>> Speaker 1: [SOUND] Hey guys, Anna and Dave here with Adam Savage at
Tested.com's Cinephile for the Love of Film Event here at Comic-Con 2015.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: So Adam, thanks so much for joining us for this Interview.
>> Speaker 2: My pleasure.
>> Speaker 1: Can you talk to us a little bit about some of the props that are here?
>> Speaker 2: We tried not to do too much repeating of
what we brought down to display last year.
We do have my alien suit costume, my Harrison Ford Raiders of the Lost Ark
costume, but we also brought a bunch of hand props.
This is the first time, behind us, my R2D2.
This is the first time my R2D2 has ever been out on display.
And I built him from scratch over five solid years,
which really, really like, we tried to bring out the unique stuff.
And then behind us in some vitrines we've got the contents of my Jason Bourne
bank bag, my Maltese Falcon.
There's some really, really unique things here.
>> Speaker 3: When you're deciding to make stuff, is there like a whole list of stuff
you want to make and you just have to decide which is at the top?
>> Speaker 2: There's not a decision about which is the top.
It is one day something becomes too important to not make.
So a couple of years ago I bought a Star Trek captain's chair on eBay, and
it was terrible.
And it basically sat at my shop and enraged me long enough until, aah,
I just had to make one.
And in January I made a perfect captain's chair from Star Trek.
So I didn't know that was gonna happen when I bought the lame one.
I was like, I'm never gonna build one.
I should just buy one, and I did.
And it was so wrong, eventually I made one.
>> Speaker 1: Now I know you also like to actually own the real props from movies.
Do you prefer to own them, or do you like making them?
>> Speaker 2: Here's the thing about the real props from movies.
I do have some very unique pieces that are screen used.
The problem with those is they're really expensive.
And that adds up very quickly.
Also, I genuinely like the process of putting the whole prop in my head.
I mean, when I built R2D2, understand that every dimension,
every bit of him is machined and fabricated by me.
Every piece of electronics was a diagram I did.
So the whole thing is inside me, and
that's part of the reason that I started the project, because I love that feeling.
I can't build anything unless it's in my head first.
And I like the process of putting it in there.
>> Speaker 3: What I wanna know, is there anything from a movie this year that
you're seriously considering making a prop from?
>> Speaker 2: Wow, that's a really good question.
Right now, I am laboring over
how to make a really good Captain America Age of Ultron or Winter Soldier costume.
I love Cap's costume.
I also know some details about how it's made.
It's a very, very easy-to-wear costume.
The costumer for that film kind of broke brand new
ground in the construction of it and I really would like to make one for myself.
It involves a tremendous amount of work.
It's not something I can really farm out.
I can farm out some pieces and parts of it, but I really have to do it myself.
And I'm waiting to see if I've got enough time.
>> Speaker 1: What's the fastest amount of turnaround that you've ever had,
from seeing a movie and being like, I have to make it I'm gonna make it right now?
>> Speaker 2: Wow, I really don't know.
It's usually much longer, it's usually on the order of months if not years.
I'm trying to think if there's a film I saw, okay,
I will say, when I saw Star Wars at the age of ten.
I did go home and take a flashlight, my dad was an animator, so
we had acetate, which is clear plastic paper, basically, for animating on.
And I taped up enough to make a blade that the flashlight shone inside of.
And I made a light saber, I made it a week after I saw Star Wars.
That has to be the fastest I've ever turned a prop around.
>> Speaker 1: So you were like destined to be a prop maker.
>> Speaker 2: 100%. I've been doing this since I could hold
a knife in my hand without cutting myself, and I still cut myself.
>> Speaker 3: So you've been a cosplayer pretty much your whole life.
Is there one costume that you remember being most proud of wearing?
>> Speaker 2: The purpose of wearing the costume ends up being kind of
fulfillment of the costume's purpose.
Right, it is an object, and it is part of a story.
It's part of a story that I engaged with, but
it's also part of a story that I'm building as I build it.
A story that I participate in,
in a theater that I participate in when I wear it.
And for me, the confluence of all of that came together most in
No Face from Spirited Away.
Kaonashi, or No Face, is the sort of anti-hero or hero of Spirited Away,
Hayao Miyazaki's film.
And it is one of the cheapest and fastest costumes I ever made.
$200, 2 and a half weeks.
But I wore it to Comic-Con a few years ago, and the response that I got from
the crowd was the most intense response I've ever gotten wearing a costume around.
And I think I'm still sort of searching for that level of interaction.
>> Speaker 1: Have you noticed any sort of pattern in the props that you see and
then want to replicate?
>> Speaker 2: Amazingly no.
I definitely gravitate a lot towards the firearms, because I'm still a seven
year old boy at heart, and I definitely have a predilection for space suits.
But this January I replicated the architectural maze from the Shining,
just because the one that I found in the exhibit was
wrong enough that it made me mad and I wanted to make a right one.
And in the end, my maze went into the traveling Kubrick exhibit.
So it's now in Monterey,
Mexico traveling the world as part of the Stanley Kubrick exhibition.
>> Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaking of props and things that aren't quite made right,
have you ever made a prop that you just didn't feel was right and
you just kept replicating it until you got it right?
>> Speaker 2: There are many like that.
The Maltese Falcon behind you has gone through so
many iterations that it's actually too small, because every time you cast and
mold something, you lose a certain percentage.
I did a TED Talk about that.
My Blade Runner gun, I made my first Blade Runner gun at 19.
I made my second Blade Runner gun at 25.
I made my third at 36.
And it's still not done.
So I've been making that gun for almost 30 years now.
>> Speaker 3: Do you obviously love science fiction movies?
If someone came into this world, and never seen a science-fiction movie before, and
you were responsible for showing them one science-fiction movie, what would it be?
>> Speaker 2: Wow, I had to choose one science-fiction movie?
It might be 2001.
And it seems like both an easy choice because it's maybe the most important.
It's ten years before Star Wars.
It's an incredible film technologically, also artistically, aesthetically.
But I also love the fact that it does not tell you what to think about science and
science-fiction.
Kubrick really made sure to leave it open.
And that's my favorite thing,
is bringing your own morality to the art that you like to enjoy.
>> Speaker 1: So many things in movies are CGI now.
Does that make it harder to sort of figure out ways to replicate things?
I know a lot of the props are still obviously made.
>> Speaker 2: Well, sometimes with CGI if you know the right people you can obtain
the digital files and then you've got the best reference there could ever be for
the stuff you want to replicate, I'm just saying.
>> Speaker 3: We were over at Battle Bots with Will and Norm, and
we asked them what their favorite movie robot was.
>> Speaker 2: I love C3PO.
I love Maria from Metropolis.
I love Cain, the evil robot from RoboCop Two.
That is one bad ass robot.
I love, love him.
I also love the advance, non-piloted ships from Close Encounters.
It's hard to choose one specific robot.
I will say Cain definitely captured me the moment that movie came out.
And Chronicle released one last year.
I bought it right away, I think I was the third person to buy one.
>> Speaker 3: And it's a robot fuelled by crack, basically.
>> Speaker 2: Yes, yes, crack fuelled robot, what could possibly go wrong.
>> Speaker 1: So there are the movies that are considered the best movies, but
then there are the movies that we all find ourselves watching over and over again.
What are some of the movies that you find yourself, you can pick them up anywhere,
that you watch over and over?
>> Speaker 2: Funnily enough, The Departed is on my list of if it's on,
I can not not watch it all the way through.
Just the way that movie paces, I love every minute of it.
Pulp Fiction, my wife and I sit down and just watch Pulp Fiction maybe once a year.
It is a touchstone for us.
Leon the Professional, specifically, the European cut.
Again, my wife and I are always doing call and responses.
So every now and then, if somebody says, is this always like this?
I'll always do Leon, always like this.
>> [LAUGH] >> Speaker 3: Can I put you in the most
unfair position ever and ask you Star Trek versus Star Wars?
>> Speaker 2: It's funny, both occupy important parts of my brain.
And I would say Star Wars aesthetically, Star Trek intellectually.
Star Trek broke much, much deeper ground in terms of social dynamics.
It's Star Trek that laid the ground work for
the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, some of the most important social commentary
that's ever happened on television.
And you could only do it within the confines of something that didn't
feel like it was too close to home.
And that's Star Trek.
They were thinking about those things and
how to bring them into this futuristic narrative.
Star Wars is more concerned with the history of film, and
the history of storytelling, and rip-roaring good tales.
And that also speaks to me on this deep visceral level.
In terms of props, I have collected and built a lot more props from Star Wars.
So I guess I'm more aesthetically driven to
the props that I am intellectually driven.
>> Speaker 1: Of all the props that you have and
that you've made, what is your favorite one to show off?
>> Speaker 2: I particularly love pulling out my Bladerunner gun, which is hand
gunsmithed from all the original types of guns the original is made from.
It weighs precisely the same.
I had the owner of the real Bladerunner gun, he came by my shop last year, and
I handed it to him.
And he held it, and he said good job, sir.
This is the most realistically weighted,
feels exactly perfect to the one, the original.
I love handing it to people and having them feel its weight and
its heft and its gravity.
It is what you always wanted the gun to feel like was that, you know, it's there,
and I never tire of doing that.
I also have, it's not here, the Maltese Falcon I have here is my first resin
casting out of the mold, but I also have a bronze one at home.
It weighs 30 pounds.
I love asking people to pick it up.
Because they go it's such, it's heavy, my god!
There's this three-tiered reveal as they learn exactly how impossibly heavy it is.
>> Speaker 1: Well Adam, thank you so much for talking with us.
Guys, don't forget to check out Tested.com to see more of Adam's props and
all of the awesome stuff there.
And like, subscribe, and comment on all the Cinefix videos.
We'll see you next time.
>> Speaker 2: Bye, guys.
>> [SOUND]