Have I mentioned lately that Burn Notice returns tomorrow night at 10/9c on USA?

Ok, so I did but it’s just because I don’t want anyone to miss it. Trust me, you’re gonna love the episode. So, in honor of the show’s return, here’s another of the interviews we did on my visit to the set. This time it’s with Charlie Guanci, Jr. the Prop Master or, as Michael called him, “Charlie Props.”

Charlie was one of my favorite interviews of the day. Not only was he friendly and funny but he was also fascinating. The holy trinity of F adjectives! No, seriously, listening to him tell us about what he knows you quickly realize that not only is he the one you want with you if you’re caught in a shootout at a gun range but also that he may just be as close as you can find to a real life version of MacGuyver. Check out our interview with him below…

Charlie Guanci, Jr.: [walks up and gathers all the voice recorders in front of him] We can use these in the show. I like this one…

Is that your life, doing that? Just looking around?

CG: Absolutely, [grabs someone's iPhone] I’ll take this too! [everyone laughs]

So Matt was telling us last night to ask you about guns.

CG: Ok, what would you like to know?

Apparently you’re the man who knows everything about guns so tell us about them…

CG: Well, I’ve been doing props for about 20 years. Started out on Miami Vice and that’s where I got my first exposure to weapons at an early age and handled guns from that point on with actors like Don Johnson and things like that. So it was just the sheer amount of exposure and I’m always one that when I get something I start to take it apart, put it back together. So I learned all of that taking some courses on weapons training and tactics and things like that. Just have a desire for weapons, for the mechanics behind it and things like that.

How did you get this desire?

CG: I guess just like anybody else who enjoys doing things… guns are just a small facet of my job. It just happens to be something that’s written into a story and it’s something I enjoy. Just like everything else: the explosives, the bomb building, the research and doing stuff. It’s just something you really love. Passion.

Miami Vice was such a groundbreaking show, what has that experience taught you that you’re bringing to this?

CG: You know, it’s ironic, because 20 years ago I was working for my father who was a props master on that show. I was an assistant, 18 years old, coming into the business. Now that is repeating where my son will be coming into the business working with me. So it’s just a cycle but I find that it’s come a long way. I mean, that whole style of Miami Vice and a trend that it created. Now Burn Notice is doing the same thing, they’re re-inventing that Miami look that is different from Vice. So it’s fresh, cleaner, more modernized. With all the locations, exterior shots and stuff. Original locations that we’re using versus a lot of stuff you might see in features, because I’ve been on a lot of features – Bad Boys – and seeing all the stuff that was shot. That’s pretty much it.

This show seems like it’d be really fun for you because he uses a lot of weapons and things in interesting ways and does take them apart and jerry-rig them in a lot of ways.

CG: Yeah, there was an episode we had where Matt had come to me and asked me, “How do I fix a gun with a paperclip?” Or something that…

A hairpin.

CG: A hairpin or an improvised piece of metal and I’ve got contacts in LA that are military background who I consult as well as some other friends and discuss what would be a viable piece to put there or do.

Does the props extend to the cars?

CG: It does to a certain degree. License plates, maintaining the exterior appearance to it, sometimes graphics on them.

The choice of doing the Charger, was that something in the script?

CG: That was all through Matt I believe and the Transportation Department but the actual picture cars themselves and getting them was not me or those decisions.

How do you choose which props for each actor? For instance, their type of cell phones?

CG: A lot of the props that are chosen are based off meetings I’ve had, either talking directly to Matt or the other writers. They’re often written in the script as a specific phone but I usually consult them because it does change, what is written. If it says it is a flip phone and it ends up not being a flip phone. If it’s somebody with a real stylized phone or a phone that’s going to end up being de-bugged later, I have to then look and see what I can do with that phone, how I can get into it. We had one episode where we needed a phone where a microchip was placed onto it so it had an external GPS unit put into it. Another where I had to take the back of the phone off and have an access point where I could take a USB cable and hardwire it in and put it into a hard-drive? So I have to look at that and figure out what will work and then report back to them.

Related to that, do you always make sure that it’s something that could actually be done?

CG: They do their research. The writers will do the research through their consult what really will work and it’s from that we take our slight license in creating. Now, the two posts or power wires that I put there in that specific spot will not make that work but, in order to get the shot, visually for that quick second it’s impacting enough to know that, wow, that’s pretty cool. But it’s not something you’d see on YouTube where the guy – because he’d be completely taking the phone apart and spending half a day… like the guy that jerry-rigged the Apple, you know, broke into that whole Apple phone thing. That took, you know, 700 hours to figure that one out.

Do you find your interest in technology expanding and do you really go into technology and try to take it apart? To see if you can do it?

CG: To a surface level, I don’t have a lot of time outside of what I’m doing. [chuckles] Usually it’s reading/breaking down scripts and jumping right into the next day of work, but I do try to find out what are the latest interesting pieces and what I can bring to the table so if I’m asked or I can provide a solution to something from doing my own research through the Internet or talking to people or seeing something on YouTube. You hear about things, I get feedback from other people saying, “Hey, have you seen this, have you heard about this?” I book-log that and it’s like, “Let’s try to do that.”

I did see, we were doing a safe-cracking scene in this episode and I saw what two MIT guys had done. They created an auto-dialer – that gets put over the actual dial – you use with a small computer and it automatically accesses the safe numbers and cracks the safe. With a computer hooked up and it was all crude. So I forwarded that information on to the writers as maybe a bit of—because I hadn’t that full script so if it was something they may be able to use that I stumbled upon… but, in the end, we went a different way.

Charlie, when you’re dressing the set or finding the props for a character like Madeline, how much of that comes from the writers and how much do you then go out and start thinking like “this is what her home would look like and these are the kinds of tschotskies that would be on her dresser”?

CG: Well, everything that you just described is all handled by our set dressing department. They literally dress the set. The rule of thumb is anything that is picked up or handled is a prop. Like Madeline walks in and picks up a blender in the kitchen. Well it was dressed on the set by the decorator who had a look inspired by her and the production designers to what that set would appear as so I wouldn’t just walk in with a modern looking blender or something – because her set is kind of stuck in the 50′s and it’s a nostalgic grandmother-type feel – so I wouldn’t want to impose with wrong technology. So she usually dresses the set as well as all those pieces but we collaborate on some things.

Does product placement affect you at all and what you choose?

CG: It does, a great deal. In television it’s very difficult to get stuff right away, quickly, because there’s a whole protocol in getting people to respond back to you and how they work. I deal with product placement companies who will send me sunglasses for the actors to wear. There’s not brand recognition on that so we have to be careful the network how we use like a Heineken beer bottle. We gotta go clear that then they have to authorize us to use it and make sure the network doesn’t have any Budweiser advertisements conflicting with that. And that takes time, it could take a week, it could take a month. I know there’s been things that we haven’t still gotten clearance on and there’s stuff we would like to clearance on that you’d think they’d just say “no problem” and we can’t just stick it in there so we use generics.

Does the network ever send you a case of Sam Adams and say “start using it”?

CG: The networks? No. We did get Heineken. Danny, our art department coordinator, had researched that out and they did provide 15 cases of assorted Heineken products which we used in the club scene. We have to be careful that we don’t over-advertise because we’re so commercial based. So a lot of the stuff I use is all generic labels that are cleared to use: Sam’s beer, the yogurt that is used by our actors – Brenner’s yogurt. It’s so high profile that we wish somebody would just jump on board and say, “Hey, let’s use Dannon.” Or another brand. You would think that would be a shoo-in and I’m sure there’s reasons why not.

Well, it would be difficult for them if later down the line a different yogurt company wanted to buy a commercial spot and they were like, “Sorry, Dannon…”

CG: Yeah, yeah, see how that all works together.

Do you ever have to take a prop, like a phone or a computer, and make it look generic?

CG: Yes. I do that with cameras sometimes. I’ve got to greek them out. I get a Nikon camera that I rented and I have to cover it up. But in another case we had enough time where we had this microcomputer. It had a big name on the outside and we went ahead and cleared it. It cleared fast through a product placement company and we went ahead and used it. Huge exposure, I mean it was – Bam! – right there. As long as we have other products there to compliment that (Toshiba, Dell, etc.) and as long as we use the products in the way they were designed to be used along with the permission from them or a representative then we’re ok.

As a prop guy, why is Apple in every single TV show out there?

CG: It’s funny that you say that because… About four years ago, when I was really trying to go after Apple for a show, they were just, “Well we’ve allocated all of our product out, we don’t have anything to give.” Then the last show that I finished doing, Apple was just throwing stuff. They were just, you know their media relations and advertising have markets they’re going for at certain times in the year and they just push it. Apple iPhones on the last show were just coming out like candy. But to get Apple on here it’s, uh, something we haven’t followed right away. The Apple phone is the technology that we’d like to have but it’s soon becoming passé.

Is Apple product placement easier to deal with than say Dell?

CG: It depends on the situation and the time of year. If it’s big season, in television, when there’s a lot of shows and a lot of features, they only have so much merchandise that they can let go out. They don’t have just warehouses full of stuff. If I call product placement, they may have ten or fifteen laptops or ten or fifteen handsets available that they have to put on all of these shows, so they are limited on their volume of equipment. But, they’d make a great product, I have an Apple computer. [laughter]

Does that make it better for you guys to be shooting during the summer as far as that goes, because you’re not competing with as many productions for products?

CG: Summer is terrible because that’s when everybody’s shooting. You call out to LA needing something and it’s like, “Sorry, call us next week, that’s out.” I mean, there’s so many productions going on that you’ve got to think ahead and call in advance for what you need.

What are the toughest props for actors to deal with?

CG: Actors in general?

Yeah, what do they have the most trouble handling?

CG: That’s a good question. I think, for the most part, it would be guns and maybe electronics. Because those are the most foreign to them which is quite different with our cast because they’re very proficient in everything they do. Especially Michael, I’ll show him how to take apart something, build something, do this, do that. I’ll do it once and he comes right in and carbon copies me. Everything that we’ve done, that you’ve seen, I have researched it (along with the writers), I’ve gotten the components, I’ve built it, tested it, and I do a dry run for the actor. He watches and he comes right in and he does it verbatim. And it’s just amazing.

What do you do when an actor just doesn’t get it? You show it to him 5 or 10 times and he just can’t get it.

CG: That usually happens with the guns. I was in a situation with an actress and she had never fired a gun before so now it involves handling, actually firing the gun, education of the gun. A gun should always be treated as if it could fire a real projectile. You want them to understand the difference between a real gun and a movie gun, a blank and a bullet, and how to hold the gun and then to test fire it. So there’s so much information that we don’t time on a TV show to go to the range for a half hour, forty-five minutes of talking with them. Because normally these guest stars are flying in, going through wardrobe, and I might have them ten minutes before. So I have to show them proper handling and, if they’re going to be firing a gun, how to move with the gun and how to hold the gun and then we do a test fire so they can feel with the gun will do. And I really explain a lot about the safety because, from the gun, there’s a blast of burnt powder and gases that come out and that’s what does all the damage. People think that guns are dangerous because you’re dealing with a bullet and then they think that it’s a blank gun so it’s safe. That’s completely wrong, it’s more dangerous.

Does this show call for you to build many props? Obviously you try to find what you can but have there been any particular challenges as far as things you have to build?

CG: Yeah, that was the case on this show. We’re doing a safe-cracking scene and we’re using a magnetic drill press. So I did the research on it and tried to call out to various companies to be like technical advisors for the show, “ABC Safe Company, we’d like to get a magnetic drill press, we can hire you on to come out or rent it from you…” They don’t return our calls because, in general, shows depict the counter-measure safecracking people as, uh-putting them in the wrong light. It’s not always showing their people as doing what they really do. So I never got phone calls back and I had to make it. I looked in the catalog to see what it looked like and it was $1700 and that’s $1200 over my budget for such an item so I could not afford it. So I got with our special effects department and I’d done the research on what I wanted it to look like, I talked to the director and writer about it and they liked it. From there we went ahead and manufactured it. We made this magnetic drill press within budget and now we have something that’s probably a lot better, more tailored to our show, and is good for everybody.

That’s the episode filming right now?

CG: Yeah, this is the episode filming right now.

When you did the episode where Michael jumps on top of the car and has the humongous drill? Did you go to Home Depot and buy that drill?

CG: That drill came off the prop truck; that was my drill, just greeked out. We bought a big bit and the bit wasn’t big enough on the day of shooting. We had talked about the bit but we needed it bigger. So we ran out to Shell Lumber and picked up a bunch of bits, came back and then they realized the bit we had was just fine. So we were getting pulled apart from both ends. Yeah, it was a pretty cool scene.

That was a great scene.

CG: Yeah that was a great acting spot for Michael, that little psychotic…

Name another film that you’ve ever seen someone do a scene like that?!

CG: Yeah, drilling right through…

With the turpentine and the whole bit.

CG: Yeah, very graphic and original.

Exactly.

CG: Yeah, yeah, that’s what makes the show different. It’s just amazing how many people I talked to, “You’re doing Burn Notice?! My sister loves that show.” And these are vendors, these are not friends and family-they all like it, they’re all good-but it’s amazing, you know, the third and fourth party people, “Oh, that’s great!” Even the safe guy I talked to, “Oh, that’s Burn Notice, right?” “Yeah, how about it?” “Well, talk to this guy and he’ll get back to ya.” Phone hasn’t rung yet, still waiting. [laughter] He’ll get back to me I’m sure.

What was that word you used? “Greeked” it out?

CG: “Greek,” yeah greeking is when you just change what it is says, modifying. [uses one of the voice-recorders as an example and points to the Olympus logo] Taking the “Olympus” and either putting something over it or I’ll take a Sharpie and I’ll dabble that and just touch on it. You won’t be able to read it. Olympus may know it’s their product but…

Right, right. Turn Nikon into Nixon

CG: Nixon or Jack Daniels into Jim Dandies. Budweiser Beer to Bod Beer. [laughter]

Coca Cola to Cola Cola.

CG: Yeah! We have Cola Cola, that’s a good one.

How do you choose the type of weapons for every actor? Is it per what their character should be in the show or…

CG: Well, for instance, for Michael I had talked to them early on about him being ex-CIA and the types of gun that force actually uses which is the Sig 228. Jeffrey was thinking about—we had shown him a couple of guns like the 226 but that was a little large for his hand. Our hands are the same size and I mentioned that it [Sig 228] was a real good feel for ergonomically for my hand, it’s a good-looking gun, and he agreed and we went forward with that. Now, on the other shows, like the last one we just did with a bunch of Russians and, uh – bodyguards – I thought it’d be great to stay in that—the weapons really have the characteristic of the AK-47s but shortened models and the CZ-75s, which are the handguns, so it was all Russian – Russian newspapers, Russian vodka, Russian weapons – as opposed to throwing in a MAC-10 or something else.

I’m always looking for something that is very different, as much as possible. Or, at night, it’s a silver gun as opposed to a black finish gun or a two-tone finish gun or a matte finish gun. The styles of guns, some people say, “A gun’s a gun’s a gun…” but if I laid four guns out on the table you could see that they’re very distinctively different. Especially with Fiona, since she has a cache of guns that’s just endless. [chuckles around the table] Yeah, I try to get her into state of the art stuff that, when you look at it, you have to stare at this thing and go, “Wow, this is really neat, this is real intricate with all the attachments and things like that.” So, it really catches your eye. That’s what we did two shows ago where she was a sniper and she’s supposed to be on the phone talking and looking through a scope. I suggested we go with the earpiece, the Bluetooth, that way she could talk, look through the scope… [mimes why that'd be easier and cooler looking than using a headset] She’s real proficient with all her firearms.

Is it dangerous working with knives?

CG: With knives? It is, even dulled down ones. We were just dealing with a knife where I had ground down the blade and blunted the tip on it. Yeah, a lot of times when we deal with knives they’re all ground or we have retractable knives and things like that. We don’t use a lot of knife work in the show except one time, unfortunately, we had a scene with Michael working on the set back here where he was installing a floodlight. It was a multi-purpose tool and I had given it to him to use the snipers and stuff. Unfortunately, when he opened it up, the blade caught his finger and give him a little… [mimes Michael getting cut with the knife] But during that whole shot – it was one of those where I had explained to him how to mount bracketry, pull this thing out, do this – they backed the lenses up and shot it all in a one-shot deal. He cut his finger on camera, put it to his mouth, and kept on going. It was one of those things, it was a little fluke thing that happened, but he made it work, just went right through it and a band-aid later, game over.

How specific are the writers in their research in terms of “Michael’s with the CIA, this is the type of gun they use, and we want to try and match it to this…” Is that something the writers tell you or do you tell the writers?

CG: No, they haven’t told me on that specific situation. They are very specific on what they are looking for, they have research that I get based on what they were thinking about when they were writing it, links to websites for me to look at. Once I see the things, I can see that some of it may be looking a little boring and then we’ll take that item, for instance on this show, it was a WiFi signal repeater which takes a signal – like a boost cell that you see on these towers. It was a part that was going to be attached to a web camera. Some of those can look boring – not the web camera but the signal booster – so we’re going to “Michael-ize” it where we’re going to end up taking the cover off, adding an external power source to it, duct-taping it to it, putting it in a plastic enclosure so it doesn’t look like I went up the street and bought some boring looking piece of plastic. I’ve taken it so he’s done the mechanics behind it. So I take what they give me and I try to take it to the next level. I show them, obviously, to find out what they think which I did with Rod, our director, and he liked that idea. Just kind of keep exploring. I kind of live in that world of the Michael Westen to try and be on the same level as what Jeffrey would do.

Is there a prop masters’ email list or group that you all get onto and try to exchange ideas?

CG: No, I’ve never seen that before. I don’t think that exists. I’m sure there are friendly prop masters amongst themselves that share secrets.

How did you come up with the idea for the sticky bomb in the season finale?

CG: The sticky bomb the writers wrote in, that was their idea. We talked about the mop head and we talked about how it would be used. If I recall, that was last year’s work, so that was a telescopic pole, the mop-head, the device inside. They give a blanket idea of what they’re looking at: a mop and a pole. Then I take it to: I need a shortened mop because he has to do this with it, the explosive has to be weather protected inside and hidden under there. So that whole mop sequence with the zip ties and all that, I had done some more research on it and me and my assistant, we did it right there in front of the actors, and they came right in and copied us right over. They came up with that idea. All those ideas are the writers.

The tile adhesive as well?

CG: The tile adhesive was their idea, yep. Yeah, they have time to sit there and think about these things. [laughter all around]

Were there shows – you said you grew up in the industry – were there shows you remember watching as a kid that you thought had the coolest gadgets, coolest props? Did you love Mission: Impossible?

CG: The funny thing about it is, when I was growing up my dad was a props master before me, I wasn’t interested in the film industry. It was a summer job. Then, all of the sudden, it was like, “Wow, this is something else.” Then I just went right into it and that’s how that happened. Growing up I wasn’t much into…

I mean, things like Star Trek and when saw a phaser and things like that…

CG: Yeah, that was always cool but I guess I wasn’t nearly what I am today with watching other stuff and getting ideas. I don’t necessarily go out to other films and say, “Oh, I’m going to take that…” because that really won’t work, if I rob somebody else’s idea. It’s more, “What’s out there? What’s my situation? How do I get out of it?” Now I’m being original, now I’m being creative as opposed to, like I said, rob somebody else, “Oh it was done in this other movie…”

No, there are things that you’re doing now that people are going to copy you.

CG: Very well could be, yeah.

Thank you so much.

CG: I appreciate it. It was nice talking to you all.