Richard A. Coyle Interview

Richard A. Coyle Interview.

Q. Rich, you’re fairly well known for your props, how did you get into propmaking?

A.     Star Wars! If I had not gone to see the first showing of the first Star Wars film I might well be living a non sci-fi, normal life now (the Horror!). What did me in was the flyer on the theater window that we saw on the way out: a flyer for an upcoming Star Trek Convention. A convention with some special guests, one that was a must see for me, my favorite author of all time, Mr. Robert Heinlein. That bit got me totally hooked; I HAD to go to that con. Of course, meeting Walter Koenig, George Takei and Grace Lee Whitney was great, but Robert Heinlein… whoa.

Q. So what happened there?

A.     Heaven happened. Two days of sci-fi bliss, a hotel full of fans just like me. Watched Star Trek 16mm films projected on bed sheets. Met George and Walter, fell in love with Grace, and was in awe of Mr. Heinlein. Drooled over the dealer’s room, bought  StarLog Magazines and wished I could afford more, learned that there was a whole world of sci-fi out there, learned about hall costuming and masquerades. Saw lots of fans wearing costumes of their heroes. If anything lead to my total downfall, hall costuming was it.

Q. How?

A.     I had to join in. With funny luck, I found fliers for other upcoming cons. One was being held within a month, another Star Trek con right here in Phoenix, where I was living at the time. So I made my first hall costume and my first ray gun. I did a childhood hero, one that was simple enough to do in a hurry and on the cheap. I did the TV version of Flash Gordon, the one from the 1950s. A “T” Shirt with a lightning bolt, a wide gun belt, bloused black paints, black beetle boots. And a ray gun

Q.    What kind of ray gun was this first one?

A.     I took a toy Johnny Eagle Mugumba automatic pistol by Topper Toys, pulled off the slide and replaced it with a rounded CD microphone body. I also cut up a Meco Star Trek Communicator electronics board to get the beeping sound part and hooked it up to the insides of the CD microphone body with an aluminum knob from a 10 turn pot, so I could change the sound. Finally, I added an aluminum radio knob drilled out with a plastic rod and a light on the barrel.

My first prop and it had sound and light effects. I then used the CD microphone’s hanger to make a mystery holster, resembling Star Trek’s, and I was off.

Q. How did it go?

A.     Well, I was an instant hit. This was back in 1977, so a working ray gun was totally unheard of. Everyone wanted to play with it. I was even talked into entering the masquerade, and that, initially, seemed to have been a mistake, for when I was introduced to the show, hecklers alone seemed interested. I drew the blaster and fired at them, and that drew applause. The audience loved the fact that I had a firing prop. Props to the rescue, again.

Q. So this led to Hollywood and professional work?

A.     Almost. The next year I had a convention planned. This one was bigger, called WorldCon. It was going to be five days, so I geared up and went to work making a new ray gun, one I hoped to sell to help defray the costs of attending.

I enlisted some local fans in doing this. We ran short of time and were barely able to finish a few machine gun bodied ray guns for ourselves, along with creating simple costumes to help “display them.” Again, these ray guns had light and sound effects.

The first indicator of how things were going was when my friend, Chris A. Mathews, found me at the end of the first day, and said I had spoiled his day at the con. That is, he had saved all year to buy neat things at the con, and then found that he was WEARING on his hips the neatest thing at the con, the then-named Beldorn Blasters.

The second was that it took me three full days to see all of the dealers’ room. I kept getting stopped and asked to show the blaster, which was like opening an air lock aboard a space ship: I literally vacuumed anyone within earshot to me. Or, to mix metaphors, I would become land-locked in a churning sea of fans wanting to see and hear my little (but loud!) blaster.

Most of the dealers appreciated my mob gathering abilities, and they were sure were to ask for a demo in front of their table, if things were a little slow.

I was hooked on cons and thought I had a way to do them and pay for them. I would make ray guns, become a dealer and do as many cons as I could. And I started that year, building Beldorn Blasters and working cons.

I even struck a deal with StarLog to sell them Beldorn Blasters, (see issue #43, near the back) but in the time it took for the first ads to come out, my wife of 13 years and I separated, and I moved to LA where I kept working cons.

A lot of these cons were in LA. There I meet Tulio Peroni who was trying to run a group called “ Sci-Fi Consultants” that offered to help sci-fi films get the science in their stories accurate, and he knew a company looking for original style ray guns for film work. This was my introduction to Modern Props. They ordered three versions of my Beldorn Blasters with a few minor changes, primarily to remove all sound effects. THIS was the beginning of my professional prop work for films and TV. I soon realized that I had to consider making and selling props to fans a professional job, more so, as fans tend to expect better finishes than the studios. (Pix 3= Blasters) This was where I worked on my first Star Trek Film “The Wrath of Kahn.” I made the wrist com, boatswain’s whistle and medical scanner used within the film.

Q. So you stayed with “Modern Props”?

A.     No, it was piece work. I was renting half of a wood workers shop next door and only getting paid by the job, and, as with all new arrivals in Hollywood, I was underpaid and under worked.  I started looking around and found another shop called “The Hand Prop Room” in Culver City, so I assembled my most exciting models and arranged an interview.

Q. How do the job hunt go?

A.     Very well. I was demonstrating my props to Mr. John Ramsey when the owner, Mr. Allen Levine, came into the shop, saw all my stuff and excitedly asked, “Who made these?” which is Hollywood-speak for “Is he available?”, and John indicated me. I was promptly hired.

With a steady paycheck my wife and I could rent one of those quant Los Angeles converted garage to apartment deals.

This job only lasted for about 10 months because Hand Props had almost no sci-fi or futuristic style props and most productions were not willing to foot the bill to pay for a totally built up and original prop when they could just go and rent from Modern Props. In an ironic twist, I ended up competing with my own earlier work.

Q. What did you do at Hand Prop Room?

A.     The only sci-fi show was the opening of the 2^nd Season of “The Greatest American Hero.” This show used a few of my props from Hand Prop Room and some of my earlier work from Modern Props. At the former, I made the new instruction book and got a lot of excitement over being able to hardwire an actual radar detector to read out 113 miles per hour.

At the end of ten months I went independent, and one of the first things I worked on was “Ice Pirates” for Ellis Mercantile. Among others.

When word got out among the various prop shops and film and TV people that I was pretty good at electronics, they kept me busy, steadily sending work my way.

In fact, that was the real secret to my success: electronics. I would first get the job to make what Nicholas Meyers called “winky blinkies,” in Star Trek Two, and then I would sell then on the fact I could also make the housing for them; it was the tail wagging the dog. 

 

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Q. So you made mostly “winky blinkies”?

A.     Mainly, that was what got me the calls and thus the jobs. Sadly, it bugged a lot of the LA crowd of would be prop makers to see this come-out-of-nowhere hick from Phoenix get all these jobs, but most of them had worked on model making and had no electronic skills and often did only copies of props already used in films and TV shows, and the film makers wanted new props and new ideas, which I often did have. And the electronics, the lights and so on.

Q. So you were a little unpopular with the local boys?

A. A little. I did make a few friends, and they got to work on a few of the projects with me.

Q. Like what projects?

A.     We got a deal making Nautilus reproductions with Disney, thanks mainly to a friend, Mr. Scott Brodeen. He made a great 16 inch model of Captain Nemo’s  boat, so we were getting commercial work as well. We made props and models for the fans and collectors between film work.

Film work like Star Trek Four, Five and Six. A couple of small films like “Nightmare at Noon,” “Titan Find,” and others. We got to visit the Paramount lot and see some of the films being filmed and walk the film sets.

Q. What was that like, to visit the sets?

A.     It does kind of disturb your enjoyment of the films’ suspense of reality, once you have seen how crudely made most of the sets were. The Star Trek skit on “Saturday Night” with the lamps hung behind panels and the old clothes wringer used to feed the paper through the wall to look like an automatic print out is just about dead on.

I saw that the turbo elevator was a wood frame with a pretty interior and a crude wood frame exterior. The green textured panel detail of the wall interiors shown in the films were, in real life, just carpet padding. More reality busting, one panel had a small tear in it.

Q. That was bad?

A.     Oh yes, because I’d be watching the film, a scene with Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock in the turbo lift, a dramatic scene, very intense, and then I’d spot that tear in the carpet padding and would be blown right out of the film’s suspended reality. Now all I could see were William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy acting in front of a wood framed box with carpet padding on the walls. It really blows the movie fantasy once you’ve seen the reality.

Q. That happened a lot?

A.     On almost every film I worked on, either I would visit the set and see the harsh reality of film making OR I would spot a prop I made and drop out of the film, as I would critique my work and see how realistic (or not) it looked on film and how many (or few) of its functions got used.

Q. What are some of these props you have spotted on film?

A.     Let’s begin with the best and important: the Klingon hand disruptor from “Star Trek Four: The Voyage Home.” It was featured when Chekov tried to get away from the US Navy interrogators and received a close up when Cpt. Kirk hustled the doctors into a small room off the operating room and then welded the door shut with one of the hand weapons. Interesting note about insert shots and bloopers, watch the screen, first the Prop is in his left hand, then in the close-up, it’s in his right hand and, pop, it is back in his left hand. On another note, that the design was the work of my then 16 year old son, Robert Coyle, who was working with me that summer. 

Next would be the wrist communicator from “Star Three: The Wrath of Khan,” where Cpt. Tyrell tears his off with his teeth. Cpt. Kirk grips it in a later scene and bellows into it.

For our final group of props we return to “Star Trek Four.” Uhura and Chekov used a “Power Leach” to collect photons from the Nuclear reactor aboard the USS Enterprise. Our Clipboard for Scotty gets a scene, and, lastly, there was our Plex Welder. The welder was a particularly electronics intensive prop. We rigged it with fifty yellow and red LEDs and three settings: red and orange with both colors running, or red all blinking with one or both sides running, all settings controllable by the actor with even a speed adjustment. 

But, frustratingly, it could be three blocks of wood from what is show in the film. They simple rigged a “flaming match,” which is a stage gag that burns on command in a line. It made the welding action of Scotty welding the plexi-glass together look real, but they did not show the lighted panels we worked so hard to make. Like an actor’s best lines, many of a prop’s best scenes end up on the cutting room floor.

A lot of these props were made with the help of my friends and crew then, Scott Brodeen, (Specially the “Plex Welder” body, helped on the “Power Leach” and others) Bob Rokes, (he did most of the painting) Shawn Crosby and Roger Farnham, (model makers).

Q. Sounds like your career was really taking off at this point.

A.     That was what we all thought, but this was the peak. I made a pitch to Ralph Winter executive producer for prop work on “Star Trek Five: The Final Frontier” but did not get the job. A little later I got a call from Greg Jein asking if he could get a few props. Well, this was a bit of a letdown, but by then I had so many friends who wanted to do movie props, we took the work.

And that is what happen again with “Star Trek Six: The Undiscovered Country.” Again Greg ordered props and electronic drivers from my shop. Eventually I pulled out of LA and returned to Phoenix and have been making a living as a model maker.

Q. What models?

A.     I had let the deal with Disney fade away when my buyer, Ms. Lois Fulmer, retired back in about ’91, so I contacted Disney and offered the Nautilus again. We made a run of it, the Monorail, Moon Liner, Submarine Ride, the Autopia ride and Flying Saucer ride. This was due to the help of Mr. Shawn Crosby who helped get the ball rolling and to Mr. Arron Mack who really helped with all the production work. Sadly, due to major miscommunication between us and Disney, this fell apart after only one delivery of 24 Nautilus, 50 Moonliners, 24 Monorails and a few of the other models.

Q. What advice do you have for up and coming propmakers?

A.     I give this lecture called, “Mothers, don’t let your children grow up to be propmakers” It is an underpaid, under- credited job. And nowadays the very thing that got me so much work, electronics, is no longer the draw. Things have become so miniaturized that I have to go to other electronic manufacturers to get my drivers. You have to be able to work with surface mounted components and “chip on board” devices. No longer can you simply perf-board a dip IC and hook up a couple of LEDs. And I have even seen CGI done onto a wrist com face, so less of our work is needed.

If you’ve got the talent to work models (3D work) with your hands, go for make-up effects. There you stand a small but real chance of steady work doing normal make-up between the special jobs and you might end up becoming tomorrow’s Mike Westmore or Stan Winston.

Q. So what is in your future?

A.     I continue to make model s and am currently running a webzine, FX Propmaker’s Journal at my website www.racprops.com . It covers much of what I have learned about the real props being used in TV and Films and is loaded with pictures starting with the early black and white classic phasers on up to the present day.

Also we have begun making recreations of the classic phaser from Classic Star Trek at  www.roddenberry.com operated by Gene Roddenberry’s son, Eugene W. Roddenberry, Jr. This is akin to a “voyage home” for me, as in the beginning, I am making props for fans.

 

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