YOU DID WHAT?

The fondest memories are those where you should have gotten into big trouble, but didn't. I was at Epic one day and my coordinator said, "Do you want some ice cream?" Normally that would sound innocent enough, but this was during a show. We walked over to the dinosaur ice cream stand outside Epic and ate ice cream, then strolled back to the stage in time to finish the show.

During the run of Hunchback of Notre Dame, one of my cast was a Michael Jackson impersonator. To look at him out of make up, you would never know it. I am a photographer on the side and had started making a name for my self as such at several of the stages that I worked at. He wanted pictures of him as MJ, so one day, he dressed up and did the hair and make up. Let me say he looked exactly like MJ. We went out on stage and shot some pretty good pictures. The techs saw what we were doing and turned on the fog machines and fans. It was pretty darn cool.

HOWEVER, it didn't stop there. Back in the day, before lights motors action stunt show, there was residential street and a backstage studio tour that ran right next to our stage. MJ impersonator walked off the Hunchback stage and into view of the tour tram. People started to talk. He walked next to the tour tram. The tour guide lost her train of thought and started stumbling over her lines. We, meaning MJ impersonator, myself and half dozen members of the hunckback cast walked into the park. Now, mind you, the cast was wearing shorts and t-shirts with 'Hunchback' written in sharpie on the front. They were playing the body guards. . . . God help us. Seeing how the crowds mobbed MJ, this as not a smart idea.

We heard a few guests say "Hey MJ!" "Is that. . .no it couldn't-" "Look who it is." You could feel the electricity start to build in a matter of moments. Seeing a stir start to build, we ducked out the back gate as soon as we could. End of story ? Not quiet. Later our stage manager came up to us and said,"Please tell me that you did not walk through the park like that." We said, "Of course not." WE knew, that he knew, that we knew.

Speaking of being in place you probably shouldn't, as a photographer for several of the Indy Stunt doubles, I have been in places on that stage that I KNOW I should have neve been in. Like the Mayan temple set in the ball(rolling boulder) track. In a prop rock during the show so I could get pictures of the Plane scene. At the top of the market place buildings, so I could get shots of high falls. At least I never went up in th rafters like the boys did one day. THey were bored and moved the high fall pad to under one of the beams in the rafters and decided to take flying leaps from the roof of the stage.

If you have ever seen the Indy stunt show, then you'll know that scene two is the cairo marketplace. In that set above the awing is a little niche. They use this niche for DJ's at times during convention shows. One day two of our Epic/Fantasmic! cast got bored between Fantasmic shows and decided to climb into the set and pretend they were eating dinner. . . during the Epic show. One was wearing one of Marion's shirts as a diguse. At the end of the scene, he knelt down to the other and pretended to propose. (By the way, both guys were married with kids.)

THe cast and crew about died laughing. The stage manager, thank goodness was awesome. She came up to them and said(paraphased) "That was the funniest thing i have ever seen. Don't you ever do it again."

Fantasmic! stunt perfomers meet at Epic, use Epic's pargo to ride over to the stage. Every so often they'll give ride to a character or two as well. One day the driver took a short cut through the creative costuming tunnel (part of the backstage tour) and turned a lliiitttle to soon. Because setting outside of the tunnel are prop planes from the movie Pearl Harbor. On this particular day, the Epic driver plowed into the wing of the plane an crumpled the top of the pargo. No one was hurt, from what I can remember, but they did have to use the jaws of life to get one of the character girls out of the front seat. And wouldn't you know, the driver still works at Disney.

I had my own personal "You did what ?" moment one day at Fantasmic!. I was not in a good mood that day. I had one precious darling cast mamber get all over my case one day because she said "This is not my costume. My costume does not have this piece in it" (it was a snap in, snap out removable piece)
I said,"you're the only one doing this role today. Not one else has worn it. It's identical to the other costumes in the trailer."
She still said, "This is not my costume, I don't use this piece."
Now, mind you, we are on the steamboat. The cross bridge is pulled back and the boat is about to start moving. I snatched the costume from her hands, ripped out the unwanted item and handed it back to her. "Here it's doesn't have that strap anymore."
She went out and did her part, but ran to the stage manager afterwards and said "costuming was being mean to me."
And 'bless his soul', he stood up for us and said,"Did you check your preset ?"
She started to cry.
I went to my manager and told her what happened. All she said was, "Yeah, you probably shouldn't have done that."

Ah, those were the days.

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.

The Fans, The Fanatics, and The Fanatic Fans

You hear about rock stars and boys bands dealing with crazed fans, but what you may not realize is that Disney is a magnet for the odd and sometimes extreme fans. We've had families up and move to the area, just so they could get closer to a performer. This happened when we had a show called Doug. It originally was a Nickelodeon show that Disney bought. They made a movie out of it that did poorly and created a show at The Studios that was short lived. Basically, Disney almost killed the franchise. Nickelodeon bought it back after a couple of years though. For those who are not familiar with Doug, it was a show about a pre-teen boy with a huge imagination. The cast wore various colors of make up like Skeeter was Green, Rodger was blue, Patty was orange. A young girl had a huge crush on Rodger and convinced her mom to move to Orlando so they could get closer to Disney. In fact, the cast member had to start leaving through different doors each day on his way home because she'd wait for him at the stage door. We never knew if she wanted Rodger 'the person', 'the person' who played Rodger, or if she just had a thing for blue people.

Hunchback of Notre Dame seemed to have the freaky fans coming out of the wood work. We had one fan, a young lady, we refered to as cape girl. During the show, she'd spin around with her jacket and pretend to do the gypsie cape routine. But Wait, there's more. She later got hired as a costuming cast member. Let's just say she scared the cast. One day she was in the green room and showed someone the secret compartment in her ring. I kid you not, she said, "This is where I keep my poison to kill people." Needless to say, managment moved her very quickly.

One of our Quasimodo cast members got a fan letter one day. It started out normal. "I love your show. I think you're a great singer. . . " . Then it got odd. She said that 'she was new to the area and we were the closest thing to family that she had and that she was coming back on her birthday to spend all day at the show,' and she gave us the date. THEN it got weird. she asked our Quasimodo cast member, 'are you into paganism ? If you're not, that's okay.' Needless to say, we were a bit alarmed and intrigued. In the greenroom there was a dry erase board that listed who where the equity cast members and who were the gypsies for the day. In the middle of those two lists someone wrote COUNTDOWN TO W##F3N DAY (I don't want to use her name, but let's just say it was not a normal name.) Sure enough, on that day, half way through the day, one of the operations people came to the green room and told us she was there. I have never seen that green room clear so fast in my life. Everyone ran out to the stage to see who this girl was. It scared her and she never came back.

We have a gentleman who insists on putting disney performers on his body. Across his back is a tatoo of one of our Streetmosphere performers. The face of one of the Indy Stuntmen (the German Giant) is tatooed on his knee. During the Star wars Weekends we have a lady fan who has legally changed her last name to Skywalker Quigon Kenobi. She'd come every day to the event and stay all day dressed in her Jedi garb.

The Studios is known for it's special events. StarWars Weekends has seventy to eighty Star Wars characters from various Jedi's to three different type of troopers (storm, sand and clone). Storm troopers wear spandex and plastic armour. Guests tend to get a little frisky with some one in spandex. . . I wonder why? Not all Storm troopers are guys. One of the female storm troopers got pinched by a couple of flirty girls. The Storm Trooper informed them she was a girl and embarassed the snot out of these girls. Supersoap Weekends is a time I was glad to be behind the wall. When the park opens, they do a little rope drop ceremony. During Super Soap, it is like the running of the bulls, or as one of our stage managers put it, the running of the house wives. They open the gates and literally thousands of normally sane individuals turn into steam rollers and book it to the back of the park so them can get numbers for the autograph sessions. While I was working as a runner at a resort, I had to drive a guest to the Studios during Super Soap. The whole way over there she kept saying, " I'm not one of those crazed fans." Then she'd turn to her daughter and say, "As soon as we get out you have to run." Not a crazed fan . . . rriiight. ESPN The Weekend is a testostrone version of Super Soap. It's very amusing to see all these guys try to act calm, cool and collected, but as soon as one of the sports stars walk past, they turn into a twelve year old. That's okay, Mr Armchair Quarterback, no one saw you get all giddy when the cheerleaders came out.

Then we have the Dead Dog Lady. Yes, that's right I said the Dead dog Lady. When she and her daughter come to the park, her husband stays in the car all day. He thinks Disney is evil or something. The mother and daughter go to Beauty and the Beast and sit down front center for all five shows. In her lap is a plastic grocery bag. In the bag is a freeze dried / taxidermied little black poodle. Needless to the say the cast gets a bit un-nerved knowing that there is a dead dog in the front row.

Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular

Or as we call it EPIC. The oldest show at the Studios, it opened shortly after the park opened. I can best describe Epic as working in a 'Boy's Club'. A good chunk of the cast has Peter Pan syndrome. . . they refuse to grow up. You never knew what was going to happen next. It took a certian personality to be able to work at Epic: not easily offended, ability to go with the flow and most importantly 'Shy People Need Not Apply'. Not to say that my cast of 'Lost Boys' was difficult to work with, but on more than one of occasion we had costuming dressers get trained at Epic and never come back.

With a cast of close to twenty guys and three girls per day, testosterone and bravado filled the room. And "oh the things you learn about guys when you're the only female in the room." I'll never forget, we were on a long break between shows and only a handful of people stuck around the green room. One of the cast, who grew up in Alaska, started talking about peeing into the wind and watching it freeze. I was eating lunch. All I could say was "Thanks for THAT visual." Working with a bunch of half dressed men, we had a lot of visuals. One of the guys, who had been there since day one, walked into wardrobe with only a towel wrapped around his waist. That's it. Nothing else. We said, "We're putting a load of towels in the washer, we need that one too." He dropped it and kept on walking. Now THAT WAS A VISUAL.

A costuming job at Epic was mostly presetting clothes, replacing worn out costumes, sorting laundry and dressing the guests which were picked out of the audience to be in the show. Sounds pretty easy. . .right. Wrong. Getting the 'boys' to give up a worn out costume was like getting Linus to give up his blanket. The conversations usally went something like this. "You need to try this on." "Later." "You need to try this on." "Why? I have one already." "It's falling apart. You need a new one." "I like my old one." " You look like you were on the losing end of a dog fight." "No I don't." Basically, you had to wear them down. . . in a nice, big sisterly way. One of the worst was Tumbler "P". I called him the brother i never wanted. He harrassed me. I harrassed him. One sure fire way to teach new cast members to put up thier shoes, hats, ect, was to put them in the freezer. The next day he had to wear frozen shoes, but he never forgot to them away again. Everyone expected the clothes to be ripped to shreds, the shoes to fall apart and the hats to eventually disintegrate. It was the unexpected wardrobe malfunction that kept life interesting. Indy has a monlogue where he explains the difference between a stunt double and stunt actor. Indy 'E' happened to be wearing a pair of button fly pants that wouldn't stay buttoned. He did his whole speach not only with his fly open, but his shirt sticking out. Dark brown pants. Light tan shirt tail poking out. Enough said.

I often thought I had the wierdest job in the world. I helped people change clothes during shows. Then, during the show, I'd see the six tumblers walking towards me taking thier shirts off for thier costume change, and think "I like my job." One day, a group of girls (guests) discovered they could stand on the handicap ramp and see the guys as well and started whistling. Amazingly, the guys turned shy all of a sudden. Thier one costume change was by no means a quick change. In fact, they had time to get into water fights, feed the begging squirrels, torment the new dressers and throw each others costumes in to the Mayan cart. (Scene one is a Mayan Temple scene, afterwards the set separates into three sections and rolls off to the side.)

Thier shenanigans didn't stop there. In the green room, if you heard the phrase, "Hanger in flight", you learned to steer clear of the costume rack. They loved to throw the heavy costume hangers at the rack and see if they could make them stay on the rail. They rarely made it. For several years they had a ping pong table and, for a while, full contact ping pong games dominated the greenroom. They'd hit the ball so hard, it'd ricochceted off the walls. Then there was Mote Ball. I am not sure where the name came from, but it's hybrid of a shortened tennis court, using racquetball racquet with elements of jai lai thrown in for good measure. The techs and certian cast members had mini-tournements between shows. The court was actualy a driveway leading to the the stage. The backstop on one side was the high stage wall/gate. The back stop on the other side was what ever car happened to be driving past. The sides were marked out by the Tech break trailer to one side and the tent storing the extra rolling boulders to the other.

The most awesome thing about working the show for the number of years that I did, was I saw kids with little to no experience come in and learn how to be a stunt performer. Now, I can't watch a movie with out sitting throught the credits to see if I know any of them. I'll always remember a kid from south Florida. He was a high school football star. The first time he sauntered into the trailer, he wore a big cowboy hat and had his shirt halfway unbuttoned. Well, let's just say, boot camp had begun. That training session there were six new tumblers, (I think), one or two new Marions and a couple new Indy's. Thier trainer was Tumbler "O", or as I called him Sargent "O". He ran that bunch of new hires ragged. During training they ran circuits, which consists of climbing the buildings of the market place (scene two sets), running across the tops of the buildings to the Indy high fall, do the high fall and run back to the begining. Between shows they'd learn about throwing punches, the slide for life and three-man pyramids. At one point in time when the Indy high fall wasn't high enough, they went all the way to the roof of the stage and jumped out of the rafters. Absolutely, utterly insane. One day, in the greenroom, they were watching a home video of someone on fire. Only at EPIC does that not seem wierd. That week end one of stunt captians had an unofficial training session at his home on how to do fire stunts.

By the way, the high school football star stuck around for a three four years, then moved to L.A. and became Toby Maguier's stunt double in Spiderman. Not bad, eh. I found an interview with him on You Yube http://www.anthonyplascencia.com/video/stuntman.html Another rags to riches story has to do with a guy who started in costuming. He went to the casting center and told them he wanted to be in costuming at Epic. They tried to taking him out of it. He insisted. His goal was to see what it took to get cast in the show from the inside out. He auditioned, but didn't make it. He auditioned again. He still didn't make it. In between auditions the Indy's would work with him on what he needed to improve for the next time. I believe it took four or five times before he got cast. Once he broke through, he was contracted as a primary Indy stunt double for a while, then he moved to L.A. Long story short, he landed work on a Tim Allen movie as his stunt double. Now, he's Mr. Allen's primary stunt double.

The tell tale signs of an Indy in training: knee pads, elbow pads, butt pads, brand new timberline boots all while wearing eye protection and the leather jacket in 90 degree Florida summers, just so you can learn that dam whip routine. Oh, yeah, throw in a few character performers running for thier lives because they're afraid of being accidently hit by the thing on thier way to the parade trailer.

There are plenty of more EPIC stories to come, so come back and check it out.