♪ ♪ ♪
[text messages dings]
MIKE: Robbie, we're in southern California, we finally get out
of here, and you got your face in your phone the whole time.
ROBBIE: It's Jersey.
He's like, having problems with his woman.
Mike: [laughing] Jersey has a woman?
ROBBIE: This week he does, that's all I can say. I think--
MIKE: Call him up. ROBBIE: Yeah.
MIKE: You and I have been through a decent
amount of therapy.
We have pearls of wisdom to give.
JERSEY JON (on phone): Robbie!
ROBBIE: Jersey!
MIKE: Jersey, what's up? You got Robbie and I.
We're both here for you, man.
JERSEY JON (on phone): How're you doing?
ROBBIE: What's up with this lady?
JERSEY JON (on phone): Yeah, you know, it's hard, you know,
I- I'm kind of tripping on my emotions a little bit with her,
not sure which way to go.
MIKE: Are you the anxious partner, or are you the
avoidant partner?
JERSEY JON (on phone): The anxious partner,
or the avoid-what? I think that-
MIKE: Yeah. You need to figure that out,
you-you need to understand
what role you play in someone else's life.
ROBBIE: You know... yeah.
JERSEY JON (on phone): She gets worried because I'm busy,
so if I don't give her a call back right away,
she gets, you know, upset with me.
MIKE: It sounds like you're the avoidant partner.
Alright, so what you need to do is, like-
JERSEY JON (on phone): Yeah.
MIKE: -you need to take a moment, and just let her know
that you care, but that you need space.
ROBBIE: And when you're doing that, Jersey, you need to like
stop, and think about what's coming out of your mouth before
you actually it actually comes out of your mouth.
MIKE: Yeah, that's good advice.
ROBBIE: Like, think about your...
JERSEY JON (on phone): Yeah.
MIKE: Like, think about what you're going to
say before you say it.
ROBBIE: Yeah, yeah.
MIKE: You need to communicate your feelings...
ROBBIE: your feelings...
MIKE: like before she goes to bed.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
MIKE: You know, just call her, and let her know
that you're thinking about her.
JERSEY JON (on phone): Oh man...
how do you guys know any of this stuff anyway?
MIKE: Hey, we'r modern men.
JERSEY JON (on phone): Oh my God...
ROBBIE: [laughs]
MIKE: You know what I'm saying?
I mean, it's like-
JERSEY JON (on phone): I miss you guys.
[sniffs]
ROBBIE: Jersey, are you crying right now?
JERSEY JON (on phone): No dude, I'm stripping some furniture.
MIKE: Oh okay.
[laughs]
ROBBIE: Oh gosh, sounded like...
JERSEY JON (on phone): Look out...
♪ ♪ ♪
[phone ringing]
MIKE: Dani D, what's up?
ROBBIE: What's up, girl?
DANIELLE: Hey, I got a lead for you.
I'm sending you guys to a killer pick.
You ready?
MIKE: What do you got for us?
DANIELLE: He does props for movies.
MIKE: That sounds cool.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
DANIELLE: Okay. It's getting ready busy in the shop.
ROBBIE: Send the coordinates.
DANIELLE: I'm going to send you guys the address,
give me just a minute.
MIKE: You got me excited, girl.
DANIELLE: Hey, have fun out there, okay?
ROBBIE: Thanks, Dani D!
DANIELLE: Love you, bye.
MIKE: Later.
♪ ♪ ♪
MIKE: Dang, this is really nice.
I've never been up here before.
ROBBIE: It's right here, this white house, right here.
MIKE: Oh yeah, I see the guy's cleaning it out.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
MIKE: Hey-hey! [laughs]
[honks horn]
MIKE: He's cleaning it out in the garage.
Okay here, get a flyer.
ROBBIE: Get a flyer.
MIKE: Urgh! Ugh.
MIKE: Hey-hey!
CHRIS: Hey, what's going on, guys?
MIKE: You Chris?
CHRIS: Yeah it's Chris.
MIKE: Hey man, I'm Mike.
ROBBIE: How are you doing, man?
MIKE: Nice to meet you. Hi.
CHRIS: Nice to meet you, Mike.
ROBBIE: Robbie. Good to see you, man.
MIKE: Wow, look at that.
ROBBIE: Good to see ya.
CHRIS: Good to see you too.
MIKE: Man what... Fantasy Film effects.
CHRIS: My name is Christopher Lee Warren.
I'm part of a 3-generation visual effects family.
My brother and I, we grew up in Hollywood, making magic.
CHRIS: By the time my brother and I were 7, 8 years old,
we were part of probably the biggest TV show in
America at the time, Land of the Lost. [laughs]
MIKE: We're big fans. I was 10.
CHRIS: Yep. ROBBIE: Yeah.
MIKE: I was 10.
CHRIS: I was 9, my brother's 11.
MIKE: Yeah. ROBBIE: Yeah.
MIKE: And we would sit like, this close to the TV.
CHRIS: Oh yeah, that was- that was the thing to do.
MIKE & ROBBIE: Yeah.
MIKE: Robbie and I could pound a whole box of
honey comb cereal in one episode.
CHRIS: Land of the Lost...
MIKE: I know.
CHRIS: actually was beating out primetime TV
for viewers on a Saturday morning kids show.
MIKE: Really?
MIKE: He worked on that when he was around
the same age that I was.
So that's really cool to think about a kid being
behind the scenes, helping make that show that all
of these kids loved all over the world.
CHRIS: We worked on hundreds of movies and commercials,
and iconic TV.
CREW: Action!
CREW: That's it, that's the shot. Nice!
CHRIS: Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
We're the ones that nobody sees, nobody knows about,
but yet know our work.
1941 is the first known screen credit that we can find for our
grandfather, and it was on George Pal Puppetoons,
that were for shorts only for the theaters.
CHRIS: Stop motion was our grandfather's forte at the time.
He would animate the puppet.
He's take the arm and move it one frame,
take a picture and move it another frame, take a picture.
MIKE: Oh my God...
so he was a very patient man.
MIKE: We grew up in the stop motion era.
And to us, it was magical.
I remember Davey & Goliath, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,
and the big one - Gumby.
All of that was stop motion.
CHRIS: Our grandfather went on to do Time Machine.
The original Time Machine.
ROBBIE: Your grandfather was part of the
original Time Machine?
CHRIS: He won an Academy Award for that.
MIKE: No way!
ROBBIE: Wow!
ROBBIE: H. G. Wells, Time Machine, that was one of my
favorite friggin' movies.
I can sit down and watch that movie all day long.
CHRIS: My son and my daughter will become 4th generation,
100 years they're going to take the family to.
MIKE: Oh you guys still doing it!
ROBBIE: Wow.
CHRIS: Oh yeah, oh yeah, we're still in it.
ROBBIE: Wow.
MIKE: So what do you got going on in here?
CHRIS: Our father passed away about a year and a half ago,
and now we have to move this stuff around.
And we're not collectors.
CHRIS: We don't go out and search for
props and movie props.
So everything that we have is part of our family history.
CHRIS: We build it, we shoot it, and it goes on the shelf.
CHRIS: So all this stuff, nobody else has ever seen
before, and a lot of it we're attached to,
we're ready to sell some, but not all of it.
MIKE: Yeah.
MIKE: When you talk about a generational business where
I'm from, it's usually like a hardware store or a restaurant,
or maybe even a century farm. But this is Hollywood.
So a generational family business is props
and special effects.
MIKE: So what is this from?
CHRIS: Land of the Lost.
MIKE: Oh this is it.
ROBBIE: This.
CHRIS: This is it.
MIKE: This is the stuff.
CHRIS: This is Grumpy, this is Dopey, that's Emily.
MIKE: What is this made of?
CHRIS: Foam. It's 45 years old and foam just didn't
hold up like it does today.
MIKE: Wow Robbie, this is what we were watching...
ROBBIE: Really?
That's what that was that we were watching on TV.
It was so real then.
ROBBIE: Actually look, large, it looked like it was coming
out of the TV at you.
CHRIS: When we do our job right, yes it does look large.
ROBBIE: So here's a question for ya - the Sleestak.
CHRIS: Yep.
ROBBIE: They're hands and stuff were like 3 fingers,
they're going 'aagghh' walking at ya!
ROBBIE: Did your dad make them, your grandfather make...?
CHRIS: No we, we didn't do the practical makeup effects.
ROBBIE: Okay.
CHRIS: We just did the stop motion animation.
Had nothing to do with the Sleestaks.
This is how you animate.
You actually physically grab it...
ROBBIE: And have to move it.
CHRIS: Okay, you have to get to the ball joint.
One of the dinosaurs breathed fire.
ROBBIE: Oh yeah?
CHRIS: Our father would bring us over, or I would use the
lighter, my brother would set the butane up, it would blow
flames, and then he would take us back home put
us back in bed, and he'd continue-
MIKE: He just wanted you guys to be a part of it.
CHRIS: He-he couldn't do it all.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
CHRIS: He actually needed us to physically
be there to shoot the shot.
ROBBIE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. MIKE: That's crazy!
MIKE: Wow. [laughs] ROBBIE: Exactly.
CHRIS: In the visual effects world, you didn't have to big
crews, there wasn't much money for it.
This was a passion job.
MIKE: Really?
CHRIS: In the early visual effects days.
MIKE: But the visual effects were everything.
CHRIS: Not until Star Wars.
MIKE: Ohh okay.
CHRIS: After Star Wars, booom!
Right after Star Wars came out, they said, oh my God,
you can make a lot of money with these visual effects movies.
Here's more money.
MIKE: It's amazing that such a large show
was really a grassroots effort.
When you think Hollywood, you think big -time production,
you're not thinking about all the mom & pop shops
that were really keeping the wheels turning
behind the scenes.
MIKE: Would it hurt this to have someone do
some sort of restoration on it?
CHRIS: Yeah, yes it would.
ROBBIE: Yeah, yeah.
CHRIS: In this world, if you restore it,
it takes the charm out of it.
ROBBIE: Yeah. MIKE: Yeah.
CHRIS: It doesn't...
MIKE: It doesn't show the history.
ROBBIE: It only tells the story one time.
CHRIS: It only tells the story one time.
ROBBIE: Yeah. MIKE: Yeah.
What is the value of somethinglike this?
CHRIS: 10 to $20,000.
MIKE: Really!? ROBBIE: Really?
CHRIS: Um...
MIKE: In this condition?
CHRIS: They can be from this condition,
all the way to this condition.
Don't be confused that there's no foam on...
ROBBIE: Yeah.
CHRIS: Depending on what it's from...
MIKE: Yeah.
Chris: [CH-CH-CH-CH].
King Kong's armature is worth more than a million dollars.
And it's only... this condition.
ROBBIE: Just the body.
CHRIS: It's just the metal.
MIKE: From the first King Kong movie?
CHRIS: Yep, yep.
ROBBIE: Yeah. MIKE: Oh wow.
So this is not for the average fan for Land of the Lost.
CHRIS: At the price points, no.
ROBBIE: I know somebody out there would want this,
but most people we deal with aren't
going to buy something like this.
CHRIS: Gardner Advertising came to us and said,
make these 4 mittens.
We sculpted 4 mittens, and they said-
MIKE: Oh are those for Hamburger Helper.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
CHRIS: And Hamburger Helper commercial was started.
MIKE & ROBBIE: [laughs] MIKE: I love that stuff!
CHRIS: Kind of strange being able to walk down
a supermarket aisle and go -
worked on that, helped create that, did that.
ROBBIE: The original Pillsbury sign.
MIKE: Hee hee hee...
ROBBIE: Yeah.
Mike: Hoo Hoo! What is something like this worth?
CHRIS: 6 to 8,000.
MIKE: Wow.
CHRIS: It's not for sale.
MIKE: Okay.
ROBBIE: Look at that.
MIKE: What's that from?
CHRIS: Magic in the Water.
ROBBIE: This is the dragon.
CHRIS: Orky.
MIKE: You familiar with this movie, Robbie?
ROBBIE: I got 5 kids. Come on.
I remember the kid would go out to the end of the dock...
CHRIS: Yep.
ROBBIE: And feed Orky.
MIKE: This was the main character.
CHRIS: Yeah he was the character...
ROBBIE: This was the main character, it was like-it was
like the Loch Ness monster, basically.
CHRIS: Exactly.
ROBBIE: It's amazing to look at this piece, how small it is,
when the kid's standing at the end of the dock, this thing
comes out of the water and it looks at the kid.
It was huge!
MIKE: So was this a movie that you worked on?
CHRIS: Oh yeah. I personally animated
that puppet swimming around and did the flapping.
ROBBIE: To see this thing move through the water,
jump in the air, get fed by the kid, is absolutely amazing.
How talented these guys were.
ROBBIE: That movie was shot in the '90s.
CHRIS: Yeah.
ROBBIE: That's why it's like I can't believe they used
something like this to shoot it with.
CHRIS: They're still doing stop motion.
ROBBIE: They're still doing it that way.
CHRIS: Yeah, still today.
Everybody wants that CGI, it just doesn't have the charm.
ROBBIE: What kind of value has this got on it?
CHRIS: It's a movie, but it's not an iconic American piece.
MIKE: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
CHRIS: Value on that's probably anywhere from 500 to $1,000.
ROBBIE: I'd take a chance on it at 500 bucks.
I like the movie, but I-I mean, this is like stuff that's
completely out of my wheelhouse.
CHRIS: 750?
It's one-of-a-kind.
ROBBIE: Umm... 600.
CHRIS: 650?
ROBBIE: I'm doing it.
MIKE: Alright, alright.
CHRIS: Done. Woo. Our first sale.
MIKE: Tell me about this piece that's hanging
above your head here.
That is like...
CHRIS: Peter Benchley, who wrote Jaws, wrote a movie
called The Beast. So it was basically a squid.
MIKE: It's just the tentacle?
CHRIS: it's just the articulated squid arm.
MIKE: Oh okay.
So it doesn't have a body or anything.
CHRIS: No.
This is the most modern silicone that's out there.
It wrapped around the boat.
ROBBIE: Oh.
CHRIS: And then pulled it, we...
ROBBIE: Pulled the boat down.
CHRIS: Big struggle, and...
MIKE: What's something like this worth, would you sell this?
CHRIS: We actually like just this single
squid arm more than the full squid.
MIKE: Oh you have the whole squid.
CHRIS: We have the whole squid.
MIKE: Okay.
MIKE: I'm literally like a sponge today.
MIKE: This is all CDs.
MIKE: Soaking up all this information.
MIKE: Newspapers...
MIKE: Yes, I'm here to buy some stuff...
ROBBIE: Whoa...!
MIKE: But these are things that we very rarely
ever come across,
and it's fascinating for me to hear the values of some
of these things, when the condition is so poor.
ROBBIE: What is this thing?
What movie is this from?
CHRIS: Not a movie, but it was handmade by our father.
It was for my 11-year- old Halloween costume.
What he did was, he took a mold of my face,
and then he sculpted this out of clay,
made it so this mask was fit for my head perfectly.
And then when we went to the costume contest, they
disqualified my brother and I 'cause it was too professional.
Mike: [chuckles]
CHRIS: So we stepped aside and just said, you're right.
ROBBIE: Yeah, that's something you need to keep.
CHRIS: It's pretty cool.
ROBBIE: Yeah. That's really cool.
CHRIS: Yeah.
MIKE: What this from?
CHRIS: Mothman Prophecies with Richard Gere.
MIKE: No, I love that movie!
ROBBIE: Yeah.
MIKE: Mothman Prophecies is one of my favorite movies that
Richard Gere starred in. It's a story of a West Virginia town,
a bridge collapsing in 1967, and it being connected to the
Mothman folklore in the area.
This is the movie that's based on true events, but it leaves
you wondering where the true ends and the folklore begins.
CHRIS: That's fiberglass, detailed-
MIKE: It's got some weight to it.
CHRIS: -detailed.
MIKE: So would this have been something like it fell off the
bridge when they went over the bridge.
CHRIS: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
MIKE: This is so much different than a character
in a commercial or a Saturday morning kids show.
CHRIS: It gets carved first out of foam.
MIKE: Okay.
CHRIS: Then you build a mold.
MIKE: Seeing this truck makes me realize how much miniature
work we've all scene without even really knowing it,
which really speaks to the quality of their work.
ROBBIE: How long would it take to make this...
CHRIS: A month.
ROBBIE: start to finish-a month.
Yeah, there it is.
MIKE: So what's the value of something like this?
CHRIS: 500, $600.
MIKE: So you're not making this guy,
that looks like a some sort of-
ROBBIE: No, it's a G.I. Joe.
MIKE: It's a G.I.
Joe, it's something that-
CHRIS: Well, 6th-6th scale is a really good scale.
ROBBIE: Okay.
CHRIS: To build miniatures at, because you can,
you can still make it look real...
ROBBIE: Okay. MIKE: Uh -huh.
CHRIS: G.I. Joes and Barbies happen to be 6th scale.
MIKE: Did you play a role in building this?
CHRIS: My brother built it, I shot it.
MIKE: What would you feel comfortable selling this for?
CHRIS: 400 bucks.
MIKE: Yeah, I'm trying to think,
what we could get out of it.
This would display well, I mean...
CHRIS: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Oh yeah.
MIKE: obviously it's from a movie,
but it's also transportation.
Alright, I'll do 400 bucks.
Alright, thank you, man.
Appreciate it.
♪ ♪ ♪
MIKE: What's this?
CHRIS: I had a box I went through, and I said,
'Gene, I'm going to toss this.' He pulled that out, says
'you don't want to toss this.'
MIKE: Terminator...
CHRIS: 2...
MIKE: Judgment Day.
ROBBIE: Wow.
CHRIS: Original script.
MIKE: Huge movie. Blockbuster.
MIKE: It says 'Gene Warren, Leslie Huntley,
Fantasy 2 Film Effects.'
CHRIS: Gene Warren's our father.
MIKE: 'Dear Gene and Leslie, per your conversation with Jim,
I am sending a script.'
CHRIS: Pretty personalized script.
ROBBIE: Oh yeah.
CHRIS: Our father did the stop motion puppets
for the Terminator.
ROBBIE: These guys were doing the visual effects on that.
Crazy!
CHRIS: Each time you saw it walking full body,
toe-to-head, stop motion puppet.
To different scales, 'cause T1 was 6th scale,
and then when we did T2, Jim goes, big difference,
you got more money, make bigger miniatures.
MIKE: So is that something you'd sell?
CHRIS: Yeah.
MIKE: This is an original script that is personalized
to his father.
MIKE: I mean, what would you have to have for that?
CHRIS: The bigger the picture, the bigger the price.
There's T2 pieces have sold for a quarter-of-a-million dollars.
MIKE: Really?
CHRIS: Yeah. So... 3 to $500.
Probably worth maybe, double that on an auction or something?
MIKE: To the right auction, yeah.
CHRIS: Yeah.
MIKE: It's so hard to find an original script,
next to impossible.
But here is one that's personalized.
So there's 2 stories colliding there.
This is an incredible piece.
MIKE: 3 to 5... 400?
CHRIS: 400 it is.
MIKE: Alright, I'm doing it.
CHRIS: Deal, to both of you, yes.
400 bucks.
MIKE: Thank you, buddy. I appreciate it.
Check that our, Robbie.
CHRIS: Right on.
ROBBIE: There's a train behind you, Mike.
MIKE: Where, right here?
ROBBIE: Yeah.
CHRIS: That's, that's the train tracks for-
oh that's actually, good find.
That's Bram Stoker's Dracula.
That's the actual engine from Bram Stoker's Dracula.
CHRIS: I didn't know where that was, good job.
MIKE: Okay here, Robbie.
The train to that...
Wait-wait-whoa-whoa-whoa -wait -wait, let me move this...
ROBBIE: alright, it's not going down, you're good.
CHRIS: This is when it takes Keanu Reeves across
the Carpathian Mountains...
ROBBIE: Right.
CHRIS: Through the tunnel, you see the eyes in the background,
the eyes glow up.
ROBBIE: That is an awesome movie.
CHRIS: The reason why this looks so good, is we would take
smoke cookies, put them inside this, and we'd light them.
And it was almost a bomb.
Mike: [laughs]
CHRIS: Because of-
ROBBIE: Almost a bomb.
CHRIS: Because there's a tiny hole in here...
ROBBIE: Yeah.
CHRIS: It didn't explode.
So then this thing would plume.
If we couldn't get that smoke cloud, we couldn't have
sold the audience that it was a bigger train.
ROBBIE: Right, right.
CHRIS: We have a box downstairs with the rest of
this, which by the way, my brother's inside right now.
MIKE: Can we bring this inside?
CHRIS: Yep.
We can lay it together.
ROBBIE: I'll carry this in, I'm following you.
CHRIS: This was our father's house.
My brother and I now have it.
MIKE: What year was the house built?
CHRIS: 1926.
ROBBIE: Wow.
MIKE: Really!
ROBBIE: Wow.
CHRIS: Welcome to our home.
MIKE: Oh-ho-ho.
ROBBIE: This is cool.
CHRIS: Gene?
Gene, we've been selling stuff up there, what you doing?
MIKE: Hey-hey.
ROBBIE: Hey, what's going on?
MIKE: Hey, I'm Mike.
GENE: Mike, nice to meet you.
ROBBIE: Ugh.
MIKE: Nice to meet you, hi.
GENE: I'm Gene.
MIKE: This is my brother, Robbie.
ROBBIE: Ah.
GENE: Hi Robbie.
ROBBIE: Good to meet ya.
GENE: We both, I think, ended up working with our father
because we needed a job out of highschool.
It's not like we were growing up saying,
oh we want to be visual...
CHRIS: Not necessarily me.
I- I took 3 years before I joined the business,
knowing I wanted to get into it.
But this business, you sell your soul.
And I wasn't ready to sell my soul yet.
GENE: Which... which I did jump right into it,
and 3 years later, I quit for a decade,
because I realized I hadn't had my fun yet.
So I went out and had my fun for 10 years,
and then got back into it.
CHRIS: I saw it coming, said no way, Dad,
I'm not doing this [beep].
But growing up in the business and being a part of it,
and being around it, I knew this was what I wanted to do.
GENE: We blew up the FBI building.
MIKE: What movie was that?
CHRIS: Arlington Road.
GENE: Arlington Road.
CHRIS: It was 40 feet tall, 80 feet wide.
MIKE: Oh you...
GENE: We built it.
CHRIS: We built the miniature.
MIKE: Oh you built a 40-foot tall building.
CHRIS: Yeah.
GENE: Yeah, most of our stuff is...
ROBBIE: 80-foot wide.
GENE: huge. CHRIS: Yeah.
GENE: Mothman Prophecies' bridge was 170 feet across.
MIKE: Oh the one that fell in the water.
CHRIS: Collapsed.
GENE: It was 170 feet.
CHRIS: Over our tank.
MIKE: Wow.
MIKE: These are like the biggest moments in the movies,
and their family's the one doing it.
CHRIS: My brother would build it, I would shoot it.
I love shooting; he loves building.
Worked out perfect.
GENE: Yeah, just yin-yang, I guess.
CHRIS: Yeah.
MIKE: You've only got one chance to get that
shot where it collapses?
GENE: No, took us 3 months to shoot.
CHRIS: That particular.
But if you blow up the FBI building...
CHRIS & GENE & ROBBIE: One shot.
MIKE: No stress! No stress!
CHRIS: If it was easy everybody would be doing it.
ROBBIE: everybody would be doing it, yeah.
Mike: [laughs] You said you guys have a
whole box of pieces for this.
CHRIS: Yeah.
GENE: Yeah, I think they're right here, actually.
CHRIS: Yep.
GENE: Here they are.
MIKE: These guys go way beyond just making the miniature,
just making the train and handing it over to the studio.
MIKE: Did you build these cars or did you use a commercial
product and you're just painting them?
CHRIS: These were commercial product that we-
GENE: -repurposed.
CHRIS: -repurposed.
MIKE: Okay.
MIKE: They're actually shooting the piece,
they're shooting the train going down the track,
they're lighting it.
MIKE: There's like some sort of paper on here, so...
GENE: We added texture.
MIKE: Okay.
GENE: Did the paint work, added the people inside.
MIKE: They're shooting it from far away so you
can't see that it's a miniature.
They're shooting it super tight,
so you can't see it's a miniature.
MIKE: So what would these batteries have powered?
Those lights that you put on the ceiling right there?
GENE: No, they power these little people, so that they
would wiggle a little bit, to give it some motion.
ROBBIE: Oh wow.
MIKE: Okay.
That's so cool.
MIKE: They're creating the piece that's in the scene,
and then they're creating the illusion of what that piece is.
I mean, it goes way beyond just them being artistic in a way
that makes something like this.
MIKE: Would you guys sell this?
I think this would be a great crossover piece.
GENE: Not this one.
MIKE: Yeah, I hear ya.
MIKE: So what about all this other stuff over here?
I mean, obviously this thing is like...
ROBBIE: This thing is...
MIKE: you know, the elephant in the room,
or the monkey in the room, whatever this is.
[chuckles]
GENE: This is from Fright Night 2.
It's a vampire bat.
CHRIS: It comes to an elevator shaft, you look up and they
bust through the elevator shaft,
it comes down and its wings are...
ROBBIE: Like this?
CHRIS: Yeah, exactly. Then it opens up.
MIKE: What are you guys thinking on this?
GENE: This could get between 7 and 15,000 depending on who's...
MIKE: Really!?
GENE: who's interested, you know.
Some of these things really mean things to other people.
ROBBIE: Oh yeah. MIKE: Absolutely.
ROBBIE: Yeah. GENE: Yeah.
MIKE: Wait, here's more...
GENE: Doughboy...
MIKE: Pillsbury Doughboy stuff.
GENE: This is replacement animation heads.
These have all of the vowels and
the consonants for him to talk.
GENE: You didn't try to animate the mouth.
You made 16, 20 heads with different mouth shapes, and so
you just replace the head, to get him to say something.
GENE: When he needed to make a, like a 'me',
you start with an 'm'...
MIKE: Oh... for him...
GENE: you took the head off, then you put the 'e' part on it.
MIKE: Oh wow. No kidding.
With every little movement of his mouth...
ROBBIE: Every...
GENE: Every little sound.
CHRIS: Yeah.
MIKE: you had to change the head.
GENE: Replacement animation.
MIKE: Wow.
MIKE: These are the heads that allowed the
Pillsbury Doughboy to speak.
GENE: This is a series of, you know... 16...
MIKE: So how many heads are in here?
GENE: 12, 16, something like that?
MIKE: Wow.
CHRIS: It's missing 2 from the collection.
ROBBIE: Don't know where those went.
CHRIS: No, I do, I...
when I was younger, I was in love and gave a
Doughboy to a girlfriend.
Mike: [laughs]
MIKE: The Pillsbury Doughboy has been around for so long,
he's really a part of the American landscape.
And what I mean by that is just like, pop culture.
Everyone knows the Pillsbury Doughboy.
MIKE: Here's where he's laughing.
GENE: And we also have these Doughboy things.
MIKE: What are those?
GENE: We occasionally got to poke the Doughboy.
MIKE: Yeah.
ROBBIE: You had to move that slowly?
GENE: That's fast.
[group laughing]
GENE: And so, because this typically looked like
it was a rubber hand, they decided,
okay we're just going to do it with our kids and get real skin.
MIKE: Were you the one, was it your finger?
GENE: Both of us.
My first job in the industry was poking
the Pillsbury Doughboy at 9 years old.
And they set us up on something like this,
and we had to go one frame at a time.
They take a picture, they change the head,
they'd animate the body...
MIKE: Wow.
GENE: we'd have to move another, so about 45 minutes
it took us to go all the way in.
MIKE: What noise did he make?
[Hoo-hoo!] [laughs]
MIKE: The reason I'm drawn to all of these heads is
because they're connected to each other.
They're a variation on a theme.
MIKE: Let me see how these would even display.
So there's 16 heads, and one body.
MIKE: There's almost a complete set here.
Now there's one missing, due to the casualty of love.
But other than that, I mean, it's all together.
MIKE: There's a lot of collectors out there that
collect advertising, but this kind of takes
it to the next level.
I mean, that you have so many in a box,
and they're all different faces,
then it becomes an art installation.
MIKE: What's the difference between this
and Warhol's Campbell Soup Cans?
You know, over and over again, repetition, art,
handmade, pop culture, all of that.
This is the Pillsbury Doughboy's head over and over
again with different movements of his mouth.
The way they're displayed right now, it's already art.
MIKE: What are you guys thinking on this?
CHRIS: 2,500?
I know each individually it can be lotted out for
a lot more money than that.
But it's important for us that it stays...
MIKE: It has to stay together.
CHRIS: And it has to stay together.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
CHRIS: And I, and the condition, he's got a little
bit of a pug nose, there's a little bit of dent on his cheek.
MIKE: eye right here. 22.
GENE: 2,250?
Mike: [laughs] Alright.
Ugh! Alright, ugh!
CHRIS: We love it, we want-
MIKE: I mean, I never thought I'd get that excited about...
GROUP: Pillsbury Doughboy.
MIKE: They're handmade, they're iconic.
The way they're displayed transcends the commercial.
It's an incredible piece.
MIKE: This seems like a fun box, what else is in there?
GENE: Oh, oh, unfortunately it's deteriorating.
But this is Gremlins, from the movie, Gremlins.
ROBBIE: Oh from the movie, Gremlins?
MIKE: Gremlins, huge movie.
GENE: This is one of the-
ROBBIE: Oh look at that.
GENE: There's one stop motion shot in Gremlins.
MIKE: Can I touch him?
Oh you can't touch him, he's going to fall apart.
GENE: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Ahh...
MIKE: You know-
GENE: If we each have-
MIKE: It looks like, it looks like a little bat.
GENE: Yeah.
MIKE: It doesn't really even have a face.
ROBBIE: Well it's smashed now.
MIKE: Oh I know, it's just melted.
But it's so cool.
CHRIS: Gremlins, the family that one shot.
GENE: Spike's in the middle of the street,
and he starts walking into the light.
And he turns around and goes like this, and then 36 of them
start walking out into the light, jumping over each other.
ROBBIE: Yeah. Wow.
CHRIS: We kind of know what the value of those
puppets are, in good condition.
That puppet is...
MIKE: What's this thing worth, in that condition?
CHRIS: 100 bucks
GENE: Yeah.
MIKE: I'll take it.
ROBBIE: I was going to say.
[group laughing]
MIKE: Yeah, he was an extra,
he was in the background, it's not in the greatest condition,
but this is one of the original
Gremlins from the Gremlins movie.
♪ ♪ ♪
MIKE: Let me see the zeppelin, man.
That's cool.
Do you remember where this was from?
CHRIS: The Winds of War.
GENE: Oh yeah, there you go.
CHRIS: TV series. ROBBIE: Yeah.
GENE: The Winds of War.
MIKE: Wow. What are you thinking on this zeppelin?
GENE: Which is one of those, those Emmys up there
is from that, Winds of War.
MIKE: Ah no! And Oscars!
Oh my gosh...
MIKE: I've been watching the Academy Awards
since I was a little kid.
So to actually be standing here in a house in the
Hollywood Hills, holding one of these, is unbelievable.
GENE: This is for The Time Machine.
MIKE: So what year is that then?
GENE: 1961.
ROBBIE: '61.
That was one of my favorite movies of all time.
GENE: It's great.
ROBBIE: I mean, oh my God, it was incredible.
MIKE: This is the pinnacle of the motion picture industry,
and their family has 2.
ROBBIE: Ha!
GENE: And then from '91 for Terminator 2.
MIKE: God, they've got some weight to them.
GENE: Grandpa, Dad.
MIKE: Look at, look at where they've been held, you can see,
look at how wore they are right there,
where they've been grabbed.
MIKE: The piece itself, it just has such energy.
CHRIS: There's only 2 families in Hollywood that have 3
generations of Academy Award winners.
The Coppolas and the Hustons.
CHRIS: We would love to add the Warrens to that.
CHRIS: Let's head upstairs.
MIKE: That's killer. Oh wow!
What's going on with Herman Munster's head over there.
CHRIS: It's actually Fred Gwynne.
You know, he was known as Herman Munster, but...
MIKE: Yeah.
CHRIS: He was in Pet Sematary.
MIKE: I'm a Pet Sematary fan.
But what helped make that movie for me, was Fred Gwynne.
I grew up with Herman Munster, so when I see the head across
the room, that's the first thing I'm asking about.
ROBBIE: Look at that thing.
CHRIS: It was a one-off.
There is not another one of those around.
And it was to be able to melt his face as
he rises up into the camera.
MIKE: Why would you father have kept this?
What would-why would this be significant to him?
GENE: I don't think it was significant to him.
MIKE: Yeah?
ROBBIE: Yeah?
MIKE: I mean, it's kind of an odd thing to have in your
bedroom. [laughs]
GENE: Look we, we collected...
we didn't really collect things,
we just didn't throw things away.
ROBBIE: away.
MIKE: What do you got to have for this?
CHRIS: 150 bucks?
MIKE: I'm into it.
CHRIS: Alright.
MIKE: I'm into it, man.
GENE: Alright, thank you. Done.
MIKE: It was one of my favorite shows from when I was a kid.
GENE: Done.
ROBBIE: So hey, I got to ask about this large semi.
CHRIS: It's from a TV show, but it is already offered to
a family member, so it's not for sale.
ROBBIE: Okay.
MIKE: What's the statue here?
GENE: From The Expendables.
MIKE: What's the casket from?
CHRIS: Sleepy Hollow. TV show.
ROBBIE: What's this architectural piece from?
GENE: Winds of War.
MIKE: Even though they keep telling me,
you know, hey we worked on this,
we worked on that, it's like hearing it for the
first time, every time they say another project.
MIKE: Look at that, what's that from?
GENE: The Man From Atlantis.
MIKE: I remember the show Man From Atlantis,
and I remember this ship going through the water
and the way he would swim was pretty funny.
CHRIS: This was put on wire, you smoke up the room...
MIKE: Yeah.
CHRIS: dry for wet.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
CHRIS: And then you just moved it along with smoke and it
would look like it was traveling through the ocean.
GENE: Aimed at, aimed at that wall right there.
CHRIS: Aimed at that wall.
MIKE: What do you guys value that at?
CHRIS: 10 grand, minimum. Because it was in the actual
opening sequence, and this was shown every single week.
MIKE: Wow.
I can appreciate it, but I'm not a player at 10K.
CHRIS: Let me show you some more stuff in this room.
MIKE: Alright Robbie, you got that?
GENE: I'll take it.
ROBBIE: I got-oh yeah, yeah,
I don't want to be in charge of that.
GENE: Hoah!
ROBBIE: Well yeah, don't be doing that.
MIKE: Let me see that Impala, where's that from?
CHRIS: Mothman Prophecies.
MIKE: This would have been on the bridge, the same way
that that truck was on the bridge that we bought?
CHRIS: Yeah.
This was made from scratch, by hand.
MIKE: No way.
CHRIS: Sculpted.
MIKE: This is a Chevy Impala from that movie,
that they made from scratch.
MIKE: Wow.
CHRIS: This is one of, sort of the hero cars, it was parked
next to Laura Linney's Jeep, which is right there, actually.
The Jeep-
MIKE: Noo! That's the Jeep?
CHRIS: The Jeep.
MIKE: No way!
CHRIS: And the cool thing about this is, we made 2 of these,
because if one broke down...
MIKE: Yeah, yeah.
CHRIS: it was like the star of the show.
That's supposed to be Laura Linney in there.
MIKE: Okay.
CHRIS: So when you shoot this stuff relatively wide...
MIKE: Yeah.
CHRIS: You just need a figure in there.
MIKE: I love both of these.
CHRIS: The Impalas-
MIKE: Have you guys-have you guys thought about anything
like on these, what would you-what you'd have to have?
Like the Impala's nuts!
CHRIS: The Jeep we're not selling because it's a-
it's a big... this piece, yeah.
MIKE: This would have been in more than one shot.
CHRIS: Oh yeah, multiple shots.
MIKE: If you're a Chevy guy, if you're an Impala guy, movie
prop guy, [laughs] I mean, this checks all the boxes.
CHRIS: This one would be a little
bit more expensive than...
MIKE: I'm sure, I'm sure, than the truck.
CHRIS: than the truck.
MIKE: Yeah.
CHRIS: Um...
MIKE: This is, this is... man,
this is it right there, boy.
CHRIS: It would make-
MIKE: It's a great size, it's just,
it's got everything going for it, man.
CHRIS: Yeah.
Actually, in the movie, one of the guys gets out of this car.
You see him get out, run away, and when we come back to it,
it's our miniature, things start to go crazy,
and then it falls down...
in the water.
MIKE: What would you feel comfortable at?
CHRIS: 1,000.
MIKE: I'm doing it.
CHRIS: It's yours.
MIKE: I love it, man.
♪ ♪ ♪
ROBBIE: Hey, I wanted to ask about this.
GENE: United Federation of Planets, it's a...
Star Trek prop from the original series.
ROBBIE: From the original TV series.
GENE: Series, yeah.
ROBBIE: Science Fiction has been around forever,
but Star Trek actually cemented it into pop culture.
Anywhere in the world, people go crazy over Star Trek.
ROBBIE: So this was what, like a bomb or...
GENE: Just some energy field thing that they had on set.
ROBBIE: sat next to the wall.
GENE: There was probably a number of them lined up.
GENE: Our grandfather Gene Warren Sr.
Build the first Starship
Enterprise and a lot of the props for the 2 pilots.
CHRIS: Main-mainly because he was already working on
The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone.
CHRIS: He was the go-to guy for this type of stuff.
ROBBIE: The impact that this family had
on early special effects in the movie industry
and television is mind-blowing.
ROBBIE: So what kind of value's on this?
GENE: Yeah maybe 500 bucks, maybe 700, I mean...
ROBBIE: Star Trek collectors, heh-heh,
I mean... you can't throw a dart at a wall
and not find a Star Trek collector.
That's simple as that.
So you always have to buy the stuff.
ROBBIE: 400.
GENE: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Alright, appreciate it.
GENE: Thank you so much.
ROBBIE: Thank you.
MIKE: What is the Airstream from?
CHRIS: Johnny Mnemonic. From 1995. He's...
MIKE: Keanu Reeves.
CHRIS: Keanu Reeves.
That's the movie where he was carrying gigabytes
of information in his head.
MIKE: Johnny Mnemonic, data entry into the brain
is a little bit of a cult classic.
MIKE: I love the John Wick stuff.
CHRIS: Oh he's great.
MIKE: And-and I love the fact that he's got his own
motorcycle company.
MIKE: I'm looking at this piece because I'm more of
an Airstream guy than a Johnny Mnemonic guy.
MIKE: What's, what's the-
CHRIS: 200 bucks.
MIKE: Alright, I'm doing that.
CHRIS: Alright.
MIKE: I'm doing that.
Here, put that down there in the pile.
CHRIS: Yep, yep.
GENE: These are original storyboards from a
movie called Black Sunday.
A Frankenheimer film.
ROBBIE: I-I remember that movie.
GENE: Yeah, in the '70s.
ROBBIE: Storyboards provide structure and
direction in any movie.
ROBBIE: Ship is in reverse direction.
GENE: Pretty unique storyboards.
ROBBIE: Oh yeah.
GENE: Look at that.
ROBBIE: Oh they are very unique.
ROBBIE: 5 different scenes, Goodyear blimp crashing
into the freakin' ground.
Amazing.
ROBBIE: What kind of value?
GENE: Uh...
500 bucks maybe?
ROBBIE: I like them, I mean, they're one-off pieces.
They'd be incredibly framed up together.
GENE: Yeah, framed up in one big thing.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
ROBBIE: It said Goodyear on it.
I collect gas and oil, and to find a piece that says Goodyear
on it, and is a movie piece, come on.
ROBBIE: It's a crossover for me.
ROBBIE: 400.
GENE: 400.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
GENE: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Alright, doing it.
GENE: Thank you.
ROBBIE: Thank you. Thank you.
GENE: Thank you so much.
MIKE: Ahh!
MIKE: This is a 1930s flatbed truck, man.
It's got the look, it's very cool.
And the best thing it's got going on, is its overall size.
It's huge.
CHRIS: This is from a TV show called Cold Case.
They do a flashback, they were trying to
figure out how the person died.
MIKE: Okay, okay.
CHRIS: So this went off a bridge.
MIKE: This is like one of those murder death series.
CHRIS: Exactly.
And it went off a bridge, and landed in the water
and it'd sink.
MIKE: Oh yeah.
Let's see this thing.
CHRIS: So they-it was commissioned to us,
to build and shoot this and...
MIKE: Ugh... These are transportation-
related collectibles.
The fact that they're handmade and done so well is huge.
I know that market for these.
MIKE: What are you thinking on this, man?
CHRIS: A little bit more than this one.
MIKE: Shhewww...
CHRIS: 1,200? Cold Case never did miniatures.
MIKE: Then you put on top of that that they're connected to
a series or a movie, and it does take it to the next level.
MIKE: Well, are you talking about a little bit more just
because it's a larger piece and
it's from an earlier time period?
CHRIS: Because it...
MIKE: Because the thing is, if you're talking about iconic and
something that somebody would recognize from a show,
this would probably not be obviously
as significant as that.
CHRIS: True, true.
MIKE: When I'm looking at price and thinking about price,
I'm thinking about both of those things.
MIKE: I'm just looking at it from a perspective of, okay,
this is from a movie with Richard Gere,
this is from a TV show that's on late night.
MIKE: That's why I pointed out to him, it's like, hey,
this is a TV show, this is a movie.
What can we do on the price?
CHRIS: 750.
MIKE: Alright, I'm doing it.
CHRIS: Done. It's gone.
MIKE: Alright, I got, I can't wait to show Robbie this.
CHRIS: We love those things, but you know what,
we don't want to store them anymore.
Let them go to a better home.
GENE: A lot of the larger props we've been
talking about are about 20 minutes up the road.
Why don't you guys grab your car and meet us back here
and we'll drive up together.
MIKE: We'll follow you up there?
GENE: Yeah sure.
MIKE: Alright, man.
♪ ♪ ♪
MIKE: Alright, look at all the stuff outside that container.
There you go, Robbie, there's a jet ski for ya.
ROBBIE: No, I don't want a jet ski.
MIKE: Woo.
CHRIS: The Warren Backlot.
ROBBIE: Man...
MIKE: Whaddup!
ROBBIE: You guys weren't kidding.
MIKE: What do you want to show us first?
GENE: Careful with the rattlesnakes, okay?
CHRIS: Oh we got a bunch of molds around here.
MIKE: This is pretty cool.
CHRIS: Land of the Lost. That's, that's Emily.
ROBBIE: That's Emily.
MIKE: What do you value this one at?
CHRIS: This is probably something we'd hold onto,
because if we're going to keep the dinosaurs for now,
we want to keep the whole collection together.
MIKE: I mean, that's a, that's...
GENE: Yeah, this is kind of special to me, even.
MIKE: Absolutely.
MIKE: What's this?
Look at his hair on the back.
CHRIS: Is that Cha-Ka, from Land of the Lost?
It is Cha-Ka.
MIKE: Wow.
MIKE: I love the molds.
MIKE: What's this?
CHRIS: Space suit.
That's from Outer Limits, that our grandfather did.
GENE: Late '50s, early '60s.
MIKE: To be able to look through these
molds and have the brothers tell
us what each one is, is incredible.
ROBBIE: What is this?
CHRIS: This is a mouse.
GENE: This is an old Mickey Mouse.
ROBBIE: Oh it's Mickey Mouse.
MIKE: That's not pie-eyed Mickey so
it's not real early Mickey.
MIKE: We're having a moment, we're having
an experience with them.
MIKE: What about this one here?
CHRIS: This was from Stephen King's It.
This clown is Tim Curry, he played Pennywise.
MIKE: He scared the hell out of me.
MIKE: But when you have the mold by itself,
in a store, it has to be presented in a way
where someone looks at it and they can tell
what it is immediately.
ROBBIE: What's this?
CHRIS: Oh...
ROBBIE: It's a face of some sort.
MIKE: That's a, it's Planet of the Apes, isn't it?
ROBBIE: King Kong, maybe?
I don't know, I can't tell.
CHRIS: No, we didn't do anything on King Kong.
MIKE: A lot of times I'm asking him,
what is this mold, what is that?
You know, because you can't see it.
There's-there's no definition to the piece.
MIKE: So what are you guys thinking on Mickey?
CHRIS: It's pretty rare, at least 1,000, maybe 1,500?
MIKE: Okay.
And then what about the gorilla?
CHRIS: 500?
MIKE: Okay.
CHRIS: Space suit, super old, 1,200.
CHRIS: And believe it or not...
GENE: Pennywise, even broken... 2,000.
CHRIS: 2,000.
MIKE: Yeah.
GENE: $2,000.
MIKE: So I'm imagining these pieces sitting on a table by
themselves, and I'm having a hard time figuring out how
I'm going to present them and how that customer
is going to make that connection.
MIKE: For me to bring this back to Nashville or to Iowa,
I can't-I can't get anywhere near those numbers,
I don't think.
MIKE: It's a fine line you have to walk between really
appreciating it and getting into it, because this is what
made that iconic piece for the movie.
But when you're looking at it from a retail standpoint and
the way you're going to present it,
it really has to grab a hold of you.
MIKE: Alright, are you interested in
any of this stuff, Robbie?
ROBBIE: I like the-the ape.
But I don't know what you'd do with it.
Yeah it's like...
MIKE: Okay so...
if this is display, if you're displaying that...
ROBBIE: I already know.
MIKE: And you guys aren't sure what film it's from.
CHRIS: No we're not.
ROBBIE: Right.
MIKE: Or TV show.
CHRIS: I can't, yeah.
MIKE: That's the thing, so it doesn't really have any
pedigree other than it's from your company.
GENE: Right.
ROBBIE: Right.
Ean, whichis cool within itself.
ROBBIE: Look at the teeth in there, that thing's cool.
ROBBIE: This ape head mold, it just brings me
back to another time in my childhood.
King Kong, Godzilla, Planet of the Apes.
It scared the hell out of me as a kid.
ROBBIE: 2-and- a-quarter.
GENE: I'm good with that.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
CHRIS: That's good enough for us.
MIKE: What else you guys got?
GENE: We have some trains over here you can take a look at.
MIKE: Yeah, where are those at?
These are huge!
CHRIS: They're huge.
MIKE: This one right here is the most appealing to me,
the caboose.
GENE: It was in Atomic Train.
MIKE: I'm a huge Rob Lowe fan.
CHRIS: 250?
MIKE: Alright, we're doing it.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
MIKE: My brother and I are geeking out
about things that his family made for
the film industry.
MIKE: Wow.
ROBBIE: I don't know.
MIKE: What's this plane from?
GENE: Spike Jonze commercial for Buddy Lee jeans.
MIKE: It's been mega crashed.
GENE: Yeah.
ROBBIE: There's the tail, Mike.
ROBBIE: It's hard to imagine these pieces that look like
broken toys, actually came to life on TV
and in movies and commercials.
MIKE: Woo.
That's incredible.
125 bucks.
GENE: Sounds good to me.
Mike: [laughs] Alright, man.
GENE: I'm outta here on that.
ROBBIE: What's that?
CHRIS: Clive Barker's Lord of Illusion.
ROBBIE: It's cool.
CHRIS: 75 bucks.
[chuckles]
ROBBIE: I'll take it.
CHRIS: Johnny Mnemonic.
MIKE: The 2 trailers and the boat,
what are you guys thinking?
CHRIS: 100 bucks apiece.
CHRIS: Right on.
ROBBIE: Oh man...
GENE: Oh, our Gremlins.
We were looking for those.
MIKE: Look at that.
GENE: Would you go for 250 each?
MIKE: I would, absolutely.
I absolutely would.
CHRIS: Alright, they're yours, man.
MIKE: I can't imagine what it would feel like to be
such a part of so many kids' childhood memories.
MIKE: Look at this, look at this. Ugh!
CHRIS: What is it?
Oh my God, I forgot all about that thing.
MIKE: Urgh!
CHRIS: That was our grandfather's.
MIKE: Look at his eyes, they're like glowing in the night.
ROBBIE: I know.
CHRIS: And the copper is because it breathed fire.
MIKE: Really!? GENE: Yeah.
ROBBIE: What's it made out of?
GENE: So they pumped real fire through that thing.
MIKE: I can see the copper tube in his mouth, it would...
GENE: Yep.
CHRIS: Blow it out, yeah.
MIKE: Wow. This is nuts.
What's this from, guys?
CHRIS: You know, I can't even-can you remember?
GENE: I can't, I don't, I don't know.
ROBBIE: The thing is cool.
MIKE: Like, what time period do you think it's from though?
When it's made?
GENE: Late '50s, early '60s.
MIKE: It's really interesting, really early.
And all it is is the head, but you can tell it's just
different the way it's made, the way it's constructed.
Out of everything I've seen today,
this just feels different to me.
MIKE: So your grandfather made this?
CHRIS: Whether or not he made it or-or you know,
it was his company, I mean...
GENE: I wouldn't doubt it if Wah Chang...
CHRIS: Wah Chang probably sculpted that,
actually, their partner.
ROBBIE: Who?
CHRIS: Wah Chang.
ROBBIE: So who was that?
MIKE: Tell us about it.
GENE: Our father's partner.
CHRIS: Wah Chang...
ROBBIE: Okay.
CHRIS: was a partner.
He was a sculptor, world -renowned, actually.
He sculpted the first Barbie for Mattel.
MIKE: Really.
ROBBIE: Really?
CHRIS: Yeah.
GENE: He was Chinese.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
GENE: You know and back then, the way that Hollywood was,
they didn't welcome many people outside of the industry.
ROBBIE: Right. Yeah.
GENE: My grandfather was good at bringing in
people with talent into his place.
ROBBIE: Wow.
GENE: He actually hired a lot of blacklisted people in
Hollywood at his toy company, because they needed a job.
MIKE: That's awesome.
MIKE: So you guys have no idea what project it's from.
CHRIS: No, and it's going to give a, I'm going to go home...
GENE: We're going to take it home today with us
and figure it out, 'cause we have no idea.
Mike: [laughs] So you're not, you don't want to sell it.
GENE: Not this one.
MIKE: I don't blame them, because when they
start doing research on it, they're going to
be able to connect it to something from their family,
and then that's going to push it forward value-wise.
[crowd screaming]
[expolsion]
MIKE: You got a squid out here?
CHRIS: Yeah. He's a little parched.
Mike: [laughs] Wow, wow, wow.
ROBBIE: What movie was this from?
GENE: Peter Benchley's The Beast.
ROBBIE: The Beast, and this is the beast?
CHRIS: That's the beast.
GENE: That's the beast.
ROBBIE: Look at this thing.
MIKE: In the mid -1970s, Jaws launched a
whole new era of movies that villainized animals
in a whole new way.
Movies like Congo, Cujo, Lake Placid, Anaconda, Piranha.
All of these took a natural fear and made it supernatural.
GENE: Peter Benchley wrote Jaws.
ROBBIE: Okay.
GENE: He also wrote this book in 1991.
And within 2 years, they were making the movie.
MIKE: After the juggernaut success of Jaws, Hollywood
was going to do anything that he wanted to do next.
CHRIS: Basic story is, Jaws but it's a squid.
Mike: [chuckles]
MIKE: It's funny to say Attack Of The Killer Squid,
but you could take the worst qualities in any animal and
blow that up into the biggest nightmare that you ever had.
MIKE: It feels like this thing's still alive.
[laughs]
ROBBIE: It is.
MIKE: Alright, let me check the pulse.
Yeah, it's-it's dead.
ROBBIE: It made you terrified.
It made you terrified to go in the water.
After I saw Jaws as a kid, I didn't want to go in the water.
But to see this thing, this gigantic squid eating a ship,
it's crazy!
GENE: Each bundle of cables moves one tentacle.
ROBBIE: Holy Toledo!
GENE: These-these were 40 feet long or 30 feet long,
and you had them on rigs that you can just...
MIKE: Really.
ROBBIE: There's a claw in there.
MIKE: Yeah, it does.
ROBBIE: That had to have come out.
MIKE: You were able to shoot that out?
GENE: Yeah, with the tentacles going like this.
And the- and the beak...
MIKE: Really.
GENE: doing its thing.
MIKE: How many people did it take to run it?
GENE: We had at one point, like 16 or 18 people,
all push-pulling these things.
ROBBIE: Damn, that things smells.
MIKE: So it's like this huge ventriloquist doll. [laughs]
CHRIS: Exactly. That's what it is.
ROBBIE: This squid is unbelievable.
Each arm, how the tentacle moved in the water.
I mean, it's mind-blowing.
CHRIS: I spent probably 1,000 hours under water
shooting that, that movie.
ROBBIE: This.
CHRIS: Yeah.
MIKE: Really?
CHRIS: Under water.
In the big tank that our father had, it was 100-by-100,
21 feet deep, 1 million gallon water tank.
GENE: 1 million gallon tank.
ROBBIE: A million gallon water tank out here?
CHRIS: Yeah.
MIKE: And that's where this thing was living at?
CHRIS: That's where we shot.
GENE: Shot.
Mike: [laughs] Oh wow.
ROBBIE: Avatar, Wonder Woman, Black Panther,
you know, everything nowadays is on a green screen.
These guys are floating in a tank, there's 20 people
operating it just to make this thing move.
ROBBIE: Can you imagine every position they had
to be in, to make it swallow that ship.
MIKE: So his skin's coming off here a little bit.
GENE: Yeah.
MIKE: I can't believe how well it's lasted out here.
CHRIS: It's not foam, it's silicone.
Over the years, when the materials changed,
even foam to foam, the newer foam lasted longer
than the older foam.
This is the most modern silicone that's out there,
it will not decay.
MIKE: So what's going on with this?
I mean, is this part of the family,
you guys thinking about...
I mean how do you gauge the value?
CHRIS: This... unless somebody comes to us
within the next few weeks or so,
this will probably get parted to tentacles only.
MIKE: Really! Why?
CHRIS: Yeah.
ROBBIE: And then try and sell those off?
CHRIS: Because, because otherwise,
it's just going to sit here and continue to...
MIKE: Oh you would sell just the tentacles.
ROBBIE: Just thetentacles.
CHRIS: People could buy the tentacles
and put it on their wall.
GENE: And we- and we would...
ROBBIE: Wow.
CHRIS: All of a sudden it gets parted.
MIKE: Well I don't want to see that happen to it.
So in order for us to fix this...
GENE: Yeah, it's a silicone glue.
MIKE: Okay, that's all we need to do is glue that.
GENE: That's all you need to do.
CHRIS: Yep, yep.
MIKE: On that seam there.
CHRIS: And a little bit of a cleanup,
and it'll clean pretty well, because it's silicone.
MIKE: What are you thinking on this thing?
CHRIS: 500 bucks. GENE: Yeah.
MIKE: Really? I mean, it just seems... phew...
CHRIS: We can get a little bit more for the tentacles,
but we'd rather not have it parted.
GENE: Yeah, we'd rather it stay its shape.
CHRIS: We'd rather not part it.
MIKE: I mean, you guys are like making us buy it.
CHRIS: Well it's part of the deal.
[group laughing]
MIKE: Alright, man.
ROBBIE: Awesome.
CHRIS: Alright.
MIKE: Whether or not you're a fan of the movie,
this squid is a work of art.
ROBBIE: You guys act like it's heavy or something.
CHRIS: Ugh...
MIKE: Yeah-argh...
ROBBIE: Get it all the way in there, all the way,
tentacles and all.
MIKE: Yeah...
MIKE: It's just mind -blowing to think that one family
was a part of so many iconic productions.
Mike: [laughs]
ROBBIE: Today was a walk through
Hollywood visual effects history.
And I'm glad I got to ride on that train.
MIKE: [laughs]
CHRIS: Thank you, thank guys.
ROBBIE: Appreciate it, love the family history, man.
I love the family history.
MIKE: I'm so glad I bought that!
MIKE: Imagine your family's history not
just being your family's history.
I mean, this is the film industry's history, and it's
American pop culture history.
MIKE: See you down the road, guys.
CHRIS: I know that our grandfather and
our father would be proud that 2 of us
are teaming up to create Warren Brother's visual effects
and start 3rd generation independent company.
We for sure want to make them look good and do a good job,
and keep the lineage moving.
[honks horn]
MIKE: See you down the road!
GENE: Later.
[honks horn]
CHRIS: Thank you!
Mike: [CHUCKLES]
MIKE: Ready?
OFF-CAMERA: Go ahead... Thank you.
ROBBIE: These might be needs that she needs filled, but you
might have to do some damage to your own psyche.
MIKE: Yeah.
Off-camera: [laughs]
MIKE: So we'll follow you from here?
GENE: Yeah, you follow us from here.
ROBBIE: Alright. Sounds good. See ya.
GENE: Alright. See you guys.
CHRIS: Brothers, say goodbye to the brothers.
[group laughing]