The Lonely Island Fan

***UPDATED 10-13-09:  Check down the post for updated materials that could work well for the coveralls!***

I’m probably one of the biggest fans of The Lonely Island and this Halloween I decided to try and make a Rod Kimble (played by Andy Samberg) replica costume from one of my favorite movies they were involved in, “Hot Rod.” Having a lot of images and watching movie footage I began looking around seeing what I would need to do it as close as I could.

My two big challenges were trying to figure out where the blue coveralls originated from. Eventually after looking around found a website in Canada that carried something very close to what I wanted and ordered this:

They are the same sized ones as the screen used suit worn by Andy Samberg, 38 Tall. The only issues I had with this pair is that it appears they didn’t have the cotton ones with the button up and these had a zipper instead. It made trying to beat the suit up very difficult because of how durable the fabric is, but I was able to make it work. You can purchase a pair clicking the following link from BC Textile Innovations in Canada, but it might be worth a try calling them to see if they have the cotton ones in stock instead of the one made tougher.

***[10-13-08:  James Taylor of BC Textile Innovations chimed in recently to let people know for costume purposes they will waive the $70 minimum!  Very cool!  Thanks for commenting here, James!]

Additionally I have found some other sources that might work for you based on a reply comment I made a few days back that might help everyone:

There’s one that looks like it could be perfect, though it doesn’t say the brand of it, but I think you’ll agree that this one looks to be the best setup with minimal work! click here: directworkwear and scroll down to item D035. Looks to be the closest I’ve seen as a source suit.

100% Cotton Welding Coveralls
100% Cotton Welding Coveralls
Postman Blue, Navy Trim, Metal Buttons, With Reinforced Button Holes, Two Snap Cuffs, One Piece Top Stitched Collar, Telescopic Back For Comfort, Two Chest Pockets with Pencil Division On Left Pocket, Two Front Pockets, Side Vent Openings, Two Big Rear Patch Pockets, Rod Pocket On Right Leg, Double, Stitched, Waist Band With Elasticized Sides, High Resistant, Cotton Thread, Bar Tacked At All Stress Points. Comes In Regular Or Tall.

From $45 Per Pair
From 3 Pair For $125
Sizes: 36-66T
I haven’t seen those in person, but looks like a good bet!

If you’re willing to sew on all the navy material into the suit the one pictured here:Redkap coveralls in postman blue should do the trick being full cotton and only $29.95. Beyond that I haven’t found much that is comparable and might be extensive work for that.   From initial photos the directworkwear version looks lto be the least amount of added work on the navy.  You’ll just have to seam rip the navy around the waist and material match that with a postman blue fabric.***

First I had to use a seam ripper and remove the dark navy color around the belt area so I could cannibalize it for the cuffs which you will see in the next photo. It took many times putting the outfit on to measure the coverall legs because I needed then to ride higher than how the suit came. As you can see in the film the pant legs sit almost at the top of his shoes and when he sits down they ride pretty high up his calf. The trimmed pieces were re-used so that I could sew them back on to the coverall belt area later to cover the ban seam under where I took off the navy blue for the sleeves.

The sleeves ran a bit long, so I took them up some so that it would ride just at the wrist. This next part was a bit of a pain. I had to rip open the seam underneath the coveralls so that I could machine sew this red fabric into each side of the sleeves. Keeping it aligned with pins was tricky as I did this, but it all turned out awesome. at the end of each sleeve I used that cannibalized navy fabric from the belt section made my cuffs from it followed by closing off the under-arm seams again. Later I found that I needed to make the sleeves a bit more snug fitting, so I just made my seam a bit farther in to fit accordingly. If you look at the suit it looks like it has a comfortable fit, but on the sleeves and pants appears a little too short which was what I wanted to also achieve.

Can’t forget the star! I pretty much just eyeballed this and made a 3 or 4 layer star and purposely sewed it with the fray out so that when I cut and dirty it up it’ll appear more abused like the one in the movie.

This part was actually very time consuming. Since I didn’t have enough navy fabric to make a leg stripe I had to take a swatch with me to find the closest matching stuff I could find. Went to a few stores before finally finding something passable. As you can see in the picture it matches pretty close to the sleeve cuff. The only other unfortunate thing about the fabric is that it had a lot of play in it in that it doesn’t easily hold still, so even pins holding the stripe down while sewing was a pain. I also had to do what I did with the sleeves which was seam ripping the inner legs to be able to machine sew the stripes down.

I found a great flag patch online for the right side and then I had to look for a custom patch place that could make the “Tony’s Auto” name on an oval patch. I was very please with how this turned out from the vendor.

Next came the smaller stars. I used a small star rubber foam piece from a pack of these at a Michael’s store. I glued the foam rubber to a small block and used it as a stamp in white acrylic paint.

Can’t forget the cape! I improvised and cut out some red letters and roughly cut out a cape. Used blue outer lining material to sew along the top part of the cape and then made two button loops on each side that will attach to the suit under 2 buttons I sewed into the under collar.

After that I added some other details like putting metal snaps in the sleeve cuffs and roughing up some frayed parts. If you look at the movie suit too there’s a couple patched up spots using the suit fabric, so I did that with my excess fabric from the suit.

The last thing needed was painting the red and white stripes on the sleeves. I used painters tape to mask off the spots and then did the white color first and the red part last in acrylic. It was important to not paint too think because the movie suit is really beat up. I painted a wee too thick, but was able to get rid of most of it in the next step.

The only other thing left was to take it outside and literally beat the crap out of it. I would recommend getting the cotton coveralls if you can find it because they dirty much easier and also it’s the same material as used in the film. Because of how durable the coveralls were made it was very hard to abuse the outfit. I had to use a sander in places to wear off some of the paint. Another thing I did was take the suit outside on a damp night and jump all over in in the front yard in the gravelly dirt. Additionally to get some other look of dirt I painted with heavily diluted blacks and browns on parts of the pockets and bosy of the coveralls. I would have liked to make it more abused looking, but it got a bit too close to the Halloween party to do too much more to the suit in time. I’m still very happy with how it turned out.

What shoes are those?!

It took a while to search for these. I have a Hot Rod high resolution digital press kit and was able to zoom on the shoes, but for the life of me could not make out what the brand said, but saw a blobby logo on the tongue of the shoe. After looking at different shoe brand logos I was able to locate the exact shoe. These are Vans “Off the Wall” Skater shoes. Luckily I was able to score a pair of used ones on Ebay and they fit perfect.

And here’s a few pics from that party with me in costume. Of course I had to get a wig that would fit the Samberg sort of look…

I think about 80% of the people there had no clue who I was for Halloween, hahaha! Oh well, it was a great party and there were some excellent costumes there!

Thanks for reading!