Frozen in carbonite

On November 23rd, 2005 I was pulled over after a premiere party and arrested for drunk driving. After spending the night in jail, I was charged with driving under the influence, fined $1500, and required to complete a mandatory DUI course which included mandatory AA meetings. My license was suspended for 6 months and I began riding my bike to work shortly after the new year. The whole process set me back about $2500-3000 depending on if you count rising insurance rates.

With my mind dealing with all the things I had to get done by certain dates or face jail time and my Han pants hanging in a closet with a busted zipper, I kind of forgot about Captain Solo for a time. Understandable as it is.

In February I was made aware, by my boss, that the show that I primarily do effects for at Nick was running a heavy risk of being cancelled. Thus, layoffs were a real risk on the horizon. Not knowing when, as it could have been anywhere from March to August, I decided to start saving money and living as if I would be laid off anytime. I began cutting my spending, which was easy due to my lack of automobile mobility, and selling off random crap I had laying around on eBay.

I spent most of the winter and spring slowly selling off parts of my Anakin costume as well as other costume and props stuff I had lying around that I had bought up in the frenzy that was fall 2005. I didn’t give a thought to fixing my Han pants for quite a while. It wasn’t until sometime in April, when I started giving serious thought to attending San Diego Comicon. I had been to Comicon a year before; for one day. I wanted to go for more and get a hotel room. eventually I bit the bullet in late April and snagged a room, through Nickelodeon, at the Hyatt.

With that decision made, it opened up another can of worms. Did I want to go and where my costume? If I decided to take that plunge from normal Con-goer to costumed Con-goer, I had to fix my pants. I wasn’t even sure if they were able to be repaired. I don’t know much about sewing, seamstressing, tailoring, or garment construction. Could a zipper be easily removed from some cheap decades-old pants and replaced with a heavy duty metal one? Was it worth it? Should I just find a new pair of pants at the thrift stores and swap the stripes? I really wasn’t sure how to approach it. And the lack of a car for transportation made it tough. At the time I was stuck walking to the supermarket if no one could drive me.

An answer would come via the Replica Props Forum. A member there was selling his Han pants. ESB style for pretty cheap. I decided to buy them and see if I could alter them to fit. They arrived a few weeks later and much to my surprise fit great! To be honest, I had dropped nearly 15 lbs at this point from my bike riding shenanigans. The stripes on the sides were inaccurate, as most are, and I had them replaced with my stripe patches.

The costume was now complete again and need only wait for July and Comicon International.

The puzzle pieces

Possibly because the movie starts off in a freaking ice cave, John Mollo (the costume designer of the original trilogy) saw fit to give Han a blue waist length jacket in Empire instead of his trademark vest from Star Wars. I have always been a fan of waist length, Eisenhower type jackets so I always gravitated towards this look. It doesn’t hurt that Empire is my favorite movie and Han’s character really came into his own during this episode.

From my research the outfit from Empire lays out as follows:

- Brown calavry-based pants with yellow horizontal stripes down the side
- White cotton long sleeve shirt with front bib closure
- Dark blue waist length jacket with various pockets
- Black leather 3 holed belt with 2 prong buckle
- Brown leather quick draw holster
- DL-44 heavy blaster pistol made from a WWII German Mauser
- Belt tool kit
- Droid caller made from a Kobold flash gun
- Knee high black jack or riding boots

My first find came from a man named Vince Carter. He is an old school Han costumer who operates a side business called Corellian Exports. He sells Han costume parts based off his designs and patterns as well as resin copies of the belt tools and droid callers from all 3 movies. I ordered his ESB toolkit, droid caller, and shirt.

From an information exchange on The Jedi Council forums with a very nice woman named Kay-dee, I was able to track down an army surplus belt that worked once one prong was removed from the buckle and was turned in the direction of another woman named Dawn Anderson. Dawn makes a pattern called The Falcon Jacket. It is a damn near perfect replica of Han’s jacket from Empire. Lucky for me, she also sells ready-to-wear versions that are 100% finished. They are professionally manufactured and com complete with interior pockets and satin lining. I ordered one without hesitation.

The blaster was ordered from a site called Blast-tech. The operator sells various parts for saber replicas and blaster kits. I was not foolish enough to think I had the skills for such an endevor and ordered a pre-made ESB blaster. The kit features the added scope, muzzle, and greeblies and is based on a Denix Mauser replica.

For the pants I went a cheaper route. I found a website called J Kerezman costumes that sells pre-embroidered bloodstripe patches that need only be stitched to the sides of pants. I ordered a ESB set, yellow on brown, and started scouring thrift stores for brown 70’s slacks. Arriving at decent pair for some hefty sum of 2 doillars or something, I took them in for altering. I had the bell bottoms removed and the stripes attached.

This left me with probably the 2 hardest parts of the costume: the boots and the holster.

At the time I knew of a guy in Texas named Matt Poitras making the holsters but he had moved in the interim year between when i found him and when I started the project and had said he was done with making Star Wars stuff and was attempting to get work in the motion picture industry. I was out of luck for the holster and had considered trying to make my own with my all too feeble leather skills. One day I randomly checked Matt’s site and saw that he was once again taking orders for Halloween. I quickly emailed him and got my order in.

The boots were a conundrum. The boots used in the movies were German Officer jack boots most likely from WWII. They are shiny black riding boots that come up to the knee and are straight across the top. Most Imperial officers wore them as well as Han and Luke in ROTJ. I could find replicas, custom made, that went for upwards of 300-400 dollars. I could find standard riding boots with the higher outside top edge. But nothing cheap with a straight top. At least nothing tall enough to reach my knee. I eventually settled on a risky plan. I bought a pair of medium quality equestrian boots and decided to cut the top straight myself at home. Luckily it worked out fine and I still use these boots to this day.

After painting the droid caller and tools, the costume was ready for its debut on Halloween.

There would be a few snags.

The blue jacket

I started researching Han Solo costumes online over the summer of 2005. The internet’s base of information had taken quite a leap since 1998 and I was flooded with sites to read. Perusing through such places as the aforementioned Jedi Academy, The Replica Props Forum, and The Jedi Council Forums I found other people online with this same passion who had catalogued and studied and built and sewn and were willing to share all this with me for free.

My mind began to fill with new terms: Mauser, bloodstripes, DL-44, Kobold, Graflex, Sterling, E-11, MPP, vac-forming, resin casting, weathering, found parts, greeblies, etc.

I realized a couple of things. This project was beyond my skills and would cost me a pretty penny. Not sure yet if I wanted to dive in this far financially, I bookmarked pages and began to think it through.

When my raise came through just in time to start working for Halloween 2005, I decided enough was enough. I would plunge headfirst. The dilema before me now was which costume to recreate? I had recently learned that Han, in fact, wore 3 different costumes in the 3 movies. I was aware of changes in the past but never to this extent. I never noticed that his pants changed to brown in Empire Strikes Back. Or that his blaster was different. I had a tough decision to make. Besides similarities between the Empire costume and Return of the Jedi’s, there was no way to do a generic Han. One look had to be nailed down.

I made the only choice I could ever make. I went for the one detail I had always thought was the coolest:

The blue jacket.