When the Netflix series “Wednesday” needed a guillotine recently, it did not have to venture far. A Holly Hollywood propeller house called History to hire had an available, standing more than eight feet high with a properly threatening blade. (The company also offers pillars, but the show was not on the market for anything.)
The 33,000 square feet of the company is like the attic filled with treasures from the film and television industry, filled with hundreds of thousands of articles that help bring to life. He has a Timothee Chalamet guitar used in “A Complete Uncommon”, luggage of “Titanic”, a black car of “The Addams family”.
Are you looking for period details? You can find different iterations of wheat boxes dating back to the 1940s, huge television cameras with rotating lenses from the 1950s, a hair dyer with a long pipe that connects to a plastic hood from the 60s, a paid telephone from the 70s and a Welfpoft Walkman of Sony Walkman from the 80s.
The story of Hire, which Jim and Pam Elyea have had for almost four decades, is part of the crucial but often invisible infrastructure which maintains Hollywood baracting and contributes to making it one of the best places in the world to make cinema and television.
“People simply do not realize how precious a business is to support the appearance of a film,” said Nancy Haigh, a sets decorator who found everything, from a retro pork and beans to a studio crane at a ton there for “he was once in Hollywood”, for which she won an Oscar. “But it is because people like them exist that your cinema experience has such a life.”
When “Good Night, and Good Luck” was filmed in town with a tight budget of $ 7 million, its sets decorator, Jan Pascale, persuaded the Elyeas to rent them vintage cameras, microphones and reduced prices. When the director, George Clooney, really wanted an old publishing machine in Moviola, remembers Pascale, the Elyeas found her in a local school. And they had not only the tex machines that production needed, but also workers who knew how to work them.
“I don't know what we would do without them”, said Pascale, who won an Oscar for “Mank”.
No one likes to entertain this idea. But with fewer films and television programs shot in Los Angeles these days, and the story to hire business, the Elyeas fear that they are unable to renew their lease for five more years. If they close, Los Angeles will lose another piece of the dynamic ecosystem that has kept it attractive for filmmakers, even if states like Georgia and New Mexico attract productions with lucrative tax credits. Some Angelenos fear a vicious circle: if the city continues to lose talents and local resources, even more productions will flee.
The Elyeas were doing enough before the pandemic to employ 25 people. Now they employ 11 and have reduced savings to stay open. The rent is expected to increase by 25% in July, when their lease is up. Now they are faced with a difficult choice.
“What are we doing?” PAM, 71, asked. “Do we say yes-We think there will be a business here? Where do we say:” Do you know, we had a good race? “”
Field radios with vintage boxes of Froot loops
The Elyeas met at the design school. Jim, 74, has become an artist in the courtroom, but an abuse at the sex on which he worked in the 1980s embittered him during this career. His parents had an antiquity store and Jim had always been a collector. So when a friend who was a production designer asked Jim to come to work on sets, he was sold.
“He loved it,” said Pam. That was what he wanted to do.
The couple opened their accessories rental activity outside their apartment. Their first big break occurred when they obtained the concert to rent flak vests, field radios and medical equipment at the film by Oliver Stone in 1986 “Plato”. (They now admit that they may have exaggerated their size and expertise.) They quickly opened a 4,000 square feet store, a fraction of their current size.
Using his eye for antiques, Jim has bought many items over the years. The craftsmen have reproduced the others. The work called for creativity and flexibility. A camera crane of 8,000 pounds from the 1930s – shown in films like “Hail, César!” And “Babylon” – had to be changed to comply with modern security laws.
During a recent afternoon inside the warehouse, Dave McCullough, an accessory, was blurred on a workstation showing a microphone stand to a base for which it was not designed. He would later use a 3D printer to make a new light of counting – the light that indicates to the artists of the camera at any time – for an original RCA TK60 TV camera from the 1960s and consider using a thermal pistol to make a slightly richer red shade.
“What is great to be in a building like this is that I have the last century of objects as a reference,” said McCullough, who worked to hire for nine years. “Many things here have had several lives before they happen to us.”
No detail is too small, said Richard Adkins, graphic director of the company, who recreated hooful vintage cereal boxes of Cheerios, Froot loops and revolved brands like sugar jets for prop. Does a scene call a pack of Luckies? Depending on the year, or even the month in which the film is shot, it can help find one with the right Lucky Strike logo.
He folds his eyes towards a sovereign as he measured the height of a glass bottle. A shooting in the 1980s was looking for a Budweiser bottle in a size that is no longer made, then Adkins pulled two candidates from his vintage stock.
“There is a lot of research that can be done on the internet, but there is also a natural advantage of being a person who remembers,” said Adkins, 76, who has been doing this work for 51 years and has worked in history for the rental for 27.
Perhaps the most fulfilling part of work, said PAM, is to dive into history itself. There is an entire library in the warehouse devoted to this work, filled with books and reference guides that could themselves be accessories.
“Sears have been catalog for a long time,” said Jim, signaling to a piled up shelf. A catalog of the Montgomery hall of 1922. A volume of Marshall Field on “jewelry and European modes” of 1896.
A musical linked to Broadway centered on “Soul Train” recently needed to rent television cameras, said PAM. When searching for cameras, the History for Hire team discovered that the show was one of the first to employ cameras operators. So they sent a camera – and a photo. And now, public members will see a female cameras operator in the show, a spokesperson for the musical, “Hippest Trip: The Soul Train Musical”, confirmed.
Pam said he was told once “people learn their history of films”. She has not forgotten.
Each accessory has its own filmography
Scan a barcode and the history of the Hire inventory system will reveal the past lives of an accessory. A very appreciated vintage camera – used in the 1992 “Chaplin” film with Robert Downey Jr. – was in Antarctica and Mexico. A brunette bag defeated by the bad weather appeared in “The Patriot”, “The Alamo” and “Pirates of the Caribbean”.
For 10% of the price of the propeller, it can be yours for a week. Do you want a wooden drum stick from the 1970s? It's $ 2. Do you want a set of vistalite drums? It is closer to $ 495.
The Elyeas should rent many battery sets and many, many, many battery sticks to cover the $ 500,000 they pay each year to rent the building where they store them all. Pam said that she agreed with a little work in other places and noted that it was logical to film, let's say, “Oppenheimer” in New Mexico. She has sent her accessories all over the world for years.
But Pam said that she would need more local production in Los Angeles to keep its doors open. To fill some of the gaps left by her smallest staff, she began to hire people like Sadie Spezzano for the strange working day here or there. Spezzano is herself a sets decorator, but her work has also been slow. Spezzano therefore picked up overtime in a company that she has often visited as a customer.
“There are so many talented and incredible people who work in our industry who only grasp the straws to stay afloat,” she said.
Sets decorators say they have already lost several local accessory houses, as recently as this year. False library had specialized in the supply of light books that designers could use to fill out a study. Modern accessoriesWho had been a must for futuristic objects, closed some time ago.
“It becomes more and more difficult here,” said Pascale. “Losing history for rental and what they have – I don't know what we would do.”
Pam intends to keep the doors open for as long as she can for herself, her husband – who has Parkinson's disease – and her staff.
“Neither Jim or I are really ready to throw in the towel,” she said. Perhaps, she said, they will sign a two-year lease, rather than a five-year lease. And then they will see how it goes.
Pam still thinks. She and Jim cannot work indefinitely. She had thought, if the company was still viable, to put it back at the next generation, which learned the profession – perhaps some of its long -standing employees. But at the moment, it is a little clear if the management of the company would be a boon or a burden.
She knows this: “I don't want to be the last accessories house in Los Angeles.”
