Club Obi Wan

For the movie fans.
I found this photo when checking the album recently. These are the whips Terry Jacka supplied for the Rundown movie some time back. I remember talking to him about that time about these and he didn't have anything good to say about them. Generally he doesn't like making whips for movies as the producers mostly want something odd, cheap and could we have them yesterday thank you. He said he made these with leather he had on hand which didn't match and he hoped they would disappear into some stunt guys prop box.
As a joke I asked Terry if he has made any good whips lately, and after a long pause he said something like- I remember about five years ago I made a good whip, it was a black sixteen plait, everything just fell into place with that whip. When you make something like a whip you have your ideal of how it should be, but sometimes your ideal is shaken up when you produce something that surprises you and you spend years chasing that new ideal, often in vain but not giving up because the next whip may become the next good whip.
I was a bit surprised by this at the time but I guess that's what keeps these old whipmakers going. Terry must be about sixty now and I haven't heard anything about him retiring. Has anyone here?
I asked him what he did with the 'good' whip and he said he just looked up to the whipmaking god and told him gently that this is a good whip, then he put a little tag on it that said 'this is a good whip' hoping that whoever bought it may wonder, then he bundled it up with the rest of the order and sent it out.
He says you can't tell anyone how special a whip is because they wouldn't understand, it's not how a whip looks that makes it special but how it is. Only the whipmaker knows, after handling thousands of whips he just feels the life of it in his hand.

sorry being a bit long winded I got carried away

littlejohn









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Paul Nolan of Midwest whips supplied the whips used in the Rundown. At the time, I believe, the movie was being dubbed "Helldorodo". Paul, can you chime in ??



This is the Handel of the whips he sent.

As a joke I asked Terry if he has made any good whips lately, and after a long pause he said something like- I remember about five years ago I made a good whip, it was a black sixteen plait, everything just fell into place with that whip. When you make something like a whip you have your ideal of how it should be, but sometimes your ideal is shaken up when you produce something that surprises you and you spend years chasing that new ideal, often in vain but not giving up because the next whip may become the next good whip.
I was a bit surprised by this at the time but I guess that's what keeps these old whipmakers going. Terry must be about sixty now and I haven't heard anything about him retiring. Has anyone here?
I asked him what he did with the 'good' whip and he said he just looked up to the whipmaking god and told him gently that this is a good whip, then he put a little tag on it that said 'this is a good whip' hoping that whoever bought it may wonder, then he bundled it up with the rest of the order and sent it out.
He says you can't tell anyone how special a whip is because they wouldn't understand, it's not how a whip looks that makes it special but how it is. Only the whipmaker knows, after handling thousands of whips he just feels the life of it in his hand.

Thanks for sharing that anecdote, littlejohn. I really enjoyed reading it

As far as I know, both Paul and Terry supplied whips for 'The Rundown'. Paul supplied some black, 'Joe Strain-version-of-an-Indy' style bullwhips, as well as at least one whip with the special handle. In the movie, however, the only handles you see are the metal 'monkey head' handles. Paul has one of the prop handles and I can wait until he makes a whip for it.

It's interesting to see that Terry supplied what look to be black and white whips (which look very cool, I want one ). In the movie all the whips look to be a single, dark color.

I did a repair on the handle of an older Terry Jacka bullwhip and I was surprised to see that the whole inside of the whip was chrome-tanned cowhide. I think it had a bolster, a 4-plait cowhide belly, then another cowhide bolster. Joe Strain told me that's how Terry makes (or made) his whips, though I didn't believe it until I saw it.

People that have Terry's whips seem to really like them, so maybe there's something to using only cowhide on the inside of a kangaroo whip.

-Adam

Adam is right. Paul only supplied SOME of the whips for the film. He did 12 in black that were used in production.

I'm sure Paul will jump in here, but I've had EXTENDED conversations with him about this, (most recently, as we've talked about him tracking down and re-acquiring some of those screen used whips. He DOES have one of the metal-and-resin monkey-head handles, and we'd talked for a while about me getting hold of the handle to get a mold done so I could have a replica. But we've since moved on to planning on a Cecil Henderson replica instead.) So, sorry if I step on your toes a little here, Paul. You don't have time to answer anyway. Get back to packing, and braiding! ;-)

Anyway, the tiger-stripe whip that Ripper posted the pic of was a sample Paul and Gery sent to show what he could do, (the production company hired Anthony DeLongis to train the stunt actors with the whips. DeLongis uses almost exclusively Jacka whips. They hadn't seen Paul's work.) The production company ended up ordering JUST black.

Adam, if you re-watch the film, and look REALLY closely, you can see that not ALL of the whips are black.

The whips used by the main "Baddie with the whip" who cuts the gold miner's hand when Beck, (the Rock,) first arrives at Helldorado, and later in the bar, tells Beck, "You should have kept the gun," (and then proceeds to cut a chair in half with a whip ,) were the Jacka whips. You can really see the two-tones in that scene. The white is more like gray by that time, (lots of whip practice in the jungles in Hawaii will probably do that!) I personally thought they'd spray-painted the tiger stripes onto the whips all this time. Nice to see that it was not some fouled-up propmaster decision, (and now I need one like that too!)

Paul's whips were used in the whip fight at the end of the film with the 3 guys all carrying dual whips, (the dual whip duel!) Paul did 12. 2 per goon. 2 each used to train with. 2 each used for actual production.

So, there you have it.

And Littlejohn, I hope to HEAVEN that Terry doesn't retire any time soon! I LOVE his stuff, and need at least two or three more!

Thanks for posting the pics. That's cleared up a question I've had for a while, (and I really like the look of them!)

All the best, and happy cracking!

-Dan

I didn't know there were two suppliers. Thanks for shedding light on this. My mistake !

Hey LittleJohn,

Thanks so much for posting the pictures, it's great to see those whips!

Dan(the fish) is right, the only whips I supplied to the film were for the final whip fight at the end of the movie. Where The Rock battled 3 guys with two whips each. All of the other whips in the film were supplied by Terry Jacka as far as I know.

More information on the whips I provided can be found at:

http://www.midwestwhips.com/FilmWork.html

When I first started talking with the prop master about what they were looking for, he had said they wanted white and black whips. So I went ahead and ordered some white roo hide(which cost almost twice as much as any other color at the time). Then he decided to go all black, and I was stuck with the hides. But I figured one day I would end up finding a use for them.

And last week I used some of those hides to make a white 5 foot bullwhip to be used for show work.

Here's a post with pics and a couple really short videos with the whip:

viewtopic.php?t=22034

Regards,

Paul Nolan
http://www.midwestwhips.com