Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538452
6 PROP CULTURE I FALL 2025 WHAT IS THE MOST MEMORABLE PROP YOU HAD TO MAKE OR USE FOR A SHOW? CAROLINE STRATTON – LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA This story always comes to mind. Early in my career, I had a scene involving a young boy who gets lost in the wilderness and finds a berry bush. He eats the berries which make him sick. The director wanted to see him grabbing the berries off the bush, and wanted the berries to not be overly recognizable. He wanted something similar to a goji berry and was insistent that he wanted an insert of the boy grabbing the berries off the bush. We asked around town, but it was not berry season, so we weren't able to find any goji bushes, or any others, with fruit on them. I did a lot of research and ended up buying four goji bushes and some red currants which are sold with little branches still attached, much like grapes. I used a very thin fishing line to tie the tiny currant branches to the goji plants. The child was easily able to grab the berries off the plant without breaking or revealing the rig. They were easy to reset, safe for him to eat, and looked like a simple red berry. I've always been proud of that moment of ingenuity. ROBERTO PIZARRO NUÑEZ – MEXICO CITY, MEXICO One of my all-time favorite props to work on was Melquíades's ancient book in our adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude Season 1. We wrapped it in textured leather and filled every page with Sanskrit calligraphy (huge thanks to our Latin & Sanskrit expert for getting it just right). The lively illustrations really steer the story, and that hefty tome ended up feeling like another cast member on set. I teamed up with an awesome crew—a binder, calligrapher, translator, and illustrators—and spent months perfecting every detail. Watching the actors lose themselves in its pages reminded me why I love this job. It's definitely one of my proudest moments. KEITH WALTERS – ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO Whenever I've been asked about my most memorable prop I've had to come up with, I invariably reply with the bolt cattle gun used by Javier Bardem in the Coen brothers' film No Country for Old Men. I've had to come up with props from gatling guns on horseback to Abraham Lincoln's pocketknife, but hands down that odd contraption used by the evil Anton Chigurh is the prize for me. It was a really simple build. The SFX crew milled the actual bolt gun piece. We found a pair of compressed air tanks the right size and weight in a surplus store and connected an air hose from tank to bolt gun, and we had a very scary and unusual device of death. DON O'REILLY – NEW YORK, NEW YORK On The Blacklist, a script called for a working Russian M-125 Fialka cipher machine from the Cold War era. We were told there was only one in the States— at a museum in DC—but it would take two weeks of red tape to get it. I needed one in five days. Hours of research and phone calls—all dead ends. Finally, I found a collector in Vermont who had recently picked one up at an auction in Europe. Touchdown! On the way back from Vermont, I got a call about blue revisions—they now needed two real cipher machines. Luckily, the property gods were on my side that day. The collector had spare parts from another machine. He brought them down, and I built one to match! DON O'REILLY KEITH WALTERS CAROLINE STRATTON ROBERTO PIZARRO NUÑEZ ASK THE EXPERTS –The PMG Membership Committee