EPIC - More Shananigans

The Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular. . . or as we call it EPIC, has a reputation for being a wild and unruly place. Just because it was the place where second hand furniture would go to die and there was always clothes hangers flying through the air didn't mean they don't follow the rules. They just tend to bend them every chance they get. Around 2003 or 2004, two tumblers we'll call 'P' and 'S', were working at Fantasmic! one night and decided to come back to the Epic trailer between shows. During the Epic show, they crawled into an upper window of the scene two set and pretended to be eating dinner. The crew was dieing laughing. To make it worse, Tumbler 'P' knelt down and pretended to propose to the other tumbler. After the fact, the Stage Manger said she had never laughed so hard in her life, then she threatened them with thier life if they ever did that again.

A few of the cast were moving the tumbling mats one day and they found a HUGE black snake. Of course they had to catch it. It was like watching a bunch of boys in a school yard as they brought it in the breakroom trailer. One of the girls screamed and ran. The boys followed her the dressing room with the snake. I'm not sure, but I think she promised to do permanent bodily harm to them if they didn't get the "%$&" snake out of the green room. Believe me, this particular Marion Stunt double would have kicked the tumbler's @$$ too.

At various times through out the years we have had several husband / wife cast members. I often wondered how many times personal marital desputes were settled on stage. The girls could beat up her husbands and say "Ooops, huney, sorry, didn't mean to hit you that hard." When the first Marion got pregnant, it seemed so strange to have 'maternity clothes' in a predominately male cast show. Then the next married couple got pregenant, and the maternity clothes moved on down the clothes line. After a few years of revolving pregancies, I decided there must have been 'something in the water' and stayed away from the water cooler. The boys in the cast quickly learned to stay away from any 'milk' in small bottles that was in the refridgerator too.

The first lunch table in the room was the designated 'Public Access" zone. If you accidently left your lunch there, it was eaten by some one. One year on July 4th, I wanted to bring something colorful in for every one, so i mixed Skittles and M&M's since they looked similar. Taste however. . .not so much. The boy's would grab a handfull, thinking it was all chocolate. SURPRISE! (Note to self: lemon and chocolate didn't really go well together.) One of the guys brought a bunch of crawfish back from his family's place in Louisana one year and made crawfish etufee (i know i spelled it wrong), the green room was turned into a feeding frenzi. A large crock pot filled to the ring was empty om mear minutes. During convention season, they do a Cairo themed dinner show at the stage. Afterwards, the catering people would let us have the left overs instead of throwing it out. We'd have a full rack of lamb and couscous for days.

The great thing about being involved with a stage show, is when you need help, your friends are there by your side. One of the tumbler's blew his knee out doing a mini- tramp stunt and had to have surgery to re-attach everything. He said he got up one morning when he heard a mower running in his front yard. With out asking and with out being asked, one of his fellow cast members was outside mowing his yard.

In the same token, when some thing good happened, everyone joined in the fun. One of the German giants (tall guys that beat up Indy), was in the movie Speed Two. The Epic cast rented a limo for him so he could be chauffered to the theater. We filled up at least three rows in the theater. The cast member that was in the film roamed up and down the isle taking to everyone. THe rest of the movie goers wandered what was going on. When our friend's scene came up, we all stood and cheered. After the film, our friend had a couple dozen new fans.

It doesn't take long to learn to not dare these guys to do anything, cause they'll take your dare. One of the Indy's came into wardrobe, one day, wearing only a towel. We told him we were washing towels and needed that one too. He dropped that one and walked off bare behinded. My first thought was, " Hey that worked, let's try that again." Actually, it was more like. "Oh YEAH, I like my job." Then it was, "Hey that worked, let's try that again."

Speaking of towels. I was bored one day and decided to throw a few pair of red tumbler pants in with the white towels. Sure enough. they came out the prettiest pink. What's funny is that the macho stunt guys always used those towels first.

The boys love to mess with people's minds. They'd walk through the back of the Epic theater and do a prac-fall. This usally meant a cup of water would fly into the air one way and papers would fly off in the other as they'd hit the ground. Every time they'd fall, I'd see a half dozen guest's come close to wetting themselves. If several of us were going to the commissary, at least one would always walk into the door and smack it so hard that the entire room would hear it.

One of my favorite memories was when I was giving a couple guys a ride to the commissary, when we could do such things with out getting in trouble. Our pargos, or modified electric golf carts, was a flat bed. Back when we were an actual studios, we had various places were the guests could see back stage. On this particular run, one of the stunt guys laid down in the back of the pargo and the other pretended to do CPR as we passed by a line of guests. The whole way he kept yelling, "Can't this thing go any faster !!". I ducked my head and just kept driving.