Rachel Talalay has served as director and producer on some of the most culturally significant films and franchises in entertainment history, including Doctor Who, Sherlock, Tank Girl, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Hairspray – and over the course of her travels through time and space and showbiz, the Vancouver-based screen storyteller has amassed a veritable treasure trove of movie and TV memorabilia.
This week, Talalay is auctioning off some rare and one-of-a-kind items from Doctor Who, Sherlock, Hairspray, Cry-Baby, and other beloved screen projects in order to raise money for several charities on both sides of the border.
“Definitely this political climate makes it feel like now more than ever, our activism is so important,” says Talalay in a recent phone interview. “I felt very strongly that I had some items that I think people would like, and that this was an opportunity to do some good with them."
Talalay’s eBay auction is populated by the type of collectibles that are usually only available to production insiders, like the custom fidget spinners – emblazoned with an image of the iconic TARDIS – she presented to Doctor Who cast and crew as a Christmas gift last year, and t-shirts featuring original artwork of a shark and a hound that she had made for the crew after directing the premiere episode of Sherlock ’s fourth season in 2016 (“I commissioned an artist [Sarah Peters] to design something for me and that was tough because we weren’t allowed to give away any spoilers,” recalls Talalay).
One of the items is especially rare: a 20-page book featuring Talalay’s own behind-the-scenes photography from Doctor Who that she created for the birthday of the Twelfth Doctor himself, Peter Capaldi. Only six copies of the book exist, and five of them belong to individuals that are well known in the Whoniverse: Michael Pickwoad (production designer) Steven Moffat (writer and executive producer), Peter Bennett (first assistant director), Capaldi, and Talalay.
Talalay describes the photo book as “the most 'me' of the things that are on sale. I bought these new iPhone lenses and went to the TARDIS and took all of these pictures. I had a fish-eye lens and a macro lens, and I spent some time during lunchtime playing with the macro lens in particular and I’m really pleased with the results.” A mug featuring one of Talalay’s fish-eye TARDIS shots is also up for auction.
There’s also a crew jacket from 1990’s John Waters masterwork Cry-Baby, which Talalay produced; a shirt that Sonny Bono wore in the original Hairspray (“I happen to have a huge amount of Hairspray wardrobe. I stuck a lot of it in my parents’ basement in 1988, and it’s been there ever since”); a one-of-a-kind custom slide from the animation panels in Tank Girl; a Steve Dillon Preacher comic book original board (Talalay owned the first option on Preacher in 1998); and more. Items can be autographed upon request. Peruse the auction items here.
Winning bidders will have reason to smile for reasons beyond becoming owners of highly coveted memorabilia: funds raised from the auction will benefit a number of charities, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (says Talalay: “I particularly feel the necessity to pay back the ACLU for what they’ve done for women directors”); Planned Parenthood; the Southern Poverty Law Center; Emily’s List; and the Full Flood Endowment Fund, which Talalay and producer Rupert Harvey established in 2016 to assist in the post-secondary educational needs of the children and families of missing and murdered women.
Talalay directed 2016’s powerful On the Farm, which gave voice to the victims of Robert Pickton by telling the story from their perspective and keeping the killer voiceless and on the periphery.
The Full Flood Endowment Fund is operated through the Vancouver Foundation; the fund is currently in its primary funding stage, says Talalay, and “we’re getting very close to getting enough funding to start distributing money, which is one of the reasons that I wanted to make this part of the charity auction.”
Talalay is an in-demand director and producer whose recent Vancouver directing credits include The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Continuum, and Supernatural. Talalay has spent the bulk of 2017 in England directing multiple episodes of Doctor Who, including the highly anticipated Christmas special, “Twice Upon a Time.” In 2016, Women in Film and Television Vancouver named Talalay its Woman of the Year.
Talalay’s charity auction runs until Sunday. Browse and bid here.
MORE FROM RACHEL TALALAY
On the ongoing impact of On the Farm (which also goes by the title Full Flood): “Rupert [Harvey] and I and one of our daughters were in the Downtown Eastside yesterday, and she said, ‘I’ve completely changed my view of being down here, it’s not a scary place, it’s a place that still needs help,’ and I was like, ‘Yes!’ What I’ve actually found is, when I’m looking for my next work – because I went straight from all of the Full Flood energy into eight months on Doctor Who, and so now I’m starting to look at what I’m going to do next, and immediately the features I’ve looked at and I’ve felt very strongly about have to compete in terms of importance with Full Flood, with On the Farm, so that’s changed me a lot. It doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t go and do Star Wars were I offered it – that’s a glass ceiling I can’t break – but in terms of the independent world, I’m definitely looking for things which are significant and which we can have some impact with. I think because it’s such a politically difficult time in the States and in the UK, it just seems so important to have these very open voices and tell stories that have more impact. What’s changed in me is that has become so much more important. I will read a lot of things and just think, ‘Yeah, this is a nice, entertaining piece, but why would I want to do it?’”
On her collection of storyboards: “What I may do is pull out, if I ever get organized enough [to do another auction], some of my early storyboard drawings, which are hilarious, because I can’t draw at all, and see if people might have some interest in my scribbles and what they mean. What ends up happening is they end up looking like I scribbled all over the page. As I’m drawing something, it will look okay, and they’ll say, ‘Well, how does this work?’ And I’ll start drawing things over it to explain the movement, and then I’ll start scribbling over it, and then they’ll say, ‘What about this?’ And it looks like a two-year-old came and scribbled over it, but really what it’s representing is The Veil jumping out of the grave [in the Doctor Who episode “Heaven Sent”), or Sherlock walking in the streets from a taxi into another car, and the hilarious part about it is, while you’re doing it, people are actually getting something out of it. And they all have coffee stains on them. Every one of them.”
