7 Famous Props That Were A Huge Pain Behind The Scenes

5 The Wilson Company Was Reluctant To Fork Over Balls To Play Wilson In Cast Away

For the eight people out there without a proficient knowledge of Tom Hanks' filmography, Cast Away is a movie in which Hanks gets stranded on a deserted island with only a volleyball named Wilson for company. By the end of the film, you're kind of upset that Hanks' character survives and the volleyball doesn't. And if you're athletics equipment company Wilson, you're kind of upset that this movie got made in the first place.

The name "Wilson" was written into the script from the beginning. This wasn't a cry for product placement; they weren't going to name the ball "Adidas" if there was suddenly a better offer from them. It was always Wilson the Volleyball. The writers had consulted with psychologists, who told them that someone stranded on an island would seriously become pals with an inanimate object to cope with the loneliness. And so props master Robin Miller went up to Wilson the company hoping to get them to provide blank balls for the production to use. They said no.

Luckily, having Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis attached to the film really impressed some woman in the PR department at Wilson, so she pulled some strings and was able to get Miller some balls. Twenty of them, to be precise. Imagine how many balls a standard eighth-grade volleyball team goes through in a season, and now imagine they're playing on an island.

4 Working With Gremlins' Gizmo Puppet Was A Living Hell

If you're a puppeteer and not Jim Henson, your work is probably wildly underappreciated, given how difficult it is. The reason we now know this is because of how pissed off the puppet people were following the movie Gremlins. It's a movie wherein the main stars are the not-so-distant ancestors of Furbies, and it was a nightmare for all involved.

According to director Joe Dante, "A small army of puppeteers was living beneath each set, controlling rods and levers and staring into video monitors with the picture flipped as in a mirror." That meant that there were a ton of people sitting down there moving bits and pieces of the little mogwai around, glancing at a screen to make sure they were even close to being on the right track.

3 Masters Of Sex Had To Go To Ridiculous Lengths To Obtain Vintage Birth Control

Sex Ed has come a long way, but still has a long way to go. And a lot of that is due to the tireless efforts and studies of the researchers Masters and Johnson, who were the primary subjects of the TV show Masters Of Sex. See? It's possible to combine academia and puns.

Because of the subject matter, and because this was a cable show (mostly the second thing), there are a number of sex-related scenes in it. For one sex scene, the crew had to get vintage condoms, but it turned out that little penis-sized tubes were constructed differently 60 years ago. In the '50s, condoms didn't have reservoir tips, which are a pretty important part of their anatomy today. We'll go out on a limb and call it more important than chocolate and fruit flavors and such.

2 The Orange Trash Couch From The Wire Cost $5,000

The Wire is perhaps the greatest series in television history, with ideas reverberating through its five seasons like the themes of a great novel. And so when the first episode had the Pit Boys hanging out on their orange couch in the middle of the projects, the crew knew it was an iconic locale that was sure to be revisited.

Just kidding, they tossed it in the garbage as soon as the pilot was done.

Ironically, the couch had been a dumpster find in the first place. However, rather than go dumpster diving yet again and praying to the ghost of Oscar the Grouch that they could find a new one, they decided to start from scratch. This was a whole process in itself. The couch was made from orange crushed velvet -- words that you'll notice are rarely put together in such a manner. Flava Flav himself would not buy furniture that looked like that. They finally managed to find someone who had a bunch of it in bloody London, and were able to have them ship that over for a replica couch to get made. Then they had to further damage it by "aging" it and pulling out bits of stuffing to match the original. All in all, it cost them a cool five grand, which is more than most people will spend on any one piece of furniture in their lifetimes.

1 Twilight's Uncanny Valley Baby Was Even More Horrifying In Person

The Twilight movies had a surprising amount of action and plot, given that they were based on books that were 80 percent adjectives and similes. But by the time they got to Breaking Dawn, the films were running on fumes, and nowhere was that more evident than with the infant Renesmee (yes, that's a character's name), the half-human, half-vampire spawn of Edward and Bella. Renesmee was eventually portrayed as a child by actress Mackenzie Foy, but for the scenes wherein she's a super-smart baby, she's played by a mass of unnerving CGI.

Believe it or not, this was the least creepy option available. When they shot the scene, the "baby" present on set looked like this:

Rather than trying to get a real baby to act, the props department tried to create an animatronic doll for the part, and ended up with that ... thing. If an actual woman had birthed that, she'd have demanded a refund from the hospital and speedy divorce. The crew went so far as to rename the doll "Chuckesmee," an affront to both Chucky and the concept of names in general.

What makes this even sadder is that the crew had to decide between CGI and animatronics, and ended up having to CGI over it anyway, so it's more or less a circle of life that nobody wants to sing about. Since Twilight is basically the first full series about vampires and werewolves to not be at least kind of scary, maybe it's some sort of lesson. Is the real "monster" the terrible life lessons we hand down to our children? Who's to say?

Isaac now thinks puppets are infinitely more terrifying than clowns. Follow him on Twitter.

Real talk though, the Twilight novels are just fascinating reads.

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