Episode 271 Ā· November 27, 2025 Ā· 1h 2m
Prop Master, Kevin Hughes, Coppola & Paul Thomas Anderson
About this episode
šļø On this episode of the Kingdom of Dreams Podcast, we sit down with legendary Prop Master Kevin Hughes, whose extraordinary career has seen him collaborate with filmmakers including Francis Ford Coppola and Paul Thomas Anderson. Kevin shares incredible behind-the-scenes stories about creating memorable props, building authentic worlds for some of cinemaās most acclaimed films, and the craftsmanship that brings iconic moments to life. Join us for a fascinating conversation about the art of prop making and a career spanning some of Hollywoodās greatest productions.
Kevin Hughes is a veteran Hollywood prop master whose career spans decades across both film and television. Born in 1952 in California, he grew up around old movie theatres, where his grandfather worked backstage, sparking his early fascination with show business.Ā
He began his career in television on shows like The Price Is Right, All in the Family, and The Sonny & Cher Show, before landing a small courier job on Apocalypse Now that unexpectedly launched him into the world of feature films. Hughes went on to become a respected prop master known for his meticulous, āmethod-prop-manā approach, breaking down scripts line by line, tracking every object a character touches, and building detailed timelines for each prop.Ā
Over the years, he has worked on films such as Boogie Nights, Borat, Bobby, and many others, earning a reputation for bringing authenticity, texture, and emotional grounding to the worlds filmmakers create.
#boogienights #francisfordcoppola #paulthomasanderson #apocalypsenow #piranha
Full transcript
Automatically generated from the episode audio, so expect the odd misheard word or name. Speakers were labelled automatically. About 11,900 words. Tap a timestamp to play from that moment.
0:00Kevin HughesMovie called Private Lessons, which was, Alan Myerson directed it. The producers tā¦ really destroyed what thought the director wanted. The director wanted a comā¦ a comedy. The producers wanted something salacious. So at a certain point when we had a rough cut, I was one of the, a crew of three, and I guess the statute of limitations has passed by now, but we broke into and we stole the reels off of the, off of the racks. We brought them over to his house. It was on a weekend, I think. Took it to a transfer place. They transferred the film so he would have his own interneg, you know, to work with and cut his own film, and then brought it back so that as if no one would notice. And, I think we had an insider in the editing department who knew it was gonna happen, so he allowed it. But it turned out that when we put the films back, we put them A to Z instead of Z to A or something. We had them back, so they didn't, it didn't happen without being noticed, but he did get a copy of his film.
1:05Jawad MirWelcome back, everyone, to another episode of Kingdom of Dreams podcast, the making of stories. I'm your host, Jawad Mir. Today, my guest is Kevin Hughes. Kevin Hughes is a prop master who's worked on some incredible films over the last several decades, including Apocalypse Now, Boogie Nights, Piranha, and several other more. It was a great pleasure of mine to be talking to him about those films, some of the most incredible stories that he shared that I have never heard before. Lovely guy, great stories, great career, and the pride that he takes in his work is absolutely remarkable. I truly appreciate all the work that he's done, in the films that we have grown up with. Without further ado, here is my conversation with Kevin Hughes. If you can just introduce yourself, you know, in terms of your career, where it started and how it started and the catalyst behind it.
1:56Jawad MirThat would be a really cool place to begin, I think.
1:58Kevin HughesAll right. As a, as a child, my, everybody in the family has been in show business one way or the other. My grandfather on my mom's side, was a cameraman for Paramount for 30 or 40 years, and my, grandfather on my moā¦ my dad's side worked the vaudeville circuit in Calā¦ in Los Angeles. So Broadway, the street in Los Angeles, the Broadway, had a lot of theaters, which are being renovated now these days, too. But he worked, he was a prop, grip, and electric. They were all the same thing. He was a stagehand. He came out of the Navy, and a lot of people who came out of the Navy became, worked stages for some reason. I don't know why. That's where all those medical terms come from.
2:43Kevin HughesBut, so that's grandparents. Then my dad worked at, CBS for many years. He was a sā¦ a stage technician, and I-A prop, again, a prop, grip, electric. And, he worked... My favorite thing was that he, when he did props, he often brought things home. He worked on a shā¦ a show called The Soupy Sales Show, and, we were asleep, and he somehow did, he got home a weather balloon, a gigantic weather balloon, and filled it in the living room so that when we came down the stairs to go into the living room, we were, we could see in the room, but we couldn't get in because this membrane was blocking our view. So it was basically surreal and surrealism and, magic kind of combined together to make me wanna do nothing other than that. So I pretty much had my mind set on doing something like props, when I, since I was a kid. And I put on magic shows and that stuff for the family. I got a job at, working for the Smothers Brothers for a time where my mom worked for them and, then Pat Paulson and his, run for presidency in '72, and I, became sort of a road manager for him while he was campaigning to be the president.
4:01Kevin HughesAnd then I came backā¦
4:02Jawad MirOh, wow
4:02Kevin Hughes... Came back and got into the, my dad's local from nepotism. Oops, sorry.
4:08Jawad MirThat's okay
4:09Kevin Hughes... And, he,.. So I worked, around the stages in LA for a while. I ended up at CBS, where I worked for five or six years. This is like from '74 to, well, I don't know, till '79, so '72 to '76. And in '76, I got a call. I was on a long list of people who might be able to drop what they were doing and be a courier for Francis Coppola while he was in the Philippines making Apocalypse. And I was on that list because my sister, used to babysit for his kids, and we all lived up in the same neighborhood. And, so I was on the list and he said, yā¦ somebody said, "Can you come to the Philippines and bring some wine and cheese and a few movies to brighten up the mood for the guys?" 'Cause they were exhausted from two or three, you know, almost two years of working. So I had this fantastic courier job. I asked for a leave of absence at CBS, where I had been working on game shows and soap operas and variety shows, and, they allowed me to go.
5:13Kevin HughesI flew to the Philippines and asked him, asked Francis if I could stay, and he asked, you know, if I, what I wanted to do with it, and I said, "Well, I'm props in LA." And he said, "Talk to Doug Madison," the prop man on the movie. So I went over, had a brief conversation. He said, "Yeah, sure. Come on in." So I was, at that point, like I say, everybody was burned out on that movie, and so I became like the third assistant props, listed in the screen credits as a, as a production assistant, which was really more like it. But that got me hooked for sure on props because movie props versus soap operas, it's just, you know, put the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the table each time, you know, untilā¦
5:52Jawad MirRight
5:53Kevin Hughes... But, movie props was really something fascinating, so... And watching a pro make what at the time was the most expensive movie ever made, it was, it was kind of mind-bending to see what you could do if you had, you know, money and talent around you And, so I was dazzled. But the, as soon as that movie ended, I was three months in the Philippines, and then I worked for a year for the sound department in the, in LA doing foley and sound effects. And like they wanted somebody, which is crazy too, at the end when we were doing the sound they wanted the actual sound when they were doing foley. So rather than just finding a recording of a Zippo lighter, they wanted to use the Zippo lighter that Marty used in the movie. And if it was newspapers and prā¦ there's a dossier, scene where he's looking at the dossier and throwing it into the water, Francis wanted the actual page so that a Xerox page would sound different than a photograph, and that would sound different than a glassine or typewritten page. So I was in charge of the actual props while they were doing the sound effects, and that lasted a year.
6:59Kevin HughesAnd right after that I got a, my resume had all that TV stuff and Apocalypse Now. And, so I went on an interview for, Joe Dante for a Roger Corman movie called Piranha, and that was my second film. So from Apocalypse Now to Piranha was a huge jump in concept of what you can do on a, with a budget. I think we had $500 budget on Piranha, not countingā¦
7:28Jawad MirWow
7:28Kevin Hughes... Not counting the little fish. But, and I had a great gig on that too. One of my jobs was to be snorkeling, sometimes a scuba taā¦ tank under the water and holding on to little kids who were inner tubes, and on a cue yanking them through the inner tube so as if a piranha or sharks had eaten them. So I would pull the kid into the water and somebody else would pump 50 gallons of blood into the water.
7:56Jawad MirOh, wow.
7:57Kevin HughesIt wasā¦
7:57Jawad MirThat's, that's insane
7:58Kevin Hughes... It was nothing but enjoyable. I never did a movie, almost never that I didn't enjoy working on and have a great time doing. So it was that film. From there to the, that, those two movies and then I filled in what kind of budgets and style from that point on. I didn't work big movies. I worked more smaller crew movies. But they were good movies. I've worked on a lot of really great movies. So I think that's a brief rundown as to how I got started, and withā¦
8:25Jawad MirOh, Iā¦
8:26Kevin HughesButā¦
8:26Jawad MirSorry, go on.
8:27Kevin HughesWell, I was gonna say the movies after that were varied and, you know, there were a lot of different kinds but, anytime anybody saw that movie on my, on my resume, they were at least I got a second, you know, minute of talk. And another one was I would show my resume a couple years later and, I would be kinda cocky by then and go, "You know, I got Apocalypse Now and Piranha on it." And these guys would look at it, these production managers or producers and say, "Oh, this is great. We could put you up. You did Teen Wolf? That made a fortune and it didn't cost a dime to make." So I thought, geez, Teen Wolf, you're looking past Apocalypse here. But, so that was a movie that you never know what's gonna make you, get you a job. But having worked on Teen Wolf was a big thing to a lot of producers. So that was a film.
9:19Jawad MirYeah, I think, I think Apocalypse was, one of those films even though you had Coppola attached and Brando and Sheen, and I mean, so many, you know, Robert Duvall, it just didn't become what it became after maybe a good seven, eight years later. Like it was a grand film, but it was more like a small film at the same time.
9:38Kevin HughesAbsolutely.
9:39Jawad MirAnd you know, you can, you can call it indie, right? But, Teen Wolf is kinda like, you know, I Know What You Did Last Summerā¦
9:47Kevin HughesYeah
9:47Jawad Mir... In the '90s.
9:49Kevin HughesRight. Right.
9:49Jawad MirThat kind of approach. But you mentioned Piranha, so Piranha 2 I think. Did you didn't work on Piranha 2, right?
9:55Kevin HughesI just, I just worked on the fā¦ the Joe Dante one, yeah.
9:58Jawad MirYeah, because the second one was, I don't know if many people know about this, was James Cameron's first film.
10:03Kevin HughesOh, that's right.
10:04Jawad MirRight?
10:04Kevin HughesYeah.
10:05Jawad MirAnd then the story behindā¦
10:07Kevin HughesI won't tell whatā¦
10:07Jawad MirThe story behind it too that he, I think, I think he told it that, I'm sorry I'm kinda like deviating, but it just kinda reminded meā¦
10:14Kevin HughesOh
10:15Jawad Mir... That how he actually the producer I think or the actor wanted to have their cut and didn't wanna give Jim any access, so he ended up breaking in and stealing the film.
10:27Kevin HughesOh, wow.
10:27Jawad MirAnd edā¦ and editing it.
10:29Kevin HughesI've done that.
10:30Jawad MirYou have done that?
10:31Kevin HughesI did that with a movie called Private Lessons, which was, Alan Meyerson directed it, and it was about a kid, God, it's a weird movie. The female lead was Sylvia Kristel, who at the time was famous for her films called Emmanuelle, and, she's the female lead and a 15-year-old boy is the male lead, and it's about being seduced by somebody and it's a hijack. Or, you know, kind of like Home Alone in a sense but with a porn star. And, the producers tā¦ really destroyed what the director wanted it. The director wanted a comā¦ comedy. The producers wanted something salacious. So at a certain point when we had a rough cut, I was one of the, a crew of three, and I guess the statute of limitations is passed by now, but we broke into, the, it was at, they were cutting at the Ins Studios I think. I can't remember exactly where. And we stole the reels off of the, off of the racks. We brought them over to his house, it was on a weekend I think, took it to a transfer place.
11:36Kevin HughesThey transferred the film so he would have his own interneg, you know, to work with and cut his own film, and then brought it back so that as if no one would notice. And, I think we had an insider in the editing department who knew it was gonna happen, so he allowed it. But it turned out that when we put the films back, we put them A to Z instead of Z to A or something. We had them back, so they didn't, it didn't happen without being noticed. But he did get a copy of his film. So yeah, it wasā¦
12:03Jawad MirWow
12:05Kevin Hughes... A hijacking movie in real life. And I thinkā¦
12:07Jawad MirRight
12:08Kevin Hughes... Cameron must have done that beforeā¦ Before Private Lessons, I think it must've been a few sā¦ few years before that.
12:16Jawad MirYeah, I think Piranha II came in the early '80s, and I think, I'm just looking at IMDb. It was around the same time. Private Lessons came in, 1981, and Piranha II came in 1982, so it was around the same time.
12:32Kevin HughesOh, yeah, okay.
12:32Jawad MirMore or less.
12:34Kevin HughesOkay.
12:34Jawad MirBut, you know, and now that you mention, is this like a customary, like a very common thing in Hollywood in the '80s?
12:40Kevin HughesI don't... No. Well, maybe in the '80s.
12:42Jawad MirYeah.
12:42Kevin HughesBecause at the time it was everything was film. There was no digital yet.
12:46Jawad MirYeah.
12:46Kevin HughesSo you had to, you'd get something with, from a work print. It's, I think we ended up probably with the work print. It wasn't gonna be able to be released. But Alan wanted to, you know, he was proud of it. We made a fucking funny movie. Pardon my language, but, you know, I mean, they have the people who were in that movie are all members of the Committee, which was an improv group in LA at the time. They were a lot like Second City, but they were out here. And, Howard Hesseman was one of 'em and, it was just, you know, giving those guys a chance to be hysterically funny. Ed Begley Jr.ā¦
13:18Jawad MirYeah
13:19Kevin Hughes... Even. But no, I don't know. Maybe. The, I mean, I think the first, this is sort of connected 'cause of Dodie, but, the first director's cut that I know of was Gladiator, that he made a movie and then the director's cut came out, because he... No, that's not right. It was, the one with Harrison Ford
13:44Jawad MirWitness?
13:46Kevin HughesNo, it waā¦ he was, let's see, he was theā¦
13:49Jawad MirThe Gargoyle
13:50Kevin Hughes... Building, the replicant movie. How can I not remember this movie?
13:53Jawad MirOh, Blade Runner.
13:54Kevin HughesBlade Runner, yeah.
13:55Jawad MirYeah.
13:55Kevin HughesI think Blade Runner was one of the first movies to have a official director's cut. And I think from then on people, if they thought they had a good enough movie, you know. But now you get a director's cut. You know, you get 10 weeks after you shoot, you get a 10-week director's cut, and I suppose they could always run off a disc of that if they wanted to, but hard to get back toā¦
14:16Jawad MirYeah, I meanā¦
14:16Kevin Hughes... Doing it at that point.
14:17Jawad MirYeah, I mean, things are so different, I mean, even now, maybe even 15, 20 years ago, right? Like, you can't, you know, the, gone are the days in the '70s and '60s and maybe even the '80s, like when you could just sort of walk into a studio. And nowā¦... You know, now it's like, you know, forget about anything like that.
14:34Kevin HughesAbsolutely.
14:34Jawad MirLike, it's like sā¦ not only you have to have proper ID, but you have to be invited. You have to be on some sort of a list and, you knowā¦
14:41Kevin HughesYeah. Yeah
14:41Jawad Mir... All that stuff.
14:42Kevin Hugheshuh.
14:42Jawad MirBut, you know, I was going through your IMDb, and you worked on some of the films that I've, you know, sort of seen growing up. Black Stallion. At least that's what IMDb suggests, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
14:55Kevin HughesYeah.
14:55Jawad MirThere wasā¦
14:56Kevin HughesI was set decorator on that, then the props, but that's mostly set and unit.
14:59Jawad MirYeah. You worked on, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. You worked with Paul Thomas Anderson, for Boogie Nights. You, Mā¦ Apocalypse Now. Or maā¦ many others, which I probably didn't really, you know, and Wedding Planner. But, if there is a couple of stories that stand out from any of those films or any other film that I didn't mentionā¦
15:24Kevin HughesYeah
15:24Jawad Mir... That were very intriguing, from a story standpoint, directors, actors. You know, anything that you must have gained a lot of experience and knowledge over the years to getā¦
15:37Kevin HughesOh, Iā¦
15:37Jawad Mir... To where you are today.
15:38Kevin HughesWell, one of the smartest directors I've ever worked for, is Paul Thomas Anderson. He knows his filmmaking so well that, and not just contemporary. He can go back into the silent films, and he, really knows alā¦ almost everything there is to know about filmmaking and directors in film. And working with him was great. I grew up with a lot of information because like I say, with three generations of, you know, show businessā¦
16:05Kevin Hughes... We were conscious of the fact that it didn't just happen. People had to make movies happen. But, and with Paul, just every day was interesting, and he and Burt Reynolds had a constant trivia pursuit questions they would ask each other during the day and see if they could stump the other person. But that just was just sort of part of the social life. The technical part, prop-wise on that movie, was sā¦ really challenging because we used real cameras and wā¦ for the, like when they were shooting. So a lot of these acā¦ the actors, if they were shooting, they were shooting with an actual practical camera with film in it until they went to video, then with video in it. And therefore, the props, as opposed to just being a plastic box that looks like a camera, they had to beā¦
16:49Jawad MirYeah
16:49Kevin Hughes... Real cameras, and they had to be working. So again, that's not, you know, I'm pretty good with, pretend things, which is why I kinda liked the prop department rather than going into, you know, the police force. But, so yeah, to keep those film, the things working, we had to have a camera tech with the, within the prop department because, you know, the actors are shooting and they're, and, they, there's no other way to do that when, you have other actors in the same shot to, well, then to give them the actual camera. So that was kind of a exciting thing to do. And Boogie Nights, from day one, there was nothing that wasn't fascinating to do on that movie. And I'll tell you one quick thing about actors. Yā¦ people have, you know this for sure. When you say you work in show business, people almost always say, "Well, do you know any actors?" Or, "You know any, you know, tell me something about an actor." And I kinda don't because they're just sort of people I work with in a blue collar way. You show me Alice Waters or a fantastic chef, I'll, I'll be dazzled and want an autograph, but movie stars, they don't really want you to come up and interrupt them.
17:53Kevin HughesBut, oh, I got lost on a tangent. With, I was gonna say an actress who just blew my mind was Julianne Moore in Bā¦ in Boogie Nights. Forgive me for that.
18:09Jawad MirYeah
18:10Kevin Hughes... She, you know, in the movie she plays an actress. And the actress is not a very good actress. And so the character who is supposed to be believed as a, of the, her character is whatever her name was, and she's, she's an actor. You had to, she had to differentiate between acting and being the character who was acting. And everybody on the crew that who was aā¦ who was able to be on the set stood around and watched her because it's so hard to figure out how to do that. Sheā¦ When they, the actress is on the set, the cameras are ready to shoot, and the shot is an actress on the set with cameras ready to shoot. And so she has to be herself in dialogue with the people she's talking to, and then when they say action to the character, she acts poorly. And God, it was just fascinating to see. Nobody could figure it out. It was like something about her voice changing or her, she got a little stiffer in her movements. Whatever it was, it's really clear. You watch the movie, you will see it really clearly.
19:11Kevin HughesAnd, so if William H. Macy, all these people would stand around and watch to see, what's she doing? How is she making that happen? I just think that's a masterful acting job that's often of constantly overlooked. I mean, yes, she's a great actress, and they say that, but how deeply hard that must be to do that always, you know, kind of has freaked me out, I guess is the way to put it. So yeah, that's a Boogie Nights thing. Plus, of course, I was, you know, the body double for Dirk Diggler through a lot of the close-up scenes. No, that's not true. That movie waā¦ Yeah, every day on that movie was great, and so a lot of great performances. And Ricky Jay, do you know who he is? He's a, just passed away recently, but a great magician who was, famous for he could throw playing cards across a football field and have himā¦
20:02Jawad MirOh
20:03Kevin Hughes... In the basket. You know him.
20:04Jawad MirYeah, I know who he is. I know who he is. Yes.
20:05Kevin HughesHe wasā¦ And he's in a lot of David Mamet's movies, for some reason. He was on the set, and he was playing a cameraman. But everybody knew it was Ricky Jay, so they'd always ask him to do a magic trick if he had the time. And he did close-up magic of, you know. He had a deck of cards, as any decent magician will have a deck of cards close by at any time. And he did tricks that were just kind of amazing to watch as, you know, you're on the job, and there's a magician in front of you. You know, how often does that happen in somebody who's like, you know, a, an architect? Those things don't happen very often. So anyway, that was, it was great to learn magic, a little bit of magic from him. And when I worked on, Masked and Anonymous, the Bob Dylan fiasco movie, he asked me at one point if I could teach him some magic tricks. I don't know how he knew. I think maybe I just did something of magic. But, he asked me if I could teach him a few tricks that he could do, perform in front of his grandchildren because I said, "Have you had a lot of them?"
21:10Kevin HughesHe said, "I got twelve so far." And, every day or every once in a while, if I, we're standing between takes, I'd show him something. And it's really the, you know, pull a quarter from the ear thing or, you know, any of those goofy magic tricks. But he loved learning them, and, I think he enjoyed being able to go home that night and do a trick for his grandkids or wherever he saw them. But, that was magic another time in the movies. Sā¦ and also one quickā¦ I'm sorry. I'm really going all over the place with this.
21:42Jawad MirNo. This is lovely. I love it. I love it.
21:44Kevin HughesAll right. Well, that Bob Dylan movie, Masked and Anonymous, it's a long movie and a lot of... It's like a, it's a road picture. Dylan gets out of jail, and he gets to, he works his way to trying to put on a concert to save the world. And, it's in a, it's in a dystopian near future. And when movie's a movie, it was hard work, but great actors. Giovanni Ribisi played one day and was just insanely brilliant in it. You watch that movie just for actors, for each scene they do. It's great. Whether it holds together all together, I'm not sure. But I love it as a movie, and I loved watching it be made. And, so do we shoot the movie about the, about it, the prison break and all that. And at the end of the movie, of shooting the movie, we shot, we had four days of concert footage 'cause he's gonna put on the concert. And it was shot on a huge sound stage with nobody there except the crew and, you know, two or three jib arm cameras and a, and a handheld and the crew of maybe eighteen or nineteen people and Bob Dylan and a band of four people playing for four, for two days of constant music, four days oā¦ overall.
22:55Kevin HughesAnd I just got to sit in my, on the stage with my prop box standing by if they need the harmonica back and watch Bob Dylan play music for days. It'sā¦ And they were paying us money to do that which is just astounding to think, that we haā¦ had that opportunity. Every day was amazing to me. I guess I'm making you... You're getting the idea that I enjoyed my jobā¦
23:22Jawad MirYeah. Yeah
23:22Kevin Hughes... While I worked there. So, yeah, that was a great one. Bob Dyā¦ And at the end of the movie, there's also in the movie, I think Jeff Bridges kills, somebody with a smashing a guitar over their head. So we had to buy like twenty replica gā¦ exact match guitars and score them, so that they would be, you know, breakable and, you know, presā¦ you could predict where and how it would break. So we had, I think we went through eight of the ten. We must have had at least ten. It's my usual number, that had been smashed and done. And at the end of the movie, we had two left. And, Larry, the director, wanted one of them, and I got the other one. And I asked Bob Dylan's handlers if they thought he would sign that for me. And they said, "No, he doesn't really do signatures, autographs," because he, it really hurts his feelings when two days later, he sees it on eBay. To beā¦
24:22Jawad MirYeah
24:23Kevin Hughes... To be stolen. Says it really irritates him. And I said, "Okay." I said, "Well, how about if he signs his character's name on the guitar?" And they said, "Well, I don't know. See ifā¦ talk to him, see what he says." So I went into his trailer and, you know, we, again, we knew each other pretty well by then. And, so I asked him if he would do it. I said, "You don't have to do your own name, but, you know, Jack Fate would be fine." And he said, "Yeah, okay, that'll be fun." So he writes, "To Kevin, thanks for the instructions. This is a real Lebon Lemon guitar. Thanks for the instructions, Bob Dylan." And he was absentminded enough to forget that he wasn't supposed to sign his own name. So I do have a guitar, a breakaway guitar withā¦ signed by Bob Dylan. Which, believe me, will not go on eBay. If you're listening, Bob.... That's a fantasā¦ one of my favorite things. You know, souvenirs from movies. I don't have a lot of those, but
25:19Jawad MirThat's awesome. That'sā¦
25:20Kevin HughesThat, and I, and I also have... I just, I think I sent it to you a couple minutes ago. I also have Francis Coppola's chair back from Apocalypse.
25:28Jawad MirYes.
25:28Kevin HughesAt a certain point, he was, he shā¦ kind of shouted to the world. That was how he worked. He'd say, you know, "Could I get a glass of water? Whoever the glass of water department is, could I..." Then, he at one point said, "Can somebody get mā¦ get me a chair back that doesn't say Francis Ford Coppola? It seems so pretentious. I want oneā¦"
25:48Jawad MirYeah
25:48Kevin Hughes... "that just says Francis Coppola." And I said, "Okay, I'll see to it." And I grabbed the chair back and put it on the, my bag at the, on the prop boat and, kept it. And he got his new one in there in less than 24 hours because the Filipino crew, workers there were so amazing. They could build, you know... You've seen the sets. Those are... Some of, some of these totem poles and statues were made overnight with a crew of 30 guys all sitting on sā¦ five, you know, foam rubber and carving something out like it was on fire. And then two hours later, there it is, a perfectly done and painted set. So yeah, it wasn't, didn't take long to get new things from there once I got to the Philippines. Soā¦
26:33Jawad MirAmazing
26:34Kevin Hughes... Now let me see. A couple of movies, I'm trying to think. Oh, a great experience was Dead Man, the Jim Jarmusch movie with, Johnny Depp. And that was a road picture for us. We went from Mexican border to top of Oregon. And we would shoot couple of days here and a couple of days there, then pack up like a circus or caravan, move to the next town a little farther up and, you know, we were a caravan doing that, and it was sort of fascinating to do. But during that time, I had a dog, and I was driving my own little camper car that had... The prop truck was its own truck, but I drove to the location and drove from location to location with my dog, whose name was Blaze because she was caā¦ rescued from a Topanga Canyon fire. And she was on set all the time, was always around me. Everybody loved her. And at one point, we had this beautiful set of a bedā¦ bedroom set with cut paper flowers on it, and it was a, you know, elegant and a hot set when we broke for lunch.
27:38Kevin HughesWe go to lunch and when we come back to shoot, Blaze was asleep on that bed, having squished a bunch of the flowers, but just sort of kind of just sound asleep, hanging out. And I was humiliā¦ I just thought, "Oh my God. This is..." I promised that she wouldn't do anything bad, and this was the worst thing. A hot set ready to shoot, and we have to wait. And I said, "Let me get her." And he said, Jim, Jarmusch said, "No, don't wake her up. We'll find something else to shoot. What else have we got?" And they go... Rather than wake up my dog, Jim decides he'll find another, something else to shoot until, till the dog wakes up, and that's just... You don't see that with directors very often. If they don't get their way, they're usuallyā¦
28:18Jawad MirYeah
28:18Kevin Hughes... Upset. But, he was, Jim is a... I would work, I told people this, it never happened, but I would have worked for Jim Jarmusch for free anytime. It was just so pleasant. He's such a nice guy. And, but I guess he never heard that because he hired other people for his other movies. But he comes out of New Yorkā¦
28:39Jawad MirYeah
28:39Kevin Hughes... So I wasn't always available for that, so.
28:41Jawad MirYeah.
28:42Kevin HughesButā¦
28:42Jawad MirYou know, you're, you're cā¦ clearly, as you said, and it's visible, you enjoyed what you did and what you do. But you know, there's always times at any work where things go wrong, and you might get yelled at or you might get screamed at orā¦
29:00Kevin HughesOh, yeah
29:01Jawad Mir... You know, F-bombs here and there. Anything that stands out where, you know, whether it was your mistake or whether it wasn't, and how that sort of unfolded, whether it was like a senior prop department or whether it was a director, which I don't think, I don't know if the director ever dirā¦ dealt with you directly, because of the chain of command. But anything of that kind of sort would be really great to hear.
29:23Kevin HughesWell, the movie, like I said, the movies I've worked on have been pretty small, and the director would talk to the crewā¦
29:30Jawad MirOkay
29:31Kevin Hughes... We were all on first name basis all the time.
29:33Jawad MirOkay, good. Yeah
29:33Kevin HughesSo if I made a mistake, he would talk directly to me. And I can think of one, let's see. Well, let me see. There's, there are times when things go wroā¦ that almost went wrong. Oh, no, I'll tell you one that's not necessarily me, but Mike Figgis on, the movie, Lieberstrom, about an architect who's, infatuated with another architect's wife and also infatuated with, steel buildings. And you know, there's only a few made. And one scene in it was the first time they open up the doors to a previously sā¦ shut building, a department store that's been closed for 50 years, and this is the first time they've been, they've walked into it since then. So there's still some mannequins on it. They're all full of dust. And so you really have to walk very carefully so as not to raise dust. And, Mā¦ Mike Figgis always liked his quiet set. He sort of was the, you know, Clint Eastwood kind of director who really wanted quiet.
30:37Kevin HughesAnd we're in there and we're wearing particle masks because this dust is everywhere. And we got to a certain point, we're about to shoot and it's, you know, quiet on the set, quiet everybody. And we weren't rolling. He was waiting until he could have quiet. And he said, "I'm sorry, I'm still hearing noise. Quiet, come on. Quiet down, you guys." And still fā¦ you know, he wasn't gonna roll. And he said, "Somebody in here is breathing. Who's breathing in here?" And he actually meant it. He says, "Listen to the sound of breathing in here. Who's breathing in here? Somebody's in here's breathing." Just sort of sets him aside as a person who really does like a quiet set. But that was an anger thing. I don't know whether, you know, well, I've, we've, we've run... So the saddest story of show business in a long while was, on Rust. I didn't work on Rust. But the movie where, that a cinematographer was killed with a gun that went off just recently. And
31:36Jawad MirOh, yeah. The Aleck Baldwin film.
31:38Kevin HughesYeah. There wā¦ I was in sā¦ never been this so angry about movies fā¦ since I started working them, that was aā¦ able to happen. So many things had to not have been done, that are almost, I mean, are always done. You never leave a gun on the set without being, without a gun handler being right next to it. You never put live ammunition in a gun ever on a set, ever on a movie. Even in a truck you wouldn't have live ammunition. You never walk away, go to lunch and leave a gun out for anybody to pick up and use. Itā¦ it just, there's so many rules of guā¦ of gun safety that were not followed from the assistā¦ everybody was at fault and I'm not sā¦ singling out somebody, but you know, it comes down to the prop man who's, you know, should not have had a gun there without being, standing on it. And that's just heartbreaking. But it did make me think. I was in New Mexico. That movie was shot in New Mexico.
32:39Kevin HughesAnd, we were doing a movie called, what was it? Heck, I don't know the name. It'll kind of come to me too. But, we were running out of, blanks and we had to, we had full load blanks, but we're shooting in this ravine. And so it was making so much noise, the full loads, that we used quarter loads which is a, you know, an eā¦ a shell of a, for a shotgun for example with three quarters the amount of gunpowder or half or quarter is how they differentiate those shells as blanks. And so it wā¦ became my job to as fast as possible empty the gunpowder out of the shells and put in only a three, a quarter instead of a half or a whole load. You really shouldn't do that. That's not how it's done. Those are manufactured on a lathe and a, you know, in a, you know, an epā¦ sā¦ you know, sā¦ experienced people doing it in a closed environment. And for me to be up on the prop truck, you know, poking a hole in a shotgun shell, shaking out the gunpowder and then taping it closed to fit back into the gun was begging for it to jam and for go, something to go wrong.
33:51Kevin HughesIt, nothing did go wrong, but when that, when Rust came out it just reminded me again of just how dangerous that it was and a terrible thing could have happened if we hadn't been lucky and careful and lucky. So let's see. That's that. And again, I've worked on the danger thing of, Freddy Got Fingered, a Tom Green movie where there wasā¦
34:18Jawad MirOh
34:18Kevin Hughes... By the way, the, my producā¦ the production designer on the movie, almost all these except Apocalypse, was the same production designer, Bob Zembicki, who was kind of my boss. He was, as a production designer, he was the one who would hire a prop department or a pā¦ prop master and then I'd hire the crew. And we did a lot of movies together and we're really still really good friends. And, tā¦ we worked together a lot and we just, we had a ball doing that. I just didn't want to gā¦ I needed to drop his name because my jobsā¦
34:48Jawad MirSure
34:48Kevin Hughes... I wouldn't have had all those jobs without Bob, so, But, he was on that film too and it was, he was a, he was a witness to my terrible behavior on that. So yeah, that's it, that movie. Let's see. I think, again, I've wandered. I warned you that I would wander aimlessly off too.
35:09Jawad MirNo. This isā¦
35:10Kevin HughesI think I'm weaving like Trump does. So.
35:13Jawad MirNo. No, you're not. You know, it's, it's, it's all organic, right? And you know, sometimes when you're talking organically things come up and that's just the way we all communicate.
35:23Kevin HughesYeah. Okay.
35:23Jawad MirTrā¦ it doesn't look good on Trump because he's the president and but heā¦
35:29Kevin HughesButā¦
35:29Jawad MirBut, going to, you know, your career, I've had your wife Doā¦ Dody who's been on the podcast andā¦
35:41Kevin HughesYeah
35:41Jawad Mir... Yā¦ you guys know each other.
35:42Kevin HughesWe went to high school together.
35:44Jawad MirOh awesome. Do talk about that. How did that work?
35:47Kevin HughesWell we, she was a couple yearsā¦
35:49Jawad MirIā¦ Iā¦ if that's not personal. I don't normally ask those questions but I'll leaveā¦
35:54Kevin HughesNo. I often say we went there but, she was in a different grade. I often tell people, you know, I, she was just a child when I was there. She's a couple years younger but she was a friend of my sister's as well. And, at Hollywood High, I knew her and we'd hang out together at lunch with a kind of a gang of, you know, hippie types that were working. In most high schools the groups sort of congregate in various places like, you know, the jocks are in the quad and the music, theater people are over by the auditorium and the hippies were all up on the front lawn. And this is the front lawn Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue which isā¦ Right in the middle of Hollywood. And, in 1968, '69, '70s, it was a wild world. And Dody was among the friends who were going on field trips to, into the canyons on the weekend, or sometimes we'd go to UCLA to watch the student films that would come, that the UCLA students would put out every couple of weeks.
36:56Kevin HughesAnd so she was, in groups with us. We'd go together. We don't... We never had an actual date, the two of us going someplace on our own. But we were friends. We had a lot of good times. And then high school ended, and everybody went their own ways, and, the end, until my 50th birthday. And my sister arranged for Dody to be, not a surprise guest, because she asked me if I would want to have anybody, you know, a special guest at my birthday. And I mentioned her 'cause her name had been up recently in the paper. She was, had edited, Memento. So when I saw her name, went, "Oh, wow, she must live in town. See if you can find her." And so Dody was invited, and thought something was odd about that, having not spoken for 30 years. But she came, and she was a good sport. And there's a great photograph of us seeing each other for the first time in 30 years, and six months later, we were married. So that's... It is kind of a fairy tale story but
37:54Jawad MirWow
37:54Kevin Hughes... And that's 22 years ago. So it was a... We had a great time. We have been crazy in love since that day. And we kind of, you know, I wrote her a note, a kind of a Dear John letter, unā¦ an unintended, an uninvited Dear John letter by saying, you know, "I gotta move out and I can't give the best unless I've got room to move," which was a John Mayall song. And I drew a picture. This is toward the end of our, of high school days. And I drew a picture of a bird in a cage, with a tear in its eye, to shā¦ to indicate very clever graphics in my mind. You know, of a sā¦ a sad person being in a cage. And then I, if that wasn't enough, I also then parallel drew a picture of a man, or I guess it was a hand with a wedding ring on, and a tear, and a tear in that person's eye, or something like that. It was like, you know, 17-year-old bad poet drawings.
38:54Kevin HughesAnd to say, you know, I, it's just as bad to be, to be a, you know, a bird in a cage as to be a married man or something. And she saved it. And on that date, 30 years later, she showed it to me, and it cracked me up to think, first of all, that I would have ever written something as lame as that. But secondly, she haā¦ hung onto it to, for all of... She also hung onto my draft card, which was, at the time, I was, I could've, you know, it was a law in the States. You had to be in possession of your draft card at any given time. Somebody could come up, like ICE now, could come up and say, "Show me your draft card," to any person of fighting age. And also they did it because there was a lot of people burning their draft cards at the time. So I looked it up and found out that it was, if you had a replica of your reā¦ draft card, it was okay. You didn't have to have your real one. But you had to have something to show your status in the, in the military. And, so we made a lot of copies of our draft cards so that when we were burning them in public, we'd still have one in our pocket, which would mean we couldn't be arrested.
40:00Kevin HughesWe just, maybe for littering, but not for subversive acts like January 6th. So I, she had a, like, a, one of the copies of my draā¦ draft card, which she saved, again, for 30 years, and it was in pristine condition. You know, there it is. And, I think our second date was a couple of days later, and we went to a coffee shop in Brentwood area. And, she said, she mentioned, or I talked about her saving that thing. She just, you know, said, "I kind of save that kind of stuff," whatever it was. And I went to get it to show it to her, to look at it again, to see if it was the original or if it was the copy. And I couldn't find it, and I lost it that nā¦ the night she gave it to me, I lost it. So she had it for 30 years, and it didn't matter. It didn't even pertain to her. I had it for 30 minutes and lost it. So that's a kind of a difference between Dody and me as far as the skill we have.
40:58Jawad MirThat's such a cool story. I mean, in those 30 years, did you ever think about the fact that this was, you know, not that it would happen, that you wish it had, or you wish at some point it does?
41:09Kevin HughesWell, her name, again, her name is Dody Dorn. It's just such a great name. It's, it's like a, it should beā¦
41:16Jawad MirIt's almost like a fairy tale name, like from movies like Willow or Lord of the Rings orā¦
41:20Kevin HughesExactly. And so, I mean, her name came up because my sister, like I say, they were, they were good friends during the high school days. And, I don't think that it crossed my mind that, you know, I shā¦ I should find her and marry her like they do or whatever. But
41:40Jawad MirYeah
41:40Kevin Hughes... But it was, it was, pretty much both of us. I don't think she thought twice about me either in those 30 years. But, it turned out that it was well worth it. I think we would not have been married still had we gotten married then because neither one of us had, the phrase, we hadn't sown our oats. You know, we hadn't finished growing up yet. And soā¦
42:04Jawad MirYeah
42:04Kevin Hughes... To come into the world at 17 or 18 and try to make it last or make it work, you know, who knows what couldā¦
42:11Jawad MirMuch harder. Much harder
42:12Kevin Hughes... A lot of things could go wrong.
42:13Jawad MirYeah, and you know, when you were, like you said, you were 50. So I mean, at that point, you're pretty much at the peak of your maturity. You know, andā¦
42:21Kevin HughesYeah
42:21Jawad Mir... You like let go of those silly things and all that. So that is, that is so cool. I did not know that. That is so cool.
42:28Kevin HughesWell, I didn't know whether... I listened to the thing the other day, your podcast with her. And I wasn't thinking about listening for that information, but
42:37Jawad MirNo, I normally never ask personal stuff. Like, I never do. We, Abduldy and I, when I, when we met, like, you know, in person it's different. Like, you can talk about certain things.
42:46Kevin HughesSure, yeah.
42:46Jawad MirBut if sā¦ if somebody wants to volunteer that information, I'm all for it. But it's not my, it's not my cup of tea. You know, I'm more focused on people's career and stuff.
42:57Kevin HughesRight
42:57Jawad Mir... But thank you for sharing that. I truly appreciate it.
42:59Kevin HughesSure. And I'm not admitting to any of those murders that they accuse me of doing, so I didn't.
43:05Jawad MirSo in your career, are you, are you still working on projects?
43:11Kevin HughesNo, I'm, I'm retired
43:13Jawad Mir... Retired.
43:14Kevin HughesI tell people, and I'm not sure if it's true, but I'm pretty sure it's true, just by my observations, is that, other than the stunt people, prop people are the most injured peā¦ peā¦ crew members on a movie. There's alwaysā¦
43:29Jawad MirReally?
43:30Kevin Hughes... Something going on. I mean, there... You have to be, you know, underneath the horse and handing things.
43:36Jawad MirYeah.
43:37Kevin HughesI've, I've been on a couple of rodeo movies and one where I tore my rotator cuff 'cause I was running, literally running away from stampeding cattle, or calves in a ring, and I whoosh, and I ran as fast as I could and kind of did a stunt, one arm on the fence and fly my body over to the other side. And it looked great, but I reā¦ ripped my shoulder up in doing it.
44:01Kevin HughesAnd, also running up and down. You've... Other departments don't really need to run. You know, they get their cable out and they get... The lamps are pretty close, and they're, they're lit by the time they're ready to shoot. It's not... Something doesn't happen very often with the camera department or the fā¦ lighting department where they say, "Quick, put in a lamp up there," unless, you know, we're losing light or something. Butā¦
44:23Jawad MirSure
44:23Kevin Hughes... It's usually we work at a regular pace. Props, something goes wrong or the actor wishes it to be something else, you know, things have to change quickly, like between takes. Run to the truck, run up to it, get something, look, find something that might work for that. Run back, jump down on the tailgate onto the ground and back to the stage. A lot of running, a lot of jumping, climbing up onto the tailgate of these big trucks and, you know, sometimes you don't make it and you bash your shin into the tā¦ lift gate. And it's just constant injuries in the prop department. Even when you're careful, and I'm not really careful, but, be careful.
45:02Jawad MirThat makes sense.
45:03Kevin HughesYeah.
45:03Jawad MirThat makes sense now.
45:04Kevin HughesI think it's likeā¦
45:05Jawad MirYeah. But
45:05Kevin HughesThat's why I don't... I say I don't know for sure, but it seems like, you know, once in a while other departments get something like, something's, a cut or a thorn in their eye, or they cut their fingers and stuff, but we're always getting, you know, just trashed somehow.
45:19Jawad MirWell, evenā¦
45:20Kevin HughesSo it takes a toll.
45:21Jawad MirYeah. Even for stunt coordinators, stuntmen or stuntwomen, I think not up until like maybe, I would say, maybe I'm wrong, you know, in the early '90s or mid '80s, there were... The audience was told that what a stunt person is. Before that, I don't think that concept was there in terms of public's eye. So when you're not informed, you don't know, you know, whether that does it or not. I mean, Tom Cruise obviously has taken it to another level now. Like, he's this like, you knowā¦
45:50Kevin HughesYeah
45:50Jawad Mir... Stunt person. But I think it makes sense. And, you know, with the, with the prop industry, you know, you've been at, you've been in it since the mid '70s, and to leading up to, you know, in the last 10, 15 years, what has changed for better and for worse in your department, over theā¦
46:09Kevin HughesYeah
46:09Jawad Mir... Over the last few decades?
46:11Kevin HughesWell, I used to say, you know, this is when it was only in theory, that, you know, the, they might, you know, pā¦ use AI and green screen and all those things in the future and, all the actors will just be there and everything will be fake. And I never really believed that because actors, they need to have those things in their hands. They have to have a gun. You can put something that's a rubber gun in their hand, and they'll change it in post to a ray gun or a sā¦ you know, science fiction thing. But it's not gonna be that they just stand there doing nothing and acting and animators put the rest of the stuff in because the actors would insist on, you know, "I gotta carry my briefcase. I can't just have nothing in my hand. I'm not a, I'm not a mime. I'm, I'm trying to act." So I think they often... I think the dogs might bark in a minute. That, I was, I was always saying that, you know, you'll, they'll never replace prop department in the fā¦ in the industry, in the film industry. And I kinda think it's probably still true, but there's a whole lot less of actual, you know, manufacturing of props.
47:17Kevin HughesThā¦ a lot of things are done by AI nowā¦
47:21Jawad MirYeah
47:21Kevin Hughes... That didn't used to be. So I worry about that.
47:24Jawad MirBut at the... Yeah. But at the same time, I mean, I think one of the things that you said was, which is true, like actors, I mean, need that space, not just even holding an object, but the surroundings that they're in.
47:36Kevin HughesYeah.
47:36Jawad MirAnd you can tell in movies where they're like, you know... I haven't really seen superhero movies, but I've seen some behind the sceneā¦
47:42Kevin HughesYeah
47:42Jawad Mir... Where like it's 360 degree green screenā¦
47:46Kevin HughesYeah
47:46Jawad Mir... And everything is happening. And you could tell. Like, not... You cā¦ you can't tell, but you can't get yourself immersed into that environment, and that's how you can tell.
47:55Kevin HughesYeah.
47:55Jawad MirAnd I thinkā¦
47:55Kevin HughesThat's exactly right
47:56Jawad Mir... And James Cameron is a great example of that. I don't know if you've seen Avatar behind the scenes stuff. So to even have that, you know, the famous bird, the seā¦ bird sequence. I'm really bad with the names of theā¦
48:07Kevin HughesYeah, me too.
48:08Jawad Mir... You know, whatever. They actually made a plastic thing where they sat on itā¦
48:14Kevin HughesYeah
48:14Jawad Mir... And it had hydraulics, and it moved back and forth.
48:16Kevin HughesYeah.
48:17Jawad MirAnd obviously then they replaced it because you need that for actors to be fully involved into the characterā¦
48:22Kevin HughesYeah
48:22Jawad Mir... And for the audience to engage.
48:23Kevin HughesYeah. Yeah, I had Joā¦ not Jonah, Scott Glenn, on a rodeo movie. He's actually also in Apocalypse Now in a very,.. It's almost entirely cut from the movie, but he's in Apocalypse also. But he, we were doing a rodeo movie, and he was a bull rider andā¦ You know, then he's not, he's not a bull rider, and he was the first person to tell us that. And so we did a lot of shots with a double on the bull, but a lot of times we had those, you know, country bar fake bull, you know, on the set that he would sit on and, you know, so that he was being thrown around but not on a real bull in a real, you know, arena. And I don't think it... We could've gotten any kind of facial performance from him if it wasn't like that, if he wasn't in danger of being thrown or, you know. So even that, it was, you know, it's kind of a prop I suppose, the bull. But I think it was really operated by the animal trainers at the time on that movie. And yeah, he wouldn't wā¦ you wouldn't wanna sā¦ you know, have to be the director to say, you know, "Imagine that you're being thrown and, on the fifth throw you get tossed off."
49:32Kevin HughesYou know, they're, that's, no actor wants that.
49:36Jawad MirYeah.
49:37Kevin HughesThe rapport with actors, I really enjoyed that part of the movie business to see good actors working. I'm sorry, we're still trying to talk about things going wrong and damagingā¦
49:48Jawad MirNo. That's fine
49:49Kevin Hughes... So, what is or is not gonna be replaced. Yeah, I feel, I've, Jody and I often say in terms of the prop department, it's good that I'm done with that. It's not as exciting, it's not as romantic. It's not as thrilling as it used to be. Because again, there's so many restrictions and rules that, and budgets are high enough now that you don't have to put something together with spit and glue. They expect it to be, you know, done, manufactured. 3D printers, for example, there's something. Antiques can be made, you know, overnight on a 3D printer that most of the time in prep on a movie, especially period movies that I love doing, you gotta shop around and find that, you know, very camera, for example, you know, that was used in 1956 or the chā¦ difference in, you know, anything. You know, they're, they can now just create those. So even if it's not green screen, it's nothing that the prop department has to do other than, you know, indicate what it should be and then sā¦ designers make that happen.
50:55Kevin HughesSo it's
50:55Jawad MirYeah
50:56Kevin Hughes... That's kinda sad but efficient, as long as... And, yeah, people, I think, which is also sad, don't care if it's a real or a fake. I mean, again, you're nā¦ in the sci-fi things everybody knows they're not on dragons, but they don't care. That's, it's okay with an audience that it's, that it's pretend. I like, you know, I love shopping for the right thing, the right watch that's, that's on an actor or, those things. I guess that's still done and maybe wardrobe does a lot of it, but does seem to be easier.
51:31Jawad MirYeah. I mean, I agree with you and I think there's just something about an actual authenticity of an object, of a prop and it just, even if it's like, you know, somebody wearing a watch from the 1950s, even if it's not in like a close-up or a shot, it still sends off that message.
51:49Kevin HughesYeah.
51:49Jawad MirDetail, right? So everything is in fine detail. That's all it is.
51:52Kevin HughesYeah.
51:52Jawad MirEverything isā¦
51:52Kevin HughesAnd if you look on IMDb about movies and it says like bloopers or trivia, a lot of times it'll say something like, you know, "That watch didn't come out until, summer of 1958."
52:04Jawad MirYeah.
52:05Kevin HughesYou know. It was just not before that.
52:07Jawad MirYeah.
52:07Kevin HughesKind of maddening to do. Apocalypse has got a lot of, continuity errors in it that, either you don't care or you don't notice, but not because it was a mistake that was made. There were Bibles this thick of scene by scene what the, what the PBR, that boat was supposed to look like. In other words, it, bā¦ from up to scene 0 to scene 25 it was a pristine condition. Then there was an attack and they had to use palm fronds to make shade over the top of the, of the canopy, and then later there's bullet holes in this, and the surfboard is there at a certain point on, and after a shootout the surfboard's gone. So a lot of those things happened and we were meticulously careful, and the script supervisors were really great at, "Oh, hang on, this thing should be a little bit farther over here." And then in editorial Francis goes, "Well, you know what'd be a lot better? If this happened before that, you know, you could build something up to it." And so the continuity was for the sake of the story was moved around.
53:10Jawad MirTurned off, yeah.
53:12Kevin HughesAnd, so people will say, you know, "Those idiots, they made a mistake that, you know, the candle is half, down and then the candle's back up." And that's because a line of dialogue was more interesting earlier in the conversation, and they're not gonna say... Well, now of course that is a, that's a conā¦ an additional thing. You could raise the length of a candle anytime you want in Vā¦ in VFX rather than knowing that the candles are all burning down in sequence to the rest of the shā¦ of the, of the scene. So yeah, I guess that's a, that's one of the positives that VFX bring.
53:44Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, no, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, no, this is, this is awesome, Kevin. I mean, anything else, if you wanna add on feelā¦
53:53Kevin HughesYeah
53:53Jawad Mir... Free to. I think that was fascinating hearing your stories, especially your personal story.
53:59Kevin HughesWell, yeah. Well, my dad, speaking of personal stories, was the guy who, there was a TV show called The Soupy Sales Show. I don't know if you ever saw it, but that was a show where pies were thrown a lot on a TV and he would bring a bunch of those things home from time to time. But, let's see if my dad... Oh, and, there was also, and people now have seen it 'cause of, YouTube, Groucho Marx had a TV game show called You Bet Your Life, which is kind of a funny idea to think of that's the, that's the wage, you know? And if you said the secret word, a duck would fly down from the ceā¦ from the rafters with that word on it, and the contestant who said it or accidentally would win an extra prize. So my dad had a job when they were shooting that showā¦ Here. Most of the time they shot it in New York, but when they were shooting here, his job was to stand by the flyā¦ fly rail and wā¦ they'dā¦ somebody would say, "He said the word, you know, toaster. Go." So my dad would be the guy to pull the rope that would bring the duck into the shot.
55:04Kevin HughesSoā¦
55:04Jawad MirReally?
55:05Kevin Hughes"Fly in the duck" is a questā¦ is a statement that you don't hear very often, but my dad had to be that person. And
55:11Jawad MirWow
55:11Kevin Hughes... Another quick thing. My grandfather on his side, also when I was a kid, his job was to open and close the curtains at the Chinese Theater, the Grauman's Chineseā¦
55:24Jawad MirChinese Mann's Theater?
55:25Kevin HughesYeah.
55:26Jawad MirYeah.
55:26Kevin HughesAnd, he'd be back behind the screen and, he'd sit in a chair reading a book or carving something out of wood, and a little yellow light would come on, and he'd get up and stand over by the switch. And when the green light flashed, he would push a button, and that would close the see-through curtain, and then another... Then it would go solid, and that would close the solid curtain. And the audience would then leave, and then the new audience would come in, and the reverse would happen. He'd open the big curtain, and then he'd open the see-through curtain, and then sit down for another hour and a half.
55:58Jawad MirWow.
55:59Kevin HughesThat was his gig when I was a kid, and I thought, "I want that job. That'd be kind of cool." I still haven't done it, but, that would be kind of a great job.
56:09Jawad MirYeah. And, you know, I will say this, that, you know, you have... I don't wanna call it a hierarchy, but let's just say, like, you know, in the eyes of the world, like everybody sees the film, they see actors, right?
56:20Kevin HughesYeah.
56:20Jawad MirThat's the firstā¦
56:21Kevin HughesThey don't think past
56:22Jawad Mir... First thing. Yeah. They don't think beyond that. But then, you know, if you, even if you look at, like, directors or producers or composers and all that, for them, they don't, they mā¦ not all of them, but some of them may not look beyond that, right? So there's all the other techniciansā¦
56:37Kevin HughesYeah
56:38Jawad Mir... That are pretty much making all the crew and departments' job a lot easier. It's not just one person doing it. And the point that I'm trying to make is that it's people like yourself who do make everything else look a lot bigger and better. Actors have their job. Directors have their job. All of them. But it's just the, again, the fine details which comes through people like yourselves.
57:00Kevin HughesYeah.
57:00Jawad MirSo really appreciate you.
57:01Kevin HughesAnd vision making it believable, that's
57:03Jawad MirExactly
57:03Kevin Hughes... I think it comes down to. Yeah. It's great to be able to do. Can I tell you one quick story as the last story?
57:10Jawad MirSure. Yeah, absolutely.
57:10Kevin HughesEmilio Estevez is a friend. I met Emilio when he was mā¦ maybe 11 years old or younger, because when Marty had his heart attack in the Philippines, rather than send him home, which they thought would be a guarantee that Francis would not be able to finish the picture. They were gonna send him home and make it with what you've got. So he, as you know, in Hearts of Darkness, they kind of didn't want the States to know anything if they could help it. So they brought his family out. After he got out of the hospital, he was there. His whole family was there. And we'd, they'd go out and hang out. And if they wanted to play catch, Emilio or Charlie would come up to the prop boat at the time and say, you know, "You got a, bat and balls?" I said, "Yeah. Hang on." Give them. So they'd play, and at the end of the day they'd bring their, you know, sporting goods back to us. But that was my introduction to Emilio. And later on in life, he was, began to direct a movie, and he'd directed quite a few movies. And, when Bobby was being made... Well, first of all, there's another movie called Men at Work where he and Charlie play garbage men, and it's kind of a Weekend at Bernie's.
58:14Jawad MirI think I know which one that is, yes.
58:16Kevin HughesAnd when I met him to interview for the job, I said, "You know, we actually, met before." And he said, "Oh, really? Where?" I said, "Well, on Apocalypse, you came out to the Philippines. I was the guy on the boat that would give you the mitt and ball." And he went, "Oh, my God." And said, "I don't know. I don't know if I can hire you thinking that you know, you're..." I said, "Look, you're directing. There's no rules here. It's not because I'm older than you. You're gonna, you're gonna run into that a lot, of people are gonna be older than you and more experienced than you. But, you're the boss. You're the director. It's, it's okay." So he hired me on that. We worked several movies. And I was gonna say about Bobby, and I forget what it was. But, oh, yeah. We were, it turns out on the movie about Robert F. Kennedy's last day in life and where he was, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
59:09Kevin HughesAnd the movie is about everything that was happening around him. You only saw him briefly in a one moment. But it's like Grand Hotel. You follow the cooks and the chefs, and you follow some of the guests and all these things that are happening. And at a certain point all through it, there's, Kennedy paraphernalia. Bumper stickers and hats and all that stuff. Because we've got a huge scene with extras that are throwing their hats in the air and doing all that. And I was shopping for props, and it, I'd almost never done it because you can't trust the postage or the postal service. But you're shopping on Emaā¦ eBay, the chance of it not getting to you in time, it was just too stressful. So you try to have to go and find something physical that you could take and we have. But there was a few things that were unique that I found on, you know, on the internet, and it was the bidding time was before we started to shoot. So I would put in a bid and then keep lā¦ keeping an eye on it and then add whenever I needed to. And it started to get pretty expensive, but it was... Came from a specific prop. I think it was, Ambassador Hotel related, not Bobby Kennedy.
1:00:12Kevin HughesBut I'm, I'm not sure. Anyway, we finally got it, and, we had a production meeting, and I kind of held it up at the production meeting saying, "I think you're gonna like this. This is a cool one." And I hold the prop up, and he said, "Oh, God. I was trying to get that. I've fā¦ you know, I kept bidding and bidding." And he and I were bidding against each other for a prop on a movie that, you know, he was trā¦ he didn't know I was bidding. So he was actively involved in raising the cost of that prop. Whereas if we'd been, you know, talking to each other, we could've gotten it a lot cheaper by only one of us bidding. But that's, that's... Shopping for props, I guess, is what I meant for that.
1:00:51Jawad MirYeah. No, Emilio, Estevez, I mean, I haven't seen a lot of his films, but I became very aware of his work and his skills in The Mighty Ducks.
1:01:03Kevin HughesYeah.
1:01:03Jawad MirAnd when that came out in the midā¦'90s, it was a big deal back then. Like, that kind of started the trend of, like, sports filmsā¦
1:01:09Kevin HughesYeah, right
1:01:10Jawad Mir... I think. And it, and it was supā¦ and it was a super hit. But yeah. I mean, Charlie Sheen, Martin Sheen. You know, what was that TV show? The West Wing.
1:01:21Kevin HughesThe West Wing. Yeah. Martinā¦
1:01:22Jawad MirRight
1:01:22Kevin Hughes... Estevez
1:01:23Jawad Mir... Emā¦ Emilio. Amazingā¦
1:01:24Kevin HughesYeah
1:01:25Jawad Mir... Amazing stuff. But yeah. No, thank you for sharing, all that. And I thinkā¦
1:01:30Kevin HughesIt's a pleasure
1:01:31Jawad Mir... It's a testā¦ it's a testament to your work, and, you know, there is no sā¦ you know, some people do think that. But I truly believe, you know, if there is such a thing as small jobs, they are the biggest jobs there are because they make everybody else do those jobs easier. So thank you so much.
1:01:48Kevin HughesYou bet. And keep in mind, it's a blue collar, it's a blue collar job just like other people have. It just happens to have crazy things involved.
1:01:57Jawad MirThank you so much, Kevin.
1:01:58Kevin HughesThank you. Take care.
1:01:59Jawad MirTake care, sir. Bye. Bye-bye.