The first time Patrick Charlebois-Downes saw the Sofia Coppola movie “Priscilla,” he didn’t get swept up in the story about Elvis and Priscilla Presley.
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Entertaining: Kingston native gives ‘props’ to Elvis Presley
Author of the article:Peter Hendra
Published Nov 23, 2023 • Last Updated 6 hours ago • 6 minute read
Kingston native Patrick Charlebois-Downes, seen standing in front of Graceland in Memphis, Tenn., served as the prop master on the film “Priscilla” and will take part in a question-and-answer event after the premiere of the film at the Screening Room on Friday at 6:30 p.m. Supplied Photo
Kingston native Patrick Charlebois-Downes, seen standing in front of Graceland in Memphis, Tenn., served as the prop master on the film “Priscilla” and will take part in a question-and-answer event after the premiere of the film at the Screening Room on Friday at 6:30 p.m.
The first time Patrick Charlebois-Downes saw the Sofia Coppola movie “Priscilla,” he didn’t get swept up in the story about Elvis and Priscilla Presle
“The first time I watched the film,” he recalled, “I don’t think I was able to fully enjoy it because I was sitting there going, ‘Is our stuff gonna look good?’”
The “stuff” to which he’s referring are the props used in the biopic, which starts Friday at the Screening Room. Charlebois-Downes, who grew up in Kingston and now works as a props master in Toronto, will be in attendance at the 6:30 p.m. show that evening and will take part in a question-and-answer session after the final credits roll.
Thankfully, he said, the props looked great on-screen in what is his biggest production to date, he said.
“We get a lot of nice close-ups, especially in the first third of the movie, and that’s pretty rare for a movie to really zoom in and feature our stuff,” he explained, adding that he received compliments on his work from some industry veterans.
Charlebois-Downes, who had been involved with Salon Productions while in Kingston and studied film at Queen’s University, moved to Toronto six years ago. With the acting bug out of his system, he was more interested in working behind the camera than in front of it.
“A lot of my friends had broken into the industry here while I was doing the theatre stuff in Kingston,” he said over the phone. “A close friend of mine was art-directing music videos, so I started helping him out with that. And then, you know, over the years things snowballed and then I found my own calling working as a prop master.”
He moved on to work on a few smaller films and then some TV shows, including one called “The Horror of Dolores Roach,” which got him noticed.
“It’s a pretty small industry here, so people get chatting and I guess we did a good job and my name got thrown to Tamara Deverell, who is a production designer here in in Toronto. She’s Guillermo (del Toro’s) production designer. So she’s done the last few films with him. And we had a little interview, this would have been last fall, and then after that, it was a go.”
The movie, shot in Toronto between September and December of last year, is a period piece, so it’s not as simple as going to a store and buying wine glasses for a party scene, Downes-Charlebois noted.
“This spans from the point where they met in Germany in 1958 or ’59 through the ’60s on to the ’70s, so a lot of research has to be done beforehand,” he said.
“For instance, there’s a scene where they’re shooting with Polaroid film, so you have to figure out what the date was in that scene and what cameras were actually available during that time. And so there’s a lot of history of ‘stuff’ you need to look up. Period pieces are considered to be a little more challenging.
The most challenging prop he had to dig up was a walking stick Elvis held in a family photo shoot in 1970. It turns out it had an ivory handle that was carved to look like the head of a bulldog and was encrusted with gems.
“You look at something like that, and it’s, ‘OK, we’re not going to find that,’” chuckled Charlebois-Downes, who has buyers who search for things he needs and a lot of contacts through which he can search for props.
In this case, he had to go to a prop-building team to create a new one.
“They modelled the bulldog head and 3D-printed it and then got a little pack of gemstones and set them in the head and painted it,” he said. “So that that cane was definitely a memorable one.”
Charlebois-Downes, who was idled for half a year by the writers’ and actors’ strikes, also has another movie, a reboot of the TV series “Monk,” coming out soon.
In the meantime, though, he’ll be back in his hometown this weekend and both friends and family will be in attendance Friday evening.
“I grew up going to movies at the Screening Room,” he said, “so it’s going to be a nice little homecoming.”
