Trade a Dodger for a Mo-pro?
Most employees end up with their names on a business card, a time card or, if things go badly, a pink slip. But at Culver City’s Modern Props, which makes high-tech props and contemporary furniture for the film industry, the workers have been immortalized on baseball-player-style trading cards.
The cards are part of a series of unusual Christmas greetings the prop rental house started sending out years ago. There had been Yuletide 3-D comic books and car-window decals. Then the company decided to do an employee-based parody of sports collectible cards.
“Every Christmas we try to top ourselves,” says President John Zabrucky. “And it’s not easy.”
The cards were popular enough that a limited edition is now sold in specialty shops.
Now future generations can know the favorite prop, food, shoe size and distance between the eyes of 30 “Mo-pro” employees. Each is pictured on the front of a card featuring a favorite prop. The employees look like passengers peering through a cruise-ship porthole at some Flash Gordon-type electronic gizmo.
On the back of each card is a short bio. There’s the electro-tech fabricator who believes he killed Gen. Custer in a past life and the supervisor who, “if Modern Props was a living organism,” would be its libido.
Off-the-Wall Videos
What are they watching at underground video parties these days?
“Valley of the Dolls” and “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” two formerly out-of-print films about the seedy side of Hollywood success, have been newly released on video, showing up in stores and unreeling on VCRs around town for fans of cinematic squalor.
Then there’s “Fertile La Toyah Jackson Video Magazine,” a video version of the popular underground magazine of the same name. It’s something like a twisted version of “Eye on L.A.,” conducted by several fixtures on the L.A. nightclub scene. Sample story: a look at prostitute fashion trends, filmed on location on some of this city’s most notorious streets.
And, finally, there’s a tape without a name, by and about a prominent and recognizable musician--one of the fathers of rock ‘n’ roll--as he develops an extremely personal relationship with a young woman in what is said to be a Lake Tahoe hotel room. This particular tape has been copied and recopied so often that portions are largely invisible, but, like the infamous Rob Lowe tape, it’s become a hit on the underground circuit.
A Few Words on Spandex
Our witty friend, an arbiter of fashion, had this to say about clingy clothing: “People have to realize that spandex is a privilege; it’s not a right.”
