Page 67 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 1 Fall 2012

67
JohnBankson ’81
In the World War II period drama My
Dog Skip, Bankson secured a fleet of
period-appropriate cars to occupy the
streets of small-town Mississippi. Also
for that film, Bankson operated the gas
pedal on one of the vehicles as the title
character, a Jack Russell terrier, “manned”
the steering wheel. For Hot Shots! Part
Deux, Bankson and an assistant were
charged with creating a hog snout sand-
wich that could blast mustard out one
of its ends. It took 25 sandwiches to film
the effect.
Bankson used a St. Paul’s connection
when former faculty member Barbara
Talcott ’79, who once coached debate at
the School, helped him with historical re-
search for the 2007 Denzel Washington film
The Great Debaters, which was set in 1935.
A side business for Bankson is a per-
sonal property appraisal company, which
frequently bumps up against his prop mas-
ter world. “The crossover in terms of the
Rolodex is quite startling,” he says. “One of
my old assistants was working on the first
Pirates of the Caribbean movie and I intro-
duced him to a few map dealers. Disney
ended up reproducing the original maps.”
The latest project for Bankson, who is
now based in Wilmington, N.C., is the new
NBC series Revolution, a post-apocalyptic
drama, filmed in Wilmington, for which
Bankson is gathering a great deal of “sur-
vivalist materials – torches, gas lanterns,
large machetes, backpacks and bedrolls.
We have given them an organic look, which
works really well.” He has also worked
recently on 35 episodes of the Lifetime
TV drama Army Wives (see IMDB.com for
his full résumé).
the prop master
The prop master’s nightmare is main-
taining continuity throughout a film.
For Bankson that has included every-
thing from monitoring the level of Gina
Davis’s glass of orange juice in Earth Girls
Are Easy to vigilant tracking of a cracked
windshield that deteriorates over time to
ensure its chronological reality. In the
Tom Cruise-headlined movie Mission:
Impossible II, the crew wrecked six Audis
and half a dozen Porsches in a chase scene,
with damage that was nearly impossible
for Bankson to predict.
“Sometimes there’s a mistake, but you
can’t always blame the prop guy,” he says.
“But the work is in the details, and it can
be really satisfying.”
in Journey 2: The mysterious island
ornate, steam punked version tank variation – double hose
Below: These drawings were
used by Bankson as a guide to
create vintage dive gear.