I was watching the movie In the Line of Fire (clint eastwood movie about assasinating the president) and there was a running series of shots of the bad guy making a gun out of resin casting. There was a scene where Eastwood is telling his partner to check on model builders since they have their own little weird subculture (or something like that). So it got me thinking - what other movies and media have potrayed the hobby. I can think of a scene in Rodney Dangerfield's Easy Money where he is trying to build a BF-109 complete with a Squadron/Signal reference book. Also, there was a great series of cartoon strips in Calvin and Hobbes where Calvin is trying to build an F-4.
Anybody see anything else?

There is an epsiode of The Simpsons where Homer and Bart are building a model, but Homer is building a ship and Bart is building an airplane, so they have half of each built together as one model.

I think it was an episode of Oliver Beane, somebody else may be able to verify, that had a substitute teacher building a plane model in his room.

When Drew on the Drew Carey show decides not to have sex, he takes up building model aircraft

Here is a Calvin & Hobbes, I'm still looking for the series that your referenced, I'm sure I have it.

Wierd little sub-culture?
-- He should really be more accurate and throw some PE on that comment using CA.

-- It's clear from his comment he didn't check his references (all 66 Shiffer Books on German Units that made comments about modelers on the Eastern Front).

-- If DML made that comment it'd be dressed in a camo smock (and spoken in German, of course).

In 40 days and 40 Nights, Josh Hartnett took to building models to distract himself from thinking about sex. What is it with TV and Movies and substituting Model building for sex?

Thee was a Jim Belushi movie where he was trabnsferred into the "What-If" area of his life by the magical bartender (Micheal Caine) and he is fabulously wealthy so he goes and buys some car models, complete with Testors drop clothe and cheapo knife.

Rob

On Malcom in the middle, the commandant of the military school that Francis goes to was building a Panther (tan plastic-had to be tamyia!), complete with a triangluar shaped, fine tipped testors glue bottle. And i also vaguely remember an X-files that had a spooky model builder in it.

AHA!! Found them! I knew that in 8+ years worth of C&H cartoons archived on CD I had to have them somewhere. (Only 3 years to go and I will have them all. YAY!!!! ) You just know Bill Watterson 'enjoyed' building when he was kid.

Good stuff Tim, that comic strip's great! Thanks for uploading it

Cheers,

Cokes.

We in Belgium have a tv-show for kids called Samson & Gert. It is about a guy (Gert) and his speaking dog-puppet (Samsom). One of the characters is called De Burgemeester (the mayor) and he is always busy with aircraft modelling. So in about each episode he's so called busy at work but in reality he's doing an aircraft and he quickly has to put it away everytime someone enters his office.
Very funny because of the repetitve element.

In Three Days of the Condor Robert Redford's character confronts a CIA type spy master who is in the process of painting a Napoleonic figure. In The Hitman, Chuck Norris' character has a softside where he builds 1/48 scale aircraft (when he'snot single-handedly defeating the mob) and tutors the kid next door in the art of modelling.

Tim, just read the comic strip. Great stuff. "Stupid Model"

I remember a couple of aircraft models and missle models in the movie "Flight of the Intruder". That actaully wasn't that bad of a flick.

~Chip :-)

There was an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun where Sally Solomon builds a B17. She even used ZipKicker to dry the CA.

Mike

In Ronin the man robert deniro vists after being shot is building a samuari Dio and can be
seen painting the figures

There is currently some commercial about financial planning that has the line "What can a trip to the toy store teach you about buying stocks" or something like that. It shows a kid checking out one of those fancy carved painted models of a Hell Diver. The tag line is something like " not every thing that catches your eye is worth buying." That seems to me a pretty good motto for buying on ebay.

There is also a Bond flick where the bad guy, an American arms merchant, has a slew of painted minitures laid out like famous battles. I remember at one point Bond hides behind a bust of Wellington.

In Murder at 1600 (or something like that) Wesley Snipes had built a huge diorama of the Battle of Gettysburg (or maybe First Manassas) in his home- to quote the character- "I'm a homocide detective in the homocide capital of the world, it's cheaper than therapy"

In Pet Sematary (the novel- not sure about the movie) The main character's hobby is model building.

This past Friday my wife was watching that CBS show- Joan of Arcadia. It seems the son of the family was crippled, in a wheelchair, and spends his time building models. He gets into a fight with his father who tells him to stop playing with toys and grow up.

Love the Calvin and Hobbes-
"Shouldn't we read the instructions?" -my wife, everytime she buys something from Ikea

"Do I look like a sissy?" - me to her (I mean come on, it's designed by a bunch o' Swedes for Heaven's sake, how hard can it be to put together? ( I'm half Swedish- I know how they think ))

Peter

In the Mister Bean Christmas episode with rowan atkinson Mister Bean gets a ship model of I believe the Cutty sark

FWIW,

I had to meet with the under-Secritary of Cal-EPA and also with a couple of Lobbyists in Sacramento, CA one time.

While I was there on a regulatory matter, I was very tasked to keep my eyes off of the armor models on the book shelves.

Go figure!

Dave
AMPS Member

REAL MEN DON'T NEED INSTRUCTIONS! #:-)

Calvin and Hobbes my all time favorite cartoon strip. Seems I remember some TV show where the villian was doing Napoleonics. He was some militia guy. Didn't Tim the Toolman do models. THere were always model cars all over the house or were those Frannkilin Mint stuff?

in the osbournes, in jack's room there is a big tank

ifi recall, in Stephen Kings story Apt Pupil in the very beginning he's building the RMS Titanic. Not sure about the movie though.

in Kiss The Spider or something like that with Morgan Freeman, I believe he was building a model ship. You know, as many movies and tv shows feature models it's suprising it isn't a bigger hobby.

Those were REAL models, and pretty good ones at that. I remember several pics and maybe an article in the IPMS Journal that showed car models by IPMSers on the set of Home Improvement. If I remember, Tim Allen loves models, but just doesn''t have the skill and/or time to do nice ones himself.

They both:
- take some time and effort
- increase your self esteem
- give you satisfaction
- strain your back if your posture is incorrect
- result in miniatures/replicas that you like to show off to your friends

Way OT but couldn't resist (++)