Models / Weapons/ Deckard / Kovach
Item:Kovach all metal firing Blaster
Estimated Value: Estimate is $10,000 US
Availability: Only two exist. Not available.
Origin: Fan initated project
Links:
Phil Steinschneider's Prop Site: The Blade Runner Blaster Section V: Metal Initiative
Too Square magazine Interview with Craig Kovach (page is no longer there. Text is at bottom of this page.)
Video 1 of the gun firing
Video 2 of the gun firing

Description: Fan initated reproduction.

Text from an interview with Craig Kovach from a site that is no longer up.
The Prop Master

You could call geologist Craig Kovach a movie buff. But that would be like calling Star Wars a little sci-fi flick.
A Man and His Maker Hook
Do you LOVE movies? I’m not talking about the weekly Saturday night trip to the multiplex with your significant other. I’m not talking about enjoying movies. I’m not asking you if you have a passing casual interest in the latest Harrison Ford flick, or if you have a huge collection of DVDs. I’m asking if you LOVE movies. Would you rather sit home and watch Dune again than go to clubs with your friends because you just can’t get enough of the style, the story, the PROPS. Do you seek out information about films months before they even start filming? Do you spend countless hours watching certain films over and over again? Have you ever spent an uncomfortable amount of money because you had to have the actual prop used in a film you loved? How about this: Have you ever sat down and watched a movie frame by frame, in slow motion, with the intention of building your own version of a certain prop? And would you ever actually build that prop, spending thousands of dollars and many man-hours reaching perfection?
Well, this man has done all of the above. Tampa Bay geologist and all-around everyman Craig Kovach is a certified film NUT. He has dedicated a room in his home to the theater experience, and he has dedicated many shelves and tables to his wonderful collection of memorabilia and props.
I’m sitting with Craig inside his custom-built home nestled in the countryside along the Alafia River, just a short drive from the frenzied streets of Tampa. We’re speaking mostly of films and filmmaking. Craig reminisces, “I've always been a movie fanatic, and I am truly a sci-fi buff. When I was a kid, we used to pile in our old Chevy station wagon and go to the old 20th Century Drive-in on Dale Mabry (long since demolished) just about every weekend. I can remember seeing movies like Fantastic Voyage and Journey to the Far Side of the Sun and being completely blown away. Some people see movies like Top Gun and run off and join the Navy. I saw Journey to the Center of the Earth and ran off and became a geologist.”

If you question the man’s dedication to collecting and building props, your doubts are quelled by the seven-foot-tall greeting just inside his front door. Yeah, that’s right, it’s the alien, from the movie of the same name. Intruders beware, because if the alien doesn’t get you, you might just be “retired” like that poor bastard Leon, or that replicant shot in the back, Zhora. Craig has built his own firing (as in bullets) version of the blaster (that cool-looking bad-ass pistol) used by Harrison Ford in Blade Runner. That was no small task. “Reverse engineering the blaster was the most difficult challenge in building it,” Craig explained, while showing me different raw pieces of aluminum and steel that fasten to different places on the gun. “It would be like giving you a few blurry pictures of a Ferrari and crappy, solid hunks of plastic vaguely resembling a car and telling you, ‘OK, build one of these, and make sure it all runs, drives and looks flawless like the original.’ But you can't open the doors or look under the hood; you can't even look in the cockpit.” Craig’s analogy refers to the Blade Runner movie, of course, and the fact that in it there’s a lack of really solid images of the gun itself. With the exception of a few seconds here or there, the gun is usually out of focus in the film so that its user, Harrison Ford, can be in focus. Damn those filmmakers.

“It took me two years to build. Don't ask how many hours. For a long time my wife went around saying, ‘I wish I was a Blade Runner gun!’ It's since become an inside joke in prop-collecting circles. Everyone knows exactly what it means.” Craig then smiles, and shakes it off. “Janet is a wonderful person. She was actually very understanding, and continues to be so.” After handling the Blade Runner gun, anyone can see the years of work Craig has put into it. It’s quite a stunning masterpiece, one in which Ridley Scott himself would be proud. Craig also has on display a plastic-and-resin version of the gun built by a couple of friends, Richard Coyle and Phil Stienshneider, with his help. This is the most available replica of the gun for purchase online.

Craig is also the proud owner of the “Maker Hook” used by Kyle MacLachlan in the aforementioned Dune. Yes, once again I’m speaking of the actual prop from the film. It’s sitting in Craig’s living room, propped up next to the fireplace. No, he doesn’t use it to stoke the fire. It’s here because once he saw it, he had to have it; it’s a testament to how much he enjoys the film. “The Maker Hook is still my favorite (prop). Dune is just an amazing film.” Craig hefts the all-steel piece in two hands as he talks about the prop, “Most of the sets and props were destroyed (at the film’s Mexico location, after shooting) but someone smuggled this back into the country.”
For the record, Craig also owns a small piece of the Tyrell building from Blade Runner. He has previously owned the “hero” guns and some set dressing used in Alien: Resurrection. The complete trio of furry alien suits from Earth Girls Are Easy (that must have hurt his wallet) as well as some of the more deadly weapons from Alien, Blade and Forbidden Planet. Craig adds, “Some other props I've owned or traded over the years: the Armadillo (six-wheeled vehicle), crashed shuttle and nuclear detonator Bruce Willis used in Armageddon; the hero and stunt knives Kevin Costner used in Waterworld, Predator 2 stuff…

“I can't say how much I've actually spent on props, because my wife will undoubtedly read this. We have a kind of don't-ask-don't-tell thing about that.” Craig smiles again, and hang’s the hook up on the fireplace mantle. Regarding marriage in relation to his hobby: “It's funny. Janet has always been very tolerant, but when I started getting heavily into expensive original material, she started to get a little worried. You know, little looks and comments; somewhere between humoring me and wanting to strangle me. Then, whenever money got tight, I'd feel guilty and would sell this or that prop and she would freak out. ‘What did you go and sell that for? That was the coolest prop you had! I loved that thing!’ Go figure.”
Some of you readers may be scoffing. You might think Craig’s love has reached the point of obsession. Hey, so what. Craig doesn’t care. The props adorning his mantle, side by side with trophies won by his daughter, Holly, his wife and himself, make him happy. They are the ultimate keepsakes of experiences that changed him sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Almost everyone has had a similar movie experience, and can probably recount when, where and under what circumstances they first viewed the film.
“Prop collecting for me was a natural outgrowth of collecting movie paper,” Craig says. “I'm not exactly sure, but I’m guessing I have around 3,000 pieces of movie paper, consisting of original theatrical posters, photos, press kits and press books going back to the 1950s. Mostly sci-fi, of course. My first movie poster was from the 1985 Bruno Lawrence movie, The Quiet Earth. That's now my daughter's favorite poster because it has a cool quote from Albert Einstein on it: ‘The creations of our mind should be a blessing, not a curse to mankind.’ Al's her hero.”
I had to ask him about his all-time favorite film.
Craig admits, “Picking favorite films is tough, because new films come out all the time that are so incredibly good. And different types of films evoke different nostalgic responses. That having been said, Alien is probably my all time favorite film. It started with the best marketing campaign of any film I can remember. They stapled little black, ‘In space, no one can hear you scream’ posters all over Tampa without leaking any of the details about the movie. I saw it the day it came out, of course, and I'll never forget the chest-burster scene. My girlfriend screamed and threw popcorn and coke all over me and five other people who were too freaked out to care. We left the movie theater with 150 other profoundly catatonic moviegoers. Now, two of my favorite pieces of memorabilia are a rare Alien print and an unpublished picture of H.R. Giger, the designer of the alien, both personally signed to me.”
The Saga Continues…
The storytelling medium of film has become such a deeply ingrained part of our modern culture that we shell out more money to watch films than to help charities. We spend more on movies than we do on healthcare. But I’m not passing judgment. I love movies too. I spend tons on DVDs, and Saturday night trips to the multiplex. The fact is, we all need to be entertained. Some of us need entertainment like we do oxygen and water. Movies just happen to be one of the most popular ways in which we choose to fulfill that need. Wrong or right, we want more. We can’t wait to see what’s next, what’s new and how they’re going to make us smile, cringe, hide our eyes or cheer for the good guy.

To that end, maybe Craig can help: He is now taking his love of films to the next obvious level: He’s started making them himself. Craig is currently writing and funding a sci-fi film, which he plans to start shooting next year. He also recently had a role in a local film production titled PAIN (covered in previous issues of TooSquare). Craig plays the role of Kovac (imagine that), a hitman called in at the last minute to help dispatch the film’s main characters. Craig was asked to use the Blade Runner gun, which he calls Model-SL, in the film. He did, ordering several .44 blanks and firing as many as the film’s director would allow. “Working on PAIN was a gas,” Craig says. “ I provided all the stunt castings and much of the firing weaponry for the film. We got to play with guns and bloody effects and blurt expletives endlessly. And I got to actually use the SL-DAPAS. That's pretty hormonal stuff. And working with Noeland Collins (friend and contributor to TooSquare) was a real treat. A great friendship and cinematic collaboration sprang out of that experience.”
Craig Kovach is a man whose life has been forever changed by some of the world’s greatest filmmakers, and even more importantly, by the guys who built weapons, tools, ships and other props for those filmmakers. And we know he’s not alone. One search on eBay, or Yahoo shows you just a percentage of the folks out there building replicas of props from films, then selling them for profit. We’re talking everything from the pulse rifles in Aliens (which no less than five companies around the world reproduce), to the guns used in Japanese cartoons. You can find the ID card used by Carter Burke in Aliens, the ID used by Rick Deckard in Blade Runner, the sword used by Maximus in Gladiator (as well as his helmet) and model after model after model out there for your consumption and enjoyment.
In Closing…
There was just one more thing I had to ask Craig: Is there any prop you haven’t had that you’re still looking for?
“It's probably not surprising that I think Deckard's original hero blaster from Blade Runner is the hands-down cult Holy Grail of sci-fi movie props. The original hero pulse rifles and smartguns from Cameron's Aliens are definitely a close second, though. But when it comes to the Mother Icon of sci-fi props, I'd have to say the original Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet would be my choice.”
I ended our session by shaking Craig’s hand, taking one more look at the firing blaster, and saying farewell to the alien by the door.
John Rosen