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!

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.

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!

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.

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?"

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.

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.