My memoirs have brought back a lot of memories for me and it’s been fun to share them with the world, including my friends, many of whom are in it, usually for good reasons.
While I was still in Port Orchard, living the vida loca in Washington State, I started to get into collecting movie memorabilia. Now, I’m not one to collect just any old piece of memorabilia. It has to be from pirate movies, of course.
It all started innocently enough. I was perusing Amazon.com’s auction site one day (yes, they had one briefly) and I found a non-profit in LA that had gotten several crates of items from the production company that made Cutthroat Island. For you movie buffs, you know that this movie was a cataclysm and has gone down in history as the biggest movie making flop in history, eclipsing Ishtar.
I liked the movie. Sure, there were some outrageous impossible scenes and explosions, but it wasn’t supposed to be a documentary. It is entertainment, and as entertainment, it’s pretty good.
What’s even better though, was the costuming. Judging by the quality, I think most of the production budget went into the making of the period costumes. Such attention to detail, all hand sewn. I had to have some.
This began a buying spree that coursed its way through almost a year. Just when I would think I was done, something else fantastic would appear on the auction site and I would go crazy bidding.
I really wanted some of the prime pieces, such as Geena Davis’ white dress. But it was $1,500. That was a lot of dough to spend on something that would just sit around the house.
Instead, I went for the more interesting pieces that didn’t cost me an arm and a leg. My first purchase was this coat. If you see the movie, this is the coat worn just behind Matthew Modine as he sashays around the dance floor, stealing everyone blind. Photos don’t do it justice. It is stunning in person.
I was originally going to have it placed in a shadow box but everyone wanted to wear it so it’s never been retired for display.
Unfortunately, it’s too small for me to wear.
It didn’t stop there, of course. I ended up with lots of other pieces from the movie. My final purchase only came last year when I found the ship’s bell from the Morning Star on eBay. I ego bid on it, ending up with the winning bid in the process. I can’t say I’m sad about it, though it is much bigger than I thought it was and consumes a large space in the living room. It does look good next to my Hook cannon though.
At one time, I had a couple of the swords from Pirates of the Caribbean. They were pretty cool. They came to us by way of a client who handled all the surplused items for the Disney parks here in Florida.
I was doing the website for MouseSurplus back then and they never seemed to be able to keep up with their bills. So I often had the pick of the litter of what came into the warehouse. It’s the reason why I had a lovely daybed out on my balcony from the Polynesian Resort and a dresser from Animal Kingdom. I also have several nice props from the parks themselves, all thanks to overdue bills.
It was there that I spotted the doors. They were humungous arched wood doors that came from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which was being refurbished at the time. I had to have them.
Since they were already up on eBay, I had the choice of pulling them off the auction site and just taking them home. Frankly, I didn’t know what I was going to do with them. They were too big for the apartment I was renting at the time, unless I removed the bed from the master and just used the the doors for a bed instead. Hey, now there’s an idea.
Since there were already some bids on the doors, I decided to stay in the bidding war and let MouseSurplus work off some of their debt.
As the bidding window clicked down to the last half hour, the war heated up. We were at about $1,200 now for the doors and I began to feel a bit guilty that someone might really want these doors more than I.
So I called Brian at MouseSurplus. “So Brian, who’s bidding against me,” I asked.
He was cagey about it. Finally he said, “A representative of a Hollywood actor who has a thing for all things pirate.”
It suddenly dawned on me. I was bidding against Johnny Depp, Captain Jack Sparrow himself. Apparently, he wanted the doors for his yacht. I thought about my adversary for the moment. Should I best Captain Jack, knowing that I could have just kept running up the bill. See if he’d blink in the heat of battle?
The bidding went over $2,000 as the minutes ticked by. I kept bidding. One minute, 30 seconds, 15…
Back then, I had the advantage over most others, given that I had massive bandwidth in a day when a lot of people were still poking along on slow connections. This allowed me to wait until the last second to punch in a bid that no one else could match, given the slower connections.
I entered the final bid, and waited. But I didn’t hit the return button. Instead, I let the auction close.
Yes, I gave Captain Jack Sparrow quarter that day. I fought him to the bitter end, could have bested him, but thought the better of it. letting him win this epib fight to the death on eBay.
In the Emerald City, thinking how good those doors would have looked in my new office,
– Robb