I Own Jeffrey Tambor’s Pants : Redux - Part One
06.03.06 By Collin DavidPlease understand that I probably go out to the movies maybe twice a year. This is for a few reasons, and they are as follows : popcorn makes my insides try to relocate to the outsides, human beings cannot seem to shut up, and I’d have to sell a pint of blood to even get in. I don’t pay ten dollars to hear Jennifer Bigmouthington’s opinion the onscreen characters’ costume choices, spoken sharply into the back of my skull as I imagine sending other sharp, shrapnel-y things back into her general area.
Despite being a hermit-in-training, (so far, I’ve climbed the hermit ladder to ‘creepy misanthrope’ level and I have the collar pips to prove it… thought they’re more like ‘beetles stuck to me with safety pins’ because hermits don’t often get out to the pip store), I did make it out to the theaters to see Hellboy in 2004, and I fell in love. Not only did it have comedy, romance and big monsters, but it had Jeffrey Tambor. And I thought to myself, quietly, “One day, I’m going to OWN those pants!”
Okay, I totally didn’t think that, but I am a big Jeffrey Tambor fan. I enjoy his work on Arrested Development and all of the other slightly recognizable, often forgettable roles that he’s fallen into. I think he’s actually 9 feet tall in real life, and he eats live cows for dinner. He’s a man’s man, I tells ya!
I found myself collecting all of Mezco’s Hellboy action figures even before the movie came out, which broke one of my cardinal collecting rules : Thou Shalt Never Buy Toys From A Movie That Thou Hast Not Seen Yet. The toys were stellar, I was a fan of the comic book anyhow, and I succumbed to my lingering fear that the toys would vanish from the face of the Earth if I didn’t pounce on them prematurely. Sideshow Toys were also producing their own line of 12” scale Hellboy figures, which also far surpassed anything I’d seen in toy form, so I snagged those too, including the convention-only ‘Nazi Kroenen’ figure. The collection expanded to include 3” block figures of the characters, as well as 2” gumball machine PVC figures and a Heroclix piece or two. I passed by the Hellboy-branded backpacks and t-shirts, and eventually found the Diamond Comics exclusive ‘crown of fire’ Anung Un Rama Hellboy. So, I had just about everything I could acquire to suitably represent a film and comic that inspired me.
If I’ve learned one thing about collecting other than the fact that I have a pathologically addictive personality, it’s that once you’ve found everything, go on eBay. eBay is the magnifying glass that will amplify all of the strange little gaps in your completist philosophy, and the funhouse mirror that will reflect to you the absurdity of your situation. This is where I found that Revolution Studios was auctioning off film props.
Bullets, gloves, wetsuits, scarves, pants, goggles, charms. If it was in the movie, there’s a good chance that Revolution Studios was selling it, and I wanted it all. I mean, you can amass a pile of things that are ABOUT a movie, or you can own a part of the movie itself. Such crucial items as locators and stunt-worn harnesses instantly shot up in value, but Jeffrey Tambor items hovered around the tens of dollars. I was gunning for his shoes, but due to some inconvenient computer freezing, I ended up with his pants.
Why his shoes? Because what could be more bizarrely fetishistic than owning a large man’s worn shoes? I figure that if you’re going to collect something as useless and obscure as Tamborphenalia, you need to go whole hog. There’s no half-cocked collecting here. I’d be just as happy with a small rock that was on screen for a frame or so, but pants, much like paper, beat rock every time. In this way, I came into possession of something insignificant, impractical, and part of something beautiful.
Not the ‘rubbing against Jeffrey Tambor’s butt’ part - the movie was the beautiful part.
But what does one do with Tamborpants?
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Article Tags: action figures, clothing, Hellboy, Mezco, Tambor================
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