song, exactly. You want like – Timothy Chalamet is a wonderful actor, but I don't think he's as method as like Viggo Mortensen. So if like Viggo Mortensen wore that still suit, you know that dude is pooping in that thing. Yes. And he wants the actual recycled water out of it. Exactly. Whereas I feel like Tim is like, guys, I'm going to break character for a bit. I'm going to strip down. I'm going to go to my –

Tim's like, where's the zipper on the back of this so that I can... Mr. Mortensen, we have told you 30 times. If you don't work, there's no filtration system. Please stop pissing and pooping, sir. This is Palm Springs. This isn't the planet Arrakis.

Gift of your body's moisture. It's just a quote in the movie. I am just a second unit director, man, and I am begging you to just stop shitting in the suits, please. You're not even on the call sheet today. What are you doing here? That's what he would think. I would just go to sell more of the rings. What a king among men. All right. If Daniel Day-Lewis had been in Dune. Oh, no. Oh, my God.

Oh my God. He's been living in the desert for a year making cobbling shoes for no reason. Just been huffing blue goop and having visions. I've soiled my still suit. Laughter

But strangely, he's still wearing a top hat. A Daniel Claymu impression on a props podcast. We've descended into madness. Did you ever hear when Patton Oswalt did his Daniel Day-Lewis's phone sex line? No. I'm unbuttoning my blouse. Incredible. Is it all in the There Will Be Blood voice? Yes. It's right after There Will Be Blood and it's a bunch of that. Fantastic.

All right. Last but not least, as we descend into chaos, it is the wild card. It just means anything is on the table, anything at all that you could possibly dream of. I'm very excited about mine. Not to overpromise. Let's ramp down expectations. Ryan Condal, what is your wild card pick? I'm going to another costume piece. It's a movie that I love that I got within a hair's breadth.

of, uh, of, of winning, but then was also so far away. Um, I was likely outbid by, um, somebody who directed a movie we've talked about quite a bit on this particular episode of the podcast. Um, but, uh, I desperately want a piece from 2001 and I, I will, I will even say like I bid on the space suit basically that was up in the

There was this very famous science fiction collector named Greg Jean, who sadly passed away a couple of years ago and his whole collection went up and he just had, I mean, it was the most amazing 50 years of collecting. Yeah. I mean, it goes back to original Star Trek when original Star Trek was on the air, his collection, original 60s Batman all the way up through modern day. But he had a, he had one of the,

moon base complete space suit costumes from 2001 in there, which is the white one with the white helmet with the silver. So I will go very simple. I'm not even going to over ask. I just want a helmet from 2001. Wow. It's a space helmet. You're a simple man. I love it. Yeah, I'm a simple man with simple desires. David, what do you got? I'm picking weird stuff. Like, I don't know. I was like, I was sort of like...

There's a piece from The Godfather that I've been looking for. I would like to find that the actual newspaper, when they look down, when the Don has been shot and Michael and Kay are coming out of the movies at Radio City and they look down. And there have been a lot of new... There are other newspapers that I think are just folded up and on the stand. But I want the one that matches the exact word for word of what is there. I want...

that newspaper. It's probably just the front page wrapped around like a 1971 copy of like the New York Post or something like that. But I would love to have that newspaper very specifically. That would be incredible. And then just the strangest other thing too, which is

I would love to have the signage from the Blue Moon Detective Agency for moonlighting. Yes. When you walk into the office, either like a glass, like the glass window with it painted on it. I'd like that whole pane of glass or just something with the actual logo that says Blue Moon Detective Agency. So very specific, weird wild card. So there you go. No, I love that. I love it. Molly Rubin. I'm up. Go for it.

Okay. So I have made picks so far from Thrones, Star Wars, Indy, and Lord of the Rings. I, for my wild card, is this where I go Battlestar? I'm considering picking Starbucks dog tags. I love the Battlestar dog tags. Having actual dog tags from the production would be incredible. That's a... I am... Can I just say that I had a group of friends who, I love Battlestar, but they were just obsessed with Battlestar. And the...

The most often replicated thing I've ever seen are Starbucks, like the replica. You're talking about the real deal, but like Starbucks dog tag replicas. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. Just like a constant accessory, I remember. When I worked at Sports Illustrated and just like had like one of those, you know, cubicles with the gray kind of carpet walls that you could put pushpins into, I had

a replica of them just hanging from a bush pin while I would just edit college football blogs in the wee hours. Okay. Can I ask a question really quickly? When you mentioned Sports Illustrated, do you have to explain to your audience what that was? No, not at the Ringer because the Ringer Sports Box was where everything was. They still remember at least what Sports Illustrated was? Okay. Yeah. What's a magazine?

Yeah, magazine. I think, you know, hopefully the folks who have like collections of the old SI covers as I do definitely remember it. And, you know, I think we've got listeners out there who are probably reading SI.com. I like to think. I showed a clip from Seinfeld of an episode I wrote where Kramer becomes the movie phone guy. Do you remember that episode? I literally had to explain to the audience of students that

back in the 90s, we used to call on our landlines, which I then had to explain what a landline was, to basically, that's how we would find out when movies started. And it didn't quite play in the same way you'd think it did. But like, calling on the landlines

Mr. Movie Phone felt like the future compared to looking it up in your local paper, which is what we used to do. When did we do that? In the 1870s? You want to see an old Western where John Wayne calls movie phone. I had a Mr. Movie Phone impression that I was really proud of. And it's so sad when those impressions just age out of the world. You know what I mean? We're just sort of like, well, no one understands what this is anymore. That's it.

And by the way, yes, Dave worked on Seinfeld. What a flex. I have a bat wing. Dave worked on Seinfeld. Equally impressive. Both of those things. All right, Matt. Here's what I'm going to go with. That reminds me of a funny story about my Veep Emmys. I am going, I'm going to go with something from Lost. A show that Joanna and I absolutely adore. I'm taking this down into the hatch.

And I am going with Desmond's copy of... I don't think I can fit the hatch in my home. Maybe the hatch door with the numbers on it? The hatch door would be great. I was considering picking the countdown timer, actually, but I am going with Desmond's copy of Our Mutual Friend, Desmond's copy of Dickens, the rubber bands around it, the book that he was saving to read before he died. That is my pick because...

And Lost, for me, Lost is the first show I ever podcasted about. And Lost, for me, that was like when I realized I wanted to do this. I would watch an episode of Lost and then I would go on EW.com and I would read Doc Jensen's

12,000 word breakdowns of the episode. And I would have seen a book that a character was holding in the scene. And I would feel like I had to read it to like understand who they were and what their journey had been about. Also, of course, to comb for clues and try to piece things together. But if Jacob was holding everything that rises must converge, like I needed to know why, you know, the fact that Sawyer was always rocking around with Watership down was like, like, this is one of my favorite parts.

books. Incredible. Right. That was just one of the really rich elements that made watching loss such an immersive, engaging experience. So it would connect in that sense to like the community around the show and the way that sharing the show and talking about the show with my friends became such a seismic thing in my life. Um,

And also it's just an incredible prop and it's this like amazing little detail from the world and from Desmond and from the time in the hatch. So that's my pick. Speaking of sort of the Reddit freeze frame 4k thing that Ryan was talking about earlier.

the numbers on loss on the hatch door and lost are like sort of the TV history example of that, because that's like the introduction of TiVo. And that's what TiVo happened to people who, it's being outdated technology, freezing stuff, free stuff and zoom in on and like examine the numbers or, or the Dharma logo on the shark fin or like whatever it is. And lost. It's like, that was the moment in TV history where that started really happening. So great pick. Um,

Thanks, pal. I'm going to, so I want to shout, this is my flex and I will say, I live in the Bay Area. I love living in the Bay Area. And, you know, we've got several George Lucas centric sites around here. Mal and I got a chance to walk around some of the closed off hallways of ILM fairly recently. And I've done another, I did a different ILM tour. Mal,

Mallory and I got kind of got like a gorilla tour, but I did like sort of a more involved tour and you round the court. There's like so many things to see in ILM and the Presidio in San Francisco, but my favorite moment, and it wasn't like the Jurassic Park models, even though Jurassic Park is probably my favorite movie of all time. And it wasn't this and that it was running the corner and there was such a giant, uh,

portrait of Viggo the Carpathian from Ghostbusters 2. And it was huge and so scary and wonderful. And my understanding is there's like a couple versions as we've been talking about and Ivan Reitman has at least had some up. But...

But at ILM, there is just like a massive Viggo the Carpathian portrait that were I ever to get arrested for heisting something, it might be heisting a portrait of Viggo from, uh,

From my own. It's so scary. Yeah. Vigo's costume is coming up for auction in that prop store auction next week that we mentioned. Excellent. Okay. Instantly recognizable. You said, did you say it was at the BFI and I said BAFTA instead, but it's at the BFI. Is that where it is or? No, it's at BAFTA. Okay, great. It's at BAFTA. Great. Yep. Okay. So that is our list. I'm just going to run through it really quickly. And I'm going to say that in weapons, Ryan picked a,

what specific gun from Blade Runner would you call it? Would you name it? Deckard's pistol. Deckard's pistol from Blade Runner. David picked a lightsaber. I picked a bone sword from Brotherhood of the Wolf. What a weird pick. Okay. And then Malorubin picked long claw, her long cherished favorite sword. In vehicle, David picked Batmobile from the 60s Batmobile. I picked the ornithopter from Dune. Malorubin picked Luke's X-Wing.

smeared in Swamp Funk from Dagobah. Ryan Condal picked the DeLorean from Back to the Future, part one. In MacGuffin, Molly Rubin picked the Holy Grail from The Last Crusade, my favorite Indiana Jones movie. Ryan picked the Ruby Slippers from Wizard of Oz. Dave, what did you actually wind up, we have the wrong thing in our notes here, what did you wind up picking in this category in MacGuffin? Oh, the briefcase from What's Up, Doc. Briefcase.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. And I picked the briefcase in Pulp Fiction and wearable. I did not break the rules. And I picked Aramir's helm from Two Towers. Ryan picked Andy's parka from Hoth. Oh, sorry. Han Solo's parka from Hoth. David picked Christopher Reeve's Superman suit. And Mallory picked the Mithril coat from Fellowship of the Ring and a wild card. We've got Ryan picking a 2001 A Space Odyssey spacesuit and helmet.

David Mandel picking a newspaper from The Godfather or the Blue Moon Detective sign. Molly Rubin picking Desmond's copy of Our Mutual Friend from Lost. And me picking Beagle the Carpathian from Ghostbusters 2. And that has been a wild and wonderful tour through props with Ryan Connell. Do we now say what we thought our favorite pick was and our least favorite pick of everybody? I mean, you can. Shred us. Do you want to? No problem.

Kidding. Do you want to pick all of your own? My pick is the best in all categories. Oh, man. These folks, aside from making wonderful television, host the Stuff Dreams Are Made Of podcast, which you can find wherever you enjoy podcasts or watch on YouTube. And I really recommend it. I've learned a lot.

from you from listening to you guys and it's like a fun way and sideways way into yes obsession but also uh just film production and uh knowledge and film history and i just have had a great time with your podcast so thank you so much for coming on and hanging out with us and i will say to your audience sometimes when we're recording ryan gets a little drunk and gives away uh house of the

all your listeners may want to migrate over and like, subscribe, follow us, leave us five stars, et cetera, et cetera. Just in case. And send me whiskey. I like, I like a nice Sherry. All of a sudden blurt something out from season three meetings, you know, it happens a lot more often than you think. Yeah. Okay. Let's get some single malt in the sky and see what we can learn about Gullen. I love it. Love it.

Thank you both so much. Thank you guys for having us, guys. We really appreciate it. This was super fun. Yeah. All right, that does it for us this week on House of R. As we mentioned, we'll be back with our Penguin coverage, some Silo coverage, and then Dune Prophecy. Speaking of Dune and still suits and ornithopters, Dune Prophecy will be on our radar very, very soon. Thank you to Mallory Rubin.

You beautiful angel. Thank you to you. Thank you to you, my darling. Thank you to Ryan Condal. Thank you to David Mendel for all of their wonderful, illuminating insight into this whole world of props. Thank you to our, yeah, really fun. Thank you to our general pal for everything that he does all the time. Always. You never see it. It's invisible work and it is incredible. Thank you. Steve Allman and John Richter.

video, audio, all everything. Thank you to Joe Mead Dinner on social and thank you to all of you for listening. We'll see you soon. Bye.