Richard Johns and the team from Empire Movie Memorabilia has assembled an impressive line-up of Stargate costumes and props from all over the Milky Way Galaxy, including his very own custom gate! Join him for this exclusive exhibit tour from GATECON 2023, with pop-in guests Peter and David DeLuise!

Special thanks to Remington Phillips and Nicole West for their camera work.

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Timecodes
0:00 – DeLuise brothers Intro
00:19 – Opening Credits
00:43 – Mud Men Props from The First Commandment
01:23 – Costume Displays
05:08 – Stargate Movie Original Props
09:36 – SG-1 Props
12:00 – Costumes from Emancipation
13:23 – Propps For Purchase
14:11 – Stargate Reproduction
20:00 – Peter and David DeLuise Explore the Display
25:44 – Wrapping up with John
27:14 – End Credits

***

“Stargate” and all related materials are owned by MGM Studios and MGM Television.

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TRANSCRIPT
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Peter DeLuise:
And action. There seems to be no signs of intelligent life on this particular planet.

David DeLuise:
Let’s go back to our planet.

Peter DeLuise:
Let’s go back ’cause I forgot to pee.

Richard Johns:
Hi, my name is Richard and I’m with Empire Movie Memorabilia and we’re here at Gatecon 2022 and I’m here to show you my collection. These here are three mud men from the episode “First Commandment.” There were actually only seven made and we have six in our collection. One of the gentlemen who had these he said he wanted to keep one for himself. This has actually been the fan favorite for everybody coming in here. The detail in these things are absolutely amazing. We have got the arm bands and we have got the cloth loin cloths here. Any of the props that we have that actually have the name tags, we keep them on there so we know who did it. The more information we have for the fans, the better. These ladies here are from the first episode of Stargate, “Children of the Gods,” the pilot episode. It was the Goa’uld courtyard where these were. It was kind of like a Roman scene and some of the detail in here, it’s got the gold grating in here and the jewels. It’s just fabulous, the costume designers who did the costumes for the show. These three, there’s a scene where Skaara gets picked in the pilot episode. These were all from the pilot episode and these are from when Skaara gets picked to be a Goa’uld. This gentleman here, this is the actual outfit that points at Skaara and picks him, so this is the actual outfit. These were two that were flanking in that scene. One of the cool things is, Peter Williams was here, and the scene that he was in, he’s standing with these actual outfits. When he was here at Gatecon, we actually have him standing here with the picture with the actual outfit. It was pretty cool, 25 years later, to actually have him with the same costume, he was pretty excited to see that. These three here are different aliens from the episode. This gentleman here is from “Spirits.” It’s the actual face mask that is from the episode. My wife, she’s an amazing seamstress and she actually made a reproduction costume so we could show the outfit. We did the eyes and the face and the hair to make it as authentic as possible. This gentleman here, everybody knows this gentleman. This is actual screen-used Jaffa armor from the show. When we got it, this was one of the outfits that when they were falling down and getting shot, it was actually pretty damaged when we got it. We restored it to the original look when it was made. This gentleman here is from the episode “Enigma.” At the very beginning, when you see them come through the gate, there’s a volcano going and you see him actually in all the ash. This is the padded armor that was in that. At the beginning, it was hard to see, ’cause the rest of the show, they didn’t have the padded armor. We got one of the control arm devices that lights up from that episode as well. This gentleman here is one of our prized collections. There’s Stargate Origins, the miniseries, and this is the actual screen-used Ra mask and collar from the episode. Brian Capri made this and he made the Horus, which we’re gonna see. I asked him about the rest of the outfit and he said that after they finished filming, they lost it. They don’t know where the rest of the outfit is. My wife made a reproduction and all the jewelry on the outfit is actually from the first movie. One of the cool things is, we have the jewelry, we were looking at how can we put it on there. We put it all on there and it came out really good. We were watching the show again, Stargate, the original movie, and we noticed that the emblems on his shoulders, the scarabs, you see Jaye Davidson actually has them on the original outfit. That was kind of cool that the original jewelry from the original outfit is actually on this now. This is another prized piece in our collection. This is the actual screen-used Horus head and collar from Stargate Origins. Again, it’s a shame, the rest of the costume was lost after production. My wife, again, made a reproduction of the costume. One of the cool things is, again, we try to add stuff to the costume, like authentic pieces. Both arm bands are actually from the original movie. I call this the crown jewel of our collection. My favorite movie of all time is Stargate, 1994. These are all used in the original movie and some of these have got some really cool stories. This Anubis head actually belonged to the original prop painter of all the armor in the movie, that actually belonged to him and his collection. When they shut down the movie and closed everything down, they gave that to him to say, “Thank you for the beautiful work that you did.” That was in his collection for about seven or eight years. He decided to give it away to a friend of his named John Allred. John Allred is a world-famous model maker. He’s done competitions all over the world; he’s won them, he’s judged them as well. The gentleman who did the stuff from the movie gave it to John because he knew John would appreciate it. John had it in his collection for about eight, nine years. John decided to downsize and to sell it. I heard about it and I got a hold of John, I said, “I would like to purchase this from you.” I made him an offer and, in the meantime, several other people came in and offered double the amount of money that I had offered. It was like, “Oh, great. I am not gonna get that.” About a week later, John gives me a call and he says, “If you want to still pay for the item with the offer that you did, I’ll take it.” I said, “Well, I don’t understand. People offered me twice the money.” He said, “It’s not about the money.” The gentleman who initially had this from the movie, he enjoyed it because he loved the movie and he loved having this in his collection. Same thing with me. “The other people I know are gonna sell it and flip it and make some money on it. I know you are gonna have it in your collection you’re gonna show people. I want it for someone who actually is gonna enjoy it.” So, that has a special place for us. This is one of the production-used Ra masks from the movie, so again, it’s a classic showpiece. I love having that in my collection, I never thought in a million years that we’d actually have that in our collection. This piece here is kind of the jewel. When I initially started collecting Stargate props about 25 years ago and I collected some autographed pictures and a few small pieces, this was the first big piece that I had. It came up in an auction and I thought, “I have to have it.” I bid on it, I won it and that started me on my collection. What happened was I got another Stargate piece, another Stargate piece and the next thing you know, I have this big collection. That has a very special place in my heart. One really cool thing was Erick Avari was here at Gatecon. He was here for about 45 minutes talking to us and it was amazing because he’s actually one of my favorite actors of all time. Stargate’s my favorite movie; he was in that. He says a line in there, he says, “Bani, bani we,” when he’s talking about the chocolate bar. I wait for that every single time and I absolutely love that. This is the actual photo continuity book for all the costumes from the original movie. It’s got the different actors in it with the original photographs from polaroids from the show. One thing is, we have it right here. Erick saw this, he hadn’t seen this in 25 years and he signed it. We have a picture of him signing it too, that was a really amazing part, that he was able to do that for us. This here is a production-made Ra hand. At the end of the movie, you see Ra in his true alien form. He took on the form of a human and at the end of the movie where they blow it up and you see his face; you see the original character as an alien. This was the hand and there’s a part where his hand comes out and he’s holding the coffin. This is a production-made hand that they had. From my understanding, in the original movie they were gonna show a lot more of the alien, but they decided not to, they wanted more of the human form. That’s the hand, one of the hands. This part of the collection is from the TV series and we have a little bit of everything. Anything I can get my hands on, I get. Any information that we can get on the pieces, we try to add it to the photos. These here are bone helmets, hats from an episode. This is really cool. I actually live in Kelowna and on the TV show they have a city called Kelowna so I had to get those. There’s a picture of the scene here and you actually see the water pitchers and cups on the table there. That’s kind of a special thing for me. This here is one of Apophis’ gold belts. Peter Williams was here and we have a picture of him holding that in front of the gate. Later on today, he said he’s coming by and he’s gonna sign it for us so that’s really special. This is a special gift for me, these are prototype arm bands. We can’t find them in any of the episodes and we were told that they were prototype arm bands. My wife surprised me with those for a birthday present. She got hold of Stefy, who owns Stargate Prop Shop, he’s got a lot of props from the movie and he had those. I wanted to get those and I got hold of Stefy and said, “I’d like to buy them.” He said, “I’m sorry, I’ve sold them.” I was like, “Ugh.” I felt so bad. It was my wife who bought them for me and she surprised me. I was almost in tears when I opened them up because I thought they were really beautiful pieces. The detail in here, all the hieroglyphics, it’s just amazing, the detail in there. I just thought they were like a piece of art. I wanted to have them in my collection and now I do have them in my collection. This is a Goa’uld reconnaissance drone and it was shot down. Samantha, Amanda Tapping, has it on a work bench and she’s working on it. It’s got all the pieces here. We have a screenshot of her working on it right there. That’s really cool. A lot of people think that’s a pretty cool piece that we have here because everybody’s coming by going, “Oh my God, that’s the exact piece.” Everybody likes Amanda Tapping and everybody’s going, “She touched this?” We’ve had a lot of people come up and they’ve actually touched this because they’re thinking Amanda has touched this so that’s a pretty cool piece. This part of the collection is all the hats from “Emancipation.” We really like these because the three main characters, we have their hats. This fur hat here and this hat here and this hat here and this hat here, they’re worn by the main characters. This hat here was actually worn by Amanda Tapping. It’s got her name in it and we have a picture of her wearing it right there. This hat here has a really special meaning. About four or five years ago, we were at a convention and Jorge Vargas was there and he played Abu. We had our Stargate there and we met him and he signed the back of the gate and we had a little chat with him. About two months later, we got this collection. It’s like, “Oh, I can’t believe this.” If we had this a couple of months ago, we could have had the hat with him. Two weeks ago, Jorge Vargas was at a convention and I brought the hat there and he hadn’t seen it in 25 years. We surprised him. He was on stage and as he was coming off the stage, I walked up and I showed it to him and he was like, “Oh, my goodness. I haven’t seen this in 25 years.” We have pictures of him holding the hat from the Stargate and he actually signed it for us. That has a very special meaning for us. It was nice to be able to reunite the two after 25 years. We have a small sample here of some props that we have for sale. We know that fans like to take a piece of the Stargate show home. What we try to do is find small but very cool pieces and we put them in frames so they can either take them home or give them as a gift. One thing that we’ve had, a lot of people, they get a small prop or something, they don’t know what to do with it. We have it all framed, or displayed on stands, so it’s nice that they can take it home. We do have a lot of other props for sale. We do have Stargate online and we have props from other movies. If you go to empiremovieprops.com, you can see the props that we have for sale. We do have a lot of other props in our private collection, so you can go on there and see that, and pictures of other conventions that we’ve been to and other displays that we have. Last but not least, this is our Stargate. This was our first big thing we decided to make and we wanted something that the fans would love to stand in front of. We wanna give something back to all the fans. This started off…it’s gone through several stages. We didn’t have the water effect; we didn’t have the light-up stuff. Every year we’ve been adding to it. We added the gold panels on either side, which are actually from the TV series. We’ve got the chevrons all lit up and we’ve got a custom-made backdrop with the water effect on it. On the TV show, the water effect was CG and we had to figure out some way of making it realistic. I had a special light made to give the same water effect as on the show. The fans can stand in front of it and get their pictures taken. What’s really cool is when you do a video of this, the water’s actually moving so it actually looks like people are on the set or coming through. This took quite some time to make. From completion, it took over a year to make. Again, it’s gone through different stages which have taken a lot of time. We wanted to make it as realistic as possible in the detail. I’m a bit of a perfectionist; I did the chevrons and I wasn’t happy with the chevrons. I did a little bit more on the chevrons and I still wasn’t happy with them. So, the next show, do a little bit more. Every year, it just gets a little bit more detailed and a little bit better. This is the first exclusive Stargate that we have done. We’ve had a gate at several other conventions, but not specifically Stargate. Usually, the conventions that we go to, we get asked by the promoters to have our Stargate there because they have actors from the show. It’s a very popular backdrop and the actors love it too. They’re able to get pictures with their fans in front of the gate. A couple of times, I’ve been almost moved to tears with people coming in saying they absolutely love it, they appreciate the time we’ve taken to put this collection together to show it to them, to give back to the fans. The one thing that’s been really mind-blowing is when we have the actual actors have come through and they’re going, “Wow, this is amazing.” I’m thinking, “These people have been on the real sets with the real Stargate and they’re saying this about our collection and about our display.” That means a lot to me. I have put hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours into building this. It took us two years to get this whole display built and everything ready for this show. It was a lot of hours. I have a full-time job so all those hours put in were worth it to have that response back. I’m one of the biggest Stargate fans out there and to be able to share this with others, other Stargate fans, and for them to have the same feeling that I have for it, it’s an absolutely amazing experience. There have been times when building this, I wanted to quit. I go to work; I’ve worked 14 hours at work ’cause I’ve had to work overtime. I had a timeframe to get this done and it’s like, I work, put another 10 hours in, I get three or four hours sleep, I’m back at work. There are times that I was like, “Oh, my God. I’m not gonna get this done.” I just wanna phone up and say, “We can’t make it because I’m not gonna have this done. Things are’t working out.” I’ve never gone to a course, I’ve never taken a class; I have to figure out how to make a pillar, how to make a Stargate, how do we do the backdrop? How do we do this? There’s nobody here to teach me that. I’m having to learn it myself. A lot of it’s trial and error so it’s very frustrating. To have it complete and be standing in this…When I initially had this, it was just a drawing. I had this drawn layout and this is what it was gonna look like. It’s funny, I was looking at the drawing the other day. If my brother was here, I’d show my brother. I said, “This is the drawing that I had before we even did anything and it looks the same as the drawing.” It was a really cool experience to go, “This was in my head and now really I’m standing in my head because this is the exact image that was in my head.” All the frustration and everything, it was worth it. One thing with the frustration, I have to say, my wife, she has been a rock through this. She has been supportive, she has helped me out when I’ve run into those roadblocks, she’s been there going, “Look, we can figure this out, you’re gonna do this.” I’m getting a little emotional here right now. She has been a huge support, a huge fan and if it wasn’t for her, this would not be here. The hardest thing with the Stargate to get right was, honestly, the chevrons. The chevrons went through several different stages. When I was initially doing it, again, everything’s on a timeframe. When I built it, the chevrons were not the right shape and I had to do the show and I had to get the chevrons done. I had it done and we had it at the show and everybody’s going, “Wow, this is amazing.” I’m standing back and I’m going, “This looks like crap.” My wife is going, “Everybody loves this.” I said, “Well, the chevrons just aren’t quite right with the shape.” She goes, “Nobody noticed that. The only person noticing it is you.” I ended up correcting that. The other thing that was hard was the initial design to start off, “how do you build a Stargate?” There are no plans to build a Stargate. I didn’t know anybody who had built or had taken anything like this. So, that was the other thing, just the initial thing to get it all organized. How do you build this? What works, what doesn’t work? A lot of it was trial and error again. This collection is only gonna get bigger and better. Hopefully there’s a Gatecon 2023, hopefully we’re back here doing it. We wanna make it different for the fans. It may look similar to this, but we wanna have different props here. We wanna add stuff to it.

Peter DeLuise:
Is every single last thing here from you?

Richard Johns:
Yes. This is my private collection and everything here is screen used.

Peter DeLuise:
So, these columns?

Richard Johns:
I made those.

Peter DeLuise:
This backdrop?

Richard Johns:
That I had custom-designed.

David Read:
These pillars are real though

Peter DeLuise:
You have a portable showroom?

Richard Johns:
Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
So you have to pack this all up and then redeploy it?

Richard Johns:
Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
This is amazing.

David DeLuise:
And you made the whole gate?

Richard Johns:
I made the Stargate.

David DeLuise:
Isn’t that crazy?

Richard Johns:
Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
And you scaled it, what scale is this?

Richard Johns:
I built this at my house when I first started because I didn’t have a workshop.

Peter DeLuise:
So it’s just whatever fit in your house?

Richard Johns:
Yeah. I have vaulted ceilings…

Peter DeLuise:
You couldn’t put the mat on it?

Richard Johns:
No. I built it as high as I could with my ceiling.

David DeLuise:
That’s really funny.

Peter DeLuise:
So, for traveling, this comes apart in pieces?

Richard Johns:
Yes. The chevrons come off and then it comes apart in six pieces and the base is in three pieces and the pillars…

Peter DeLuise:
How do you transport it?

Richard Johns:
We get the largest U-Haul moving truck and we pack it all up and put it in the U-Haul.

Peter DeLuise:
Are you local?

Richard Johns:
We’re in West Kelowna.

Peter DeLuise:
You’ve come all the way from West Kelowna?

Richard Johns:
Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
Is this in storage when it’s not being shown to people?

Richard Johns:
Yes. It used to be in my house, but I moved and my ceilings are smaller now, so I can’t have it. Several of the key pieces are actually in our home.

David DeLuise:
You can also bring it to parties and weddings and stuff.

Peter DeLuise:
Can I touch it?

Richard Johns:
Yeah. It’s made out of Styrofoam.

Peter DeLuise:
So it breaks a lot?

Richard Johns:
We’re very careful with it. I’ve had to do a few repairs over the years. This is almost 10 years old since we made it.

Peter DeLuise:
This rear projection screen, where did you get this element?

Richard Johns:
I had a company custom-make it so it had this water effect like that. It’s as close to the gate on the TV show as possible. Then I had the backdrop thing, ’cause the backdrop is darker on the outside and lighter in the middle.

David DeLuise:
This is intense.

Peter DeLuise:
Partway through the show, we would always have to avoid the Stargate because every time you saw the puddle, the event horizon, the puddle, you’d have to vis effect it in, which costs a lot of money. Jim Menard said, “Why don’t we use a rear projection screen?” – not unlike what you have here – “and get a really powerful projector to project that so that we can at least keep the presence of that alive and not incur any extra money?” The visual effects department was highly skeptical and they said, “If you do that, we’re gonna have to match it to what you have.” It was a couple of hoops to jump through, but when they finally did it, we were able to put it on as a practical puddle. It opened it up, ’cause we weren’t always framing around it and not getting dinged for the visual effects money. Here you’ve created a practical rear projection. Ours was incredibly powerful ’cause it couldn’t fade and you couldn’t have any shadow. That was the other thing. There could be no shadows, so you had to hit it from the front without creating a shadow to make sure that nobody said, “That’s a screen.” But then the light coming from here couldn’t overpower the projection from behind. It was a huge balancing act. Is this original?

Richard Johns:
That’s from Stargate Origins, the original Horus.

Peter DeLuise:
OK. What about that one?

Richard Johns:
That’s the original Ra from Stargate Origins.

Peter DeLuise:
From Stargate Origins?

Richard Johns:
Yeah, the movie series.

Peter DeLuise:
This looks kinda like the one we had access to because it was so hard to move around. If you ever had the head on, there’d always have to be a stuntman ’cause that was considered a stunt; moving around in a way that you couldn’t really see very well. I remember in the original movie, this was animated, it would turn. When we would do the visual effect, the idea was that you had to step through the event horizon, never on the event horizon. If you use this line as an example, if you stepped on where the puddle was gonna be, then your toe would be poking out. The actors who were coming through the puddle always had to step over the event horizon. Invariably, every time you see somebody coming out of the puddle, they’re always doing that and never stepping with their toe poking out. ‘Cause how would that make sense?

David Read:
The mass of the object had to completely go through first. That was the theory behind it, because a toe wouldn’t appear first.

Peter DeLuise:
It would look silly if you tried to make that work. David, you’ll appreciate this too. When we shot long caravans of people coming out, the people behind the other people would screw up the green screen, because there was green screen back there getting silhouetted. If you put one person in front of another person, it would contaminate their silhouette. As much as possible, we had to do side by side. People would come in, you would hide around the corner so you wouldn’t contaminate the silhouette and then at the last possible second, you would come in and then go through. When we were on location, we had a scaled-down version that we’d put on the hill.

David Read:
Yes, you did. It was about this tall.

Peter DeLuise:
We would do forced perspective and it would look like it was regular-sized, but if there was nothing close to it, there was nothing to give the scale away. We had a much smaller version. We would put it on the sand dune over there and we’d say, “We’ve come from all the way over there!” and it wasn’t there.

Richard Johns:
That’s cool. About a year ago, David was generous to do an interview with us and it was over Skype. He was asking about the collection and he was asking about the Stargate and he was asking how big the Stargate was. I was so nervous that I was actually doing this, ’cause I love Dial the Gate and I was so nervous that, “oh my God, I’m here with David Read talking about my collection.” David said, “So, how big is the Stargate?” He was actually talking about how high the Stargate was. I thought he was talking about how wide the Stargate was, so I was saying, “The Stargate’s about 18 feet roughly.” Dave is looking at me with this really strange look and he’s going, “How big is it?” I said, “It’s about 18 feet.” He says, “Are you sure?” I’m looking at him on the screen going, “If it’s 18 feet, why? What’s he talking about?” After he was done, David says, “OK. It’s gonna be on the web. You can watch it.” I’m sitting there watching with my wife and David’s got a picture of the Stargate on and he’s actually on the screen on his end. He’s showing how high it is with his fingers and I’m like, “oh my God. I feel so stupid. He’s talking about how high it is.” I was interpreting that as how wide it was and that’s why he had that strange look on his face. He’s going, “Really? That’s 18 feet? I don’t think so.” “Oh, my goodness. That’s embarrassing.” I thought it was a funny story about how miscommunication can happen.