The Nostromo Restored

[Vile]

In my book this was criminal negligence by the studio, but at least it looks like it's not too late for the Nostromo:

http://www.propstore.com/nostromo.htm

[electric indigo]

It hurts to read how they treated the model. You can see lots of pics of the Yellow Nostromo on Dennis Lowe's site:

http://www.zen171398.zen.co.uk/Alien.html

I still have the great Halcyon kit somewhere in my stack.

[taksraven]

In my book this was criminal negligence by the studio, but at least it looks like it's not too late for the Nostromo:

http://www.propstore.com/nostromo.htm

Not criminal negligence. It was very kind of the studio (and the director), in fact, not to chainsaw the model after production. It's not unheard of so it can be considered fortunate that this model still exists at all....

Taksraven

[Vile]

Hey, great link, electric indigo!

The problem, as ever, is copyright - that's why studios would rather destroy ( or leave to rot) props than let someone else have them. You could get around it with a contract that retains copyright with the studio, but corporate law is too expensive for enthusiasts, and studios don't really have the incentive to bother.

Still, it's good to see that something occasionally survives the crusher!

[AcroRay]

Not as bad as what happened to the amazing model of the CYGNUS from Disney's THE BLACK HOLE. It was left outside in a crate to rot, then was run over with a forklift. Employees made off with chunks of it.

"According to an ex-Disney employee, the model was stored in a crate in the 'Boneyard', where old props and such are stored on the Disney lot. It was rained on a great deal, and, one day, smashed to pieces by a poorly-driven forklift which accidentally backed into the crate. Pieces of the model were taken by various folks as souveniers."

http://www.starshipmodeler.com/Other/js_cyg.htm

If you've ever seen the film, the ship is spectacularly beautiful - hand-tooled brass, steel and glass, 12 foot long, 175 pounds. Each of the two (one destroyed for FX) cost $100,000 to build. Amazing.

[Vile]

Makes you wish there were some more dishonest employees in the old SFX studios! Future historians, like today's, will rely on all those hidden caches of 'liberated' goods to make sense of our time.

Of course, it's much easier to keep movie vehicles 'alive' these days - computer models don't tend to get damaged as easily, and there are usually a lot more copies ...

[sketchley]

THanks for bringing this to my attention. The restoration project is fascinating (who know, might learn a few tricks to apply to my models / house repair in a decade or so).

I think what's also equally interesting is how blazé the model looks, but how cool it looks on screen (and I'm not talking about lighting and other F/X around the model). It just goes to highlight the genius behind that movie.

[taksraven]

Some stuff has been rescued from bins over the years. Some stuff has been deliberately destroyed. All of the sets and models from 2001 were destroyed on Kubricks orders (so the story goes), so when it came time to make 2010, everything had to be rebuilt from scratch just by looking at the images from the original film.

The largest Enterprise D model from ST:TNG was found in a restaurant and saved from that place. (Story goes that it was auctioned in 2006 for over half a million... see here)

And the legend is that this unique ship from the Space:1999 episode "The Infernal Machine" was smashed against a wall at the conclusion of the filming of the episode by the SFX director as he found the ship extremely frustrating to work with....

Taksraven

[kaiotheforsaken]

They actually had the auction televised and it did in fact net half a million US. They had dozens of ships for sale, made me wish I had the disposable income to buy even one of the smaller ones.

Though the had a special prior to the auction about items selected from the gigantic warehouse full of Trek stuff and they didn't mention the Ent-D being in a restaurant. They actually talked a a healthy amount about that piece since it was the largest of the Ent-D studio models and gave a nice history of the piece and design of the ship. Whether that bit in the restaurant is true or just omitted when they spoke about the piece, I guess I couldn't really say. I find it unlikely though based on the volume of things they had. Paramount had basically saved everything practical in this gigantic building from TOS to enterprise and it seemed like almost every existing studio model was in that collection.

Edited August 23, 2009 by kaiotheforsaken

[Totoro242]

Though the had a special prior to the auction about items selected from the gigantic warehouse full of Trek stuff and they didn't mention the Ent-D being in a restaurant. They actually talked a a healthy amount about that piece since it was the largest of the Ent-D studio models and gave a nice history of the piece and design of the ship. Whether that bit in the restaurant is true or just omitted when they spoke about the piece, I guess I couldn't really say. I find it unlikely though based on the volume of things they had. Paramount had basically saved everything practical in this gigantic building from TOS to enterprise and it seemed like almost every existing studio model was in that collection.

By restaurant, I would assume it had been loaned out to a Planet Hollywood somewhere. If you have ever been in one, its packed with memorabilia from all sorts of studios.