This morning when I logged into my Flickr account I noticed that one of my contacts had uploaded some interesting new pics. There were lots of creatures and props from movies. What really caught my eye though is the picture that I've included here.

In case you don't recognize it, that's the Nostromo - the space ship from the movie ALIEN. Well, part of it anyway. If you recall, Nostromo was actually a large mining ship. This was the part that detached and landed on LV426 to investigate the distress call.

The reason this caught my eye is because this was the first time I'd seen the model in its entirety even though  I once stood right next to it, touched it, and examined parts of it closely. And because this model has an interesting history.

I should probably start by mentioning a major character in this story. Bob Burns. Bob has been around the film industry for a long, long time, but the thing that he's probably most well known for now is his collection of movie memorabilia. You see, at an early age Bob started collecting props and other bits from the movies. People would just give him stuff. Cool stuff. Stuff that people like me would pay good money for. In many cases this was because these items existed in a strange legal loophole. They belonged to the peope or companies that made them but because they were tied to a specific film these people didn't have the rights to sell them. Many times these things become display pieces for the companies who make them but more often than not they end up in a dumpster because they just can't afford to store all that stuff (I know this because I was forced to dumpster a lot of really cool stuff while working at Stan Winston Studio). So, Bob has become known for keeping some of these items safe at his house - so people continue to send him things. I visited Bob's house on a couple of occasions. It's stuffed full of amazing items. I could do another post just about that (and I may). Let's just say that his house is my land of dreams. I could spend weeks there and not get bored.

So, the Nostromo. This was another case of somebody needing to find a home for a piece of film history. Bob was the natural recipient. So, the Nostromo was crated up and sent from Shepperton Studio to Bob's house in Burbank, CA. Apparently, whoever crated the thing up wasn't that concerned with its final condition on arrival and much damage was sustained in the trip. Also, there was an issue with space. The Nostromo is four feet long and nearly as wide. Bob had no place to keep the thing, so it ended up under a tarp in his driveway (which is where I saw it). I'm not sure how many years it sat there, but it was a long time. When I first got to see it in the late 1990's it had already been there long enough to almost be a legend.

While I was working on Starship Troopers there were many discussions about the possibility of some of us who lived in the area getting together for a restoration project on the ship. The talk never went anywhere though and the ship continued to sit in Bob's driveway.

So, back to this morning. After running across the photos I confirmed with the photographer that this was indeed the same ship. If you look at the pictures you can see that it hasn't been fully restored. There's still a bit of damage and the age is apparent. Still, it's nice to see it's found a home where people can see it at the Prop Store of London. Let's hope that it remains on display to the public and not in somebody's private collection.