Getting props

In the middle of The Prop Depot, a former furniture warehouse around the corner from East Ascension High School, sits a wooden reeded structure and four chairs that look like the nightmarish hybrid of a birdcage and Tim Burton’s dinner table. This is where owner Roger Johnson chooses to conduct our interview. His 25,000 square feet of space is filled with furniture like this, pieces from long-ago eras and forgotten trends that only Hollywood directors and production designers are likely to seek.

A few yards away sit three cracked leather barstools whose former lives were spent belly-up to Edwin Edwards’ wet bar. “I bought them right before he went to prison,” Johnson says. “Who knows what kind of deals were made on those.”

Johnson has purchased a lot of movie stuff in the last eight months: antique armoires, Rolling Stones concert posters, medieval weaponry, candelabras, globes, phone booths, racks of clothes and uniforms, a vintage Frigidaire, a prison toilet, and enough glasses, plates and stemware to fill a hundred wedding registries. Indiana Jones’ crated Ark of the Covenant wouldn’t seem out of place.

As a graphic designer for area film productions, Johnson, 52, got used to overhearing set decorators complain about the pains of locating good furniture for rent in the New Orleans area. Last June he decided to parlay his experience as a set designer for community theater into a full-blown prop business that could cater to both New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

1. The Wilson volleyball in Castaway.

2. The white plastic bag in American Beauty.

3. The coconuts in Monty Python & the Holy Grail.

4. Freddy Krueger’s knife glove in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

5. Crocodile Dundee’s knife.

6. Almost any gadget in a James Bond movie.

7. The DeLorean in Back to the Future.

8. Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber in Star Wars.

9. Clint Eastwood’s .44 Magnum in Dirty Harry.

10. The phone booth in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

In January, with his 30-year-old brother-in-law Courtney Clouatre on board, Johnson opened The Prop Depot in Gonzales. They’re already populating Chameleon and other local pictures with much-needed gear, and business should continue to be brisk. Theirs is the first on the Baton Rouge/New Orleans circuit to rival the hundreds of prop houses in Los Angeles.

While smaller, unlicensed operations work out of storage units and garages in South Louisiana, the opening of such a large warehouse in Gonzales should be a boon to visiting filmmakers who like to see the patina of their props and feel the weight of them. They can’t do that if they’re ordering props from California over the phone. In short, they can’t shop.

Still, as expansive as The Prop Depot is, Johnson and Clouatre can’t carry everything. Part of their job is brokering other people’s vintage collectibles and cars—like an early 1950s Memphis Police Department Chevrolet patrol car—and tracking down anything a director wants on a tight deadline. With on-set rewrites and location changes, time pressures are the biggest challenges in the prop business. But that is where Clouatre excels. His title, he jokes, is “The Finder.”

His first challenge was to find a specific gas pump from the late 1980s. After two months of rummaging through Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City, filmmakers contacted Johnson. Turns out one of these pumps was sitting derelict in Thibodaux, and Clouatre located it within an hour.

“They couldn’t believe that we found one,” Johnson says. “Courtney’s family is very established here, and in Ascension, if you need something, you can pick up the phone and someone can find it. That kind of work is priceless.”

As the Louisiana film industry grows, Johnson wants The Prop Depot to become known for having a wide range of uniforms and a wealth of furniture, electronics and pop-culture markers from the 1960s and 1970s. For now, a little bit of everything will do.