Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Full Monty Car


There is a car onstage in the Full Monty. The designer didn't want a fake car or a cutout. I went to the junk yard. I am constantly surprised by how nice people can be, and how eager they are to help with my ridiculous requests. The man at the junk yard drove us around in a van with no doors, taking us car to car until we found the one we wanted. We agreed on a price, and then the junk yard cleared everything out of the car for us (everything under the hood, all fuel lines, everything in the back seat...), and had it ready when our tow truck, belonging to a friend of the theatre, arrived.
Once we got the car back to the theatre we needed to cut it down so we had only what we needed. What you see in the image is what there was. We cut the car just behind the drivers door, and then lengthwise at about 5' from the drivers side. We masked the open sides of the car with deuvateen. The car was then installed onto a 4x8 platform (with extra framing) and set with knife guides into the tracks on the stage.
Lessons learned- We should have had them remove the windshield as well; if you do not have the proper tools removing a windshield is a long, painful, sticky tar mess. The hood will not support itself; we had to weld an extra bit of frame to support the passenger's side before we did the lengthwise cut. A sawzal will do the rest of the cutting, but it takes time and we ruined/bent/dulled about 6 blades in the process so budget for that.

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