From an early model of the iconic alien mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind to a complete Stormtrooper costume from Star Wars, bidding opened yesterday on thousands of pieces Hollywood model maker Greg Jein collected over his lifetime, including many he created during his nearly half-century career.
The collection amassed by Jein, who died last year at age 76, will be offered up by Heritage Auctions next month in Dallas. Jein, who had an Oscar and Emmy nominated career making miniature models, was also a collector of costumes, props, scripts, artwork, photographs and models from the shows he loved.
“He spent his entire lifetime in a movie industry at a time when practical effects and models were the way that magic happened,” said Joshua Benesh, Heritage’s chief strategy officer. “They were the way that spaceships traveled through outer space. They were the way that aliens came and visited Earth. They were the way that catastrophes and disasters were depicted.”
Photo: AP
Jein, who grew up in Los Angeles, began his career in the mid-1970s, and over the decades worked on movies including The Dark Knight Rises, The Hunt for Red October and Avatar. A fan of Star Trek from the start, he later worked on pieces for the franchise.
Jein was still early in his career when he led the team that created the mothership for Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The model that appears in the movie — just over 1.5 meters long but appearing gigantic — is now part of the collection at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. But a small preliminary model, which is about 12 centimeters long, is among Jein’s creations that will be offered at the auction.
“It is equal parts incredibly intricate and just sort of incredibly simple,” Benesh said. “It has this sort of whacked together informal quality to it but you see it and you know exactly what it is.”
Photo: AP
Other creations from Jein’s career going up for auction include a miniature wrecked spaceship from the 1997 film Starship Troopers and a miniature shack, airplanes and newspapers from Spielberg’s 1979 war comedy 1941.
Also being offered up are a dizzying number of items Jein collected from the 1960s Batman television show and the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises. The Batman memorabilia includes Batarangs, utility belts and a Bat radio. There are phasers, communicators and tricorders from Star Trek: The Original Series from the 1960s, in addition to many costumes, including the formal dress tunic William Shatner wore as Captain Kirk. Jein even had the Vulcan lute played by Leonard Nimoy’s “Mr. Spock.”
Then there’s the “Red Leader” X-wing Starfighter miniature complete with a pilot and the top of an R2 unit that was used in the 1977 film Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope.
Lou Zutavern, Jein’s longtime friend and shop supervisor, said Jein had a love for Hollywood history and a passion for collecting.
“He loved the search and finding things and making a trade,” Zutavern said. “It was part of the fun for him but he also really wanted to make sure the stuff didn’t just get thrown in dumpsters.”
Even as a child, Jein was not only a collector, but already an exacting model maker, said his cousin, Jerry Chang. Jein collected baseball cards, comic books and toys, buying one toy to play with and one to keep, Chang said.
When Jein was around 10, he surprised Chang and Chang’s brother following a visit to Disneyland by creating a detailed replica of the theme park in his bedroom.
Jein graduated from California State University, Los Angeles in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in art. He then spent some time taking graduate courses and eventually embarked on his career in Hollywood.
Chang said that sorting through his cousin’s collection after his death became “sort of like a treasure hunt.”
“You would move a set of books and all of a sudden you’d find something and you’d go: ‘Oh my gosh, that looks kind of familiar,’” Chang said.
Chang said Jein loved his work and also had a passion to learn about a wide array of topics. After Jein died, his cousin found that his book collection spanned topics from cooking to the military.
“He lived the life that he wanted and he enjoyed it,” Chang said.
This month the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) announced a new policy ostensibly aimed at influencing the upcoming presidential election. A top-notch Voice of America (VOA) report observed “China launched a series of influence campaigns against Taiwan last week, unveiling a plan to promote integrated development across the Taiwan Strait.” The plan, a “demonstration zone,” offers incentives for Taiwanese to live, work and invest in Fujian Province, across the Strait from Taiwan, along with supplies of water, electricity and gas. Using cooperative zones to poach technology and influence Taiwanese is an old plan that has appeared in various
SEPT. 25 to OCT. 1 Joyce McMillan was greatly moved by the pleas of the Taiwanese pastor and doctor who preached at her church in the summer of 1954. Hsieh Wei (謝緯) had just completed his medical residency in Buffalo, New York and stopped by Berkeley to raise funds and recruit staff for the tuberculosis treatment center the Presbyterian Church planned to open in his hometown of Puli, Nantou County. McMillan, who was a nursing aide, had the dream of being an overseas missionary since she was 7 years old. She also had a close friend die of tuberculosis. She expressed
Si Mateneng of the Tao indigenous community felt like he had reunited with a lost friend. While visiting Seattle’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, he encountered a boat that had been in the US since the 1970s, first hanging in a restaurant then languishing in a warehouse before being purchased by a collector and donated to the museum. Si Mateneng could tell from the crosses on the vessel, known as a tatala, that it was built on his homeland of Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) after the introduction of Christianity in 1959. He could hardly contain his excitement. Si Mateneng
If the world is to avert climate catastrophe without causing immense suffering, humanity must put the global economy into reverse gear, and begin serious and truly democratic discussions about resources and priorities, says Lu Chien-yi (盧倩儀), a research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies (IEAS). Lu is a proponent of degrowth, a movement that seeks to knock GDP as the standard metric off its pedestal, save the planet’s ecosystems and create a more just society. She and other degrowth thinkers contend that the eco-economic decoupling promised by supporters of green growth will not happen fast enough to
RSS