FALCON & RUSSELL

Russell took the ferry to France on a Sunday night. Early the next morning he set off for the Pompidou Centre. He’d made the pilgrimage to see one of two lead falcons made for John Huston’s 1941 film noir ‘The Maltese Falcon’. It was being exhibited as part of a Warner Brothers retrospective. He arrived to find that the Pompidou was closed on Mondays, so he booked another night at his hotel. Ten years earlier, already a pulp fiction and film noir obsessive, Russell had made a plasticine version of the falcon. The Paris show inspired him to make a more permanent model. The two halves of his latex mould aligned perfectly using registration lugs made from the toggles of his duffle coat. He produced around thirty, packing them in kapok and calico, as they had been in the film. He gave them to friends. A couple of years later, the other original Warner’s prop was to be auctioned by Christie’s. Russell dreamt of owning it, just as Casper Gutman had in the film. The falcon sold for $398,500. Russell is still consoled by the fact that, in the movie, it turns out the falcon is a fake – just like his.

06 Nov 2011