I started making dozens of fake letters, reports, photos of alien autopsies, moon landing photos, etc. I dug into the research on conspiracy theories about Area 51, the Kennedy assassination, D-Day, government ESP research, and lots of other fun stuff. I was told to just come up with secret documents, without any direction on what those secrets should be. He also wanted additional loose inserts scattered throughout the book: loads of photos, newspaper clippings, letters, notes, and diagrams. But the director wanted the pages to have just writing, no images. I thought it would be cool to have lots of color on the pages, featuring hand-drawn maps, cryptic diagrams, and ciphers. I put together a show-and-tell presentation for the director with a couple of large leather-bound covers with a gold-stamped seal, sample papers and pages, documents, etc. In the great Hollywood tradition of Big Scary Movie Books, the new design had gotten a little over the top. I felt like the heft, the seal, and the lock were enough to sell it. I also wanted to cut back on the hardware and make something simpler, but with an impressive lock. They liked the general idea but decided that it needed the Great Seal to telegraph “president” (the Presidential Seal, which is based on the Great Seal, came along later, around 1850). I was going for something big and impressive looking: huge, thick, leather bound, with lots of gnarly hardware. I sketched a few rough thumbnails, just so we had something to get the conversation going. At that early point we had no script, so we knew nothing else about the book, what would be in it, or how it would be shot. Ritchie outlined the basic idea: when every president of the United States is sworn in, each is given an incredibly confidential notebook which contains all of the secrets too troubling to keep bottled up inside, those that are too unspeakably terrible, shocking, or astonishing to be revealed to anyone, EVER. Knowing from those experiences how much work the titular Book of Secrets might be, we wanted to get started as early as possible. I had previously made some big book props for Ritchie for King of California (2007) and The Legend of Zorro (2005). At that point, there wasn’t a full script yet, just an outline, and a lot of the movie ended up getting written on the fly, as they were shooting. The producers had just sold the movie to Disney Studios and production was going to start up in early 2007. In November 2006, I got a call from prop master Ritchie Kremer about an upcoming movie project: the sequel to National Treasure (2004). Her bickering with Patrick is one of the highlights of the movie, as are their lighter moments when they begin to reconnect.The Book of Secrets, for the movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007), might be the most involved prop that I’ve worked on. Her knowledge helps the group, and she also adds more depth to the family dynamic, fitting seamlessly into the great cast. As an expert in Native American languages, she is needed to translate information on the plank from the Queen’s desk, and ends up at Mount Rushmore when Mitch kidnaps her. The second addition is Helen Mirren as Emily, Ben’s mother and Patrick’s ex-wife. He’s the catalyst for the higher stakes in the film, and though he starts as a typical antagonist, he’s shown to have a sympathetic side, as he too just wants to clear his family’s name and make his place in history. His seriousness makes a sharp contrast to the original trio’s zany humor, but he comes to help the others and even sacrifices himself, so they can all escape. He tracks Ben’s every move and ends up coming along on their journey to Cibola. Ed Harris is Mitch Wilkinson, the man who initially accuses Ben’s ancestor. In addition to the beloved original characters, Book of Secrets adds two key characters that bring a lot to the movie.
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