We received an email in early February 2025 from a well known, highly regarded movie costume designer, seeking football helmets for an upcoming movie, "...featuring primarily New York Giants and a few other teams, set in 1983."  After a couple of email exchanges, she explained that she had "...talked to Curtis at HELMET HUT and he said that you're the man to put these helmets together for us."  To me, there is no better endorsement that being recommended to produce helmets for a movie, than by the person and company that has supplied football helmets for countless projects, including but not limited to movies, documentaries, TV commercials, numerous team hall of fames, and locker rooms and offices around the NFL and College Football. I was both shocked and flattered.  

The emails quickly changed to phone calls on Whats App.   During the first call, they shared a photo of John Tuggle from 1983, explaining the helmet he was wearing was the style they were looking for and inquiring if I could supply them with between 150 and 250 of that particular style, for primarily New York Giants with a "few" helmets needed for 6 or 7 other teams.  At the end of the call, they asked if I could show them a sample helmet of that style.   I asked them to "give me 30 minutes!"  The photo above shows on the left - John Tuggle, and on the right, the sample helmet that I showed to their team roughly 30 mins later, in addition to emailing photos of the helmet to them.   It was on that follow-up phone calls 30 minutes later that the wardrobe department leader exclaimed, "I think we've found our helmet guy."   

Over the course of the next few weeks, we worked on helmets for the movie, and I learned about making movies while their wardrobe department learned about football helmets!  I explained to them that actual 1983 BIKE helmets and period Riddell helmets from 1983 and prior were few and far between, but that helmet designs - in particular the rounded shaped shell had not changed for a couple of decades or more.  Only helmet nerds like myself would even notice the difference between a helmet from 1983 and one from the mid 1990s.  We were given approval on "round shell models," making the task of supplying 250 helmets a bit easier!  We had accumulated helmets over the years from various projects and as a team supplier - so off we went to our storage facility - a couple hour drive round trip.  By removing the helmets from the bulk boxes, we were able to get 138 into our F150 truck - enough to get us started.    

We used primarily Riddell VSR4, Schutt Pro AiR and Pro AiR II, with a scattering of Riddell WD1 and Schutt AiR Power models.  I had quoted the helmets complete and ready to wear, but what I did not account for was the different sizes required by the actors portraying the different players in the movie.  In 1983, XL sized football helmets were seldom needed with very few players on a team requiring that size of helmet. In fact, BIKE did not even offer an XL helmet in 1983!  For the movie, it seemed that the vast majority of the actors wore XL helmets - so many in fact that we did not have enough XL helmets of those models, and had to supply Schutt AiR Advantage model XL helmets for many of the actors that had minor roles with little screen time, or shown in distance shots - i.e. Kick-offs, etc.   Needless to say, the project was more than just selling a few helmets.   

Their title of "Helmet Guy" included doing hours of research - determining what each player portrayed in the movie wore - helmet model, facemask model, chinstrap style, and player number to apply to each helmet - combined with the complexity of the helmet size that the actor required.   As any helmet collector that has scoured the internet looking for photos of helmets would know, photos of older "lesser known" players are scarce in nature.  As Tuggle played mostly Special Teams for the Giants, photos of other Giants Special Teams players as well as photos of the other team's Special Teams players from the 1983 season are almost non-existent. 

As can be expected, the scope of the project was constantly changing - practically daily.  The number of teams, which teams, which players from the teams, and whether they would require college helmets or no college helmets are an example of the many changes presented.   The biggest change was when we were informed that due to liability concerns, the period helmets would now only be used in non-contact footage.  Any scenes that included blocking or tackling would require new, modern helmets, which they would edit to appear as period helmets after the production was completed.  In watching the movie trailer below, a helmet nerd can certainly notice the modern helmets in the footage - similarly to other football movies such as Rudy or Remember the Titans in which modern helmets were used for some of the scenes. 

Along with the constant changes, timing was always a concern - with tight timing and "behind schedule" as the norm. Changes to the teams, players, or number of required helmets, was almost always followed with the question, "how soon can you ship those?" Or, "How fast can you make those changes?" I quickly learned that timing was a critical part of the cost of producing a movie - with the number of actors, and the vast number of production people on the payroll prior to any revenue generated from the boxoffice.  The movie was filmed in Australia, so the shipping times and the time difference further complicated and extended the timing. Needless to say, we did our part, within our control, to keep them on schedule with early mornings and long nights of producing and shipping helmets. 

We were issued a letter from the NFL giving us permission to purchase and use NFL Team logo decals for the helmets  We used our friends at Historic Helmets HelmetHut.com to paint helmet shells and also redip any of our original facemasks that either needed a color change, or the coating itself was well worn and needed recoated.  For rare model period facemsks - such as what Lawrence Taylor and other Giants players wore, we used our friend Scott who sells these remarkable hand made facemasks on eBay, under his user name - elmaestroguapo.  The final request came as a result of an added scene in the movie - which featured Tuggle playing in organized youth/PeeWee football. The wardrobe dpartment was looking for period youth helmets from the 1970s.  Over the years we had accumulated a number of vintage youth helmets, which we layed out on a large table, took and sent photos.  They came back with, "We will take them all - as is, and have our wardrobe and set teams paint them."   Wow. If only the entire project would have been that easy! 

Mr. Irrelevant opens in theaters December 25, as most highly anticipated movies do.  If you enjoyed this story and highlights of our project, or have any questions on comments on the movie or the helmets, please send us an email using this link. Mr. Irrelevant: Real Stuff   We would love to hear your thoughts!  Merry Christmas! 

To view the trailer of Mr. Irrelevant, click the photo below.