Rambling Roundup: Planet Hollywood Loses Its Shirt — (Almost) Everything Must Go!

Planet Hollywood Auction: (Almost) Everything Must Go!

You can’t put a price on memories, except, of course, when you can. And in March, we’ll all get a crack at buying some of the most unforgettable props in movie history at two huge, dueling movie memorabilia auctions in Los Angeles. The biggest, from March 20 to 24, will be Heritage Auctions’ Treasures From Planet Hollywood event, at which some 1,600 pieces — Princess Leia’s blaster, Indiana Jones’ whip, Jack and Rose’s lifeboat door from Titanic — will be on the block. For a mere $30,000, you could be brandishing Moses’ stone tablets from The Ten Commandments next time you’re disciplining the kids. Planet Hollywood founder Robert Earl estimates that the Tinseltown-themed restaurant franchise spent between $20 and $30 million on film memorabilia over three decades and says the lots on sale represent just a fraction of its 60,000-item collection. Thirty-three years after its founding (and 23 after its second bankruptcy filing), the brand is pivoting away from displaying props and costumes in favor of a more immersive audio-video concept at its locations, including a casino in Vegas, a resort in Mexico, and a Times Square restaurant opening in June. “I feared that a lot of it was just going to be locked up in a warehouse,” says Earl of the decision to sell off the trove. The sale, which has already received seven figures in pre-bidding, is the biggest film-prop auction since the sale of the Debbie Reynolds collection at Heritage in 2012. Not to be outdone, L.A.’s Prop Store is holding a three-day event a week earlier, March 12 to 14, with more than a thousand items. “I’m sure they’re piggybacking,” says Earl, “but we like Prop Store. We’ve bought lots of things from them over the years.” Eagle-eyed collectors will notice a surprising amount of overlap between the two sales, including two versions of Marty McFly’s atomic cowboy costume from Back to the Future III. And while both sales feature multiple treasures from Star Wars, only the Prop Store can boast the golden head of C-3PO, courtesy of its onetime wearer, Anthony Daniels. It’s estimated to fetch a cool $1 million. Too rich? The Planet Hollywood auction is offering the head of Dot Matrix, Joan Rivers’ C-3PO knockoff from Spaceballs, for a steal at a starting bid of $1,000. — Julian Sancton

UCLA Brings Sin Back to Movie Screens

Drugs. Prostitution. Murder. Bad acting. Seldom in cinema history have so many mortal vices been packed into one poorly lit B movie. But in April, a lovingly restored print of The Wages of Sin — the infamous 1938 “exploitation film” about a woman whose puff on a marijuana cigarette leads her to desperate servitude in a sex trafficking ring — will screen at UCLA’s Festival of Preservation. “This was a nick-of-time rescue,” says writer and preservationist David Stenn, the hand behind Sin’s resurrection. “There was a negative that was decomposing in storage and a couple of crappy 16-millimeter prints floating around, but it’s been decades since anybody could see it. It’s an extremely rare artifact.” It’s also a shining example of a lost art form. Early exploitation pictures, made outside the Hays censorship code on shoestring budgets and with the cinematic finesse of a bulldozer, pushed the envelope of what could be shown, with prurient plotlines set in bordellos and drug dens. “Sure, a lot of these movies look like they were edited with a spatula,” says Stenn, who discovered Sin rotting in UCLA’s archives while researching Girl 27, his 2007 documentary about the 1937 scandal at MGM over murdered dancer Patricia Douglas. “But they’re an important part of history. They’re still worth saving.” — Benjamin Svetkey

Artist Helps Herself to Self-Help Culture

A few years back, Amsterdam artist Nora Turato had a big show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art — and it nearly led to a breakdown. “I was really tense,” she tells Rambling Reporter. “I hit a wall. And I thought, ‘OK, I need therapy. I need to start working on myself.’ It led me to look inward.” The results of all that inward gazing? A new exhibit at L.A.’s Sprüth Magers gallery, running Feb. 28 to April 27, that takes aim at “woo woo” wellness culture and the industrial self-help complex. The show, Turato’s first West Coast outing, is titled It’s Not True!!! Stop Lying! and features works — such as enamel pieces etched with phrases like “speaking my TRUTH!!!” — questioning the authenticity of such media-hyped concepts as, well, authenticity. “Authentic is being sold to us as an identity, like an egoic interpretation of how you should be,” she explains. Still, while in L.A., Turato, 33, isn’t above venturing into the heart of wellness: First stop on her local sightseeing tour was a trip to Erewhon. “I was very curious about it,” she says, “but I got really stressed out the second I walked inside.” — Chris Gardner

Hail, Mary: Mrs. Lincoln Meets Spielberg, Field, Kushner

Obviously, Abraham Lincoln didn’t always have the best luck at the theater. But a new off-Broadway comedy about his wife, Oh, Mary!, seems to have hit the jackpot, drawing star-studded audiences that recently included Sally Field, who played Mary Todd Lincoln in 2012’s Lincoln, as well as the film’s director, Steven Spielberg, and screenwriter, Tony Kushner. “I was nervous,” admits Oh, Mary! writer-star Cole Escola, who was alerted that Field and friends would be attending Feb. 21. “My play is a cartoon, not based in reality at all, and I did close to no research. I wondered if it might be offensive [to them] in some way.” Clearly not. Field, Spielberg and Kushner popped backstage after the show and took pictures with Escola. A big-screen adaptation of Oh, Mary! was not discussed, but Escola is doubtful Spielberg would be interested. “He’s the only director I would let do a filmed version,” Escola says, “but I cannot see a world where he would ever touch this.” — Caitlin Huston

This story first appeared in the Feb. 28 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.