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You Know...For Kids!

Sat., October 28, 2006

When I mentioned to my coworkers that for Andie’s movie-character costume party tonight, I was dressing as mailroom clerk Norville Barnes, The Hudsucker Proxy protagonist played by Tim Robbins, I was met with responses ranging from “No one will know who that is!” to “What?” But of course everyone at the party got the reference, from “I’ve seen that movie, like, five times,” to “That’s the one where the guy jumps out the window, right? And Paul Newman’s in it?”

And that’s why these people and I are friends.

Here are some photos of Tim and myself dressed as Norville.

Costume Ingredients

• shop apron. The apron in the movie is dark gray but a dark blue denim one was the closest I could find. I was thinking of sewing buttons to the top corners like Tim’s, but I can’t sew. Plus, who cares. I bought it from a supplier in California called PK Safety Supply via Amazon.com for a mere $3.50. That’s about what it’s worth: the edges frayed and curled after I laundered it. Fortunately, the shoddy stitching of the breast pocket made it easy to remove for purposes of ironing-on the Hudsucker Industries logo using...
• Avery Ink Jet Dark T-Shirt Transfers. A pack of five iron-on sheets for $14.99 at Staples. I learned this about iron-on transfers: for dark fabrics, definitely use the “dark T-shirt” variety, not the standard “white T-shirt” variety, which will transfer barely visible to a fabric like denim. And all iron-on sheets are meant for transferring solid blocks or blobs of graphics, not detailed things like logotypes. In other words, instead of directly transferring the background-less type, I had to print the white letters on a square colored an approximate denim-blue. It turned out O.K. for the low-light environment of a typical party. I built the logo in FreeHand, opting for solid type instead of the inline type used for the “Hudsucker Industries” part of the logo. The internet identified that typeface as the anachronistic Bodega Sans (Bodega Sans Oldstyle for the S’s) and the design posse at work helped me approximate the typeface used for the logo tagline, “The Future Is Now,” as Harlow Solid.
• brown shoes. These were “Walk-Overs” from George E. Keith Co., pride of Brockton and donated a few years back by my previous boss in Ohio.
• dress shirt. I used an old J. Crew pinstriped variety I’d been planning to donate to Goodwill.
• bow tie. I couldn’t find a mostly solid-colored maroon one so I purchased a ’50s-vintage blue and silver rayon and acetate Botany clip-on. I got this at The Family Jewels, one of those funky thrift shops in Chelsea I hesitate entering because it’s never clear whether they carry any clothing for guys. I’m happy to say they have a handsome collection of bow ties piled into a velvet top hat resting atop a counter in the back corner. It cost $26, which I didn’t mind because I like supporting local shops like this. Yet it pained me to see the original 1950s price-tag still attached: $1.
• visor. Norville wears one in a few scenes, such as when he’s sorting mail. I bought a sporty denim model from Conway on the north side of W. 34th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, a Garment District stretch of intense clothing cheapness. $2.99, although I had to wait in line 10 minutes.
• trousers. I got a pair of tan Claiborne cotton dress pants in my waist size but cut “long” for hiking up above my waist ’50s style for $4.99 at the Goodwill on W. 181st Street, purchased that day I was called Papi.
• suspenders. I had a tough time finding these, unless my problem was that I wasn’t looking in enough geezer shops. I ended up getting a burgundy clip-on Y-back pair online from JCPenney for $14.99.
• a piece of paper with a circle drawn on it. In the film, Norville keeps a folded up piece of paper with him and at a moment’s notice will unfold it for display, explaining, “You know...For kids!” No one knows what the hell he’s talking about and then he goes and invents the toy based on his idea, the Hula Hoop, saving Hudsucker Industries from financial ruin while getting himself and his costume promoted from shop apron to tailored suits.

Tags: Friends, Movie, Photo, Screencap | Photos of Jason by Andie. Screencaps of Tim Robbins from The Hudsucker Proxy. | Comments have been closed.