hey everybody adam savage here in my cave with brandon allinger from prop store hello sir uh
prop store obviously auctions off movie props and part of film history um and we have a long-term
friendship where occasionally they bring these pieces for me to see up close and we can shoot
videos about them and today so first of all you have a big auction coming up we do yeah november
9th 10th and 11th we've got our big emla auction in london uh 1100 lots all kinds of movies stuff
you've been saving up all year for yeah i mean this is what we do is go out and hunt this stuff
down we look for it everywhere we can find it and occasionally come we come up with really great
pieces like this one so this is from national treasure book of secrets and it is the literal
book of secrecy which is cool anytime that your prop is in the title of the film you know you've
got something special and this comes from the prop maker yeah this one originated with one of
the prop makers includes a letter of authenticity from one of the prop makers for for the film and
it's an original should we open it up i can't i can't wait one of the uh one of the people
that worked for that prop maker showed up in a thread about this on the replica prop form and
talked about the process of calligraphic doing old style stuff and the the different sort of texture
i mean first of all just the case is beautiful yeah the weathering
and you know when i look at this my mind immediately jumps to the indiana jones grail diary
which i think those national treasure movies definitely owe indiana jones a thing or two to
begin with a hundred percent and then you know to go with a a book like this and let's see if
we can just open it up oh where can i uh yeah yeah you want to feel home hold this cover oh my gosh
whole maps the page is all yeah so there's some right so these are pre-printed yep and then post
weathered love the aging on it yeah so it looks like they might have even grabbed some um some
graphic elements from old books of just like ledgers yeah right and maps and things and letters
this is oh wow this definitely feels like holding a replica of the grail diary that's what i was
thinking with all the inserts oh yeah envelopes there's some inspiration there but you know it's
i think the idea of the book is that it contains a lot of the secrets of the u.s so things like the
kennedys oh right for instance here's the alien from roswell new mexico so someone had a lot of
fun with this oh naval telegram good fun with oh man so i love thinking about the prop maker making
this piece and how much is oh wow that's the plank right which is another muffin in the film
and then there's newspaper clippings and oh look at this it's the blueprint for the flying saucer
oh this is amazing i mean i just imagine that it would be really like even if you're an old
jaded prop maker that making a prop like this is still gotta light your light your flame a little
bit absolutely and also as a fan or a collector when you get to see one of these in person i'll
never forget the first time i got to see a grail diary uh robert watts one of the producers on
indiana jones had an original grail diary and i just sat down in a chair and looked at it for 45
minutes because there's so much to drink in you know in a book like this there's so many details
all these easter eggs that are hidden here all these things that kind of play into the story
but they're not going to feature directly so they just you know they can be loose with it while also
while having some fun and just making a great prop that's going to perform well on screen and look
very impressive on screen uh what i'm marveling at here is a copy of marilyn monroe's autopsy as as
one of the great secrets a letter from wilson yeah wow oh this is just capone yeah this is the first
time i've looked at this in person but it's filled with great little wonderful little tidbits and
oh oh oh another piece from roswell yeah i'm sure somewhere in here is oh moon landing stuff there's
moon landing yeah fake moon landing there's got to be kennedy in here somewhere i would think oh
this is funny they've just replicated they've just added in a piece of one of the flight plans from
nasa i've got copies of these oh okay uh because nasa is all available on on government websites
actually oh is that right yeah a good portion of just download and print it original oh my gosh so
this is them on the set this is them on the set this is great that's clever i wonder if this is
from capricorn one that's funny that is awesome stanley kubrick in the background right exactly
the weathering is really gentle and sensitive you know like little bits on the edges here but
not it's not overdone it looks like the pages are all printed which makes sense given the volume but
there's there you go there's there's oh wow yeah yeah yep and let's see it's a number
there's a wide shot of the kennedy car yeah and what is the document yeah what does it say yeah
you don't want to unstick it if it's stuck it's the route
oh the president do not file right the parade route just do not file oh man
i so uh uh uh we'll talk about this someday but i replicated uh with some great help uh kurtz's
dossier from apocalypse now and it is a similar like like the girl diary this crazy deep dive into
such uh uh extensive and wide-ranging ephemera do we get to see that while in the film in fact
not only do we get to see it but it turns out that every beat in the film is presaged by going
through the dossier that the dossier is in fact the narrative backbone of the film and it's um
basically his journey through the dossier is his journey through the film oh wow
yeah oh victorium and going from queen victoria victoria yeah um what is that
oh man i mean so many wonderful little yeah i mean you could spend a lot of time just paging through
this and it smells great it actually smells a little like an old musty book george washington's
signature on this day in april 1792 this was great honor that i take i take pen in hand to
make the first of what will be many entries to be read by future presidents that's cool that's
a cool one that is pretty pretty cool i don't know if you see that in the film or don't go look now
uh and i just love all these like map pieces and i i it looks like they made more than one
yeah i mean i would have thought with the prop like this there had to be a few you know
as you well know modern productions always have multiples there's always multiple units you always
need backups yeah sometimes you know you'll have a hero version that's that's more intended for
close-up this is certainly hero quality i mean everything about that feels like it's ready to
go on camera again i love the leather casing and just the uh the age of it um a year many
years ago i bought from you guys the folder from red okay but it's not a hero one because there's
nothing in it okay it's all like blank pages and like uh uh accounting oh that's cool i don't
even remember that that must have gone through london it must have been i think it did yeah a
long long time ago but i love the piece again i'm a i have a weird side passion for paper ephemera
i even have some pieces i have some great replicas of leonardo's codices and uh this is wonderful
no i have not i have not and i i'm very like i'm very familiar with this piece because i've looked
into it because i the thing that's great about paper props like this is you can do a lot of the
work just sitting there in photoshop right and so that's like perfect for me when i'm flying a lot
i just sit there on photoshop working through documents of something like this now that i've
seen this up close i may tackle it tempted yeah you guys just sold uh a bunch of scans of your
one of the original grail diaries yeah loose pages pages yeah we took a look those last time you were
down those were really cool too yeah yeah there was a couple i had never seen yeah and and again
it's like the fun of what's gone into these things where have they taken their source material that
one i know has been studied for many years i don't know if people have done quite the same deep dive
on this as to identifying all the source materials yeah i bet not but uh but you know there's there's
a lot that goes into it and again it's sort of all about celebrating the movie artistry and what goes
into especially something like this that becomes a title prop of the film well and except for the
fact that you can kind of tell some of the stuff has been copied onto the page rather than written
directly on it except for that this thing sells as real right here like there's some tells we can
see but for the most part anybody who found this would consider this to be a real object there's no
there's no it doesn't it feels completely genuine yes yeah and that's just that that to me is
always really thrilling yeah maybe if it was 200 years old the leather would be a little bit more
i actually crispy but i actually just bought this stuff for restoring oh yeah it's in my
leather chemicals box for restoring old leather for leather that's like starting to just turn to
dust okay i don't think it restores it but it stops it from continuing to turn into it so i
think you're right yeah this would be this would be like shedding powder all over right yeah it
was genuinely 200 nice that isn't but but it has a great patina to it really does and i love how it's
got and this leather has a leather lining as well and the lining is like clearly hand cut and that's
all part of the narrative right of of looking the age that it does oh this is you sent me a
list of some things to like that you might bring by and this was definitely something i was really
surprised that i was going to get to see in person i was a little bit surprised you picked this
actually because it's a slightly more modern film normally you gear towards 70s 80s things like that
but but now that i know about the paper fascination now i understand this a little bit
more well and interestingly enough it's i'm not that interested in the national treasure movies
but i really love a prop that is like deeply narrative in and of itself yeah and sometimes
the prop is better than the film sometimes i have several of them that's not even a shot of the film
i'm just saying yeah yeah sometimes the props are better than the films or maybe another way
of saying it is there are a lot of great film props for films that never found a big audience
absolutely um and that just goes to show that like with auctions like this you guys can highlight
the work of so many people more than just the directors and the lead you know above the line
actors in a film yeah i mean a huge amount of creativity that goes into every detail of making
a movie right yeah oh dude thank you it's a good one yes going up for auction on the 9th 10th and
11th amazing brandon thanks so much for coming good to see you all right see you guys next time