March 8, 2007
Kim Basinger
Kim
Kim Basinger 1990 in Kim Basinger. One of my 1st dolls, this is my second version. My 1st version had a matte finish and i even forgot the gold writing on the sleeves. But I was just a beginner then.
March 3, 2007
2006 CIN WEEKLY article
The pictures didn’t copy. Too bad, I got 4 pages and the cover!
Red carpet dreams
She may be an expert on Oscar replicas – just don’t call her a Barbie girl
JULIE FITZGERALD | CIN WEEKLY
Heidi Bullard at her home in Highland Heights with her assortment of her Oscar babies. Heidi recreates dresses and hair styles of the female stars who have attended the Academy Awards over the years.
She told herself she would just do it once. You know, to get it out of her system.
Eighty Oscar Barbies later, librarian Heidi Bullard has an army of tiny Academy Award winners and nominees. All are meticulously designed, from the dress and jewelry to the scaled-down version of a particular celeb’s red-carpet hairdo.
Re-creating Hilary Swank’s boyish look from 2000 meant razoring a miniature bob, while giving Angelina Jolie her gothy style meant cutting the long, silky plastic hair from a Princess Jasmine doll and transplanting it onto another Barbie.
“That’s the whole challenge of it: to get a doll to look as much like the real person as possible,” Bullard says. “And if you pick the right details, you can fool the eye to get that immediate reaction of ‘I know who that is!’ “
THANKS TO THE ACADEMY
Bullard insists that she’s not a “Barbie fanatic.” Her stylish hobby can be traced to her years as an undergraduate student at Emerson College in Boston, when she was working on her film degree. “See, I’m a film expert, not a doll person,” she says. “When I was in school, I followed the Oscars religiously. My passion is the Academy Awards.”
After Bullard obtained a master’s degree to become a librarian, her Oscar passion found a new outlet: a job as a film reference specialist for the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. After landing the position, she decided to watch every film that was nominated for an Oscar since 1927. “I wanted to see all of the top eight categories, including all four acting and both writing, including best original screenplay and adapted screenplay,” she says. (That’s roughly 3,500 movies. To date, she’s seen about half.)
It was also around this time that Bullard took notice of the increased Oscar fashion coverage in People magazine. “In 1995 or 1996 People published their Oscar issue, and it was the first time they had top-to-bottom photos of the actresses,” she explains. “This head-to-toe fashion coverage never existed before then.
“I’m a librarian, so of course I had to cut pictures out and put them in alphabetical order,” she adds. “Then I was lying in bed one night thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to make the dresses on a doll?’ “
She says the thought kept her awake nearly all night. “I’m a very serious person, and I don’t collect dolls, but I couldn’t sleep,” she says. “So, I thought I would just make one.”
Now with dozens of Oscar dolls under her fashion belt, she’s created diminutive dresses for the likes of a Barbie Nicole Kidman and a preggers Catherine Zeta-Jones doll. It takes several hours to complete an Oscar doll, not including the research aspect.
Her designs are nearly as precise as something Mr. Valentino himself would create. But she’s far too modest to admit it. “I need about two hours for a simple sheath, but sometimes it can take like 20 hours on others,” she says. “It’s easy to make something fitted. But I failed at that vintage yellow Rene Zellweger dress. I made it from scratch three times and finally threw it away … there wasn’t enough weight to pull the fabric down and make it look like it had the right draping.”
The hours involved in making something like Gwyneth Paltrow’s pink princess dress, Julia Robert’s Valentino design or the Lizzie Gardiner American Express card getup can be daunting. But the results, she feels, are priceless.
2007 Community Press Article
This year’s coverage was in the Community Press and the Cincinnati Enquirer.
http://news.communitypress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070212/NEWS01/702080435/1093/Local
Worst Best Picture Winners
The top 10 WORST films to ever win “Best Picture” at the Academy Awards
Cavalcade-1932/33- Snoozola
An American in Paris-1951-Mediocre
Greatest Show on Earth-1952-This win is widely reagrded to be a travesty
Around the World in 80 days-1956-A boated remnant of the studio days when a big budget could buy awards.
Gigi-1958 – nice music, creepy pedophilic premise
Tom Jones-1963-People thought this was sexy?
Annie Hall-1977-I don’t get it
Chariots of Fire-1981-Well, I saw it when I was 16, so maybe it just went over my head.
Braveheart – 1995 – Blech
The English Patient – 1996 – If only they had concentrated on Juliette Binoche and the Sikh bomb guy and cut those other two losers out of the film.
Why do people find this interesting?
Why does anyone find this interesting?
In our culture celebrities are universally accepted as more important people than the non-famous. Among celebrities, movie stars out-rank TV stars and most musicians, and Academy Award winning actors are the hightest form of movie star.
Doll making is an ancient and respected art form, but it attests to our collective fascination with celebrity that the dolls are far more intersting when viewed next to the photos of the actual stars than when viewed on their own. A celebrity is inherently more interesting to look at than an equally (or more) attractive non-celebrity. This applies to the dolls as well. The dolls are deemed interesting only because they are reproductions of “important” people. Making the dolls represents for me an ironic commentary on the emptiness and frivolity of this kind of idol worship, as well as a sheepish acknowledgment of my own fascination.
When people look at the collection they buzz with recognition; “Oh, I remember that one…That was the year that…Oh, I loved/hated that one” as if these people and their glamorous gowns have some sort of connection to our own lives. Yet, there are not people we know. We did not actually share in their red carpet moment. These are only home-made fetishes copied from magazine photographs of people we think we know from movies. But, somehow, looking at the dolls, the magazines, the tv shows and movies, we feel some sort of connection to these deified personalities, which raises us up as well.
What’s with the dolls?
What’s with the dolls?
These dolls are dressed by Heidi Bullard, film maven and Oscar fanatic. The dolls recreate the gowns, dresses or other odd costumes worn by actresses and other nominees to the Academy Awards, or to Academy Award parties in Los Angeles on the night of the show. The dolls are purchased used in large lots, which is why you can see that some have had their hands nibbled or are otherwise not in perfect condition. The clothes are fashioned mostly from scraps, leftovers, and hand-me down pieces from friends, although I do have to visit the fabric store more often as the collection gets larger. Some dresses were once socks. Renee Zellwegger’s yellow gown is part of my old bedroom curtains. Jada Pinket Smith’s dress used to be a favorite t-shirt before the glitter glue.
Which begs the question:
Why?
Because, I spend WAY too much time obsessing about the Oscars. And it’s not just me, as the numerous books about the Academy Awards and the at least 5 books published in the past 5 years on Oscar fashion alone will attest The sport of Oscar fashion critique is an international phenomenon. For me, the idea of making miniature versions was born of insomnia and actually STILL seemed like a good idea the next day. I thought (hoped) that actually carrying out the plan on a few dolls would get it out of my system. Alas, 6 years and 90 dolls later, I’m still at it.
