One of the more interesting props of ‘cool’ comes from old films, the classic act of someone chewing on a toothpick. Now as a modern person and a man who was born in 1989 this tooth pick conundrum confuses me I didnt grow up watching tooth pick films or see the origin of them in some old western I was simply introduced to it as a solid base; that anyone chewing one was a bad ass, cigarettes yes I can understand them and I know their history; but a toothpick? really? whats menacing or cool about that?

So after a little research I found out Toothpicks were initially invented by a man named Charles Forster, who from the sounds of the information I found on him was a fairly big deal. I’d go into more detail but my focus here is toothpicks; Basically Forster found a way of getting almost every restaurant diner and train station to stock tooth picks; he made shady deals and employed marketing ploys in order to get his product moved, In other words he was a great business man. And it soon became common place for tooth picks to be everywhere! with people during their lunch happily picking away. Thus arrives the first instance of toothpicking as a reflection of character, you see all Forster’s picks were the same; so you could pick up the same pick in a diner as you could in a fancy hotel and so people would take their diner picks and stand outside posh hotels and restaurants picking their teeth as though they had eaten there and thus becoming rich and empowered by people seeing them and their fancy eating habits when in truth they could never afford the food in the restaurant. So in a way Toothpicks were really the first attempt at bling.

So how did this attribute to bad boys and ‘cool’ people? well there is no clear-cut answer, it seems it just did, it just happened. My thought is it became a replace ment for cigarettes when actors were un-determined to smoke, or for those characters who just maybe to poor to smoke, and needed a handy prop to alleviate their dialogue.

It is often something new directors and writers don’t consider when crafting characters, mainly because their writing for the movie not for the actor specifically, but giving a character a nice tick or prop which they always have is a great tool when rounding out their story. Think about the x-files, would Moulder be as easily rounded without his sunflower seeds? would Dr Strangelove be as menacing without his tick? I think something I have taken on board from seeing so many films recently and researching the tooth pick conundrum is that all significant characters I make from now on will be given a prop tick or query to keep up during the film.

As this is a short blog I thought I’d give you a few more examples of characters and their quirks.

Moulder is always eating Sunflower seeds and with the length of the series they had it down to a specific brand.

The Dude drinks White russians, it’s his drink, by adding a little item like a character having a favourite beverage you feel like you know him more.

Sure he was a bunny but it takes a lot of class to eat a carrot which such style.

Eastwood was a classic in terms of the smoker campaign of cool lighting up cigars and producing monolouges with a Cigar hanging out of his mouth.

And of course there is perhaps the most well-known prop in film character generation, the Martini, Shaken not stirred.