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Inspector Bunstead's Hat

Mahagonny Bill

Practically Family
Messages
563
Location
Seattle
Hey all,
I was watching Dark City again this weekend and was very impressed by the hat worn by William Hurt's character "Inspector Bumstead".

vlcsnap-5701519.jpg

/hotlink

It looks like a wider brimmed Akubra Federation (maybe 3 in?), which considering that the movie was filmed in Australia would not be unusual. During the movie you can also see that the lining is a bright red satin. Didn't Akubra use red liners at one time?

I searched for previous posts about this, but didn't find any. Anybody have more info on this hat?
 

QMcK

Familiar Face
Messages
50
Location
Christchurch, New Zealand.
Yesterday, I went to a hat shop that's having a closing down sale. I looked at a couple of Akubras, but they didn't fit me. I think the Akubras had bright red linings.
 

AlterEgo

A-List Customer
Messages
320
Location
Southern USA
I like Hurt's hat, but it's definitely not an Akubra Federation in any of its iterations--the crown has a distinct taper and does not appear to be as tall.
 

Mahagonny Bill

Practically Family
Messages
563
Location
Seattle
AlterEgo said:
I like Hurt's hat, but it's definitely not an Akubra Federation in any of its iterations--the crown has a distinct taper and does not appear to be as tall.
If you look at it from another angle, it doesn't really have much taper to it:

darkcity06.jpg
 

Not-Bogart13

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,501
Location
NE Pennsylvania
Hurt's Akubra model is either hard to find or no longer made. It was called something like the Adventurer or the Hollywood or some such. I tried to track it down some years ago, having found it on an Akubra site, but never found an actual vendor that carried it. It can open crowned with a very wide brim. It was either 3 inches or a little over (it was written in mm, naturally). The crown was lower than the Federation, I know, but not as low as the Squatter.

One of our fellow Loungers (I can't remember who, now) had Art duplicate it in gray.
 

Mahagonny Bill

Practically Family
Messages
563
Location
Seattle
Not-Bogart13 said:
Hurt's Akubra model is either hard to find or no longer made. It was called something like the Adventurer or the Hollywood or some such. I tried to track it down some years ago, having found it on an Akubra site, but never found an actual vendor that carried it. It can open crowned with a very wide brim. It was either 3 inches or a little over (it was written in mm, naturally). The crown was lower than the Federation, I know, but not as low as the Squatter.

One of our fellow Loungers (I can't remember who, now) had Art duplicate it in gray.

Aha, thank you. Now I have another impossible-to-find hat to add to my wish list. ;)
 

vagrantfedora

New in Town
Messages
1
Location
California
Try looking at caliqo.com, they custom make a lot of film hats and I found Bumstead's hat on there as well. Expensive, yes, but more to the point what you are looking for.
 

monbla256

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,239
Location
DFW Metroplex, Texas
Other than the fact that Bunstead's is grey and the Adventurer is brown, it looks pretty close.

The Adventurer has a smaller dimensional brim and taller straighter crown. This hat looks more along the lines of a wide ribboned Squatter with it's 3" brim. But who knows if it was produced as a hat for this movie :)
 

scottyrocks

I'll Lock Up
Messages
9,178
Location
Isle of Langerhan, NY
Yeah, there's no reason to believe that the Bumstead hat is an off-the-shelf unmodified factory hat. It could have very well been a modified factory, or custom made, hat, Adventurer name or not.
 

Benzadmiral

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,815
Location
The Swamp
"Until the End of the World" hat

Hurt definitely seems to go for the wide brims. One of my inspirations for choosing the dark gray color for my first Fed was the hat Hurt wore in the Wim Wenders film "Until the End of the World" (1991; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101458/). It's hard to find stills from that film. Anybody have a shot or two, and does anybody have an idea what hat model that one was, or might have been based on?
 

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