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There's this fact that I love
that I read somewhere once,

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that one of the things that's contributed
to homo sapiens' success

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as a species

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is our lack of body hair --

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that our hairlessness, our nakedness

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combined with our invention of clothing,

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gives us the ability to modulate
our body temperature

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and thus be able to survive
in any climate we choose.

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And now we've evolved to the point
where we can't survive without clothing.

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And it's more than just utility,

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now it's a communication.

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Everything that we choose
to put on is a narrative,

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a story about where we've been,

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what we're doing,

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who we want to be.

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I was a lonely kid.

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I didn't have an easy time
finding friends to play with,

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and I ended up making
a lot of my own play.

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I made a lot of my own toys.

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It began with ice cream.

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There was a Baskin-Robbins in my hometown,

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and they served ice cream
from behind the counter

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in these giant, five-gallon,
cardboard tubs.

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And someone told me --
I was eight years old --

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someone told me that when
they were done with those tubs,

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they washed them out
and kept them in the back,

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and if you asked they would give you one.

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It took me a couple of weeks
to work up the courage,

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but I did, and they did.

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They gave me one -- I went home
with this beautiful cardboard tub.

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I was trying to figure out what
I could do with this exotic material --

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metal ring, top and bottom.

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I started turning it over in my head,
and I realized, "Wait a minute --

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my head actually fits inside this thing."

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(Laughter)

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Yeah, I cut a hole out,

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I put some acetate in there

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and I made myself a space helmet.

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(Laughter)

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I needed a place to wear the space helmet,

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so I found a refrigerator box
a couple blocks from home.

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I pushed it home,

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and in my parents' guest room closet,

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I turned it into a spaceship.

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I started with a control panel
out of cardboard.

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I cut a hole for a radar screen

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and put a flashlight
underneath it to light it.

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I put a view screen up,
which I offset off the back wall --

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and this is where I thought
I was being really clever --

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without permission, I painted
the back wall of the closet black

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and put a star field,

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which I lit up with some Christmas lights
I found in the attic,

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and I went on some space missions.

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A couple years later,

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the movie "Jaws" came out.

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I was way too young to see it,
but I was caught up in "Jaws" fever,

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like everyone else in America at the time.

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There was a store in my town
that had a "Jaws" costume in their window,

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and my mom must have overheard
me talking to someone

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about how awesome
I thought this costume was,

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because a couple days before Halloween,

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she blew my freaking mind
by giving me this "Jaws" costume.

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Now, I recognize it's a bit of a trope

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for people of a certain age to complain

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that kids these days have no idea
how good they have it,

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but let me just show you a random sampling

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of entry-level kids' costumes
you can buy online right now ...

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... and this is the "Jaws" costume
my mom bought for me.

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(Laughter)

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This is a paper-thin shark face

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and a vinyl bib with the poster
of "Jaws" on it.

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(Laughter)

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And I loved it.

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A couple years later,

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my dad took me to a film
called "Excalibur."

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I actually got him to take me to it twice,

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which is no small thing,
because it is a hard, R-rated film.

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But it wasn't the blood
and guts or the boobs

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that made me want to go see it again.

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They helped --

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(Laughter)

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It was the armor.

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The armor in "Excalibur"
was intoxicatingly beautiful to me.

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These were literally knights
in shining, mirror-polished armor.

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And moreover, the knights in "Excalibur"
wear their armor everywhere.

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All the time -- they wear it at dinner,
they wear it to bed.

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(Laughter)

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I was like, "Are they reading my mind?

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I want to wear armor all the time!"

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(Laughter)

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So I went back to my favorite material,

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the gateway drug for making,

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corrugated cardboard,

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and I made myself a suit of armor,

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replete with the neck shields
and a white horse.

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Now that I've oversold it,

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here's a picture of the armor that I made.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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Now, this is only the first
suit of armor I made

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inspired by "Excalibur."

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A couple of years later,

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I convinced my dad to embark
on making me a proper suit of armor.

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Over about a month,

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he graduated me from cardboard
to roofing aluminum called flashing

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and still, one of my all-time favorite
attachment materials,

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POP rivets.

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We carefully, over that month,

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constructed an articulated suit
of aluminum armor

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with compound curves.

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We drilled holes in the helmet
so that I could breathe,

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and I finished just in time
for Halloween and wore it to school.

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Now, this is the one thing in this talk

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that I don't have a slide to show you,

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because no photo exists of this armor.

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I did wear it to school,

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there was a yearbook photographer
patrolling the halls,

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but he never found me, for reasons
that are about to become clear.

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There were things I didn't anticipate

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about wearing a complete suit
of aluminum armor to school.

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In third period math,
I was standing in the back of class,

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and I'm standing in the back of class

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because the armor did not
allow me to sit down.

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(Laughter)

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This is the first thing
I didn't anticipate.

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And then my teacher looks at me
sort of concerned

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about halfway through the class
and says, "Are you feeling OK?"

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I'm thinking, "Are you kidding?
Am I feeling OK?

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I'm wearing a suit of armor!
I am having the time of my --"

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And I'm just about to tell her
how great I feel,

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when the classroom
starts to list to the left

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and disappear down this long tunnel,

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and then I woke up in the nurse's office.

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I had passed out from heat exhaustion,

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wearing the armor.

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And when I woke up,

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I wasn't embarrassed about having
passed out in front of my class,

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I was wondering, "Who took my armor?
Where's my armor?"

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OK, fast-forward a whole bunch of years,

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some colleagues and I get hired
to make a show for Discovery Channel,

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called "MythBusters."

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And over 14 years,

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I learn on the job how to build
experimental methodologies

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and how to tell stories
about them for television.

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I also learn early on

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that costuming can play a key role
in this storytelling.

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I use costumes to add humor, comedy, color

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and narrative clarity
to the stories we're telling.

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And then we do an episode
called "Dumpster Diving,"

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and I learn a little bit more

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about the deeper implications
of what costuming means to me.

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In the episode "Dumpster Diving,"

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the question we were trying to answer is:

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Is jumping into a dumpster as safe

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as the movies would lead you to believe?

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(Laughter)

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The episode was going to have
two distinct parts to it.

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One was where we get trained
to jump off buildings by a stuntman

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into an air bag.

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And the second was the graduation
to the experiment:

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we'd fill a dumpster full of material
and we'd jump into it.

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I wanted to visually separate
these two elements,

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and I thought,

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"Well, for the first part we're training,
so we should wear sweatsuits --

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Oh! Let's put 'Stunt Trainee'
on the back of the sweatsuits.

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That's for the training."

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But for the second part, I wanted
something really visually striking --

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"I know! I'll dress as Neo
from 'The Matrix.'"

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(Laughter)

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So I went to Haight Street.

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I bought some beautiful
knee-high, buckle boots.

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I found a long, flowing coat on eBay.

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I got sunglasses, which I had to wear
contact lenses in order to wear.

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The day of the experiment shoot comes up,

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and I step out of my car in this costume,

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and my crew takes a look at me ...

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and start suppressing
their church giggles.

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They're like,
"(Laugh sound)."

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And I feel two distinct things
at this moment.

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I feel total embarrassment

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over the fact that
it's so nakedly clear to my crew

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that I'm completely
into wearing this costume.

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(Laughter)

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But the producer in my mind reminds myself

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that in the high-speed shot in slow-mo,

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that flowing coat is going to look
beautiful behind me.

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(Laughter)

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Five years into the "MythBusters" run,

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we got invited to appear
at San Diego Comic-Con.

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I'd known about Comic-Con for years
and never had time to go.

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This was the big leagues --
this was costuming mecca.

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People fly in from all over the world

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to show their amazing creations
on the floor in San Diego.

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And I wanted to participate.

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I decided that I would put together
an elaborate costume

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that covered me completely,

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and I would walk the floor
of San Diego Comic-Con anonymously.

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The costume I chose?

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Hellboy.

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That's not my costume,

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that's actually Hellboy.

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(Laughter)

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But I spent months

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assembling the most screen-accurate
Hellboy costume I could,

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from the boots to the belt to the pants

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to the right hand of doom.

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I found a guy who made
a prosthetic Hellboy head and chest

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and I put them on.

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I even had contact lenses made
in my prescription.

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I wore it onto the floor at Comic-Con

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and I can't even tell you
how balls hot it was in that costume.

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(Laughter)

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Sweating! I should've remembered this.

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I'm sweating buckets
and the contact lenses hurt my eyes,

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and none of it matters
because I'm totally in love.

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(Laughter)

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Not just with the process of putting
on this costume and walking the floor,

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but also with the community
of other costumers.

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It's not called costuming at Cons,

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it's called "cosplay."

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Now ostensibly, cosplay means
people who dress up

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as their favorite characters
from film and television

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and especially anime,

224
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but it is so much more than that.

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These aren't just people
who find a costume and put it on --

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they mash them up.

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They bend them to their will.

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They change them to be the characters
they want to be in those productions.

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They're super clever and genius.

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They let their freak flag fly
and it's beautiful.

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(Laughter)

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But more than that,

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they rehearse their costumes.

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At Comic-Con or any other Con,

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you don't just take pictures
of people walking around.

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You go up and say,

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"Hey, I like your costume,
can I take your picture?"

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And then you give them time
to get into their pose.

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They've worked hard on their pose

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to make their costume look
great for your camera.

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And it's so beautiful to watch.

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And I take this to heart.

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At subsequent Cons,

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I learn Heath Ledger's shambling walk
as the Joker from "The Dark Knight."

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00:09:52,580 --> 00:09:55,630
I learn how to be a scary Ringwraith
from "Lord of the Rings,"

246
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and I actually frighten some children.

247
00:09:57,739 --> 00:09:59,639
I learned that "hrr hrr hrr" --

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that head laugh that Chewbacca does.

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And then I dressed up as
No-Face from "Spirited Away."

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If you don't know about "Spirited Away"
and its director, Hayao Miyazaki,

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first of all, you're welcome.

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(Laughter)

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This is a masterpiece,
and one of my all-time favorite films.

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It's about a young girl named Chihiro
who gets lost in the spirit world

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in an abandoned Japanese theme park.

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And she finds her way back out again

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with the help of a couple
of friends she makes --

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a captured dragon named Haku

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and a lonely demon named No-Face.

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No-Face is lonely
and he wants to make friends,

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and he thinks the way to do it
is by luring them to him

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and producing gold in his hand.

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But this doesn't go very well,

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and so he ends up going
on kind of a rampage

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until Chihiro saves him,

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rescues him.

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So I put together a No-Face costume,

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and I wore it on the floor at Comic-Con.

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And I very carefully practiced
No-Face's gestures.

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I resolved I would not speak
in this costume at all.

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When people asked to take my picture,

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I would nod

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and I would shyly stand next to them.

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They would take the picture

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and then I would secret out
from behind my robe

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a chocolate gold coin.

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And at the end of the photo process,
I'd make it appear for them.

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Ah, ah ah! -- like that.

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And people were freaking out.

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"Holy crap! Gold from No-Face!
Oh my god, this is so cool!"

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And I'm feeling and I'm walking
the floor and it's fantastic.

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And about 15 minutes in something happens.

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Somebody grabs my hand,

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and they put a coin back into it.

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And I think maybe they're giving me
a coin as a return gift,

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but no, this is one of the coins
that I'd given away.

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I don't know why.

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And I keep on going,
I take some more pictures.

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And then it happens again.

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Understand, I can't see anything
inside this costume.

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I can see through the mouth --

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I can see people's shoes.

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I can hear what they're saying
and I can see their feet.

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But the third time someone
gives me back a coin,

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I want to know what's going on.

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So I sort of tilt my head back
to get a better view,

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and what I see is someone walking
away from me going like this.

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And then it hits me:

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it's bad luck to take gold from No-Face.

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In the film "Spirited Away,"

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bad luck befalls those
who take gold from No-Face.

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This isn't a performer-audience
relationship; this is cosplay.

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We are, all of us on that floor,

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injecting ourselves into a narrative
that meant something to us.

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And we're making it our own.

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We're connecting with something
important inside of us.

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And the costumes
are how we reveal ourselves

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to each other.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)