One of the most challenging pieces I ever had to engineer for F/X was a jewelry showcase for the Home Shopping Network across the state in St. Petersburg. This was a free-standing, multi-curvacious wall twelve feet high on one end and eight on the other, twelve feet long with swooping switchback curves coming down and a footprint that was vaguely S-shaped. It had a window through the wall with a display case mounted behind it. The designer gave us a half-inch scale model of it, and it was given to me - dumped, I would say. I had to figure out this thing that curved in every direction, disassembled into three chunks, and looked good enough for close-ups on Home Shopping's Jewelry Showcase.
Like the Grinch (my hero!) I puzzled and puzzed 'til my puzzler was sore. Finally I was saved by my old mantra, "Start with what you know." I worked out and drew the S-curve on three quarter inch plywood, carefully cut it out and duplicated it three more times with my handy dandy router (don't leave home without it!) Then I made two six foot high walls faced with bending plywood and stacked them up. I took my handy dandy pencils (d l h w t) and drew switchback curves from the top left, terminating at eight feet high on the right. After standing back to look, I modified the curves again and again until I felt they matched the model. Then I called in all the bosses to approve the line before cutting. You can always cut something, but you can't uncut it once it's cut. Eventually I cut it and capped the top edge by laying on bending plywood and tracing it. Then I traced the inside of my S-curve onto birch plywood for the front edge of the display case, cut it out and duplicated it for top and bottom.
I worked out and cut the window through the lower section, faced edges of the opening and fitted my bottom shelf behind it, blocking it in place and legging up the back. After that it was a simple matter to fit sides to the height of the window and the depth of the shelves and put the top in place. All of that was attached together, a back was fitted, and the deed was done!
Other guys had other pieces to build for the same install, and when we were all finished, we all went over to St. Pete. That was the scary part. We had to haul our stuff through a half-acre room filled from end to end, side to side with small cubicles with people sitting in front of computers wearing headsets taking orders - thousands of them at a time. We were freaked out at first, but gradually got used to the idea as we made several trips back and forth. Then it was lunch time and we went to the cafeteria, on the far end of ANOTHER half-acre room filled end to end and side to side with small cubicles with people sitting in front of computers and wearing headsets, taking orders - thousands at a time. It gave us the creeps. We installed our sets and scrammed out of there as quickly as we could.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Staring Mad
The name is Bohn - Keith Bohn. He was my best buddy at F/X from the first day I walked in to the last day I walked out. He is an excellent carpenter and a very easy going guy. There have been those who thought he was too slow to work in the business, but they just didn't have the attention span to appreciate him.
Tom "The Turkey" Magierski finally admitted it years down the line. "Every time I look at Keith he's just standing there staring at the pieces of wood on his table. As long as I watch him, that's all he does. Then I look away for a few minutes, and when I look back, the piece is finished and he's still staring at it. I don't know how he does it. He just stares it together."
He had a reddish brown Isuzu Pup pickup truck when I met him, which he drove from Deland every day. It had frequent trouble, and he was having a hard time finding parts - until one day on his way home he came up to a red light beside a baby blue Isuzu Pup, same year and everything. "You want to sell it?" he asked. "Sure!" the guy said. For the next nine (at least) years, he drove the blue one and pirated parts from the brown one.
We usually had an hour for lunch every day, which suited most of us just fine. I often tried to take a nap. Keith, however, liked to keep busy. When his son was a few years old, Keith spent his breaks and lunch hours building a "Thomas The Tank Engine" playhouse beside his table. Other days, he set up the planer and planed down pallet wood for future furniture building projects. If you've ever heard a planer, you know that there was no napping while that was going on.
I'm sure I'll think of more stories about Mr. Bohn. Luckily I can edit them in at a later time. Or maybe if I just stare at the keyboard...
Tom "The Turkey" Magierski finally admitted it years down the line. "Every time I look at Keith he's just standing there staring at the pieces of wood on his table. As long as I watch him, that's all he does. Then I look away for a few minutes, and when I look back, the piece is finished and he's still staring at it. I don't know how he does it. He just stares it together."
He had a reddish brown Isuzu Pup pickup truck when I met him, which he drove from Deland every day. It had frequent trouble, and he was having a hard time finding parts - until one day on his way home he came up to a red light beside a baby blue Isuzu Pup, same year and everything. "You want to sell it?" he asked. "Sure!" the guy said. For the next nine (at least) years, he drove the blue one and pirated parts from the brown one.
We usually had an hour for lunch every day, which suited most of us just fine. I often tried to take a nap. Keith, however, liked to keep busy. When his son was a few years old, Keith spent his breaks and lunch hours building a "Thomas The Tank Engine" playhouse beside his table. Other days, he set up the planer and planed down pallet wood for future furniture building projects. If you've ever heard a planer, you know that there was no napping while that was going on.
I'm sure I'll think of more stories about Mr. Bohn. Luckily I can edit them in at a later time. Or maybe if I just stare at the keyboard...
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
The "New" Building
As I mentioned in an earlier post, in early 1997, Mack bought an old, dilapidated long-abandoned corrugated steel building that had at one time been a manufacturing plant for concrete things such as bridge parts - huge things. The ceiling was about thirty feet up at the peak, and twenty along the walls. The overhead I beams sported an old dilapidated traveling crane system that we who carried big set pieces the length of the six hundred foot long building believed should be brought back to life. I'm guessing this still has not been done.
When we moved into the building, both ends were wide open and much of the roof and walls was missing. I often phant'sied that if Bill Villegas had not been on the crew and/or a licensed commercial contractor, Mack might not have had the temerity to buy it. We had to hire a security guard overnight for the first month or so to guard our tools and materiel while half of us built scenery and the other half worked on closing up the building during the day.
At least as threatening as the possibility of marauders getting in, was the certainty of critters that still lived there. Opossums and raccoons had nests around our stuff on the floor, dozens of pigeons nested in the I beams overhead - making a mess of whatever was stored beneath them - and thousands of lizards, snakes, insects and spiders were at home everywhere in there. Any time we moved something, three or four critters would run for cover. We had an alarm system installed, but they had to take the motion detectors off line because the nocturnal critters were so active overnight. The Ocoee police were fining us to death for "false alarms."
By the time the weather started getting unbearably hot, the whole building was closed in - a steel box baking in the Florida sun with almost no air circulation. My work table was five feet from the south wall, and I swear I could almost see it glowing red in the afternoon. Mack bought us four or five four foot diameter poultry fans. I called them "category three" fans. If I set my pencil down on the table, the fan blew it across the room. I had to staple my drawings to the table. But even so, when I picked up a staple gun or router, it almost burned my hand. It was hot in that box.
As the years progressed, Bill and his boys cut six or eight holes along the walls and installed roll-up doors. One was very near my table, which was nice. Still hot as hell, but at least I could breathe.
Rain was a factor nearly every day, especially during the summer (April - October.) There were some massive leaks in the roof that could soak whatever was beneath them in a few minutes during a Florida thunderstorm. And the shop end of the building was lower than the surrounding property, giving us a two-inch deep lake around the table saws whenever it rained. Pushing water out of the shop probably accounted for ten or fifteen man-hours a week. Another ongoing project over the years involved digging drainage ditches around the shop and plugging holes in the roof.
As my nine and a quarter years with F/X were winding to a close, the building was having its roof insulated, which was supposed to have a side-effect of stopping the last of the leaks. They hadn't made it to the shop end by the time I left, so I don't know how that went. There was a pretty good leak right in front of my tool box that still dripped on me as I cleared my stuff, the company's tools and nine years' worth of drawings out of the box.
As much as I cursed that leak and the unbearable heat, I sure miss that work table. It was the best ever.
When we moved into the building, both ends were wide open and much of the roof and walls was missing. I often phant'sied that if Bill Villegas had not been on the crew and/or a licensed commercial contractor, Mack might not have had the temerity to buy it. We had to hire a security guard overnight for the first month or so to guard our tools and materiel while half of us built scenery and the other half worked on closing up the building during the day.
At least as threatening as the possibility of marauders getting in, was the certainty of critters that still lived there. Opossums and raccoons had nests around our stuff on the floor, dozens of pigeons nested in the I beams overhead - making a mess of whatever was stored beneath them - and thousands of lizards, snakes, insects and spiders were at home everywhere in there. Any time we moved something, three or four critters would run for cover. We had an alarm system installed, but they had to take the motion detectors off line because the nocturnal critters were so active overnight. The Ocoee police were fining us to death for "false alarms."
By the time the weather started getting unbearably hot, the whole building was closed in - a steel box baking in the Florida sun with almost no air circulation. My work table was five feet from the south wall, and I swear I could almost see it glowing red in the afternoon. Mack bought us four or five four foot diameter poultry fans. I called them "category three" fans. If I set my pencil down on the table, the fan blew it across the room. I had to staple my drawings to the table. But even so, when I picked up a staple gun or router, it almost burned my hand. It was hot in that box.
As the years progressed, Bill and his boys cut six or eight holes along the walls and installed roll-up doors. One was very near my table, which was nice. Still hot as hell, but at least I could breathe.
Rain was a factor nearly every day, especially during the summer (April - October.) There were some massive leaks in the roof that could soak whatever was beneath them in a few minutes during a Florida thunderstorm. And the shop end of the building was lower than the surrounding property, giving us a two-inch deep lake around the table saws whenever it rained. Pushing water out of the shop probably accounted for ten or fifteen man-hours a week. Another ongoing project over the years involved digging drainage ditches around the shop and plugging holes in the roof.
As my nine and a quarter years with F/X were winding to a close, the building was having its roof insulated, which was supposed to have a side-effect of stopping the last of the leaks. They hadn't made it to the shop end by the time I left, so I don't know how that went. There was a pretty good leak right in front of my tool box that still dripped on me as I cleared my stuff, the company's tools and nine years' worth of drawings out of the box.
As much as I cursed that leak and the unbearable heat, I sure miss that work table. It was the best ever.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Keeping Time
The first year, over on Currency Drive in south Orlando, morning break time happened when the "roach coach," in this case Bill's Quick Lunch, arrived and blew its horn. This happened somewhere around 10:30 - mostly. Well, for one thing, the horn wasn't that loud. For another, the many segments of the F/X space were sectioned off by concrete block walls. Plus, with compressors, table saws, routers and belt sanders going, one could be pretty near the front of the building and still not hear the horn. The system was: several guys who felt confident of their job security would gravitate out to the loading dock around 10:25 and hang out there until Bill came. Then they would jump down and get their food and have their break. The rest of the company could easily - and did often - miss out completely. Even the office people. If I happened to see the truck, I would yell out "break time" in my Dodger game "Charge!" voice, so that the whole company might know.
Then we moved to the Ocoee shop. My work table was in the end of the building nearest the road, and the truck, which was from a company called "Dot's On The Dot" rumbled past the big twenty foot wide door on its way to the main entrance, blowing its horn all the way. I nearly always saw it go by, so I would yell out "Dot's On The Dot!" loud enough for the whiole building to hear. It was very much appreciated by the warehouse guys six hundred feet away at the other end of the building, and by the people in the office, which fronted on the driveway, but they could always hear me even when they couldn't hear the horn.
It may have been a year later that the company name changed to "Southeastern Catering," but I never changed my call.
Mack was increasingly unhappy, as his union crew got brassier, to see the fifteen minute breaks stretch to twenty, twenty five, thirty minutes. He bought a toy truck with a sound track that said, "Let's get rolling," with revving truck engine noise, and he would play that over the phone system's public address mode. But, after a while, he began to think that he should delegate the break-ending job. He delegated it to me. So I drilled a piece of aluminum tubing and hung it by my bench. Fifteen minutes after the break truck arrived I would whack it in the rhythm of a song from the early sixties - whack... whack... whack whack whack... whack whack whack whack... Let's Go!
As the years rolled on, the rack of pipes and other noisemaking objects grew. I even bought a car horn and a button switch, because there were some who claimed not to hear the pipes clanging. The horn was so loud and obnoxious that I abandoned it soon after I installed it. I would bet it's still up in the structure over by my work table.
Before I left in 2005, the Fergermeister (Anthony Ferguson) spent a couple of days with a digital audio recorder, trying to get a good recording of "Dot's On The Dot" to play over the PA system. I heard tell he even used it a few times after I was gone. But then he found out what I already knew: keeping an eye out for the break truck takes dedication and diligence. Not a job for the faint of heart.
Then we moved to the Ocoee shop. My work table was in the end of the building nearest the road, and the truck, which was from a company called "Dot's On The Dot" rumbled past the big twenty foot wide door on its way to the main entrance, blowing its horn all the way. I nearly always saw it go by, so I would yell out "Dot's On The Dot!" loud enough for the whiole building to hear. It was very much appreciated by the warehouse guys six hundred feet away at the other end of the building, and by the people in the office, which fronted on the driveway, but they could always hear me even when they couldn't hear the horn.
It may have been a year later that the company name changed to "Southeastern Catering," but I never changed my call.
Mack was increasingly unhappy, as his union crew got brassier, to see the fifteen minute breaks stretch to twenty, twenty five, thirty minutes. He bought a toy truck with a sound track that said, "Let's get rolling," with revving truck engine noise, and he would play that over the phone system's public address mode. But, after a while, he began to think that he should delegate the break-ending job. He delegated it to me. So I drilled a piece of aluminum tubing and hung it by my bench. Fifteen minutes after the break truck arrived I would whack it in the rhythm of a song from the early sixties - whack... whack... whack whack whack... whack whack whack whack... Let's Go!
As the years rolled on, the rack of pipes and other noisemaking objects grew. I even bought a car horn and a button switch, because there were some who claimed not to hear the pipes clanging. The horn was so loud and obnoxious that I abandoned it soon after I installed it. I would bet it's still up in the structure over by my work table.
Before I left in 2005, the Fergermeister (Anthony Ferguson) spent a couple of days with a digital audio recorder, trying to get a good recording of "Dot's On The Dot" to play over the PA system. I heard tell he even used it a few times after I was gone. But then he found out what I already knew: keeping an eye out for the break truck takes dedication and diligence. Not a job for the faint of heart.
Monday, November 8, 2010
The Union
We were still in the industrial park location when we built and sent out three sets for Fox News - two to New York and one to Washington, DC. I, of course, didn't go, but those who did - including Mack - were picketed by IATSE because we were not a union shop. Not long after, Mack called us all into a meeting. "How many of you would like to join the union?" About four people raised their hands. "How many would NOT like to join the union?" about fifteen people raised their hands. The meeting was adjourned until about two weeks later when he called us all to another meeting and said, "We're joining the union." It was March in the Ocoee building when we were sworn in and issued our union card and "Backstage Handbook." I joined for two reasons: first and foremost, by the deal negotiated with the Business Agent, it was free for us to join; Second, if the other guys were going to be voting on stuff that affected me, I wanted a vote. In fact, I did vote a couple of times.
Being in the union meant that, during the busy busy times, F/X could call the hall and get some really high priced incompetent help with highfallutin' attitudes. Not all of them were incompetent, of course, but most of them were not scenic carpenters. "Carpenter" in IATSE terms means that you know how to use a screw gun. After a while we got to know which ones to ask for and which ones NOT to ask for - but we still had to take what we got.
So I was a member in good standing with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts for eight years. The only time it has come in handy since leaving Orlando was the two-day stint I did when F/X brought a news set to a TV station in Albuquerque while we were there. The local help assumed that I was still in the union, especially because I wore my old F/X tee shirts with the IATSE bug on the sleeve both days. Good thing they didn't ask to see my card!
Being in the union meant that, during the busy busy times, F/X could call the hall and get some really high priced incompetent help with highfallutin' attitudes. Not all of them were incompetent, of course, but most of them were not scenic carpenters. "Carpenter" in IATSE terms means that you know how to use a screw gun. After a while we got to know which ones to ask for and which ones NOT to ask for - but we still had to take what we got.
So I was a member in good standing with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts for eight years. The only time it has come in handy since leaving Orlando was the two-day stint I did when F/X brought a news set to a TV station in Albuquerque while we were there. The local help assumed that I was still in the union, especially because I wore my old F/X tee shirts with the IATSE bug on the sleeve both days. Good thing they didn't ask to see my card!
Saturday, November 6, 2010
F/X - The Early Year
So I left Central Florida Display, and we went to Seattle on my birthday 1996. Carmen and I were looking at Seattle as a possible next destination for our adventure together. It was rainy and snowy and cold, oh my, but we liked the city. The cost of living is way higher than Orlando and the wages not so much. Real estate prices were ridiculous compared to Orlando. But the real deciding factor was that we felt so very far away from all of our family and friends. Back from our vacation we were in a tailspin over where to go next. But on January 23rd I was scheduled to begin work at F/X Scenery and Display, with Eddie Channell as my shop boss once again.
The shop was located on a railroad spur nestled back in an industrial park off of Sand Lake Road. I knew where it was because Al Caputo had had some peripheral dealings with Mack over the years. In fact, early in my career at F/X, Al traded his semi trailer and everything in it for us to do a show for a client of his. Al was out of show business by then, but still willing to take somebody's money to get one together. He also had no good place to keep his trailer load of crap.
One of the first things I worked on during those early months was a new (and short-lived) game show called "Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego." We built a huge time machine set, a "Chief" screen wall for Lynn Thigpen, and six portals for the last part of the game. I built all of the rolling platforms to which the portals were attached, and the "Stonehenge" portal. Way cool. I still haven't encountered anyone who ever saw it on TV - not even me.
During the spring we finally decided to move north, just not so far. We put our St. Cloud house on the market, freshly painted inside and out, and began looking for a house in Orlando. After looking at twenty five or thirty houses, we found one we liked in the county, about six blocks south of the city limits. It was close enough to F/X that I could go home for lunch if I wanted. I did, twice. I believe it was for this reason that Mack began looking for a place to locate F/X, far far away from his house, which was ten blocks from our new house.
Everett Moran came to work for us that summer of 1996. He was from Honduras, grew up on the streets, never went to school, had very limited English, and little by little we figured out that he didn't know how to count. He obviously had learned over the years to get along without being able to count, and having never encountered such a thing before, it was hard for us to spot. We would tell him to cut twenty five pieces of one by, and he'd commence-a-whacking. We'd come back in a bit and ask how many he'd done. "Plenny!" he told us. Sometimes it would be eighteen, sometimes thirty seven, never the right number. I finally figured it out one day when Everett and I were setting up pipe and drape at the Dolphin Hotel. We needed seventeen uprights, so we were going around the room attaching pipes to bases and standing them up. After a while I paused to count. "How many we got?" asked Everett. "Sixteen." "An' how many we need?" "Seventeen." "So how many more?" W-h-a-a-a-a-t ? !
During the fall we did the first of many many many television news sets I worked on. We did five different sets for Court TV. The one that stands out in my mind is the one that had "V" groves on every panel, three eighths of an inch wide, routed into the laminate. The designer from New York measured every groove, and either they were three eighths or they were done over. I think there were twenty-some panels. The grooves were rectangles set three inches (not three and a sixteenth) in from the edges of the panels, with diagonals corner to corner. Suffice it to say that this was an immense pain in the ass times twenty-some. When the set was used on Court TV, I watched it for probably six hours, and during that time caught a fleeting glimpse of one corner of one panel maybe four times.
In November we were getting a load ready for a big corporate event, with decks and flats and pipe and drape and rear projection screens and lecterns and the whole magilla. Somewhere along the line, Mack came out and asked if any of us had experience running follow spot. Keith and I raised our hands. "This client asked for two follow spot operators on the last night of the convention, but there's a catch." Uh oh, what's this? "The entertainment is John Denver." Luckily, among the dozens of people working for F/X, Keith and I were the only ones who liked John Denver. In fact, I was putting together a church service for the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and I wanted to sing "Back Home Again," but I didn't have the song on any of my CDs. I was pretty sure I remembered the verses correctly, but I wasn't dead sure until the last night of the convention, hosing JD with photons from the twenty foot high stage left spot tower, listening to the author. He asked us to sing along on the choruses, and my dulcet tones filled the hall from the top of that tower. I packed John's guitars after the show. His manager asked if I'd like to play one, so I did for a minute. Then he gave me a pick with John's name on it. Wow. I was especially glad I'd had that experience when John died about a year later.
In December I began a year-long saga with AAA that is written up already in "The Gospel Of Rand McNally" in a post called "Triple A Times Seven" And then there was the Christmas party. We were invited to bring a guest. Everett showed up with his wife, his three kids and his next door neighbors. Plenny of guests.
The early part of 1997, between shows, we were packing to move. Mack was buying an old dilapidated abandoned corugated steel building in Ocoee. Who do you think he put in charge of keeping track of how many of what was packed into which trailer? Of course it was Everett Moran!
The shop was located on a railroad spur nestled back in an industrial park off of Sand Lake Road. I knew where it was because Al Caputo had had some peripheral dealings with Mack over the years. In fact, early in my career at F/X, Al traded his semi trailer and everything in it for us to do a show for a client of his. Al was out of show business by then, but still willing to take somebody's money to get one together. He also had no good place to keep his trailer load of crap.
One of the first things I worked on during those early months was a new (and short-lived) game show called "Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego." We built a huge time machine set, a "Chief" screen wall for Lynn Thigpen, and six portals for the last part of the game. I built all of the rolling platforms to which the portals were attached, and the "Stonehenge" portal. Way cool. I still haven't encountered anyone who ever saw it on TV - not even me.
During the spring we finally decided to move north, just not so far. We put our St. Cloud house on the market, freshly painted inside and out, and began looking for a house in Orlando. After looking at twenty five or thirty houses, we found one we liked in the county, about six blocks south of the city limits. It was close enough to F/X that I could go home for lunch if I wanted. I did, twice. I believe it was for this reason that Mack began looking for a place to locate F/X, far far away from his house, which was ten blocks from our new house.
Everett Moran came to work for us that summer of 1996. He was from Honduras, grew up on the streets, never went to school, had very limited English, and little by little we figured out that he didn't know how to count. He obviously had learned over the years to get along without being able to count, and having never encountered such a thing before, it was hard for us to spot. We would tell him to cut twenty five pieces of one by, and he'd commence-a-whacking. We'd come back in a bit and ask how many he'd done. "Plenny!" he told us. Sometimes it would be eighteen, sometimes thirty seven, never the right number. I finally figured it out one day when Everett and I were setting up pipe and drape at the Dolphin Hotel. We needed seventeen uprights, so we were going around the room attaching pipes to bases and standing them up. After a while I paused to count. "How many we got?" asked Everett. "Sixteen." "An' how many we need?" "Seventeen." "So how many more?" W-h-a-a-a-a-t ? !
During the fall we did the first of many many many television news sets I worked on. We did five different sets for Court TV. The one that stands out in my mind is the one that had "V" groves on every panel, three eighths of an inch wide, routed into the laminate. The designer from New York measured every groove, and either they were three eighths or they were done over. I think there were twenty-some panels. The grooves were rectangles set three inches (not three and a sixteenth) in from the edges of the panels, with diagonals corner to corner. Suffice it to say that this was an immense pain in the ass times twenty-some. When the set was used on Court TV, I watched it for probably six hours, and during that time caught a fleeting glimpse of one corner of one panel maybe four times.
In November we were getting a load ready for a big corporate event, with decks and flats and pipe and drape and rear projection screens and lecterns and the whole magilla. Somewhere along the line, Mack came out and asked if any of us had experience running follow spot. Keith and I raised our hands. "This client asked for two follow spot operators on the last night of the convention, but there's a catch." Uh oh, what's this? "The entertainment is John Denver." Luckily, among the dozens of people working for F/X, Keith and I were the only ones who liked John Denver. In fact, I was putting together a church service for the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and I wanted to sing "Back Home Again," but I didn't have the song on any of my CDs. I was pretty sure I remembered the verses correctly, but I wasn't dead sure until the last night of the convention, hosing JD with photons from the twenty foot high stage left spot tower, listening to the author. He asked us to sing along on the choruses, and my dulcet tones filled the hall from the top of that tower. I packed John's guitars after the show. His manager asked if I'd like to play one, so I did for a minute. Then he gave me a pick with John's name on it. Wow. I was especially glad I'd had that experience when John died about a year later.
In December I began a year-long saga with AAA that is written up already in "The Gospel Of Rand McNally" in a post called "Triple A Times Seven" And then there was the Christmas party. We were invited to bring a guest. Everett showed up with his wife, his three kids and his next door neighbors. Plenny of guests.
The early part of 1997, between shows, we were packing to move. Mack was buying an old dilapidated abandoned corugated steel building in Ocoee. Who do you think he put in charge of keeping track of how many of what was packed into which trailer? Of course it was Everett Moran!
Sunday, October 31, 2010
The Stones, Man
I had decided that I had had enough of show business. I wanted to head in a new direction. What better new direction than to work in the retail displays industry where I started in March of 1972? Weeks before I left Presentations South I answered an ad for a "shop foreman" at Central Florida Display and Exhibits, Inc. I won't dwell on the details of this non-show-biz gig, but I will illustrate why I called it "The Stones, Man"
March of 1995 saw me trying to finish up the Easter Village for a mall near Houston, Texas. My crew were not carpenters, there were no coherant plans for what to build, and the table saw blade stopped when I tried to cut corrugated cardboard with it. And my boss, Tony, was totally oblivious. I asked about a new table saw or maybe a compressor, and he told me that if he were going to spend hundreds of dollars to improve his business, he would buy a new suit. The only power tool he knew how to use was a hot glue gun, and he burned himself every time he used that. I was on salary, so the long days and nights I spent drawing plans, wrestling with the tools, building pieces and fixing what others built counted for nothing as far as pay or future time off. Nothing. My favorite story about that Easter project was the day we were all out in the parking lot doing the fancy colorful paint job on everything. The landlord of the warehouse complex was very picky about his parking lot, so Tony bought a roll of plastic, we set everything on it, and then Tony placed our dozens of cans of brightly colored paint all around the edges to hold the plastic down . Good plan - until a big wind came racing through the lot and lifted the sheet of plastic, dumping ALL the cans of paint onto the parking lot. Oops.
Things didn't get any better during the ensuing ten months of employment. It came to pass that as "shop Foreman" it was my job to do drawings for approval and for non-carpenters to build from; to call lunber yards etc. for the best prices on all materials, order materials, go pick up materials in my little Corolla, build, paint and deliver everything we did. Meanwhile, we couldn't keep a graphics person, so I learned to operate the computer driven vinyl graphics cutting system, weed the vinyl and install it. By the end of October I was getting pretty good at juggling all of these hats.
Then we got the go-ahead for a big Christmas Village for a mall outside of Gainesville, Florida. Suddenly the lack of carpenters other than me was cutting into my other jobs big time. I told Tony that I needed at least one person who could build something without me standing over them showing them, cut by cut, staple by screw how to build it. He said he'd put an ad in the Sunday paper. Sunday morning I looked in the paper, all over the help wanted section. No ad for a carpenter for Central Florida Display. Hmmmm. Monday I went to him and almost quit on the spot. "I put the ad in, " he told me. He showed me his ad :"Floral arrangers wanted for busy retail display company. Will assemble, arrange and install seasonal decor in malls and stores during November and December. Also needed: carpenter." Needless to say, no carpenters looking for jobs saw that. Tony did hire a young man who, when asked, said "Sure, I'm a carpenter!" I gave him a simple box to build and he couldn't do it. Tony said, "You didn't give him any direction!" "If you mean I didn't stand over him telling him how to build a box, cut by cut, staple by screw, yes you're right. But if that's what I have to do, then there's a lot of other things I have to do that aren't going to get done - which is why I wanted you to hire a carpenter in the first place, remember?"
Once I had finished building the village, the installations began at malls and stores all over Central Florida. Weeks were averaging eighty hours and more. My crew members were showing up drunk, raiding food courts during the nights, installing things crooked or unsafely or in the wrong places, try though I might to keep my eyes on twenty unmotivated people at once.
The good thing about it was that on my way home during the morning hours I could swing by F/X Scenery And Display and see if Eddie was around. When he was I would describe my night to him and reminded him of our pact: bring me aboard when you can! He did. After my last Christmas Crap removal detail in January, we took a week's vacation to Seattle, then I started my nine and a quarter years at F/X.
About three months into the F/X job I was stricken with kidney stones. I wondered at the time whether working for Tony had had anything to do with it. Then, early in the following year, the poor sucker who had replaced me at CFD&E came to work at F/X. Within a couple of months he too was stricken with - the stones, man. Like wow.
March of 1995 saw me trying to finish up the Easter Village for a mall near Houston, Texas. My crew were not carpenters, there were no coherant plans for what to build, and the table saw blade stopped when I tried to cut corrugated cardboard with it. And my boss, Tony, was totally oblivious. I asked about a new table saw or maybe a compressor, and he told me that if he were going to spend hundreds of dollars to improve his business, he would buy a new suit. The only power tool he knew how to use was a hot glue gun, and he burned himself every time he used that. I was on salary, so the long days and nights I spent drawing plans, wrestling with the tools, building pieces and fixing what others built counted for nothing as far as pay or future time off. Nothing. My favorite story about that Easter project was the day we were all out in the parking lot doing the fancy colorful paint job on everything. The landlord of the warehouse complex was very picky about his parking lot, so Tony bought a roll of plastic, we set everything on it, and then Tony placed our dozens of cans of brightly colored paint all around the edges to hold the plastic down . Good plan - until a big wind came racing through the lot and lifted the sheet of plastic, dumping ALL the cans of paint onto the parking lot. Oops.
Things didn't get any better during the ensuing ten months of employment. It came to pass that as "shop Foreman" it was my job to do drawings for approval and for non-carpenters to build from; to call lunber yards etc. for the best prices on all materials, order materials, go pick up materials in my little Corolla, build, paint and deliver everything we did. Meanwhile, we couldn't keep a graphics person, so I learned to operate the computer driven vinyl graphics cutting system, weed the vinyl and install it. By the end of October I was getting pretty good at juggling all of these hats.
Then we got the go-ahead for a big Christmas Village for a mall outside of Gainesville, Florida. Suddenly the lack of carpenters other than me was cutting into my other jobs big time. I told Tony that I needed at least one person who could build something without me standing over them showing them, cut by cut, staple by screw how to build it. He said he'd put an ad in the Sunday paper. Sunday morning I looked in the paper, all over the help wanted section. No ad for a carpenter for Central Florida Display. Hmmmm. Monday I went to him and almost quit on the spot. "I put the ad in, " he told me. He showed me his ad :"Floral arrangers wanted for busy retail display company. Will assemble, arrange and install seasonal decor in malls and stores during November and December. Also needed: carpenter." Needless to say, no carpenters looking for jobs saw that. Tony did hire a young man who, when asked, said "Sure, I'm a carpenter!" I gave him a simple box to build and he couldn't do it. Tony said, "You didn't give him any direction!" "If you mean I didn't stand over him telling him how to build a box, cut by cut, staple by screw, yes you're right. But if that's what I have to do, then there's a lot of other things I have to do that aren't going to get done - which is why I wanted you to hire a carpenter in the first place, remember?"
Once I had finished building the village, the installations began at malls and stores all over Central Florida. Weeks were averaging eighty hours and more. My crew members were showing up drunk, raiding food courts during the nights, installing things crooked or unsafely or in the wrong places, try though I might to keep my eyes on twenty unmotivated people at once.
The good thing about it was that on my way home during the morning hours I could swing by F/X Scenery And Display and see if Eddie was around. When he was I would describe my night to him and reminded him of our pact: bring me aboard when you can! He did. After my last Christmas Crap removal detail in January, we took a week's vacation to Seattle, then I started my nine and a quarter years at F/X.
About three months into the F/X job I was stricken with kidney stones. I wondered at the time whether working for Tony had had anything to do with it. Then, early in the following year, the poor sucker who had replaced me at CFD&E came to work at F/X. Within a couple of months he too was stricken with - the stones, man. Like wow.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Sixty Three Days In The Footsteps Of Og
In mid-December, 1994 I responded to an ad for an exhibit installer. The company was a union shop called Presentations South Incorporated - PSI for short. They had been in business for a long time, which in this business isn't all that long - maybe twelve years. I had never heard of them, but they had heard of Image International. They hired me anyway.
There were no exhibits going out during the last days of December or early January. Jim Matthews assigned me to a table at the far end. It was covered with what we lovingly refer to as "crap," so my first task was to dig out. As I unearthed artifacts and asked what to do with them, everyone was reminded of the previous resident of this "cursed" table: Og, they called him, because they thought he looked and acted like a Neanderthal carpenter. His real name was... Frank! Yes, the Lemonade Stand owner. They were amazed and amused to hear my stories about Space Concepts. I didn't tell them about the tax scam. I wasn't sure whether anything was going to come of it, so I didn't make it public.
My first project was to help the guy at the next table. He was working on a piece of the new "Tomorrowland Express" set for The Magic Kingdom. This was my first clue that Disney was at last updating "Tomorrowland," a showcase of technology from the sixties. Anyway, Brian had put together this section of a wing with all of the framing in the wrong places. He gave it to me to knock out the sticks and install new sticks in the right places. Jim Matthews wandered by a while later. "Hmmm," he said, "fucked up already." I looked to Brian to straighten out this misunderstanding. Brian just stood there smirking. Grrrr.
When I got home from my first day, there was a message on our answering machine from F/X Scenery And Display. I had sent them a resume back in '93, and they still had it. They wanted to talk to me about being their shop foreman. If I had known where things were headed at PSI, I would have jumped at it. But after only one day on the job, I thought it would be bad form to bail. So I called Eddie Channell and told him that F/X was looking for a shop foreman. He jumped on it. He was still clinging to the last turds circling the flushing toilet bowl of Noro Orlando Associates, formerly known as Image International.
Life at PSI hardly got any better. Laminating was a huge part of the job, and I was totally inept at it. Matthews kept telling me to get advice from the other guys. Each one of the other guys had a different way of doing things that worked for them - but not for me. One of my projects went on display in the break room so the guys could have a good laugh whenever they saw it.
Meanwhile, I was frantically looking for another job.
Finally an exhibit became ready for assembly and prepping for installation. Their main installer, Jamie and I spent three days assembling and tweaking and figuring out hardware and inventing ways to make it work. For those three days I was living my potential. Then it was back to Og's bench.
For another couple of days, Jim Matthews had me going through the Tomorrowland pieces and working out hardware and other assembly issues. That, too, was a good use of my skills. Then I was put on the Tomorrowland installation crew, about eight guys hauling in big pieces and bolting them in place. I had worked out the hardware, and therefore was a valued member of the team. We worked from 9:00 at night until 6:00 in the morning for four nights. This left my days free to interview and negotiate with Tony Chapman of Central Florida Display. He needed a production manager. I needed to get the hell out of PSI
After sixty days I could join the union and become a full-fledged PSI employee. March was fast approaching. Tony needed a guy to get his Easter displays done. I was in no hurry to join the PSI union etcetera. I talked it over with Jim Matthews and he agreed that it was best for me to go. I gave notice and was gone after sixty three days. Out of the frying pan...
There were no exhibits going out during the last days of December or early January. Jim Matthews assigned me to a table at the far end. It was covered with what we lovingly refer to as "crap," so my first task was to dig out. As I unearthed artifacts and asked what to do with them, everyone was reminded of the previous resident of this "cursed" table: Og, they called him, because they thought he looked and acted like a Neanderthal carpenter. His real name was... Frank! Yes, the Lemonade Stand owner. They were amazed and amused to hear my stories about Space Concepts. I didn't tell them about the tax scam. I wasn't sure whether anything was going to come of it, so I didn't make it public.
My first project was to help the guy at the next table. He was working on a piece of the new "Tomorrowland Express" set for The Magic Kingdom. This was my first clue that Disney was at last updating "Tomorrowland," a showcase of technology from the sixties. Anyway, Brian had put together this section of a wing with all of the framing in the wrong places. He gave it to me to knock out the sticks and install new sticks in the right places. Jim Matthews wandered by a while later. "Hmmm," he said, "fucked up already." I looked to Brian to straighten out this misunderstanding. Brian just stood there smirking. Grrrr.
When I got home from my first day, there was a message on our answering machine from F/X Scenery And Display. I had sent them a resume back in '93, and they still had it. They wanted to talk to me about being their shop foreman. If I had known where things were headed at PSI, I would have jumped at it. But after only one day on the job, I thought it would be bad form to bail. So I called Eddie Channell and told him that F/X was looking for a shop foreman. He jumped on it. He was still clinging to the last turds circling the flushing toilet bowl of Noro Orlando Associates, formerly known as Image International.
Life at PSI hardly got any better. Laminating was a huge part of the job, and I was totally inept at it. Matthews kept telling me to get advice from the other guys. Each one of the other guys had a different way of doing things that worked for them - but not for me. One of my projects went on display in the break room so the guys could have a good laugh whenever they saw it.
Meanwhile, I was frantically looking for another job.
Finally an exhibit became ready for assembly and prepping for installation. Their main installer, Jamie and I spent three days assembling and tweaking and figuring out hardware and inventing ways to make it work. For those three days I was living my potential. Then it was back to Og's bench.
For another couple of days, Jim Matthews had me going through the Tomorrowland pieces and working out hardware and other assembly issues. That, too, was a good use of my skills. Then I was put on the Tomorrowland installation crew, about eight guys hauling in big pieces and bolting them in place. I had worked out the hardware, and therefore was a valued member of the team. We worked from 9:00 at night until 6:00 in the morning for four nights. This left my days free to interview and negotiate with Tony Chapman of Central Florida Display. He needed a production manager. I needed to get the hell out of PSI
After sixty days I could join the union and become a full-fledged PSI employee. March was fast approaching. Tony needed a guy to get his Easter displays done. I was in no hurry to join the PSI union etcetera. I talked it over with Jim Matthews and he agreed that it was best for me to go. I gave notice and was gone after sixty three days. Out of the frying pan...
Thursday, October 14, 2010
The Truck Ees Broke!
Another out-of-chronological-order story has surfaced recently. I have somehow completely forgotten to tell you thousands of rabid readers about the most interesting character (among so many!) at Image International. He was - I assume still is - a gay Puerto Rican named Otto. He was the primary decorator of theme parties, and became one of the better crew bosses during my six and a half years there. Actually, the fact that we were both there for that long makes us both anomalies in Image lore. I would guess that the average duration of employment was maybe four to six months.
One lazy afternoon, I was lingering in the office after punching out. Suddenly the company dispatch radio burst into life. "Kghello, Eemage," it said. Kghello Eemage."
Jim Locke, the company's primary driver and Lord of the Trucks, picked up the microphone. "Yes, Otto, what is it?"
The truck ees broke!" said Otto.
"What's the matter with it?"
"EES BROKE!" said Otto, obviously impatiently.
"Okay," said Jim Locke. "Where are you?"
"On the road," said Otto, matter of factly.
"Okay," said Jim Locke, "where on the road?"
The exasperation with this "estupid Amellican" was fairly oozing from Otto's voice when he said, "On the SIDE of the road!!!"
One lazy afternoon, I was lingering in the office after punching out. Suddenly the company dispatch radio burst into life. "Kghello, Eemage," it said. Kghello Eemage."
Jim Locke, the company's primary driver and Lord of the Trucks, picked up the microphone. "Yes, Otto, what is it?"
The truck ees broke!" said Otto.
"What's the matter with it?"
"EES BROKE!" said Otto, obviously impatiently.
"Okay," said Jim Locke. "Where are you?"
"On the road," said Otto, matter of factly.
"Okay," said Jim Locke, "where on the road?"
The exasperation with this "estupid Amellican" was fairly oozing from Otto's voice when he said, "On the SIDE of the road!!!"
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Sandi At The Zoo
Here is another one of those instances wherein I have forgotten to include an event until it is many years late in the chronology of the blog. Three years before I left Image International, I answered an advertisement in the Orlando Sentinal. The Central Florida Zoo was mounting a touring ecological fairy tale, and needed actors. I called, was invited for an interview, and was cast in the title role of "The Last Remaining Bird." I'm pretty sure that there was no competition.
Sandi was delighted to learn that in addition to acting, I knew a thing or two about scenery, props and such. As Education Person at the zoo, she didn't have a lot of time or resources for making such things. I volunteered to make my own bird head (of course), I supplied the multi-colored shimmery rain curtain for my wings, and I made the trees that, when spun 180 degrees, became statues of the King.
All of this, plus Sandi and her (then) husband and lighting tech Jeff plus Paul (the King) and I could all fit in a Zoo van and go to elementary schools all over Central Florida. We rehearsed at the First Unitarian Church of Orlando, where I was a new member and Paul soon became one.
Oh yes, and I also did the layout and paste-up for the brochure that was sent out to the schools and such.
Having so much to do with so much of the production, I had a lot of messages on my answering machine that began: "This is Sandi...at the Zoo."
For about six months, we toured, doing a grand total of maybe twenty performances, paying each of us twenty five bucks per show before interest petered out and we gave it up.
Several times I missed work at Image International to do a show or two. My favorite day, however, was the day my boss advised me not to punch out, but to stay on the Image clock while I went to a school and did three shows! Talk about double dipping!
The last time I talked to Sandi, about twelve years ago, she told me she still had the bird costume and the trees in her office, ready to do another show at the drop of a check. Paul went to New York sixteen years ago, so I don't think he's available. I, of course, am in western Pennsylvania.
Sandi is at the Zoo.
Sandi was delighted to learn that in addition to acting, I knew a thing or two about scenery, props and such. As Education Person at the zoo, she didn't have a lot of time or resources for making such things. I volunteered to make my own bird head (of course), I supplied the multi-colored shimmery rain curtain for my wings, and I made the trees that, when spun 180 degrees, became statues of the King.
All of this, plus Sandi and her (then) husband and lighting tech Jeff plus Paul (the King) and I could all fit in a Zoo van and go to elementary schools all over Central Florida. We rehearsed at the First Unitarian Church of Orlando, where I was a new member and Paul soon became one.
Oh yes, and I also did the layout and paste-up for the brochure that was sent out to the schools and such.
Having so much to do with so much of the production, I had a lot of messages on my answering machine that began: "This is Sandi...at the Zoo."
For about six months, we toured, doing a grand total of maybe twenty performances, paying each of us twenty five bucks per show before interest petered out and we gave it up.
Several times I missed work at Image International to do a show or two. My favorite day, however, was the day my boss advised me not to punch out, but to stay on the Image clock while I went to a school and did three shows! Talk about double dipping!
The last time I talked to Sandi, about twelve years ago, she told me she still had the bird costume and the trees in her office, ready to do another show at the drop of a check. Paul went to New York sixteen years ago, so I don't think he's available. I, of course, am in western Pennsylvania.
Sandi is at the Zoo.
Monday, September 27, 2010
The Five Weeks
October, 1994 - After the Lemonade Stand I answered an ad for the Scenic Arts Department at Sea World. I was interviewed, I showed my portfolio and was hired immediately. This was the part of the process that took the least amount of time. The day I started was the first of two days of orientation, testing, training and certifying. First they took me to the wardrobe department. There I was issued my three pairs of khaki pants and my green shirts - this particular green being the uniform of a temporary scenic arts worker, not a full timer, supervisor or department head. I was photographed and issued my ID badge. Then I was handed a twenty page booklet of procedures, rules and regulations to read before I was tested on it. After the test, I was given a booklet about safety. The test for that included demonstrating the use of a fire extinguisher. Then I went over to the vehicle department for my written test and driving test to be issued my Sea World Driver's License so I could drive the golf carts and other vehicles around the park and even off property! Ooooh!
So in the afternoon of day two I was taken two miles over to the off-site Scene Shop and introduced to Drayton Knox, the shop foreman. I was told not to use any of the tools there because I had not yet been certified for tool use on Sea World property. I was not allowed to use my own tools or even get them out of the car. Drayton introduced me to his girlfriend, the primary scenic artist on the project. I haven't been able to conjure her name.
She showed me the scene she was working on, a Mardi Gras themed backdrop twelve feet high by twenty four feet wide. It was going to Cypress Gardens, another Anheuser Busch owned park, for their new water ski show. Suddenly I came to understand that they needed a scenic artist, not a scenic carpenter. I thought back on my interview. The HR guy was looking at my portfolio and asking me if I had done the painting on each piece I'd built - some yes and some no. Evidently the HR guy knew they needed someone to paint, but didn't understand the difference between a painter and a scenic artist. Now what? So I took up a brush, ready to launch my career as a scenic artist.
The department head came by to meet me and see how I was doing. I saw him take Drayton aside ant talk to him before going back to Sea World. Drayton told me that the boss wanted me gone and replaced with a real scenic painter ASAP, but Drayton talked him into keeping me to work on other parts of the job.
Meanwhile, once a week, the Scenic Arts Department had the job of pressure washing the algae, rust and mildew from the inside and outside the Sea Lion And Otter Stadium. Every other week, the crew included me. On that Wednesday morning we started at 5:00, which gave us four hours to saddle up, get there, break out the technology, squirt the rust stains with a dissolver, wash the walls and floors, put away the technology, touch up the paint wherever needed and get out before the park opened. The usual day for our department was 6:00 to 2:30. On pressure wash day it was 5:00 to 1:30. I loved it!
The best part for me was being around the critters. I'd be walking through the park with a bucket of paint, and all manner of mammals and birds would watch and/or follow me as I passed their tanks and/or pools. I could hear them wondering, "Whatcha got in the bucket there, champ?" The best one, though, was the morning I was wandering the Sea Lion And Otter Stadium with the squirt bottle of rust dissolver - squirt squirt... squirt squirt... and I came to a door back inside the stadium set. It was pushed almost closed, but not latched. I grabbed the knob and pulled it open - there about two feet from my face was the two foot diameter face of the show's walrus! We both cried out. I closed the door.
When the street scene was done and we had painted in the sky, I finally figured out the crux of the HR mixup. The whole backdrop was getting a clear coat over the artwork, and glitter on the clear coat. Drayton told me that I knew glitter, that that was what he had told HR, that the new hire had to have experience with glitter. Welllll, I'm your man! A glitterist from way back! I taught Drayton and his girlfriend the basics of glitter (not rocket science!) and finally earned my keep.
The last week of my temporary job was spent disassembling the backdrop (still not certified on tools,) loading it onto the truck, riding down to Cypress Gardens with the rest of the department, and reassembling the Mardi Gras scene on their barge. Of course, we couldn't work on it during water ski shows, so we were condemned to sitting behind the set of the old show while young physically fit cuties pie skied in to shore, ran behind the set, peeled off their costumes, slapped on the next costumes and skied back out to the middle of the lake again. Ah, Show Biz!
When we were finished, I was no longer a Sea World employee. They had me drive a company van back to headquarters. Everyone was stopping at a restaurant they knew for lunch on the way back, but I didn't want any part of this farewell. I just drove on back, checked in the vehicle, changed into my civvies, turned in my uniforms and ID badge and went home. I never heard from anyone at Sea World ever again.
So in the afternoon of day two I was taken two miles over to the off-site Scene Shop and introduced to Drayton Knox, the shop foreman. I was told not to use any of the tools there because I had not yet been certified for tool use on Sea World property. I was not allowed to use my own tools or even get them out of the car. Drayton introduced me to his girlfriend, the primary scenic artist on the project. I haven't been able to conjure her name.
She showed me the scene she was working on, a Mardi Gras themed backdrop twelve feet high by twenty four feet wide. It was going to Cypress Gardens, another Anheuser Busch owned park, for their new water ski show. Suddenly I came to understand that they needed a scenic artist, not a scenic carpenter. I thought back on my interview. The HR guy was looking at my portfolio and asking me if I had done the painting on each piece I'd built - some yes and some no. Evidently the HR guy knew they needed someone to paint, but didn't understand the difference between a painter and a scenic artist. Now what? So I took up a brush, ready to launch my career as a scenic artist.
The department head came by to meet me and see how I was doing. I saw him take Drayton aside ant talk to him before going back to Sea World. Drayton told me that the boss wanted me gone and replaced with a real scenic painter ASAP, but Drayton talked him into keeping me to work on other parts of the job.
Meanwhile, once a week, the Scenic Arts Department had the job of pressure washing the algae, rust and mildew from the inside and outside the Sea Lion And Otter Stadium. Every other week, the crew included me. On that Wednesday morning we started at 5:00, which gave us four hours to saddle up, get there, break out the technology, squirt the rust stains with a dissolver, wash the walls and floors, put away the technology, touch up the paint wherever needed and get out before the park opened. The usual day for our department was 6:00 to 2:30. On pressure wash day it was 5:00 to 1:30. I loved it!
The best part for me was being around the critters. I'd be walking through the park with a bucket of paint, and all manner of mammals and birds would watch and/or follow me as I passed their tanks and/or pools. I could hear them wondering, "Whatcha got in the bucket there, champ?" The best one, though, was the morning I was wandering the Sea Lion And Otter Stadium with the squirt bottle of rust dissolver - squirt squirt... squirt squirt... and I came to a door back inside the stadium set. It was pushed almost closed, but not latched. I grabbed the knob and pulled it open - there about two feet from my face was the two foot diameter face of the show's walrus! We both cried out. I closed the door.
When the street scene was done and we had painted in the sky, I finally figured out the crux of the HR mixup. The whole backdrop was getting a clear coat over the artwork, and glitter on the clear coat. Drayton told me that I knew glitter, that that was what he had told HR, that the new hire had to have experience with glitter. Welllll, I'm your man! A glitterist from way back! I taught Drayton and his girlfriend the basics of glitter (not rocket science!) and finally earned my keep.
The last week of my temporary job was spent disassembling the backdrop (still not certified on tools,) loading it onto the truck, riding down to Cypress Gardens with the rest of the department, and reassembling the Mardi Gras scene on their barge. Of course, we couldn't work on it during water ski shows, so we were condemned to sitting behind the set of the old show while young physically fit cuties pie skied in to shore, ran behind the set, peeled off their costumes, slapped on the next costumes and skied back out to the middle of the lake again. Ah, Show Biz!
When we were finished, I was no longer a Sea World employee. They had me drive a company van back to headquarters. Everyone was stopping at a restaurant they knew for lunch on the way back, but I didn't want any part of this farewell. I just drove on back, checked in the vehicle, changed into my civvies, turned in my uniforms and ID badge and went home. I never heard from anyone at Sea World ever again.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The Lemonade Stand
Three or four times in the course of events, Al hired in Frank and his crew from Space Concepts to take care of special projects at Image International. They fiberglassed the Phantom statuary. They made a canopy for a storefront set. They took up the slack on several occasions when the volume of work and the time frame were impossible for two of us to handle. So Frank knew me and knew my work when he heard I'd left Image, and he made me one of his crew - the only one, evidently, who was sober.
The best part for me: his shop was located in Kissimmee, about half as far away as Image International. I could go home for lunch if I hurried.
The first thing I worked on was Planet Hollywood Miami. It was mostly finished when I started, and a crew was in Miami installing. There were several additional pieces to fabricate, and fabricate them I did. Meanwhile, Planet Hollywood Las Vegas was gearing up, and it looked as though we were going to have a lot of stuff to do for that.
Details about the three and a half months with Space Concepts are very blurry in my memory. I've told people in the past that whatever company we were working for and they were complaining about was a great company compared to some I've worked for. Space Concepts was the one that stood out bright and bold in my memory.
We had a huge trade show exhibit (20' x 20' x 20' cube of aluminum framing, two stories of exhibit space) for some European computer company that sent us all specs in metric measurements. I had to miss The Eagles Hell Freezes Over tour concert in Orlando because they brought their literature to put in their literature racks, and it didn't fit because Frank hadn't converted the measurements correctly. I had to build and laminate two new literature racks to go into the exhibit before the show opened in the morning.
We did get a pile of work for Planet Hollywood Las Vegas. Frank's business partner Steve took the crew out to install it. While they were waiting for the room to be ready for the inatallation, Steve gambled away the whole company bank account.
For a several weeks, they scraped by by paying us what they would owe us after taxes and Social Security, but then not sending in the taxes and Social Security. My wife was not amused by this little game. She wanted some documentation to show that it was not me defrauding the IRS, but they never provided it. I told them repeatedly: "I'm an easygoing guy, I can roll with it. But you DON'T want to piss off my wife!" They laughed indulgently. I didn't laugh, because I knew that my paralegal law firm manager wife wasn't one to joke around where the IRS was concerned.
We got the job of creating a huge lobster to put on top of a little delivery truck - Space Concepts had done one a year or so before - for Boston Lobster Feast restaurants. There are two details of that job I remember vividly: First, when the truck was delivered to us for the fitting and attaching of the lobster, Frank immediately sent me out in it to the lumber yard to pick up a huge order of plywood, glue, staples, screws and other miscellaneous stuff; second, when the lobster carving was finished, Frank's fiberglass crew went to work, working late into the night. When I came in early the next morning, I was supposed to start sanding so it could be painted, attached and delivered so Frank could pick up the check so we could get paid. I came in early in the morning, found two trash barrels overflowing with empty beer bottles, and the lobster covered with sticky wet fiberglass resin. They forgot to put hardener in the mix. No sanding, no painting, no check, no pay. I went home, changed clothes and applied for another job.
When I went in for my last paycheck, I carried in a big bag of lemons off our tree. "My wife sent these along. She thinks you might better try running a lemonade stand before you try operating a real business!"
Not long after I left, the IRS came knock knock knocking at their door. I done damn told you - you DON'T want to piss off my wife!
The best part for me: his shop was located in Kissimmee, about half as far away as Image International. I could go home for lunch if I hurried.
The first thing I worked on was Planet Hollywood Miami. It was mostly finished when I started, and a crew was in Miami installing. There were several additional pieces to fabricate, and fabricate them I did. Meanwhile, Planet Hollywood Las Vegas was gearing up, and it looked as though we were going to have a lot of stuff to do for that.
Details about the three and a half months with Space Concepts are very blurry in my memory. I've told people in the past that whatever company we were working for and they were complaining about was a great company compared to some I've worked for. Space Concepts was the one that stood out bright and bold in my memory.
We had a huge trade show exhibit (20' x 20' x 20' cube of aluminum framing, two stories of exhibit space) for some European computer company that sent us all specs in metric measurements. I had to miss The Eagles Hell Freezes Over tour concert in Orlando because they brought their literature to put in their literature racks, and it didn't fit because Frank hadn't converted the measurements correctly. I had to build and laminate two new literature racks to go into the exhibit before the show opened in the morning.
We did get a pile of work for Planet Hollywood Las Vegas. Frank's business partner Steve took the crew out to install it. While they were waiting for the room to be ready for the inatallation, Steve gambled away the whole company bank account.
For a several weeks, they scraped by by paying us what they would owe us after taxes and Social Security, but then not sending in the taxes and Social Security. My wife was not amused by this little game. She wanted some documentation to show that it was not me defrauding the IRS, but they never provided it. I told them repeatedly: "I'm an easygoing guy, I can roll with it. But you DON'T want to piss off my wife!" They laughed indulgently. I didn't laugh, because I knew that my paralegal law firm manager wife wasn't one to joke around where the IRS was concerned.
We got the job of creating a huge lobster to put on top of a little delivery truck - Space Concepts had done one a year or so before - for Boston Lobster Feast restaurants. There are two details of that job I remember vividly: First, when the truck was delivered to us for the fitting and attaching of the lobster, Frank immediately sent me out in it to the lumber yard to pick up a huge order of plywood, glue, staples, screws and other miscellaneous stuff; second, when the lobster carving was finished, Frank's fiberglass crew went to work, working late into the night. When I came in early the next morning, I was supposed to start sanding so it could be painted, attached and delivered so Frank could pick up the check so we could get paid. I came in early in the morning, found two trash barrels overflowing with empty beer bottles, and the lobster covered with sticky wet fiberglass resin. They forgot to put hardener in the mix. No sanding, no painting, no check, no pay. I went home, changed clothes and applied for another job.
When I went in for my last paycheck, I carried in a big bag of lemons off our tree. "My wife sent these along. She thinks you might better try running a lemonade stand before you try operating a real business!"
Not long after I left, the IRS came knock knock knocking at their door. I done damn told you - you DON'T want to piss off my wife!
The End
The spring of '94 was a death march to the auction. We went through every set in the inventory - and there were hundreds - and spiffed them up, repairing and replacing broken pieces and putting a fresh coat of paint on everything. There were six or seven sets I had never seen in six and a half years, buried far back behind other sets. Some of them Al didn't even remember. We sort of half-assed assembled them however we could, knowing in our hearts that it didn't matter - the new owners would do with them whatever they wanted anyway.
A week before the auction Al came back to the shop and called together the whole Production Department. He stood before us and laid out the plans and described the contracted work in hand for the next four months. I don't remember at all what he said. What I remember is that there was nothing in that speech that made me want to hang around for four months. Al left and I gave my notice to Eddie.
During the three days leading up to the Big Day, we set up everything. The castle was inside the building, along with many other tall and wind-resistant things. The rest of it was set up outside in the parking areas and the lawn. Every single set we had was on display, and I must admit that it was impressive.
I know who bought the castle, because he hired me to set it up its first time out. I know who bought the dinosaurs. The rest... no clue. It was just a little bit sad to see all of this stuff, so much of which I'd built, nearly all of which I'd wrestled and pinned on numerous occasions, being dispersed to the four winds. And anything that wasn't sold was crunched up into the big-ass dumpster.
I still have the little wood tool box I made in the spring of 1988 - for the Pirate party. In it I had (nearly) everything I needed for installing a show. Almost all of it was Image property, but I had kept it close and safe for six years while the Goofies lost or broke fifty times what I had in my box... Eddie said that if I left all those little hand tools, they would go into a big box with the rest of the hand tools, and the whole box would auction for five bucks, with or without the stuff I had.
I still have it. All of it. Still safe, still useful every day. Much of it has "IMAGE" engraved on it. That and all of these stories I carried away in June of 1994. The end.
A week before the auction Al came back to the shop and called together the whole Production Department. He stood before us and laid out the plans and described the contracted work in hand for the next four months. I don't remember at all what he said. What I remember is that there was nothing in that speech that made me want to hang around for four months. Al left and I gave my notice to Eddie.
During the three days leading up to the Big Day, we set up everything. The castle was inside the building, along with many other tall and wind-resistant things. The rest of it was set up outside in the parking areas and the lawn. Every single set we had was on display, and I must admit that it was impressive.
I know who bought the castle, because he hired me to set it up its first time out. I know who bought the dinosaurs. The rest... no clue. It was just a little bit sad to see all of this stuff, so much of which I'd built, nearly all of which I'd wrestled and pinned on numerous occasions, being dispersed to the four winds. And anything that wasn't sold was crunched up into the big-ass dumpster.
I still have the little wood tool box I made in the spring of 1988 - for the Pirate party. In it I had (nearly) everything I needed for installing a show. Almost all of it was Image property, but I had kept it close and safe for six years while the Goofies lost or broke fifty times what I had in my box... Eddie said that if I left all those little hand tools, they would go into a big box with the rest of the hand tools, and the whole box would auction for five bucks, with or without the stuff I had.
I still have it. All of it. Still safe, still useful every day. Much of it has "IMAGE" engraved on it. That and all of these stories I carried away in June of 1994. The end.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Jurassic Fiasco
The blistering hot summer of '93 (weren't all summers in Orlando blistering hot?) was dinosaur summer. Moments after the movie Jurassic Park was released, Al Caputo had a sculptor in to carve movie-styled spitters, pterodactyls, veloceraptors, a sixteen foot tall brachiosaur and a twelve foot tall tyrannosaurus rex. Eddie and I were there to help with fiberglassing and assembling. We were even empowered to make and install teeth, claws and other minor pieces parts.
I realize now that I've never explained the medium we used for sculptures - be they alligator, Phantom angels and such, X-wing fighter bodies, moray eel heads or dinosaurs. All of these were carved out of big blocks (4' x 8' x 2') of urethane foam, a dense, fragile, grainy foam that can be carved with saws, knives, sandpaper, whatever. One can also use the two liquid parts (called "A" and "B") mixed together to pour into a mold (careful, it grows to about five times the volume of liquid!) or to glue together the carved pieces. This foam has no strength once it is reduced in volume, so we clad it in fiberglass to protect it and make the surface right for painting. Being covered in urethane foam dust, fiberglass resin and sanded fiberglass fibers is the absolute best way to spend a blistering hot summer.
By the end of August we had a shop full of dinosaurs. The first time out for them was a big Jurassic Adventure party in a soundstage out at - you guessed it - Universal Studios, Florida. This included a huge thirty foot high waterfall set up on scaffolding using all of our rocks, all of our plants, all of our erosion cloth, and a truckload of other plants rented for the occasion. A truckload of union stagehands did most of the work on this party.
Now, if one did not know the true cluelessness of Alexander Caputo, with his "I've got forty million dollars so I don't have to follow the rules" attitude, one might think that Image would have gotten proper licensure before the first big party, since the party was happening at the Florida home of the studio that produced the movie from which our dinosaur designs were stolen. As it happened, however, the day after the party, a letter came by certified Special Delivery. Its return address proudly proclaimed that it was from Amblin Entertainment - Spielberg's company. It warned of dire legal consequences for the continued use of these props or the word "Jurassic" in any future marketing.
Sea World's Hallowe'en Spooktacular was the next time out, dispersed here and there along the trails through the park. They were painted so they did not so completely resemble the movie critters. There was no advertising about dinosaurs at Sea World, and a splendid time was had by all. There were no lawsuits filed that I know of.
A month or so later, one of our guys took the tyrannosaurus rex to a function in New York City. Now the rex was in two parts, the six foot tall leg assembly and the body, about twenty four feet long from its head to the end of the tail. It fit fine on the truck, but the freight elevator in the destination building - not so much. Our guy ended up borrowing a hand saw and sawing off the tail. When it came back, Eddie and I made the removable tail work well and look better.
Next trip out was a Dinosaur Happy New Year at the Buena Vista Palace. We made a section of tall chain link fence with a "10,000 VOLTS" sign on it being trashed by T-Rex, hung pterodactyls from the ceiling as usual, built a bamboo gazebo from scratch, and on New Year's Day there were three parties to strike.
The spring of 1994 was the beginning of the end of Image International, which in any case was now called Noro Orlando Associates Destination Management. The scuttlebutt was that Al's five year contract with Noro was coming to an end, and he was being squeezed out. There were other convention services companies going out of business or at least cutting loose their themed party accoutrements. Al saw these companies having auctions to sell off their stuff. He wanted to have an auction too! He did.
The last I saw or heard of the dinosaurs, they were decorating the miniature golf course out back behind the Mystery Fun House on International Drive in Orlando. This was in '95. I'm sure they're long gone.
I realize now that I've never explained the medium we used for sculptures - be they alligator, Phantom angels and such, X-wing fighter bodies, moray eel heads or dinosaurs. All of these were carved out of big blocks (4' x 8' x 2') of urethane foam, a dense, fragile, grainy foam that can be carved with saws, knives, sandpaper, whatever. One can also use the two liquid parts (called "A" and "B") mixed together to pour into a mold (careful, it grows to about five times the volume of liquid!) or to glue together the carved pieces. This foam has no strength once it is reduced in volume, so we clad it in fiberglass to protect it and make the surface right for painting. Being covered in urethane foam dust, fiberglass resin and sanded fiberglass fibers is the absolute best way to spend a blistering hot summer.
By the end of August we had a shop full of dinosaurs. The first time out for them was a big Jurassic Adventure party in a soundstage out at - you guessed it - Universal Studios, Florida. This included a huge thirty foot high waterfall set up on scaffolding using all of our rocks, all of our plants, all of our erosion cloth, and a truckload of other plants rented for the occasion. A truckload of union stagehands did most of the work on this party.
Now, if one did not know the true cluelessness of Alexander Caputo, with his "I've got forty million dollars so I don't have to follow the rules" attitude, one might think that Image would have gotten proper licensure before the first big party, since the party was happening at the Florida home of the studio that produced the movie from which our dinosaur designs were stolen. As it happened, however, the day after the party, a letter came by certified Special Delivery. Its return address proudly proclaimed that it was from Amblin Entertainment - Spielberg's company. It warned of dire legal consequences for the continued use of these props or the word "Jurassic" in any future marketing.
Sea World's Hallowe'en Spooktacular was the next time out, dispersed here and there along the trails through the park. They were painted so they did not so completely resemble the movie critters. There was no advertising about dinosaurs at Sea World, and a splendid time was had by all. There were no lawsuits filed that I know of.
A month or so later, one of our guys took the tyrannosaurus rex to a function in New York City. Now the rex was in two parts, the six foot tall leg assembly and the body, about twenty four feet long from its head to the end of the tail. It fit fine on the truck, but the freight elevator in the destination building - not so much. Our guy ended up borrowing a hand saw and sawing off the tail. When it came back, Eddie and I made the removable tail work well and look better.
Next trip out was a Dinosaur Happy New Year at the Buena Vista Palace. We made a section of tall chain link fence with a "10,000 VOLTS" sign on it being trashed by T-Rex, hung pterodactyls from the ceiling as usual, built a bamboo gazebo from scratch, and on New Year's Day there were three parties to strike.
The spring of 1994 was the beginning of the end of Image International, which in any case was now called Noro Orlando Associates Destination Management. The scuttlebutt was that Al's five year contract with Noro was coming to an end, and he was being squeezed out. There were other convention services companies going out of business or at least cutting loose their themed party accoutrements. Al saw these companies having auctions to sell off their stuff. He wanted to have an auction too! He did.
The last I saw or heard of the dinosaurs, they were decorating the miniature golf course out back behind the Mystery Fun House on International Drive in Orlando. This was in '95. I'm sure they're long gone.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
So Many Trees
During my six and a half years at Image International, there was really only one absolute certainty: we were working New Year's Day. For several years before I got there until the year after I left, the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress had a "Vienna Woods" New Year's Eve party. I like to make up stories, so my invention about this event is that Al Caputo realized that every Christmas tree lot in Orange County had trees left over on Christmas Day. These trees had to be disposed of somehow. What could he do with them to make money? Hmmm
So every year on Christmas morning, Al and every cheap labor employee he could rope into it set out with the semi and went to every tree lot in Greater Orlando, picking up every leftover tree - for free! The owners were happy to get rid of them - for free! Unlike most Caputo deals, everybody made out on the deal. The semi, crammed full of trees, returned to the shop, cheap wire stands were screwed to the bottoms, they were flocked with fake snow and stuffed back into the semi.
As soon as the biggest ballroom at the Hyatt was free, we went in, set up the stage and installed The Vienna Castle set, put mirror panels around the room and the trees started coming in. Only about a quarter of them came inside. Early in the morning of New Year's Eve the main entrance and the drive leading up to it were closed off. Al, his decorators and his Goofies (laborers) lined the portico and the driveway with trees and fake snow. If Eddie or I were called out there it was to set up a teflon skating rink nestled in the trees. As night fell and the lighting was turned on you'd swear you were in a pine forest. They shuttled guests from the parking lot in horse-drawn carriages, and they were surrounded by trees and snow until they went home. The Florida Symphony was the entertainment, and a splendid time was had by all.
New Year's Day was the strike. When Vienna was the only party, shop guys came out, took down the set and stayed until everything was loaded up. The biggest crew was taking cheap wire stands off tree bottoms and feeding them into a chipper truck rented for the occasion.
After "O Ghost Who Walks" and then "Jurassic New Year" were added, Eddie struck a deal that we would start at 7:00, go from hotel to hotel to hotel and disassemble every piece, then go home, leaving the cheap labor to load it all out. Another win-win situation
I'll leave this reminiscence with the words of a song sung by Curtis Hayes, one of the goofiest of the Image International goofies. It's sung to the tune of O Tannenbaum.
Hyatt Regency, Hyatt Regency
Why do you need so many trees?
We cannot lean them against your walls
We cannot leave them in your halls
Hyatt Regency, Hyatt Regency
Why do you need so many trees?
So every year on Christmas morning, Al and every cheap labor employee he could rope into it set out with the semi and went to every tree lot in Greater Orlando, picking up every leftover tree - for free! The owners were happy to get rid of them - for free! Unlike most Caputo deals, everybody made out on the deal. The semi, crammed full of trees, returned to the shop, cheap wire stands were screwed to the bottoms, they were flocked with fake snow and stuffed back into the semi.
As soon as the biggest ballroom at the Hyatt was free, we went in, set up the stage and installed The Vienna Castle set, put mirror panels around the room and the trees started coming in. Only about a quarter of them came inside. Early in the morning of New Year's Eve the main entrance and the drive leading up to it were closed off. Al, his decorators and his Goofies (laborers) lined the portico and the driveway with trees and fake snow. If Eddie or I were called out there it was to set up a teflon skating rink nestled in the trees. As night fell and the lighting was turned on you'd swear you were in a pine forest. They shuttled guests from the parking lot in horse-drawn carriages, and they were surrounded by trees and snow until they went home. The Florida Symphony was the entertainment, and a splendid time was had by all.
New Year's Day was the strike. When Vienna was the only party, shop guys came out, took down the set and stayed until everything was loaded up. The biggest crew was taking cheap wire stands off tree bottoms and feeding them into a chipper truck rented for the occasion.
After "O Ghost Who Walks" and then "Jurassic New Year" were added, Eddie struck a deal that we would start at 7:00, go from hotel to hotel to hotel and disassemble every piece, then go home, leaving the cheap labor to load it all out. Another win-win situation
I'll leave this reminiscence with the words of a song sung by Curtis Hayes, one of the goofiest of the Image International goofies. It's sung to the tune of O Tannenbaum.
Hyatt Regency, Hyatt Regency
Why do you need so many trees?
We cannot lean them against your walls
We cannot leave them in your halls
Hyatt Regency, Hyatt Regency
Why do you need so many trees?
Friday, September 10, 2010
Playing Dress Up
There were several occasions when it fell to me to be a costumed character for Image parties. I had long hair and a beard, so all I had to do was paint them white and put on a red suit to play Santa Claus, which I did several times. The best part of that was riding my motorcycle down Interstate 4 and watching the reactions of the other drivers as I zoomed by.
As I mentioned in the Oz posting, I wore a Cowardly Lion suit twice, once for a full-blown Wizard of Oz party, and once as a game operator in an Oz-themed carnival party. On the first occasion I was walking around among the guests, and the costume got damaged in vicious attacks by children whose parents stood there and laughed at how cute their kids were while they were ripping pieces of the costume off. Little bastards!
The best one, though, was an impromptu "change of plan" thing improvised by Al Caputo himself. See, Image International was a full service agency that would book the flights and hotel rooms and meeting spaces for your hundreds of attendees, arrange rental cars, provide transportation to and from the hotel and whatever attractions anybody wanted to visit, provide audio visual services, and even theme parties. Many many things went on in this regard of which we were not even a little bit aware, which became abundantly clear one late morning.
Al came back to the warehouse with a crazed look in his eye. "Guys! We need to clean the warehouse real good. Pull out all of our casino stuff." We had roulette tables, blackjack tables, craps tables, wheels of fortune, that kind of thing. "Hide the theme party sets and stuff and bring out all of our crates. We're having a "Warehouse Party" in here tonight, like a speakeasy kind of thing!" Alex Ostovich and I were conscripted to be gangsters, fitted into pinstripe suits up in the costume loft, and told we were working the party. We were sent to dinner early and told to be back at 5:00 in costume and ready. To our dismay, once we were dressed we were each issued a firearm loaded with blanks. Mine was a stainless steel sawed off double barrel shotgun. Both guns belonged to Al Caputo.
One of the high-ranking women up in the office, "Patty Paycheck," we called her, was married to a State Trooper, and we were told to go sit in his patrol car. He finally told us what was going on.
Image had arranged to transport two busloads of conventioneers to the "Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre" nearby - but it turned out that the place was unexpectedly closed that evening. Instead of just telling everybody what was up, we were going to hijack the buses and take them to the Image warehouse for a speakeasy casino party instead. Oh, is that all? No.
The warehouse was still being set up and decorated, the booze was being brought in, the bartenders and game dealers were being rounded up and organized - in short, our first job was to stall for time. Our State Trooper mentor suggested a brilliant plan for this. First, as the two buses neared the dinner theatre location, he came up behind them with his lights a-flashing. They immediately pulled over. I believe the drivers WERE told the plan in advance. Then Alex and I, brandishing our weapons, strolled in a liesurely fashion up to the doors of the buses and climbed aboard. Then, using our best improvisational skills, we went one by one to each passenger and demanded a one cent ransom. It was actually great fun, messing with this captive audience that had no clue what was up. And by the time we had collected a penny from each passenger, State Trooper Man got the "all clear" and led the way three blocks to the Image warehouse. When the buses were parked, Alex and I exited and each fired off a round from our guns, just to let the passengers know we were a "serious threat."
After that, it was just a matter of hanging around the party as part of the ambience. At 11:00 Al collected his guns and sent us back to the costume loft to change into our civvies and go home. Just another day in show biz.
As I mentioned in the Oz posting, I wore a Cowardly Lion suit twice, once for a full-blown Wizard of Oz party, and once as a game operator in an Oz-themed carnival party. On the first occasion I was walking around among the guests, and the costume got damaged in vicious attacks by children whose parents stood there and laughed at how cute their kids were while they were ripping pieces of the costume off. Little bastards!
The best one, though, was an impromptu "change of plan" thing improvised by Al Caputo himself. See, Image International was a full service agency that would book the flights and hotel rooms and meeting spaces for your hundreds of attendees, arrange rental cars, provide transportation to and from the hotel and whatever attractions anybody wanted to visit, provide audio visual services, and even theme parties. Many many things went on in this regard of which we were not even a little bit aware, which became abundantly clear one late morning.
Al came back to the warehouse with a crazed look in his eye. "Guys! We need to clean the warehouse real good. Pull out all of our casino stuff." We had roulette tables, blackjack tables, craps tables, wheels of fortune, that kind of thing. "Hide the theme party sets and stuff and bring out all of our crates. We're having a "Warehouse Party" in here tonight, like a speakeasy kind of thing!" Alex Ostovich and I were conscripted to be gangsters, fitted into pinstripe suits up in the costume loft, and told we were working the party. We were sent to dinner early and told to be back at 5:00 in costume and ready. To our dismay, once we were dressed we were each issued a firearm loaded with blanks. Mine was a stainless steel sawed off double barrel shotgun. Both guns belonged to Al Caputo.
One of the high-ranking women up in the office, "Patty Paycheck," we called her, was married to a State Trooper, and we were told to go sit in his patrol car. He finally told us what was going on.
Image had arranged to transport two busloads of conventioneers to the "Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre" nearby - but it turned out that the place was unexpectedly closed that evening. Instead of just telling everybody what was up, we were going to hijack the buses and take them to the Image warehouse for a speakeasy casino party instead. Oh, is that all? No.
The warehouse was still being set up and decorated, the booze was being brought in, the bartenders and game dealers were being rounded up and organized - in short, our first job was to stall for time. Our State Trooper mentor suggested a brilliant plan for this. First, as the two buses neared the dinner theatre location, he came up behind them with his lights a-flashing. They immediately pulled over. I believe the drivers WERE told the plan in advance. Then Alex and I, brandishing our weapons, strolled in a liesurely fashion up to the doors of the buses and climbed aboard. Then, using our best improvisational skills, we went one by one to each passenger and demanded a one cent ransom. It was actually great fun, messing with this captive audience that had no clue what was up. And by the time we had collected a penny from each passenger, State Trooper Man got the "all clear" and led the way three blocks to the Image warehouse. When the buses were parked, Alex and I exited and each fired off a round from our guns, just to let the passengers know we were a "serious threat."
After that, it was just a matter of hanging around the party as part of the ambience. At 11:00 Al collected his guns and sent us back to the costume loft to change into our civvies and go home. Just another day in show biz.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Doctor Jones and the Template of Doom
One big ongoing thing during the late eighties and nineties was the hype around Universal Studios beginning operations in Orlando. This bled over into the theme party biz a few times when our crackerjack sales department sold "Back Lot" parties. Mostly this involved renaming and repainting old stuff. For instance, rearrange the decompression chamber from the "Undersea World," paint it dark blue and call it "The Bat Cave."
The coolest thing, though, was the Indiana Jones cave. We took our two swamp ponds and the fiberglass rocks from the "Pirate" parties and set up the two rock archways as the entrance and the dead end. At the end we rigged two pumps to create the double waterfall that that rock archway was actually designed to handle, with the path taking guests between falls. One fell into a fiberglass rock with a built-in deep pool, into which we placed bones from the human skeleton that had broken years before. Between the entrance arch and the waterfall arch we flanked the path with every rock we had in stock, which was a lot, thatched it over and dressed it up with erosion cloth, reed fencing, areca palms, ferns and whatever else there was to turn the pile of rocks into a cave.
The purchasing department provided us with bushels of large, brightly colored bugs, lizards, snakes and rodents. We placed these throughout such that anywhere you looked and anywhere you might put your hand, there was a critter of some kind. (Of course, after the first time out our supply of critters was reduced by about 75% due to theft by party goers!) Just before party time, we broke out the cobweb machines, went in and went crazy with the cobwebs.
During the party, guests could sign up to be Indiana Jones in a video taped adventure in the cave, taking a tape home as a souvenir. Very clever, really, and hokey as hell. Of course, they weren't really prepared for the reality of it: they didn't have the hat and they didn't have the brown leather jacket! Lucky for them, they had a guy (me) with a brown leather jacket for riding my motorcycle, and several fedora styles from which to choose. Saved the day again!
Needless to say, the cave required exacting placement of ponds, rocks, archways and pumps to make it work properly. So when we invented it in the shop the first time, we laid it all out on quarter inch plywood, marking the placement of each element for future reference: The Template of Doom!
The coolest thing, though, was the Indiana Jones cave. We took our two swamp ponds and the fiberglass rocks from the "Pirate" parties and set up the two rock archways as the entrance and the dead end. At the end we rigged two pumps to create the double waterfall that that rock archway was actually designed to handle, with the path taking guests between falls. One fell into a fiberglass rock with a built-in deep pool, into which we placed bones from the human skeleton that had broken years before. Between the entrance arch and the waterfall arch we flanked the path with every rock we had in stock, which was a lot, thatched it over and dressed it up with erosion cloth, reed fencing, areca palms, ferns and whatever else there was to turn the pile of rocks into a cave.
The purchasing department provided us with bushels of large, brightly colored bugs, lizards, snakes and rodents. We placed these throughout such that anywhere you looked and anywhere you might put your hand, there was a critter of some kind. (Of course, after the first time out our supply of critters was reduced by about 75% due to theft by party goers!) Just before party time, we broke out the cobweb machines, went in and went crazy with the cobwebs.
During the party, guests could sign up to be Indiana Jones in a video taped adventure in the cave, taking a tape home as a souvenir. Very clever, really, and hokey as hell. Of course, they weren't really prepared for the reality of it: they didn't have the hat and they didn't have the brown leather jacket! Lucky for them, they had a guy (me) with a brown leather jacket for riding my motorcycle, and several fedora styles from which to choose. Saved the day again!
Needless to say, the cave required exacting placement of ponds, rocks, archways and pumps to make it work properly. So when we invented it in the shop the first time, we laid it all out on quarter inch plywood, marking the placement of each element for future reference: The Template of Doom!
Saturday, August 28, 2010
O Ghost Who Walks
There aren't many of you who will get the title of this post, so I'll explain it straightaway. Years ago there was an action/adventure strip called "The Phantom" in the comics section of the newspaper. The natives who lived around where The Phantom lived and fought the forces of evil called him "O Ghost Who Walks." Well... the next big hoo-hah that comes to mind from the Image International days was our New Year's Eve party at - you guessed it - The Marriott World Center. It was The Phantom Of The Opera. Once again, Al was gaga over the idea, spared no expense, and all things considered, it was one of the most interesting projects ever. My nick-name for it: "O Ghost Who Walks." Even twenty years ago hardly anyone knew what I was talking about.
Al brought in his Whiz Bang Filipino sculptor - an ice sculpture specialist who did other sculpting on the side - to do the giant sculptures on the stage. There were two twelve-foot tall ones of horned guys molesting half-naked women, one for each side of the stage, and one eight foot by eight foot angel thing flying over the center. Eddie and I were in charge of fiber glassing them and making the angel hangable. We also put rigging points on the twelve footers, knowing how these parties go and how unpleasant it would be if one - or both - fell over. The big deal with these was the nipples on the women. We put some on, Al came through and said, "Make 'em bigger!" We put some bigger ones on, the women from the front office came through saying, "That's ridiculous! They need to be smaller!" We tried about seven different sizes before everyone was satisfied. Then we fiber glassed them.
The entranceway for this one was very unusual. Guests who were willing and able were led down a back hall to a very steep set of steps up to an eight foot high series of platforms that led across one closed-off section of the ballroom. There were concrete-looking posts on both sides with chain connecting them, making it a bridge over the sewer, with pipes sticking out here and there down along the side. There were "bridge facades" on either side of the entrance bridge. In the thirty-foot space between bridges were twenty-something floor-standing candelabras with flicker bulbs, and a gondola was parked. This looked pretty hokey when we set it up, but after the fog was pumped in, it was way cool.
At the other end was a wide and long curved grand staircase. I built that baby, and I took the time to make it really beautiful. Unfortunately, my patience with this was not shared by Mr. Caputo, who told Eddie, "Don't spend all day making the curve! Just jam some plywood in there!" Eddie ran interference and I made it pretty. The staircase led down into the main part of the ballroom, which was draped all along all four sides with black rain curtain, also known as shimmer curtain. There were more candelabras standing at regular intervals along the sides. The stage was outfitted like the cemetery scene, with ornate wrought iron gates behind the entertainment. on the stage left front corner was a raised pulpit cantilevered out so it gave the illusion that the person in it was floating in space.
The Orlando Opera Company was part of the show, with full costumes and an orchestra. I never attended this or any of the other New Year's Eve parties, but I was assured everybody loved it.
As is the case with all of these parties, seen in the stark flourescent light the scenery looks pretty lame. But you turn out the lights and plug in the flicker bulbs and the whole scene comes to life. Get the partygoers a little drunk and it's all magic. That's what I was in it for: the magic.
Al brought in his Whiz Bang Filipino sculptor - an ice sculpture specialist who did other sculpting on the side - to do the giant sculptures on the stage. There were two twelve-foot tall ones of horned guys molesting half-naked women, one for each side of the stage, and one eight foot by eight foot angel thing flying over the center. Eddie and I were in charge of fiber glassing them and making the angel hangable. We also put rigging points on the twelve footers, knowing how these parties go and how unpleasant it would be if one - or both - fell over. The big deal with these was the nipples on the women. We put some on, Al came through and said, "Make 'em bigger!" We put some bigger ones on, the women from the front office came through saying, "That's ridiculous! They need to be smaller!" We tried about seven different sizes before everyone was satisfied. Then we fiber glassed them.
The entranceway for this one was very unusual. Guests who were willing and able were led down a back hall to a very steep set of steps up to an eight foot high series of platforms that led across one closed-off section of the ballroom. There were concrete-looking posts on both sides with chain connecting them, making it a bridge over the sewer, with pipes sticking out here and there down along the side. There were "bridge facades" on either side of the entrance bridge. In the thirty-foot space between bridges were twenty-something floor-standing candelabras with flicker bulbs, and a gondola was parked. This looked pretty hokey when we set it up, but after the fog was pumped in, it was way cool.
At the other end was a wide and long curved grand staircase. I built that baby, and I took the time to make it really beautiful. Unfortunately, my patience with this was not shared by Mr. Caputo, who told Eddie, "Don't spend all day making the curve! Just jam some plywood in there!" Eddie ran interference and I made it pretty. The staircase led down into the main part of the ballroom, which was draped all along all four sides with black rain curtain, also known as shimmer curtain. There were more candelabras standing at regular intervals along the sides. The stage was outfitted like the cemetery scene, with ornate wrought iron gates behind the entertainment. on the stage left front corner was a raised pulpit cantilevered out so it gave the illusion that the person in it was floating in space.
The Orlando Opera Company was part of the show, with full costumes and an orchestra. I never attended this or any of the other New Year's Eve parties, but I was assured everybody loved it.
As is the case with all of these parties, seen in the stark flourescent light the scenery looks pretty lame. But you turn out the lights and plug in the flicker bulbs and the whole scene comes to life. Get the partygoers a little drunk and it's all magic. That's what I was in it for: the magic.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Oz and Az
Eddie Channell had been with us for about four months when we got the word that Ray had sold the big one! Hardee's (of all people!) were having their big annual meeting at - you guessed it - the Marriott World Center, and they wanted two big party extravaganzas. Night one: The Wizard of Oz; night two: another Hi-Tech Aztec just like the one Al sold a year previously, and the buyer in California wouldn't rent it or sell it for less than it cost to build a new one. The good news: I still had a couple of both kinds of stringers for the step pyramids lying about in the steaming heap of old set parts.
Since I had done it once before, Eddie put me in charge of the Aztec set. We hired in two more guys to work with us, and three guys to work the night shift 3:30pm to midnight. Mostly we worked on Oz during the day, except for the time I spent doing drawings of Aztec pieces for the night shift to build. We'd come in every morning to find something Aztec standing up, ready to be taken down, painted and glittered.
In addition, Al had his "whiz bangers" come in to build the step pyramids. These guys were a construction crew that Al usually called in to build things like big-ass decks and step units. Yes, they built two step pyramids in a big hurry, thanks to my stringer templates, but the pieces that needed to come apart for shipping were screwed together in places blocked from access by the outer skin. We had to rip them apart with pry bars and repair them. Big time-saver.
Al was totally into Oz. He bought ten enchanted apple trees, fiberglass trunks with faces on them and fiberglass limbs to be screwed on with the "special screws" included with each tree (1 5/8" drywall screws!) He bought a couple hundred fake purple corn plants and a few hundred big fake Munchkin Land flowers. He bought Dorothy, Cowardly Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow costumes for walk-around characters (I was Cowardly Lion for two later rentals, but not the first run)
The entranceway was excellent! Out in the hallway Auntie Em's house was all black and white and grey, with a grey pig pen and grey pigs off to the side. The front porch led you to the double screen door (to make it wide enough to please the fire marshall) where you stepped into the Grand Ballroom into Munchkin Land, with everything in brilliant color. The house on that side was kind of crunched up, with Wicked Witch of the East legs poking out from under, wearing Red Glitter Slippers. The Yellow Brick Road led you past Munchkin houses, through the Scarecrow's corn field, past the Tin Woodman's house, through the enchanted apple trees to the Emerald City (green glitter.) The stage for the band was backed with the Wizard's chamber, gold glitter, complete with fake flames and smoke and a lame, puny video of the Wizard's head in the middle. Then was the Witch's castle facade, which was huge and dark blue, and back to Munchkin Land. For some reason, Al didn't go for a tethered balloon thing for the end.
We worked a thirty five hour day finishing up all that stuff, loading it on the trucks and installing it for the last twenty three. We all went to breakfast in the morning, after twelve hours in the ballroom. We noticed people staring at us, and we deduced why: we were completely covered with glitter. Then we went back at it, finishing up a half hour before starting time. We went out in the hall to check out Auntie Em. What a disappointment! She was sitting in her white rocking chair in front of her grey and white house, wearing a blue dress and snapping green beans! Ruined the whole illusion - but...that's show biz!
We went home, washed off a half-ton of glitter and crashed for a few hours, then went back at 11:00pm to disassemble everything. The carpenters, who would begin installing Aztec the next morning, unscrewed and laid down all the pieces and went home, leaving the "goofies" to load the trucks. As it should be.
Aztec was anticlimactic after Oz. Different colors of glitter. The high point came when the President of Hardee's Himself came in while we were working and told us what a great job we were doing. It doesn't get any better than that!
Since I had done it once before, Eddie put me in charge of the Aztec set. We hired in two more guys to work with us, and three guys to work the night shift 3:30pm to midnight. Mostly we worked on Oz during the day, except for the time I spent doing drawings of Aztec pieces for the night shift to build. We'd come in every morning to find something Aztec standing up, ready to be taken down, painted and glittered.
In addition, Al had his "whiz bangers" come in to build the step pyramids. These guys were a construction crew that Al usually called in to build things like big-ass decks and step units. Yes, they built two step pyramids in a big hurry, thanks to my stringer templates, but the pieces that needed to come apart for shipping were screwed together in places blocked from access by the outer skin. We had to rip them apart with pry bars and repair them. Big time-saver.
Al was totally into Oz. He bought ten enchanted apple trees, fiberglass trunks with faces on them and fiberglass limbs to be screwed on with the "special screws" included with each tree (1 5/8" drywall screws!) He bought a couple hundred fake purple corn plants and a few hundred big fake Munchkin Land flowers. He bought Dorothy, Cowardly Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow costumes for walk-around characters (I was Cowardly Lion for two later rentals, but not the first run)
The entranceway was excellent! Out in the hallway Auntie Em's house was all black and white and grey, with a grey pig pen and grey pigs off to the side. The front porch led you to the double screen door (to make it wide enough to please the fire marshall) where you stepped into the Grand Ballroom into Munchkin Land, with everything in brilliant color. The house on that side was kind of crunched up, with Wicked Witch of the East legs poking out from under, wearing Red Glitter Slippers. The Yellow Brick Road led you past Munchkin houses, through the Scarecrow's corn field, past the Tin Woodman's house, through the enchanted apple trees to the Emerald City (green glitter.) The stage for the band was backed with the Wizard's chamber, gold glitter, complete with fake flames and smoke and a lame, puny video of the Wizard's head in the middle. Then was the Witch's castle facade, which was huge and dark blue, and back to Munchkin Land. For some reason, Al didn't go for a tethered balloon thing for the end.
We worked a thirty five hour day finishing up all that stuff, loading it on the trucks and installing it for the last twenty three. We all went to breakfast in the morning, after twelve hours in the ballroom. We noticed people staring at us, and we deduced why: we were completely covered with glitter. Then we went back at it, finishing up a half hour before starting time. We went out in the hall to check out Auntie Em. What a disappointment! She was sitting in her white rocking chair in front of her grey and white house, wearing a blue dress and snapping green beans! Ruined the whole illusion - but...that's show biz!
We went home, washed off a half-ton of glitter and crashed for a few hours, then went back at 11:00pm to disassemble everything. The carpenters, who would begin installing Aztec the next morning, unscrewed and laid down all the pieces and went home, leaving the "goofies" to load the trucks. As it should be.
Aztec was anticlimactic after Oz. Different colors of glitter. The high point came when the President of Hardee's Himself came in while we were working and told us what a great job we were doing. It doesn't get any better than that!
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Ho Ho Ho And A Lesson In Physics
One of the gigs Image International had going was the decoration of Disney resorts and other public areas for Christmas. This project took a couple of weeks and was accomplished between 10:00pm and 6:30am during the latter days of November. Eddie and I never had to be on that crew - we were much more valuable in the shop during the day.
Then one year we also got the job of decorating Universal Studios, Florida. Eddie and I were essential to that project. For one thing, there was a plethora of new construction, including a 24' x 36' "ice" skating rink covered with a layer of Teflon sheets. We'll come back to that. The first monster project was the erection and decoration of the 45' tall tree. We had probably twenty guys, two snorkel lifts and two scissor lifts, miles if rope and a truckload of decorations. It took us about four hours to stand it up and secure it in an upright position. That done, while Otto and his decorators were hanging decorations, Eddie and I were taking the pile of extra branches and securing them to some of the sparse areas around the bottom. We drilled holes in the tree, jammed the branches into the holes, and knitted them in place with three inch screws. Then we arranged the huge plywood "gift" boxes around the base and screwed them together.
Next we helped Al to invent a Christmas tree lot in an alley of the New York City street scene part of the park. After that it was on to the skating rink. We assembled, legged up and leveled nine of our standard 8' x 12' deck frames and sheeted them with twenty seven sheets of 3/4" plywood. Then we assembled the railing around the perimeter and put down twelve sheets of 5' x 10' tongue-in-groove Teflon, tapped them together and put blocks around to keep them from separating. That done, Otto and the boys covered the edges with fake snow, while we went home for a few hours to shower and sleep a little before returning to the shop in the morning.
About an hour after sunrise there was an emergency call from Universal. The skating rink was all messed up! Somebody has to come fix it before the park opens! Eddie and I (of course) were sent out to assess the problem and deal with it. What we found was the Teflon, now bathed in sunshine, buckled at every seam. We removed the blocks around the edges to let the whole thing expand out to its new size, tapped it all back together again and reset the blocks. Problem solved - until sundown. Suddenly, there were two-inch gaps between the sheets of Teflon. We arrived with a crew of goofies and showed them how to tap it back together again for the evening "ice" shows.
From then on, for the duration of the season, there was a new detail that removed the blocks first thing in the morning, reset them after the expansion, pushed the Teflon back together after sundown and blocked it at the nightly size.
I don't know who ended up paying for all of that extra labor. What I do know is, we never set up that skating rink again.
Then one year we also got the job of decorating Universal Studios, Florida. Eddie and I were essential to that project. For one thing, there was a plethora of new construction, including a 24' x 36' "ice" skating rink covered with a layer of Teflon sheets. We'll come back to that. The first monster project was the erection and decoration of the 45' tall tree. We had probably twenty guys, two snorkel lifts and two scissor lifts, miles if rope and a truckload of decorations. It took us about four hours to stand it up and secure it in an upright position. That done, while Otto and his decorators were hanging decorations, Eddie and I were taking the pile of extra branches and securing them to some of the sparse areas around the bottom. We drilled holes in the tree, jammed the branches into the holes, and knitted them in place with three inch screws. Then we arranged the huge plywood "gift" boxes around the base and screwed them together.
Next we helped Al to invent a Christmas tree lot in an alley of the New York City street scene part of the park. After that it was on to the skating rink. We assembled, legged up and leveled nine of our standard 8' x 12' deck frames and sheeted them with twenty seven sheets of 3/4" plywood. Then we assembled the railing around the perimeter and put down twelve sheets of 5' x 10' tongue-in-groove Teflon, tapped them together and put blocks around to keep them from separating. That done, Otto and the boys covered the edges with fake snow, while we went home for a few hours to shower and sleep a little before returning to the shop in the morning.
About an hour after sunrise there was an emergency call from Universal. The skating rink was all messed up! Somebody has to come fix it before the park opens! Eddie and I (of course) were sent out to assess the problem and deal with it. What we found was the Teflon, now bathed in sunshine, buckled at every seam. We removed the blocks around the edges to let the whole thing expand out to its new size, tapped it all back together again and reset the blocks. Problem solved - until sundown. Suddenly, there were two-inch gaps between the sheets of Teflon. We arrived with a crew of goofies and showed them how to tap it back together again for the evening "ice" shows.
From then on, for the duration of the season, there was a new detail that removed the blocks first thing in the morning, reset them after the expansion, pushed the Teflon back together after sundown and blocked it at the nightly size.
I don't know who ended up paying for all of that extra labor. What I do know is, we never set up that skating rink again.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Transitions
Beginning in the spring of 1989, Image International went through a major upheaval. There was a recession on, and the term "downsizing" came into fashion.
For years, and I don't know how many, Image International had an audio / video crew at the Buena Vista Palace hotel on Disney property. The rest of us did so few shows there that we were not even really aware of the existence of this crew until the recession of '89 prompted the BVP to look into making their A/V more efficient. The equipment, owned by Image, was many years (I don't know how many) out of date in an industry where the latest and greatest is standard. The Palace told Al Caputo to either update the equipment or pull his crew out. I suppose Al looked into the cost of buying all new stuff and found it to be a hundreds of thousands proposition. The next thing we knew, the A/V crew at the shop had grown from two or three to eight or nine, and our stock of years-out-of-date equipment had grown similarly. It wasn't very many years later that the A/V department was discontinued completely.
Al Ohlson, one of my first alcoholic bosses, left the company in the early summer. I'll never know whether he decided to leave or if he was squeezed out. His lunches had become more and more "liquid" and his afternoons less and less productive. He wanted to go back home to California, and I suppose that he did. For about a month, during the dead slows of summer, I was the shop. Steve Beetlestone was still there, but he was more in the way than helpful. His wife was having a baby, and he was looking for a more stable career.
It was announced in June that Al had sold the company to a Dutch holding company. This company collected travel agencies, and Image International Travel was the most successful agency in the state. Al's deal was that he would sell them the travel division on the condition that they keep the Production Department operating with him in charge. For us, this was a boon because Noro poured some money into the shop. We got a new table saw, a wonderful new radial arm saw and a dust collection system installed over the next six months.
Early July brought a new shop boss, Eddie Channell. His first day was Beetlestone's last day, and it was entirely up to me to train Mr. Channell in the fine art of working for Caputo. In fact, Al was on vacation, fishing in the Amazon, during Eddie's first week. Ray Ramsey had sold a "Cruise Ship" party and described what needed to be built. I tried to tell Eddie about the special relationship between Al and Ray - Ray sold big expensive parties, and Al undermined him at every turn. "Don't build anything until you talk to Al," I said. He said "You can't run a business that way! We need to get started on this!" So we started on the onstage set, the stern of a cruise ship sixteen feet tall by twenty feet wide. The smokestack sat on scaffolding behind the curved wall of flats, and we were already working on the lifeboat hangers when Al returned. We could see his face get red and the vein in his temple bulge when he saw what had gone on in his absence. He told Eddie to come to his office. About a half hour later Eddie returned, his face drained of color. "You were right," he said, "Never build anything without talking to Al first." We took apart the set and cut two feet off the bottom of every flat. Ray sold sixteen feet, Al gave him fourteen. That was how things were at Image International.
A side note about the Cruise Ship party: most importantly, the headliner at the party was Bill Skyles formerly of Skyles and Henderson - if that means anything to anybody. I'd seen them on Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, and a dozen other variety shows and enjoyed their wacky sound-effects-comedy immensely, so it was a thrill to meet Bill Skyles, even at the point in his career where he was playing a corporate party at the Marriott Orlando World Center. The other item of note happened during the load-in. Al brought out all hands for this, including the current art guy, whose name I'll never recall. He was pushing a stack of flats into the room and stopped to ask me where they were supposed to go. "Put the blue ones over along that wall, and the grey ones in that corner," I said, pointing appropriately. The art guy, who was gone very soon after this, said, "Which ones are grey and which ones are blue?"
For years, and I don't know how many, Image International had an audio / video crew at the Buena Vista Palace hotel on Disney property. The rest of us did so few shows there that we were not even really aware of the existence of this crew until the recession of '89 prompted the BVP to look into making their A/V more efficient. The equipment, owned by Image, was many years (I don't know how many) out of date in an industry where the latest and greatest is standard. The Palace told Al Caputo to either update the equipment or pull his crew out. I suppose Al looked into the cost of buying all new stuff and found it to be a hundreds of thousands proposition. The next thing we knew, the A/V crew at the shop had grown from two or three to eight or nine, and our stock of years-out-of-date equipment had grown similarly. It wasn't very many years later that the A/V department was discontinued completely.
Al Ohlson, one of my first alcoholic bosses, left the company in the early summer. I'll never know whether he decided to leave or if he was squeezed out. His lunches had become more and more "liquid" and his afternoons less and less productive. He wanted to go back home to California, and I suppose that he did. For about a month, during the dead slows of summer, I was the shop. Steve Beetlestone was still there, but he was more in the way than helpful. His wife was having a baby, and he was looking for a more stable career.
It was announced in June that Al had sold the company to a Dutch holding company. This company collected travel agencies, and Image International Travel was the most successful agency in the state. Al's deal was that he would sell them the travel division on the condition that they keep the Production Department operating with him in charge. For us, this was a boon because Noro poured some money into the shop. We got a new table saw, a wonderful new radial arm saw and a dust collection system installed over the next six months.
Early July brought a new shop boss, Eddie Channell. His first day was Beetlestone's last day, and it was entirely up to me to train Mr. Channell in the fine art of working for Caputo. In fact, Al was on vacation, fishing in the Amazon, during Eddie's first week. Ray Ramsey had sold a "Cruise Ship" party and described what needed to be built. I tried to tell Eddie about the special relationship between Al and Ray - Ray sold big expensive parties, and Al undermined him at every turn. "Don't build anything until you talk to Al," I said. He said "You can't run a business that way! We need to get started on this!" So we started on the onstage set, the stern of a cruise ship sixteen feet tall by twenty feet wide. The smokestack sat on scaffolding behind the curved wall of flats, and we were already working on the lifeboat hangers when Al returned. We could see his face get red and the vein in his temple bulge when he saw what had gone on in his absence. He told Eddie to come to his office. About a half hour later Eddie returned, his face drained of color. "You were right," he said, "Never build anything without talking to Al first." We took apart the set and cut two feet off the bottom of every flat. Ray sold sixteen feet, Al gave him fourteen. That was how things were at Image International.
A side note about the Cruise Ship party: most importantly, the headliner at the party was Bill Skyles formerly of Skyles and Henderson - if that means anything to anybody. I'd seen them on Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, and a dozen other variety shows and enjoyed their wacky sound-effects-comedy immensely, so it was a thrill to meet Bill Skyles, even at the point in his career where he was playing a corporate party at the Marriott Orlando World Center. The other item of note happened during the load-in. Al brought out all hands for this, including the current art guy, whose name I'll never recall. He was pushing a stack of flats into the room and stopped to ask me where they were supposed to go. "Put the blue ones over along that wall, and the grey ones in that corner," I said, pointing appropriately. The art guy, who was gone very soon after this, said, "Which ones are grey and which ones are blue?"
Monday, April 5, 2010
Undersea World
The first big project of 1989 was "The Undersea World." This was a monstrously entertaining and huge production. In addition to giving us a shipload of stuff to build for it, Caputo had his purchasing department buy thousands of dollars worth of stuff. Who knew you could buy fake kelp that could be hung from the ceiling twenty feet up, terminating eight feet from the floor, out of reach of drunken partygoers (notorious for trying to destroy or steal our sets and props.) We built the Nautilus to hang from the ceiling, two diving bell bars, four reef screen surrounds for reef scenes to be shone on the rear projection screening, and a "decompression chamber" entranceway with a deep sea diving suit hanging inside the door, big valves and dials and pipes everywhere, and a couple of windows for looking out at the undersea world as you transitioned from the lobby to the ballroom. This show was really cool once the fluorescent lights were turned off and the theatrical lighting - complete with sparkling and wave motion - was turned on. There were strings of bubbles hanging with the kelp. There were dozens of sharks hanging here and there. In my spare time I carved and painted four moray eel heads (When an eel bites your heel and it's making you squeal...That's a moray) to poke into crannies of the reefs.
A bunch of the purchased sharks were unpainted. I called my dad in Vero Beach and asked him if he'd be interested in painting sharks, and also whether I should also propose that he carve some sea life for the show. The next time I saw Caputo, I asked him if my dad could make some stuff. "What is he, a fish carver?" he asked. "Sure," I said. But purchasing had already ordered a couple crateloads of fish, lobsters, crabs, starfish and desert tortoises (evidently sea turtles were unavailable.) But my dad did come over to Orlando for a few days to paint the blue sharks...blue.
There was also a tabletop killer whale with a flat area on its curved-up belly. When we all went out to the Stouffer Hotel to join Jeff Bates, the production manager, and his advance crew, we found that he, in his immense wisdom, had drilled holes in the tabletop whale and hung her from the ceiling with the sharks. This, of course, meant taking her down, Bondoing the holes and touching her up as best we could. Anything to make it more difficult. This did nothing to increase anybody's respect for Master Bates.
Very soon after this horrendously expensive party, one of the recessions hit, and the term "downsizing" gained household word status.It would be a year before there would be another great show to compare with this one.
A bunch of the purchased sharks were unpainted. I called my dad in Vero Beach and asked him if he'd be interested in painting sharks, and also whether I should also propose that he carve some sea life for the show. The next time I saw Caputo, I asked him if my dad could make some stuff. "What is he, a fish carver?" he asked. "Sure," I said. But purchasing had already ordered a couple crateloads of fish, lobsters, crabs, starfish and desert tortoises (evidently sea turtles were unavailable.) But my dad did come over to Orlando for a few days to paint the blue sharks...blue.
There was also a tabletop killer whale with a flat area on its curved-up belly. When we all went out to the Stouffer Hotel to join Jeff Bates, the production manager, and his advance crew, we found that he, in his immense wisdom, had drilled holes in the tabletop whale and hung her from the ceiling with the sharks. This, of course, meant taking her down, Bondoing the holes and touching her up as best we could. Anything to make it more difficult. This did nothing to increase anybody's respect for Master Bates.
Very soon after this horrendously expensive party, one of the recessions hit, and the term "downsizing" gained household word status.It would be a year before there would be another great show to compare with this one.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
The Honeymoon
The first year at Image International was truly amazing. Looking back on it, I can see what went on. Al Caputo and Ray Ramsay, the owners, saw me in action and realized that they suddenly had the talent in the shop to build some really cool stuff. Al Ohlson, I soon learned, was completely lost when the project went off square - He gave me all projects that required a mind for three dimensional geometry that didn't have standard thirty, sixty or forty five degrees coming back around to zero in a hurry. The Pirate entranceway was my first solo project, without a square corner anywhere, but five pieces came together square. He showed me the picture, and I built it. He tried to assure me that I didn't really need to figure all of those angles, that I could cut everything square and it would be okay. I scowled at him and built it right. Caputo liked it.
High Tech Aztec was all about angles. Al Ohlson gave me the project of the two square stepped pyramids that needed to come apart into four pieces along the corners, requiring the figuring of the forty five degree ends that would attach together into the square. I knew how to work it out, but Al argued with me every time I tried to lay it out. He didn't have a clue how to make it work, and didn't trust that I could figure it out. He tried to make the corners by modifying the square-on stringers, and I couldn't make him see that the step widths were going to stretch to nearly one and a half times when measured across the 45 degree angle. Finally one day Al Ohlson took a day off and I laid out and built one whole unit while he was gone, with angle stringers and square-on stringers traced for the second one. The bar units were wacky angles as well. Bob had that project, and after about three days of struggling with it, came to me and asked how to work it out. I pretty much built the first one for him, and he copied it for the second one.
Marriott Masters was a week-long event in May with Marriott people from all over the world coming together at one location - Orlando World Center in 1988 - to learn from each other and get to know each other. Image was the preferred vendor for meetings, parties and other MOWC functions, and there were breakfasts, lunches, dinners and evening parties every day for the whole week. We pulled out every set in the huge warehouse and spiffed up the ones we were using. We built six new cedar gazebo bars, two amoebic shaped 16' wide, 6" deep fiberglass ponds for swamp water, a big fifties diner, two Star Wars styled X-Wing fighters, and dozens of new pieces I can't even remember. My favorites, though, were the Cosmic Casino games. There was a crash landing game with rockets (darts) that crashed into planets (balloons) on a star-studded backdrop; a Solar Rings game with spacey-looking ring things to toss onto spacey-looking pegs; a Black Hole game with sections of 12" tubing and 11" balls to toss into them. I found that I really liked inventing and fabricating themed games.
One memorable occasion was the afternoon when we were busy in the shop, but not slammed, and the call came from the Marriott: the crew was falling behind! They were setting up a dinner, and they were short some table cloths and chair condoms. They needed somebody to drive a truck out with the stuff and help with the installation. Well, I had a driver's license. All fingers pointed at me. Damn! So, mumbling and grumbling a blue streak, I loaded the step van with table cloths and chair condoms and drove to the Marriott. I parked and carried the stuff in, pissed to the max. Damn it, Jim! I'm a carpenter not a decorator! But I slung tablecloths and stretched condoms for a half hour or so before the band came out to do a sound check. It was the fifth dimension! Marilyn McCoo, Billy Davis Junior and the others! One of my top 100 favorite sixties groups. They sang five songs for us, and we were digging it the most! Next thing I knew, I had forgotten to be pissed. I went home singing, and the next day bought their Greatest Hits cd.
In early august, we did a show at the Marriott that required a Disney-style castle. Caputo gave the artist at the time, Misty, the job of creating a multi-layered two-dimensional one out of Gatorfoam board. She did, and it was embarassing. It was very difficult to stand up, took a lot of time and materials to keep it standing up, it was small and dumpy. A few days later, Caputo came to the shop with a Corman And Associates catalog. He called Al Ohlson and me to the drawing table and showed us a picture of one of their Santa castles. "I want one of these," he said, "but I want it bigger, like twenty five feet tall, forty feet wide, and, I don't know, twelve feet deep - whatevah. Bigger, you get me? Jimmy, you can run with it, I know you'll do it right. Al, you give him whatever he needs. Got it? Good." he left us a copier copy of the page, and I was off and running with the coolest project ever. All of the towers were octagonal and stacked like Legos. The walls hooked together with French cleats. The two towers on the corners of the walls just hooked over the top and locked the whole business together. No screws were required for the installation. While I engineered and built all of this stuff, Al and Bob were creating the fancy trim pieces. As I finished sections and stood them up, they fitted trim pieces to the sections. Caputo came back frequently to make sure he liked it. I made two tower "hats" shorter than the rest just for variety. "That looks dumpy!" he said. "Make those two just like the others." That was his only criticism of everything I built. And when I was done building the castle, while Al and Bob were making flags, fitting trim pieces, fiberglassing the hats, painting and glittering, Caputo told me to build crates for the pieces. I learned the fine art of crate building when I made forty nine crates for my castle. All of this went on, of course, when there were no more pressing matters to attend to. I remember building an Italian restaurant set with castle parts and crates crowding me all around. Little by little, however, crates were finished, castle parts were laid to rest in them and they were stacked off to the side. December 10th (my mother's birthday) was the maiden voyage. The crates were loaded onto the flatbed trailer and it was hauled to (you guessed it) the Marriott World Center. This was when we learned that the ceiling at the location of the tallest tower was not quite twenty four feet tall. We had to remove a ceiling tile to stack it up. After the party, we took it apart, crated it up and loaded it back onto the trailer. It was hauled back to the shop and sat on the trailer uncovered for two weeks. It rained nearly every day those two weeks. I was physically ill when I looked out at my baby neglected out in the rain.
The honeymoon was officially over.
High Tech Aztec was all about angles. Al Ohlson gave me the project of the two square stepped pyramids that needed to come apart into four pieces along the corners, requiring the figuring of the forty five degree ends that would attach together into the square. I knew how to work it out, but Al argued with me every time I tried to lay it out. He didn't have a clue how to make it work, and didn't trust that I could figure it out. He tried to make the corners by modifying the square-on stringers, and I couldn't make him see that the step widths were going to stretch to nearly one and a half times when measured across the 45 degree angle. Finally one day Al Ohlson took a day off and I laid out and built one whole unit while he was gone, with angle stringers and square-on stringers traced for the second one. The bar units were wacky angles as well. Bob had that project, and after about three days of struggling with it, came to me and asked how to work it out. I pretty much built the first one for him, and he copied it for the second one.
Marriott Masters was a week-long event in May with Marriott people from all over the world coming together at one location - Orlando World Center in 1988 - to learn from each other and get to know each other. Image was the preferred vendor for meetings, parties and other MOWC functions, and there were breakfasts, lunches, dinners and evening parties every day for the whole week. We pulled out every set in the huge warehouse and spiffed up the ones we were using. We built six new cedar gazebo bars, two amoebic shaped 16' wide, 6" deep fiberglass ponds for swamp water, a big fifties diner, two Star Wars styled X-Wing fighters, and dozens of new pieces I can't even remember. My favorites, though, were the Cosmic Casino games. There was a crash landing game with rockets (darts) that crashed into planets (balloons) on a star-studded backdrop; a Solar Rings game with spacey-looking ring things to toss onto spacey-looking pegs; a Black Hole game with sections of 12" tubing and 11" balls to toss into them. I found that I really liked inventing and fabricating themed games.
One memorable occasion was the afternoon when we were busy in the shop, but not slammed, and the call came from the Marriott: the crew was falling behind! They were setting up a dinner, and they were short some table cloths and chair condoms. They needed somebody to drive a truck out with the stuff and help with the installation. Well, I had a driver's license. All fingers pointed at me. Damn! So, mumbling and grumbling a blue streak, I loaded the step van with table cloths and chair condoms and drove to the Marriott. I parked and carried the stuff in, pissed to the max. Damn it, Jim! I'm a carpenter not a decorator! But I slung tablecloths and stretched condoms for a half hour or so before the band came out to do a sound check. It was the fifth dimension! Marilyn McCoo, Billy Davis Junior and the others! One of my top 100 favorite sixties groups. They sang five songs for us, and we were digging it the most! Next thing I knew, I had forgotten to be pissed. I went home singing, and the next day bought their Greatest Hits cd.
In early august, we did a show at the Marriott that required a Disney-style castle. Caputo gave the artist at the time, Misty, the job of creating a multi-layered two-dimensional one out of Gatorfoam board. She did, and it was embarassing. It was very difficult to stand up, took a lot of time and materials to keep it standing up, it was small and dumpy. A few days later, Caputo came to the shop with a Corman And Associates catalog. He called Al Ohlson and me to the drawing table and showed us a picture of one of their Santa castles. "I want one of these," he said, "but I want it bigger, like twenty five feet tall, forty feet wide, and, I don't know, twelve feet deep - whatevah. Bigger, you get me? Jimmy, you can run with it, I know you'll do it right. Al, you give him whatever he needs. Got it? Good." he left us a copier copy of the page, and I was off and running with the coolest project ever. All of the towers were octagonal and stacked like Legos. The walls hooked together with French cleats. The two towers on the corners of the walls just hooked over the top and locked the whole business together. No screws were required for the installation. While I engineered and built all of this stuff, Al and Bob were creating the fancy trim pieces. As I finished sections and stood them up, they fitted trim pieces to the sections. Caputo came back frequently to make sure he liked it. I made two tower "hats" shorter than the rest just for variety. "That looks dumpy!" he said. "Make those two just like the others." That was his only criticism of everything I built. And when I was done building the castle, while Al and Bob were making flags, fitting trim pieces, fiberglassing the hats, painting and glittering, Caputo told me to build crates for the pieces. I learned the fine art of crate building when I made forty nine crates for my castle. All of this went on, of course, when there were no more pressing matters to attend to. I remember building an Italian restaurant set with castle parts and crates crowding me all around. Little by little, however, crates were finished, castle parts were laid to rest in them and they were stacked off to the side. December 10th (my mother's birthday) was the maiden voyage. The crates were loaded onto the flatbed trailer and it was hauled to (you guessed it) the Marriott World Center. This was when we learned that the ceiling at the location of the tallest tower was not quite twenty four feet tall. We had to remove a ceiling tile to stack it up. After the party, we took it apart, crated it up and loaded it back onto the trailer. It was hauled back to the shop and sat on the trailer uncovered for two weeks. It rained nearly every day those two weeks. I was physically ill when I looked out at my baby neglected out in the rain.
The honeymoon was officially over.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
"I Can Do That"
Nine months in a plant nursery was plenty. In January of 1988 I went to work one morning, was given a task to perform, and said, "No." I went home and started preparing for my new career. The big news at the time was that movies were coming to Orlando. I had said for many years that if the movie industry weren't so far away, I'd be in it. I got a head shot taken by a professional photographer, and put together a montage from the pool of pictures of my Vero Beach experience. I answered ads for actors and extras, I had screen tests and interviews, I attacked it from every angle. What I finally figured out was, if getting into the movies is your whole focus and you're willing to sacrifice everything for it - work for nothing, schmooze everybody, hang around and try to worm your way in - you'll likely get some paying gigs eventually. Plus - the movies were coming, they had not yet arrived. Meanwhile, I had to earn a living. I scoured the newspapers for possibilities. Finally I saw one that asked for Scenic Carpenter/ Stage Hands. "I can do that!" I said. I went into the south end of Orlando and filled out an application. Lo and behold, Image International called me and asked me to start the following Monday morning. Wow! After my Long Wharf and other stage hand experience, I went out and bought myself an adjustable wrench. I still have it.
Monday morning, all starry-eyed, I rode to South Orlando, my wrench in my pocket, ready to begin my new career in show biz. It was a much more typical day than I thought at first. The guy that actually hired me was out of town doing a show, and nobody else in the Production Department had any clue that he had hired anybody. After some digging around, they found evidence to support my claim. I filled out my W-4 and was introduced to Al Ohlson, shop foreman. He pointed me at a "steaming heap" of busted up crap and said,"That's what we're doing. All of this is going out tomorrow morning." What? Going out where? To the landfill? So, bit by bit we pulled out flats, sculptures, platforms, step units and other scenic elements, installed glue, screws, staples, Bondo and fresh paint, and by the end of the day most of it looked pretty darn good. The rest we fixed up Tuesday morning while "the goofies" loaded the truck. The last few pieces were still wet when they were loaded.
We all went to the Marriott Orlando World Center, arriving at about 11:30 am. I overheard that we were supposed to get the room at noon. Room? We're going to need a bunch of rooms to fit all of this! I parked my motorcycle in the motorcycle parking lot and joined the crowd at the big-ass loading dock. Somebody went inside to find out the scoop, leaving us to begin unloading the truck. We unloaded the whole thing, some of it on carts, some on dollies and most just piled on the dock. We learned that we couldn't have the room yet, so chairs were scrounged from the periphery of the loading dock. Lesson one: hurry up and wait.
I didn't know who anybody was, other than Al Ohlson and Bob, the other shop guy. I was sitting on a step unit by a guy I'd seen loading the truck - a goofy. "If you need to go to the bathroom or anything, be sure to tell a supervisor," he said. "Okay," I said, "who is a supervisor?" He scanned the crowd. "Well, let's see. Al is a supervisor, and Bob, and Lonnie, and Otto, and Bernie, and Larry, and George..." "Maybe it would be easier to tell me who is NOT a supervisor." He scanned the crowd. "Well, let's see. There's you....and me."
Hours passed. The supervisors were in constant radio communication with headquarters, and with the Marriotters. Nobody seemed to know when we were going to get the room, but it could be just any minute. Eventually we were allowed to take our stuff inside, but we still didn't have the room. This was the beginning of my education in the fine art of hotel ballroom events. The humongous ballrooms could be humongous, or they could be divided into numerous much smaller spaces. The section we were waiting for was part of a larger space, with "airwalls" dividing it from other sections. In between this one and another occupied space was a "dead space" about twelve feet wide. We were given the go-ahead to (quietly) roll our carts and dollies along the back halls and into the dead space. Then we were supposed to sit there quietly until the function was over. After about ten minutes we were asked to wait outside, because Otto just couldn't shut the f*** up.
The supervisory board was really getting antsy now. The show was scheduled to be installed by 7:30, and it was after 4:00. I had already figured out that the 7:30 to 4:00 workday was going to be a wee bit longer than that. It was past 4:30 when the hotel events crew started opening the airwall and clearing the room. We all pitched in, stacking chairs into stacks of ten, folding the legs of the "rounds" and rolling them over to the table carts, and cleaning the areas where set parts were going. Then Al handed me a cordless drill with a screw tip, and we began assembling sets. I found out that this was essentially a corporate theme party, and the theme was "Welcome To Florida." We had a swamp area loaded with plants, a beach scene with a bath house and a lifeguard stand, a space shuttle standing on end, a southern mansion, a shack across the back of the stage, and a gazebo bar. Lesson two: always have a bar. Theme parties are a dish best served with a liberal portion of booze. We finished assembling everything and wrapping the plant pots while the lighting guys ran cords, plugged in and gelled the lights. The party was scheduled to begin at 8:00. At 7:45 we were backing out of the room, plugging in twinkle lights in the ficus trees and arranging plants to disguise our exit point. The overhead fluorescent lights were switched off, and the sets were bathed in theatrical lighting. I had to admit, it was breathtaking. Just add booze and it was magical.
Carmen was a little worried about me when I didn't get home until almost 9:00. I described my day, and she was incredulous. She was sure that a strong organizer could straighten out this craziness. It wasn't too many months later that she stopped asking me how late I was working on any particular day. "Until they say I can go" was all I could tell her. After about two years, I was able to take all of the information available and make a pretty good guess at how long a day would last. No matter how much information was available, however, days like the one just finished were entirely derailed by uncontrollable factors. Best laid plans meant nothing. As I continued to deal with this lifestyle, however, I came to understand that I had the perfect temperament for it. Flexibility has long been my strong suit. It's the only suit that fits show biz.
Monday morning, all starry-eyed, I rode to South Orlando, my wrench in my pocket, ready to begin my new career in show biz. It was a much more typical day than I thought at first. The guy that actually hired me was out of town doing a show, and nobody else in the Production Department had any clue that he had hired anybody. After some digging around, they found evidence to support my claim. I filled out my W-4 and was introduced to Al Ohlson, shop foreman. He pointed me at a "steaming heap" of busted up crap and said,"That's what we're doing. All of this is going out tomorrow morning." What? Going out where? To the landfill? So, bit by bit we pulled out flats, sculptures, platforms, step units and other scenic elements, installed glue, screws, staples, Bondo and fresh paint, and by the end of the day most of it looked pretty darn good. The rest we fixed up Tuesday morning while "the goofies" loaded the truck. The last few pieces were still wet when they were loaded.
We all went to the Marriott Orlando World Center, arriving at about 11:30 am. I overheard that we were supposed to get the room at noon. Room? We're going to need a bunch of rooms to fit all of this! I parked my motorcycle in the motorcycle parking lot and joined the crowd at the big-ass loading dock. Somebody went inside to find out the scoop, leaving us to begin unloading the truck. We unloaded the whole thing, some of it on carts, some on dollies and most just piled on the dock. We learned that we couldn't have the room yet, so chairs were scrounged from the periphery of the loading dock. Lesson one: hurry up and wait.
I didn't know who anybody was, other than Al Ohlson and Bob, the other shop guy. I was sitting on a step unit by a guy I'd seen loading the truck - a goofy. "If you need to go to the bathroom or anything, be sure to tell a supervisor," he said. "Okay," I said, "who is a supervisor?" He scanned the crowd. "Well, let's see. Al is a supervisor, and Bob, and Lonnie, and Otto, and Bernie, and Larry, and George..." "Maybe it would be easier to tell me who is NOT a supervisor." He scanned the crowd. "Well, let's see. There's you....and me."
Hours passed. The supervisors were in constant radio communication with headquarters, and with the Marriotters. Nobody seemed to know when we were going to get the room, but it could be just any minute. Eventually we were allowed to take our stuff inside, but we still didn't have the room. This was the beginning of my education in the fine art of hotel ballroom events. The humongous ballrooms could be humongous, or they could be divided into numerous much smaller spaces. The section we were waiting for was part of a larger space, with "airwalls" dividing it from other sections. In between this one and another occupied space was a "dead space" about twelve feet wide. We were given the go-ahead to (quietly) roll our carts and dollies along the back halls and into the dead space. Then we were supposed to sit there quietly until the function was over. After about ten minutes we were asked to wait outside, because Otto just couldn't shut the f*** up.
The supervisory board was really getting antsy now. The show was scheduled to be installed by 7:30, and it was after 4:00. I had already figured out that the 7:30 to 4:00 workday was going to be a wee bit longer than that. It was past 4:30 when the hotel events crew started opening the airwall and clearing the room. We all pitched in, stacking chairs into stacks of ten, folding the legs of the "rounds" and rolling them over to the table carts, and cleaning the areas where set parts were going. Then Al handed me a cordless drill with a screw tip, and we began assembling sets. I found out that this was essentially a corporate theme party, and the theme was "Welcome To Florida." We had a swamp area loaded with plants, a beach scene with a bath house and a lifeguard stand, a space shuttle standing on end, a southern mansion, a shack across the back of the stage, and a gazebo bar. Lesson two: always have a bar. Theme parties are a dish best served with a liberal portion of booze. We finished assembling everything and wrapping the plant pots while the lighting guys ran cords, plugged in and gelled the lights. The party was scheduled to begin at 8:00. At 7:45 we were backing out of the room, plugging in twinkle lights in the ficus trees and arranging plants to disguise our exit point. The overhead fluorescent lights were switched off, and the sets were bathed in theatrical lighting. I had to admit, it was breathtaking. Just add booze and it was magical.
Carmen was a little worried about me when I didn't get home until almost 9:00. I described my day, and she was incredulous. She was sure that a strong organizer could straighten out this craziness. It wasn't too many months later that she stopped asking me how late I was working on any particular day. "Until they say I can go" was all I could tell her. After about two years, I was able to take all of the information available and make a pretty good guess at how long a day would last. No matter how much information was available, however, days like the one just finished were entirely derailed by uncontrollable factors. Best laid plans meant nothing. As I continued to deal with this lifestyle, however, I came to understand that I had the perfect temperament for it. Flexibility has long been my strong suit. It's the only suit that fits show biz.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Parting Shots in Vero Beach
The last post ended in such a good place, I couldn't bring myself to finish out the first season in the new place. There's not much to tell, really. The fifth and last show was Charley's Aunt. Way back during early rehearsals for Damn Yankees, the director of Charley's Aunt asked me if I'd be willing to do the set. I said, you guessed it, "Sure." So by the time Damn Yankees had ended, I had plans to go out of town on vacation. I went, and somehow the set got designed and built without me. I felt just like Betty Abbott, but I didn't win any awards.
The summer of '86 was a whirlwind of romance. We camped on an island in the Indian River, she got a horrendous sunburn. We got married in September in the Vero Beach Theatre Guild green room with a throng of our theatrical friends. Carmen's mom came from New Orleans. My mom and dad and their next door neighbor were there. It was officiated by Patti, my first stage manager and our Notary friend. Our honeymoon was at the Disney campgrounds and EPCOT Center.
The next theatrical thing I did was a "cattle call" audition for the upcoming professional shows at Riverside. I did the first soliloquy of Edmond from Firesign Theater's Not Insane album, and sang Oh What A Beautiful Morning. I wasn't nervous, because I wasn't expecting anything. I must have done okay, because many months later, I was called to appear in Hello Dolly. I was paid two hundred bucks for the show - six weeks of rehearsals and three weeks of performances - about twenty cents an hour. I was an ensemble member, a waiter and the judge, all old guys. It was great fun. Carmen did props.
My dad had a deja vu moment in the fall of '86. I'm sure it reminded him of when his father tried to pass the farm to him back in the nineteen thirties, and he didn't want it. My dad tried to pass the art business on to me. I thought about it - my mom and dad added together were making minimum wage, so I would surely be taking a pay cut for a more nerve-racking lifestyle. The bottom line was that I didn't want to run a business. Carmen and I decided to move to the Orlando area for more and better opportunities as soon as the 1987 Dodger programs were finished. And we still had one more show to do for the Theatre Guild.
Mike the sound guy had some reason not to do sound for Once More With Feeling. I was asked, and I said, you guessed it, "Sure." Carmen was asked to be stage manager. I don't know what she said, but she was stage manager. I didn't enjoy this show very much. The director was unpleasant, the tape deck was cantankerous, the music was monotonous, the play was just okay, and we were in "short timer" mode.
In January and February we scouted out rentals in St. Cloud, thirty miles south of Orlando, and Carmen got a job lined up at a title company in St. Cloud. We moved in March, right after the Vero Beach Dodgers minor league program went to press. On April first, I got a job at a plant nursery, and our new life was in motion.
The summer of '86 was a whirlwind of romance. We camped on an island in the Indian River, she got a horrendous sunburn. We got married in September in the Vero Beach Theatre Guild green room with a throng of our theatrical friends. Carmen's mom came from New Orleans. My mom and dad and their next door neighbor were there. It was officiated by Patti, my first stage manager and our Notary friend. Our honeymoon was at the Disney campgrounds and EPCOT Center.
The next theatrical thing I did was a "cattle call" audition for the upcoming professional shows at Riverside. I did the first soliloquy of Edmond from Firesign Theater's Not Insane album, and sang Oh What A Beautiful Morning. I wasn't nervous, because I wasn't expecting anything. I must have done okay, because many months later, I was called to appear in Hello Dolly. I was paid two hundred bucks for the show - six weeks of rehearsals and three weeks of performances - about twenty cents an hour. I was an ensemble member, a waiter and the judge, all old guys. It was great fun. Carmen did props.
My dad had a deja vu moment in the fall of '86. I'm sure it reminded him of when his father tried to pass the farm to him back in the nineteen thirties, and he didn't want it. My dad tried to pass the art business on to me. I thought about it - my mom and dad added together were making minimum wage, so I would surely be taking a pay cut for a more nerve-racking lifestyle. The bottom line was that I didn't want to run a business. Carmen and I decided to move to the Orlando area for more and better opportunities as soon as the 1987 Dodger programs were finished. And we still had one more show to do for the Theatre Guild.
Mike the sound guy had some reason not to do sound for Once More With Feeling. I was asked, and I said, you guessed it, "Sure." Carmen was asked to be stage manager. I don't know what she said, but she was stage manager. I didn't enjoy this show very much. The director was unpleasant, the tape deck was cantankerous, the music was monotonous, the play was just okay, and we were in "short timer" mode.
In January and February we scouted out rentals in St. Cloud, thirty miles south of Orlando, and Carmen got a job lined up at a title company in St. Cloud. We moved in March, right after the Vero Beach Dodgers minor league program went to press. On April first, I got a job at a plant nursery, and our new life was in motion.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
New Digs
I was sitting there at my desk at Emerson Art Service minding my own business (and the client's) when "The Amazin'" Pat Hazen called. The Guild, she told me, was prepared to buy the building outgrown by the Central Assembly of God church, which had moved to an enormous piece of property west of town. But the Guild needed a zoning variance approved by the City Council to open it back up as a theatre, which (for some ridiculous reason) has different rules from a church. We needed a presence at the Council meeting to help convince them to go ahead and approve it. I went. There were at least thirty of us there. They passed it. The Guild now had its own home again, for the first time since they helped build and outfit Riverside so many years ago. The best part: it was about ten blocks from my apartment. I could walk!
There were many things to do to turn this building into a viable theatre, many of which would wait years for the capital to proceed. Short term, the house needed some acoustical help as well as a light booth and sound booth, the stage needed some modifications, the whole interior needed a paint job, and in the meantime there were shows going on in remote locations that needed sets built and rehearsals rehearsed. The whole Guild family sprang into action.
I was there one night, working on the doorway to the Green Room, when local cartoonist Dick Turner came over to me. He had a drawing in his hand, and he looked unhappy. "You're Gil Emerson's boy, aren't you?" he asked. I admitted I was. Still am. He explained that the Guild had asked him to do a backdrop painting for the Guild On The Go production of The Music Man. He'd drawn this 8 1/2" x 11" rendering of it, but his macular degeneration was so bad now that he couldn't even see the whole piece of paper at once, much less an 8' x 12' wall. Would it be possible for me to take the project off his hands? You all remember several postings ago, when I often said "Sure." Well, I said it again. Dick went away happy, and I called my dad. Gilbert H. Emerson had often said he would like to do some artsy stuff at the theatre, but he didn't want to step on any toes or make waves or whatever his excuses were. Also, he had been hinky about driving that four miles to the other side of the river. W - e - l - l - none of his excuses would excuse him this time!
The Music Man has long been my dad's favorite musical. So when he was spending his evenings laying out, drawing and painting a backdrop while performers rehearsed songs from The Music Man in the same room, he was hooked. After we finished that, he worked on the building rehab, and then the production people asked him to design and build the set for John Loves Mary, the first show of the season. He couldn't say no - he was hooked. I'm sure he said "Sure!"
I auditioned for John Loves Mary, and landed a small but pivotal role, Lieutenant Victor O'Leary, former Army officer now ushering at a movie theater. I entered as a straight arrow in Army uniform, drank a wee bit of Mary's dad's scotch, and left the scene plastered. Having such a short time on stage, I knew the scene really well, so when (nearly every night) the rest of the cast got off track, I was able to bring them back to the script seamlessly. It was fun!
I had very little to do with the next two shows - Ten Little Indians and Last Of The Red Hot Lovers. I wrote the cast and crew biographies, and I came to see them on opening night. LORHL was interesting. During the big seduction scene, the main character and his lady friend suddenly stopped talking and stared at each other for way too many seconds. Shirley finally said,"May I use your bathroom?" Al gratefully acquiesced. She left the stage, and Al squirmed a little. Finally she returned with a fresh idea of things to talk about.
Cast and crew bios were kind of fun to write. I handed out information forms to my subjects and told them, "If I don't get this back by Friday, I'll just make something up." There was one that intrigued me from stage manager Carmen Braden. It said she enjoyed reading and riding her bicycle. I added that she didn't do both at the same time. I hadn't ever actually met her yet, but It was in the cards. After opening night of Red Hot Lovers I walked to Denny's for a Grand Slam Breakfast. After I'd been there awhile reading my Vero Beach Press-Journal, a slightly tipsy Ms. Braden came up to me and asked if I was willing to part with the classified ads. "Sure," I said.
Then came the Big One. Damn Yankees was the musical for the season. There were seventeen scenes to be performed on that little stage with no backstage, no wing space, no fly capability, not even any way for the thirty actors to come and go without filing out through the audience.
Set designer Betty Abbott solved one problem. "Make trilons," she said. What she meant were things called Periaktoi, three-sided columns on wheels that can be arranged into multiple configurations for multiple set possibilities. She then went on vacation, leaving my dad to work out exactly what scenes needed to be represented, how many "trilon" sides were needed for each scene and what to paint on them, and how many of what size trilons needed to be built. He built them, laid out the scenes and got them painted. Needless to say, he was a tiny bit cheesed off when the Best Set award went to...Betty Abbott!
I, of course, auditioned, and of course was chosen - as I indicated before, if a show needs a lot of men, pretty much any man that shows up gets drafted. In fact, I had two parts: Joe Boyd at the beginning and end, and Brian, one of the baseball team, in between. This meant that I was there just about every night of rehearsals. And of course I helped with the painting of the Trilons. Also helping was the woman soon to be known as "The Imperious Leader Of The Trilon Forces," the one, the only Carmen Braden. She was my dad's buddy before I actually met her! Soon I became the only actor in the show empowered by The Imperious Leader to move Trilons.
The next solution was pretty drastic. They busted a hole and installed a door through the concrete block wall on the stage left side, built a stairway down to the ground and set up a big tent to be used as a green room and dressing room. Wow.
Another bit of drama in the comedy was that, on opening night, Kevin, who played Applegate, hurt his back after the show. He was bedridden on the second night. Mike, who played Benny Van Buren, had really wanted to play Applegate, so he did for one night. I had wanted to play Van Buren, so I did for one night. Kevin came back in a back brace for the rest of the run.
None of us won real Genie awards for this landmark show, but I won The Imperious Leader of the Trilon Forces award.
There were many things to do to turn this building into a viable theatre, many of which would wait years for the capital to proceed. Short term, the house needed some acoustical help as well as a light booth and sound booth, the stage needed some modifications, the whole interior needed a paint job, and in the meantime there were shows going on in remote locations that needed sets built and rehearsals rehearsed. The whole Guild family sprang into action.
I was there one night, working on the doorway to the Green Room, when local cartoonist Dick Turner came over to me. He had a drawing in his hand, and he looked unhappy. "You're Gil Emerson's boy, aren't you?" he asked. I admitted I was. Still am. He explained that the Guild had asked him to do a backdrop painting for the Guild On The Go production of The Music Man. He'd drawn this 8 1/2" x 11" rendering of it, but his macular degeneration was so bad now that he couldn't even see the whole piece of paper at once, much less an 8' x 12' wall. Would it be possible for me to take the project off his hands? You all remember several postings ago, when I often said "Sure." Well, I said it again. Dick went away happy, and I called my dad. Gilbert H. Emerson had often said he would like to do some artsy stuff at the theatre, but he didn't want to step on any toes or make waves or whatever his excuses were. Also, he had been hinky about driving that four miles to the other side of the river. W - e - l - l - none of his excuses would excuse him this time!
The Music Man has long been my dad's favorite musical. So when he was spending his evenings laying out, drawing and painting a backdrop while performers rehearsed songs from The Music Man in the same room, he was hooked. After we finished that, he worked on the building rehab, and then the production people asked him to design and build the set for John Loves Mary, the first show of the season. He couldn't say no - he was hooked. I'm sure he said "Sure!"
I auditioned for John Loves Mary, and landed a small but pivotal role, Lieutenant Victor O'Leary, former Army officer now ushering at a movie theater. I entered as a straight arrow in Army uniform, drank a wee bit of Mary's dad's scotch, and left the scene plastered. Having such a short time on stage, I knew the scene really well, so when (nearly every night) the rest of the cast got off track, I was able to bring them back to the script seamlessly. It was fun!
I had very little to do with the next two shows - Ten Little Indians and Last Of The Red Hot Lovers. I wrote the cast and crew biographies, and I came to see them on opening night. LORHL was interesting. During the big seduction scene, the main character and his lady friend suddenly stopped talking and stared at each other for way too many seconds. Shirley finally said,"May I use your bathroom?" Al gratefully acquiesced. She left the stage, and Al squirmed a little. Finally she returned with a fresh idea of things to talk about.
Cast and crew bios were kind of fun to write. I handed out information forms to my subjects and told them, "If I don't get this back by Friday, I'll just make something up." There was one that intrigued me from stage manager Carmen Braden. It said she enjoyed reading and riding her bicycle. I added that she didn't do both at the same time. I hadn't ever actually met her yet, but It was in the cards. After opening night of Red Hot Lovers I walked to Denny's for a Grand Slam Breakfast. After I'd been there awhile reading my Vero Beach Press-Journal, a slightly tipsy Ms. Braden came up to me and asked if I was willing to part with the classified ads. "Sure," I said.
Then came the Big One. Damn Yankees was the musical for the season. There were seventeen scenes to be performed on that little stage with no backstage, no wing space, no fly capability, not even any way for the thirty actors to come and go without filing out through the audience.
Set designer Betty Abbott solved one problem. "Make trilons," she said. What she meant were things called Periaktoi, three-sided columns on wheels that can be arranged into multiple configurations for multiple set possibilities. She then went on vacation, leaving my dad to work out exactly what scenes needed to be represented, how many "trilon" sides were needed for each scene and what to paint on them, and how many of what size trilons needed to be built. He built them, laid out the scenes and got them painted. Needless to say, he was a tiny bit cheesed off when the Best Set award went to...Betty Abbott!
I, of course, auditioned, and of course was chosen - as I indicated before, if a show needs a lot of men, pretty much any man that shows up gets drafted. In fact, I had two parts: Joe Boyd at the beginning and end, and Brian, one of the baseball team, in between. This meant that I was there just about every night of rehearsals. And of course I helped with the painting of the Trilons. Also helping was the woman soon to be known as "The Imperious Leader Of The Trilon Forces," the one, the only Carmen Braden. She was my dad's buddy before I actually met her! Soon I became the only actor in the show empowered by The Imperious Leader to move Trilons.
The next solution was pretty drastic. They busted a hole and installed a door through the concrete block wall on the stage left side, built a stairway down to the ground and set up a big tent to be used as a green room and dressing room. Wow.
Another bit of drama in the comedy was that, on opening night, Kevin, who played Applegate, hurt his back after the show. He was bedridden on the second night. Mike, who played Benny Van Buren, had really wanted to play Applegate, so he did for one night. I had wanted to play Van Buren, so I did for one night. Kevin came back in a back brace for the rest of the run.
None of us won real Genie awards for this landmark show, but I won The Imperious Leader of the Trilon Forces award.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
In And Out And In And Out
From spring 1983 we leap to August of 1984. I'm guessing (because I don't remember) that there was a notice in the paper about auditions for A Midsummer Night's Dream to be performed as part of a Renaissance Theatrefest at Riverside - not a Vero Beach Theatre Guild production. I was intrigued. I'd never done any Shakespeare. I pulled out my Complete Works of Shakespeare and read the play. I was flabberghasted to find that The Bard had written me into a play three hundred years before I was born. Bottom The Weaver is an ass - like me. I HAD to audition. There was a lot of competition, but I could feel the role take me with it. I was called back for the next round, and it turned out the director saw Bottom in me as clearly as I did. I was in.
The Mechanicals, the rough tradesmen planning and rehearsing a play to perform for the king and his court, were all excellent, and Bottom was their shining star. We did Stooge moves, I did San Diego Chicken moves (I saw him three times at Vero Beach Dodger games. I have his autographed pictures!) and we rocked the audience.
Once again, I wasn't willing to JUST be in the show. When the director mentioned that we needed three heavy duty rustic stools for the mechanicals scenes, I brought them in from home. He mentioned that he was having trouble finding a donkey head for me. I asked if I could make one. "Do you think you can?" he asked. Fay assured him that I could. I did.
As a promotion for the upcoming Festival, much of the cast of the show was in the Labor Day parade on Ocean Drive in Vero. The carpenter had built a big cart that carried props and costume parts, as well as some cast members, in the parade. It was fun. I was an ass.
The show was performed on an outdoor stage. It was planned for Saturday, but it rained Saturday. We did it Sunday, and it was wondergful. Our only regret was that, after all that work, we only got to do it once. But at least we did it once.
Another act at the faire was "The Lords And Ladies," a local troupe of madrigal singers. Months later, they would be throwing a holiday Madrigal Dinner, and their jester had retired from the troupe. After seeing me in action as Bottom, they asked me to jest for them in December. I did, and it was fun. They also had a gig at the Teacher Of The Year Banquet, and I jested there as well but that was over a year later.
Having spent all that time around theatre again, I sort of got swept into auditions for the Vero Beach Theatre Guild production of The Dining Room in January of '85. It was an interesting show. The main character was the dining room. The six actors came and went through the room through the years as different characters in different situations. I was awarded a "Best Character Actor Genie Award for the '84-'85 season for that show.
Next thing I knew, I was being asked to be in a Showcase Operetta Company production of HMS Pinnafore. Many SOC people were Madrigal Singers as well, and two of them had been in The Dining Room with me. They thought I'd make a good Dick Deadeye. In addition, they needed a lot of help with the set. I was happy to oblige on both counts. The cool thing was that several Operetta people were on the faculty at the Junior High School, so the set was built and rehearsals were held there, about six blocks from my apartment. I walked.
As a smoker and infrequent singer, I was definitely at a disadvantage among these long-time operetta people, but I baffled them with my flair for the dramatic. Dick Deadeye has a verse included in the Finale To Act One, with dozens of people singing complementary chorus parts all over me. I needed a spectacular opening to my little section to focus attention on me among these dozens of performers. "Hmmm," I said, "I could swing in on a rope and land downstage center to begin. That would do it." I got permission from Bill the director and from the Riversiders to climb to the grid, sixty feet above the stage, and attach a sixty-foot rope. It was great. I had a chair off stage left, and a couple bars before my part, swung in and landed with a bang. The only time it didn't work well was the night Pete was meandering downstage just as I took off. The collision was pretty spectacular in its own right, but it didn't really work well as a theatrical element.
Widespread dissatisfaction with Riverside Theatre's new "professional attitude" was surfacing regularly now. Showcase needed the orchestra pit for the show, and it was covered by a stage-extension. Riverside added on a fee of hundreds of dollars to uncover the pit. In addition, they were mandating artistic controls over the Guild. There was much grumbling going on. The summer of '85 was the moment of transition - next post!
The Mechanicals, the rough tradesmen planning and rehearsing a play to perform for the king and his court, were all excellent, and Bottom was their shining star. We did Stooge moves, I did San Diego Chicken moves (I saw him three times at Vero Beach Dodger games. I have his autographed pictures!) and we rocked the audience.
Once again, I wasn't willing to JUST be in the show. When the director mentioned that we needed three heavy duty rustic stools for the mechanicals scenes, I brought them in from home. He mentioned that he was having trouble finding a donkey head for me. I asked if I could make one. "Do you think you can?" he asked. Fay assured him that I could. I did.
As a promotion for the upcoming Festival, much of the cast of the show was in the Labor Day parade on Ocean Drive in Vero. The carpenter had built a big cart that carried props and costume parts, as well as some cast members, in the parade. It was fun. I was an ass.
The show was performed on an outdoor stage. It was planned for Saturday, but it rained Saturday. We did it Sunday, and it was wondergful. Our only regret was that, after all that work, we only got to do it once. But at least we did it once.
Another act at the faire was "The Lords And Ladies," a local troupe of madrigal singers. Months later, they would be throwing a holiday Madrigal Dinner, and their jester had retired from the troupe. After seeing me in action as Bottom, they asked me to jest for them in December. I did, and it was fun. They also had a gig at the Teacher Of The Year Banquet, and I jested there as well but that was over a year later.
Having spent all that time around theatre again, I sort of got swept into auditions for the Vero Beach Theatre Guild production of The Dining Room in January of '85. It was an interesting show. The main character was the dining room. The six actors came and went through the room through the years as different characters in different situations. I was awarded a "Best Character Actor Genie Award for the '84-'85 season for that show.
Next thing I knew, I was being asked to be in a Showcase Operetta Company production of HMS Pinnafore. Many SOC people were Madrigal Singers as well, and two of them had been in The Dining Room with me. They thought I'd make a good Dick Deadeye. In addition, they needed a lot of help with the set. I was happy to oblige on both counts. The cool thing was that several Operetta people were on the faculty at the Junior High School, so the set was built and rehearsals were held there, about six blocks from my apartment. I walked.
As a smoker and infrequent singer, I was definitely at a disadvantage among these long-time operetta people, but I baffled them with my flair for the dramatic. Dick Deadeye has a verse included in the Finale To Act One, with dozens of people singing complementary chorus parts all over me. I needed a spectacular opening to my little section to focus attention on me among these dozens of performers. "Hmmm," I said, "I could swing in on a rope and land downstage center to begin. That would do it." I got permission from Bill the director and from the Riversiders to climb to the grid, sixty feet above the stage, and attach a sixty-foot rope. It was great. I had a chair off stage left, and a couple bars before my part, swung in and landed with a bang. The only time it didn't work well was the night Pete was meandering downstage just as I took off. The collision was pretty spectacular in its own right, but it didn't really work well as a theatrical element.
Widespread dissatisfaction with Riverside Theatre's new "professional attitude" was surfacing regularly now. Showcase needed the orchestra pit for the show, and it was covered by a stage-extension. Riverside added on a fee of hundreds of dollars to uncover the pit. In addition, they were mandating artistic controls over the Guild. There was much grumbling going on. The summer of '85 was the moment of transition - next post!
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