This gator head sculpture was originally planned to be a pelican with strawberries in its beak. I like the gator idea a lot better...

*updated 12/13/11



Recently, “All the King’s Men” was finally released. We’d waited over a year for this movie, the whole time wondering if my ice sculpture had made it into the movie. It stars Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Anthony Hopkins, and James Gandolfini. It was filmed in Louisiana because the book apparently was inspired by the life of Louisiana governor Huey Long. (The movie was also a remake of an much older Academy-award winning movie.)

The prop people working on the movie had called and asked about the possibility of getting a couple of pelican sculptures (one for a backup). They wanted to put strawberries in the pelican’s beak. After they looked at my commercial website, however, they called back and ordered the gator sculpture (one sculpture only, no backup.)

Being on set was interesting, but I was warned that I couldn’t take pictures; they sent me the one above. In the end, it turned out to be an amazing amount of work and preparation on their part for scenes that lasted mere seconds in the movie. For my efforts last year and a seven dollar admission, I was rewarded with a 2 or 3 second shot of my sculpture and a couple of movie reviews that mentioned it. Considering how much work they did for the scene that my sculpture was in, I felt lucky that it had made it into the film.

During the shooting, they’d used the sculpture for several shots that didn’t appear in the final film. I’ll look forward to the dvd; perhaps the gator will show up in a deleted scene as well.

Well before my “All the King’s Men” experience, I’d done a “sculpture” for a short-lived NBC show called “Earth 2.” When I lived in Albuquerque, NM, they filmed the show in nearby Santa Fe for one season.

It was a sci-fi series and in the episode I worked on, the characters discover an alien frozen in a giant block of ice. The block of ice was my department. The idea was to surround a large rubber alien mannequin (6’10”?) with irregularly cut pieces of ice. The massive result consumed somewhere around 15-20 clear blocks.

Unfortunately, they needed it quickly and I was about to leave for the NICA National Championships in Scranton, PA. I started work on it, then left for Pennsylvania. I ended up cutting my trip a little short by leaving before the results were announced (I’d had a very bad competition anyway.) I came back and worked myself into oblivion. Driving to the set after the piece was done, I nearly got into two accidents from exhaustion, even though it was only an hour away. Ironically, once I got on the set, I was too excited to take a nap.

In the end, I underestimated the amount of work required and overestimated how good the final result would look. I ended up underpaid, overworked, and unsatisfied: a true learning experience. But I got to see my stuff on TV, so I guess I didn’t really mind...



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Tags: movies, tv