The auctioneer held two shell casings in his hand – blanks, he said, noting that they were inscribed on the bottom as such. Before us, on the inside right arm of a clean white leather tufted sofa, were two nicks that revealed a hint of the stuffing inside.
He had found the casings under a cushion on the sofa and surmised that they may have made the markings. There was no way to tell if they had nicked the sofa, or if they had been put under the cushion intentionally or just gotten lost there.
Nevertheless, it was an interesting theory about two of the props from “Dead Man Down.” The auction house was selling items from the set of the yet-to-be-released movie starring Colin Farrell, Noomi Rapace, Terrence Howard, Dominic Cooper and Armand Assante.
It was the first time I’d been at a sale of movie props. When I saw mention of them on the auction house’s website beforehand, I was eager to see what they were. Most were furniture – very unassuming and indistinguishable. In fact, the pieces blended in well with the other common-folks stuff in the room. If I didn’t know the consignment number, I wouldn’t have been able to pick them out from anything else.
Maybe that’s what the producers had in mind – to make the set appear as believable and commonplace as our own homes so we would believe in the fantasy on the screen.
Some pieces of the furniture were different, though. Blue tags labeled “Beatrice bedroom” were stuck to them, and they apparently were used in the home of Rapace’s character in the movie. There was also other furniture with labels I could not decipher, but most had no labels.
Spread out in the auction house’s furniture room were enough pieces to partially furnish a house: a vanity set with chairs, mattresses, a distressed white iron headboard and footboard, sofas, armoire and chests, a dining room set, tables, wall scones, rugs, lamp shades and more.
Sitting atop some file cabinets were three scales, one with a white powdery dust that the auctioneer figured was make-believe drugs.
The furniture’s provenance was undoubtedly the movie, but after talking to two auctioneers, it still was not clear to me who had consigned the items for sale.
For movie buffs, it probably wouldn’t matter as long as they knew that Rapace or Farrell may have touched it. I could imagine someone standing behind that bar with the wooden overhang and barrel chairs making drinks and telling friends about how famous it was. And once the movie is released and if the bar survives post-production cuts, he/she can brag about where it appeared in the movie and who had actually handled it.
I’ll certainly look for each of the pieces when I go to see the movie, which is scheduled for release next April. “Dead Man Down” is the story of a professional killer and right-hand man (Farrell) to a new York crime boss who teams with a victim (Rapace) to get revenge against the boss.
Scenes from the movie were shot in April and May in Philadelphia, which was filling in as New York. I overheard one auction-goer tell another that he had dropped by the location. Other scenes were shot in New York, where the movie takes place.
All of the photos I saw on the web were of street scenes, mostly of the hunk Farrell, who looks good even with his trademark stubble and grime. Howard as usual was his suave-looking self. I had never heard of Rapace, but she is in the movie “Prometheus” and was in the Swedish “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” in 2009. Earlier this year, I saw the American version of Tattoo starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara.
I wasn’t around when the props were sold. Here’s a sampling of what was available:
