ah that's a little better a little headroom i got almost a wolf blitzer going on up here
hey everybody adam savage in my cave answering questions from tested patrons uh
the subject is on my time at industrial light and magic and uh this question comes from c morgan
who wants to know when at ilm what were the most memorable walk-throughs of
celebrities or other vips and what was the typical reaction from workers on the floor
so you know how you've heard certain movie stars don't want people to look at them um the fact is
that on any given movie set i'm not sure that really needs to be specifically spelled out
film crews in general are highly professional uh i was gonna say we but i haven't been on
film crew in a long time so i guess i'm gonna say they film crews deal with famous people all
the time they're cognizant of how hard the work is for someone who's carrying a franchise and
famous people absolutely would come through the model shop all the time
and we were always really chill about it in fact almost to a point of absurdity like you
just like you'd like pretend not to notice to a certain extent you really you wanted to
create a space for them you also you know you wanted to be cool about it um i and i have met
many famous people on walkthroughs the first one i ever met was don johnson don johnson
when they were gearing up for nash bridges uh don took a tour through jamie's model shop at colossal
pictures and i remember specifically like i was using the lathe or yeah i was using the lathe and
i'm cutting some small parts i think i was making tiny tiny beer bottles for a commercial and uh
i knew he was coming but i also had a job to do so i wasn't like waiting for him or anything and
he comes in i see him come in with his people a whole entourage of people they're all on the phone
um this is early too like 95 they're all on cell phones uh and at some point i like felt a presence
to my right i looked over and it was don johnson and he was like hey and i said hey and he said
looks cool i said thanks nice to meet you he said see you around so that was the first one um among
the people that came through ilm we got everybody because the model shop was the sexy part of the
tour it was almost always the end of the tour because there's only so much touring you could do
through a sea of computer desks that people are sitting at i mean it's certainly great to see all
the toys and stuffed animals that cg artists have at their desks and each one each desk is a real
demonstration of the person that you're you're talking to i love that part um but the model
shop was where stuff got actually made it's where you could see a spaceship or handle a prop so yeah
we were at the end of every tour which meant that we usually got people in a pretty good mood they'd
spent like two hours like you know getting a basic tour and now they got to see the cool stuff
um sean penn and robin wright came through with their kids once um but he's local that wasn't a
like a super surprising visit um anthony daniels whenever star wars people came
through that was really neat anthony daniels was surpassingly lovely to everybody in the shop
and took pains to say hello to everybody it was really really sweet ray park was the same
uh also really really cool and i have since run into him at different cons a lovely human being um
i uh clint eastwood came through once we were working on space cowboys uh and we were building
the space shuttle and the russian satellite for space cowboys and clint likes to work lean and
mean so we had a tight budget on this and we were still doing killer work some of the best
work i've ever done was on that space shuttle uh and clint came through i think after we'd finished
most of the shuttle but before we got started building the satellite and so lauren peterson
was the job lead on that and lauren had mocked up the satellite in foam core with its big solar
array because we were just laser cutting that at the time and he called the he instead of putting
the russian name of the satellite he called it the rowdy yates which if i'm remembering correctly is
the character that clint played on gunsmoke when he was when he showed up on that show
before he reached international stardom in sergio leone's films uh and it was fun to watch clint
walk into a room see that and smile and like tip his hat to lauren that was delightful
um lauren peterson absolutely delightful to talk to because that guy has sat in meetings with
everyone he has like you know talked to spielberg and everybody else in in meetings about modeling
um those old-timers at ilm i don't mean to call them old-timers but you know the original group
have some wonderful stories on that front um but my single favorite walkthrough
at ilm was when incense in sync came through uh they were
they were recording an album at skywalker sound or doing some mixing at skywalker sound and i think
they did a cameo in episode one i think they did a cameo in episode one the model shop had
it could have been episode two i'm sorry it doesn't really matter to the story at any
rate they did a cameo in one of the star wars films and they were getting a tour
and then came through the shop and they were uh
justin timberlake was not in the group that day they he was the only one missing but
all the rest of the members of nsync were walking through the shop and
getting led through and they were moving through the kitchen into the desks area
and in those days where the bottle shop was on the south side of kerner boulevard when you left the
kitchen the very first desk you encountered was grant maharas uh and he had this desk that faced
you as you left the kitchen so you always could see grant working on whatever santa's workshop
electronics amazement he was conjuring and uh this was also uh after the first battlebots had aired
and uh grant had competed with dead blow down in long beach at the first battlebots competition and
what was unknown at the time was that nsync were huge fans of battlebots in general and they walked
out of the kitchen looked over saw a dead blow on grant's desk and they went dead blow and then
they all looked up and grant was standing right there and they all went great amahara
it was so awesome so awesome you you've got to understand that like grant uh grant was part of
the group of laser oh he loved pop culture he loved nsync we loved the spice girls right like
the idea that this that this super band we're fans of grants just i mean nobody
was more over the moon about it than grant himself was really really delightful to see
that's my best favorite person walking through ilm story trying to think if there's any others
no i think that's about it thank you guys for these awesome questions
uh see morgan good question i feel like you kind of knew i had a story there just a really
good lead and i appreciate that about you tested patrons please keep submitting your
questions and i will always answer them thank you guys so much see you next time