Not With a Whimper, but With a Bang! - Jay Stein: Father of the Modern Theme Park - The Lowdown on the Plus-up - A Theme Park Podcast

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_04 (00:46):
Hello and welcome to The Lowdown on the Plus Up, a
podcast where we look ateveryone's favorite theme park
attractions, lands, textures,and novelties.
We talk in, over, about, andthrough our week's topic, and
then, with literally no concernfor practicality, safety, or
economic viability, we come upwith ways to make them better.

SPEAKER_05 (01:06):
My name is Kelly McCubbin, columnist for the
theme park website BoardwalkTimes, and with me as always is
Peter Overstreet, UniversityProfessor of Animation and Film
History in Northern California.
Hey Pete! Yeah.
What are we talking about today?

SPEAKER_11 (01:27):
Well, today is gonna be a weird, weird episode
because it's uh we're not gonnaget too modeling about it, but
uh we are gonna talk about somestuff that may be uncomfortable
for some people.
Yes.
Uh Universal uh Disney, uh,because we're gonna be talking
about a gentleman who justrecently passed away.
Right.
And Kelly and I felt that thisindividual made such significant

(01:49):
contributions to the world oftheme parks that he deserved his
own episode.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:53):
And that person is Jay Stein.
That's right.
Jay Stein, the I would argue,architect of the modern theme
park.
I would agree that I wouldtotally agree to that.
Yeah, if if if the idea of themeparks in America originates with
Walt Disney, Jay Stein is theone who made the modern version
of it, and it's the version thateveryone's chasing.

(02:14):
Yeah.
We we like to say, oh,everyone's trying to keep up
with Disney, and it is not true.
Even Disney is trying to keep upwith Universal.

SPEAKER_11 (02:23):
Oh, yeah.
More so than that.
Or for better or for worse.
More so now than ever.
This that trend was started byJay Stein.

SPEAKER_05 (02:30):
And and and I will I will say absolutely I'm
Disneyland guy.
That is my park.
That is the one I I hold mostdear, and I absolutely
understand that what Universaldid via this man, via Jay Stein,
changed the industry entirely.

SPEAKER_11 (02:49):
Yep, he really, really did.
He retired from UniversalStudios in 1993, folks.
But still he is still very, veryinfluential.
If you're a regular listener tothe show, uh to the dozens of
you who are, thank you.
Um but and and for all of you inBrazil, yeah, and in Russia,

(03:13):
uh-huh, and where else have wehave some of our international
listeners have been popping upnow?

SPEAKER_05 (03:18):
Um, I have seen Kuwait, I have seen some people
in Spain are listening now,which is amazing to us.
There's certainly certainlypeople in Russia, yeah.
It's kind of kind of all overthe world at this point.
Yeah.
I'm I'm amazed.
I don't know how you guys foundus, but welcome.

SPEAKER_11 (03:35):
Yeah, really welcome.
And and again, if you really didenjoy the show and you see
something or you have not beenable to find something on our
podcast that we haven't coveredyet, and and we're not just
universal in Disney, by the way.
Oh, yeah.
We we we've done episodes onlike Frontier Village and some
Six Flag stuff, and we evencovered Gravity Shacks not too

(03:56):
long ago.
But if you there's aninternational theme park, like
at some point, I'm sure we'regonna cover Tiboli and all the
other great stuff out there.
Yeah.
Tell us about these parks.
We love doing research.
And if you have footage of theseparks that you remember growing
up and loving, or you still lovetoday, like if you're from
Dubai, tell us about some ofthat stuff that's popping up out
there.
We'd love to hear from you.

SPEAKER_05 (04:16):
Yeah, and if you're from Dubai, you're about to get
a metric dog-choking motherloadof theme parks over the next 10
years.
Because man, everyone is goingthere.
Yep.
Disney's opening one there.
Universal just announced thatthey're opening something there.
Warner Brothers either isopening or something.
Are they doing a nuts?

SPEAKER_11 (04:34):
A Knott's berry farm Dubai out there, too.
Like that'd be great.
This underground Knott's berryfarm.

SPEAKER_05 (04:46):
That would be amazing.
It's just like life around theold oil, Derek.

SPEAKER_09 (04:50):
Yeah, they just had withers out there like get in
from out of the shun, kids!

SPEAKER_04 (04:56):
Things whittles.

SPEAKER_05 (04:57):
Whittles.
That was it.
Whittles.
I thought it was withers.

SPEAKER_04 (04:59):
That was it.

SPEAKER_05 (05:00):
Okay, so yeah, Jay Stein back to Jay.
Jay Stein passed away just abouta little over a week ago as of
this recording.
It's been really interesting towatch.
So I found out about it from JayStein's biographer, Sam Genaway.
We'll be talking about Sam'swork a lot during this episode

(05:21):
because he's the guy who wentand discovered how the Universal
theme park started.
He chronicled it, then latercame back and chronicled Jay
himself.
This is actually it's sort of afascinating story to hear Mr.
Genaway tell it.
He worked on a uh terrific bookcalled Um Universal vs.

(05:42):
Disney, which is just great.
And it it talks about the theconflict between the two of
them, how they developed side byside.

SPEAKER_11 (05:50):
Really good book.
Having read that book, I have tomake a quick little note.
When I read that book, I don'tknow what compelled me, but I I
read that book while listeningto the soundtrack to Ken Burns's
The Civil War.
Uh-huh.
Because it kind of was like itwas totally the blue versus the
gray.
You hear a shoking.

SPEAKER_05 (06:12):
I just have this image of like Biff Ten and at
Appomattox.

SPEAKER_01 (06:15):
It's Yeah.
Don't shot that horse.
Mag dog.
Nobody calls me Magdoe.

SPEAKER_05 (06:22):
Yeah.
But so Sam wrote that book,which is terrific, and then he
moved on to another project.
During the writing of that book,he reached out to Jay Stein, who
is the single most significantforce in the development of
universal theme parks, and gotnothing back from him, and which
was expected.
Jay had kind of become a littlereclusive at that point.

(06:43):
But after the book came out, Jayevidently called him and said,
Hey, why didn't you talk to mefor this book?
And Sam said, I tried.
He didn't respond to me.
And Jay came out and said, Well,at this point, Lou Wasserman
from Universal is dead.
Sidney Scheinberg from Universalis dead.
Most of these people probablydon't want to talk to you.

(07:03):
Steven Spielberg's not going toreturn your calls.
Why don't we get together andtalk about it?
So Sam got back on the horse anddid a second book called Jay
Bang.

SPEAKER_01 (07:14):
Jay Bang!

SPEAKER_11 (07:16):
You've heard us mention this in the past.
You're finally going to reallyunderstand the meaning of Jay
Bang.

SPEAKER_05 (07:22):
Yes.
And so they collaborated on abook about Jay's career at
Universal.
And it's great.
And just like Jay himself, it isfull of bluster.
It is a little chaotic.
It tells us a story that is justfilled with kind of joy and

(07:44):
retribution.
It's just terrific.
So good.
But I so I I found out that JayStein had died because Sam
Genaway was posting about it.
Yeah.
And I I asked him, I was like,are you saying that Jay Stein
has died?
And he said, yeah.
And they had become friendsafter that book.
So I started looking around andcouldn't find any other

(08:08):
information about it.
And I thought, this is weirdbecause this is basically
Universal's Walt Disney dying.

SPEAKER_01 (08:15):
Right.

SPEAKER_05 (08:16):
And nobody's saying anything.
So I I wrote a piece forBoardwalk Times, just a short
obituary about it.
But so a little behind thescenes for people listening, my
editor and I kind of sat on thata little bit because we couldn't
find any other information otherthan Sam, who's a very nice man

(08:37):
and a very responsiblejournalist.
So we were pretty sure he wasright.
But we couldn't find any otherinformation.
Universal didn't post anythingabout it, didn't seem like any
of the people who were inStein's orbit who were still
around were posting about it.
It was weird.
It has since been confirmed thatJay Stein did pass away.

(09:00):
He was 88, though he might havebeen 87.
This is how weird it is to tryand find historical information
about Jay Stein.

SPEAKER_11 (09:06):
Yeah, his obituary on the on the Neptune Society
here that says that he was 88.
Yep.
And he was in Bend, Oregon whenhe passed away.

SPEAKER_05 (09:14):
That's right.
The only other So there'sthere's three things you can
find at this point.
It's that, there's a thing onthe Inside Universal site, which
was the only one that printedanything concurrent with me.
Right.
And me.
Yeah.
And I I found myself beinglinked by other people.

(09:36):
Um there's actually an NBCaffiliate out of Orlando,
Florida that linked to me.
But I I didn't feel like it Iwas going to be the
authoritative source on Jay'sTime's passage.
So thankfully some people dideventually weigh in, and
obviously there's funeralinformation now in the Neptune
Society.
But it's weird because Universalhas yet to say anything about

(09:58):
it.
Very bizarre.
And Pete and I were just talkingabout the fact that Universal
seems averse to preserving theirhistory.

SPEAKER_11 (10:07):
It's really weird.
The research that Kelly and Ihave to do for this program, for
those who listen and manage tostay awake every episode, uh you
do know that we do get a littlelong-winded, and it's because we
want to make sure that thisinformation is out there rather
than us just sitting on it.
Because it damn it, it took us along time to get this stuff.
Or we've been storing in ourheads, having glommed it from

(10:30):
firsthand accounts, like some ofthe stuff that we've learned
about various imagineers fromBob Gurr, we had to get from the
horse himself.
Or you get it from hearsay fromother people within the
industry.
Otherwise, you can't find it.
And time and time again, likewhen we did our Conan episode,
when we did our Tumbleweeds inTransylvania episode, talking
about Dracula, especially CastleDracula Universal, which was a J

(10:53):
Cy J Bang.
It's damn near impossible tofind real information,
especially from Universalitself.

SPEAKER_05 (11:01):
Yeah, it's it's a really it's really an
interesting phenomenon.
And the more you read aboutUniversal, particularly in those
early years of the park, so wewe've talked about before the
Universal studio tour goes backto like 1914.
Like they they had they rantours during the silent film
era, they were pretty famous forit.

SPEAKER_11 (11:21):
Well, and it was a silent era, so you could have
people literally watch you film.
On a live set, it didn't matter.
Yeah, it didn't matter becauseno one was picking up sound.
So people be eating popcorn,eating lunch, laughing, yelling,
and stuff like that.
The quiet on the set was just sothat we they would tell people,
okay, guys, you're too loud.
They need to hear the directors.
So shut up.

SPEAKER_05 (11:41):
Right.
But and much of Universal'stourism history for the 20th
century is based around themtrying to get people to pay
money at the commissary.
Yeah, well.
Like if they truck people in tohave them watch some movies, and
then maybe they'll make somebank at the the commissary.
Sure.
And that that's not only true inthe 1914s, that's also true in

(12:05):
the 1960s, in the 1980s.
That was true for a long time.
They were like, how how do weget people in here to eat?

SPEAKER_11 (12:12):
Well, yeah, they were probably actually taking a
page from the Knott's, Mr.
and Mrs.
Knott.
Absolutely.
Running Mrs.
Knott's chicken.

SPEAKER_05 (12:19):
Tram Tour went dormant for a while.
Universal's fortunes were werefading, as were a lot of the big
old studios.
In the 50s, early 60s, MCA, theMusic Corporation of America,
came in and bought Universal.
Yes.
Universal MCA.

(12:41):
Yes, Universal MCA.
And Jay Stein was an MCA man.

SPEAKER_11 (12:46):
Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05 (12:47):
He had come out.

SPEAKER_11 (12:48):
He was working in the mail room, 22 years old.
Yeah.
And he was working, he just gothis butt in the mail room.

SPEAKER_05 (12:54):
Right.
And someone told him that hewould by taking that job, he
would get to deliver mail toreally famous people.
And he was like, that soundsgood.
He was just out of the NationalGuard.
Why not?

SPEAKER_11 (13:05):
Yeah.
And and and and it just takesoff from there.
Now, here's what is so bizarre.
Now, I I don't know about you,but I had a really hard time
finding out how he actually gotto power.
So do you have that?
Do you have that piece ofinformation?
Because I think it was likeeight years.
Talk about a meteoric rise.
He literally starts off as amailroom worker.

(13:25):
Yeah.
And within eight years, he's thepresident of the company.

SPEAKER_05 (13:30):
Yeah.
Well, he's he's the president ofUniversal Recreation.
Oh, I see.
So he's not the president ofUniversal.
But that's still that's amazing.
The two heads of Universal arereally interesting guys.
So the one is Sidney Scheinberg,who is he was a lawyer, he came
up, he really nurtured a lot oftalent.

(13:52):
The reason that we have StevenSpielberg is because of Sidney
Scheinberg.
He he discovered Spielberg earlyon, really protected him, got
him his first TV movies likeworking on Night Gallery and
Duel.

SPEAKER_11 (14:06):
Yeah, with what I love is that like didn't he
wasn't his first episode withJoan Collins or something like
that?
It was.
Yeah.
Not Joan Collins.
Crawford.
Joan Crawford in all of herpsychotic glory.
Oh man.
I want to see again.
I want to see trees and grassand color.

SPEAKER_05 (14:24):
And talk about throwing him in with the lions.
Young kid.
Oh my god.
Yeah, it's crazy.
And Spielberg will come back inour story in a little bit.

SPEAKER_06 (14:32):
Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 (14:32):
But uh even more interesting, and and I love this
guy, is Lou Wasserman.
Lou Wasserman is a remnant ofold Hollywood.
Yeah.
He is the crazy tough guy,larger than life, like Hollywood
mogul that you see in a CohenBrothers movie.

(14:54):
He's that guy.
Right.
And he has connectionseverywhere.
He is quick-tempered, much likeJay becomes.
He has been, he's just been withUniversal forever.
Right.
And he is the kind in a manyways the last vestige of old

(15:15):
studio system Hollywood.
Yeah.
Yep.

SPEAKER_00 (15:20):
That's right.
We've been in the in theindustry now for some time here.
And I want you to understandthat I've been doing theme parks
now for over 30 years.
And if you don't understandthat, you don't know where I'm
coming from.
Okay, that's enough of that.
Sorry.

SPEAKER_03 (15:41):
That's good.

SPEAKER_00 (15:41):
Okay.

SPEAKER_11 (15:43):
Really shitty.
Marlon Brando.
Okay, anyway.

SPEAKER_05 (15:47):
So yeah, Washerman and Scheinberg are kind of the
ruling the roost at UniversalStudios.
The tram tour gets relaunched in1964.
Stein is taking a couple ofdifferent jobs.
Stein is clearly a go-getter.
Oh, yeah.
He's going to do what it takes.
And he is also, fortunately orunfortunately, has a name very,

(16:10):
very close to the founder ofMCA, who is Jules Stein.
Oh ho.
So Jay Stein, not seeminglybecause he tried to, but Jay
Stein gets a lot of deference bya lot of people who think he
either is related to Jules Steinor is Jules Stein.

SPEAKER_11 (16:33):
See, having a good name just gets you into places.

SPEAKER_05 (16:36):
There is a great story where Jay Stein goes to
deliver a message, which is hisjob, he's the mailroom guy, to
Cary Grant.

SPEAKER_01 (16:46):
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (16:47):
And so he shows up and Cary Grant is sitting there,
he's he's in the small trailerdressing room.
He Jay walks in.
Kerry Grant goes, withoutturning around, says, Are you
Jay Stein?
And Jay says, Yeah.
Grant is sitting there like he'son his couch.

(17:08):
He's in bare feet.
Okay.
Up on his makeup counter.
And he's reading some legaldocument.
He starts reading it out loudand saying, This is not what we
agreed to.
And he he starts kind of gettingangry.
And and eventually, and Grennever turns around.
He's just like, hang on, wait aminute.

(17:29):
You're just going to hear theend of this.
And he keeps reading.
And then he turns around and hegoes, You're you're not Jules
Stein.

SPEAKER_11 (17:38):
Yeah, you Jay Stein.
You're a kid.
Your name is actually J, J Y,not J, period.

SPEAKER_05 (17:46):
Supposedly, like at that point, Grant just laughed
and got up and shook his hand.
And they kind of became friends.
They they met a couple of timeslater.
Okay.
But so he he started moving hisway up the ranks, partially
maybe because people wereconcerned that he was related to
Jules, to the head of thecompany.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Unintended nepotism in order toget you there.

(18:07):
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
But also because Lou Wassermandiscovered that he could count
on him.
Yeah.
And and he like Jay wasn'tafraid.
So Jay would do whatever it tookto get something done, and also
was willing to like take thebrunt of something if it went
wrong.
So he just he he started movingup the ladder.

SPEAKER_11 (18:25):
Trevor Burrus It reminds me a lot of the
relationship between uh thefilmmaker William Castle and uh
Larry Cohn, the owner of uhColumbia.
They had a very similarrelationship, although Cohn was
like the devil incarnate.
And and Bill Castle, but Billlike was kind of like his
favorite because Bill wasunafraid and would just be a
go-getter and he would just getthe job done.

(18:46):
And that's what that's where hegot his reputation from.

SPEAKER_05 (18:48):
Well, and so Jay's like working his way up the
ladder, and weirdly, so theyrelaunched the tram tour in
1964.
It's doing okay, it's actuallymaking money.
And weirdly, he gets called intoone of his boss's offices and
they say, Do you want to takeover the tram tour?
So in 1967, he just gets handedthe tram tour.

(19:15):
And that's that's the beginningof a career with universal
recreation that lasts until1993.

SPEAKER_11 (19:23):
That's crazy.
So just just to keep in mindwith the with the tram tour
itself, the tram tour, when wetalk about the trams that we
know and love today, you thinkof for some of us, we think of
the blue ones.
Right.
But when I went, they still hadthe pink and white striped
roofs, yeah, the glamour trams.

SPEAKER_05 (19:44):
The glamour trams designed by Harper Gough.

SPEAKER_11 (19:46):
Yep.
And boy does it show.
Yes, it does.
They look like Jungle Cruiseboats or Willy Wonka's boat.
They do.
And it's oh my gosh.
And what I loved is that theybasically look like uh giant
like Harper was like, Oh, Igotta I gotta finish this thing
for Walt, but I'm getting paidto work on some universal stuff.
And what am I gonna do?

(20:07):
How am I gonna make these tramslook different?
And he's looking at his draftingtable and he sees a regular pink
eraser.
Yeah, if you remember the oldstyle pink erasers, they're all
like slanted diagonally.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's what those trams looklike.
They were all slanteddiagonally.
And if you think like, well,I'll just make them taller, and
there's my tram.
Like thanks, Harper.
Jeez.
And those trams ran for a while.

(20:29):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I think they went to like 76 orsomething like that.
And they were reinstated, theywould get fixed up.
But the tra the notion of a tramtour, by the way, does actually
go as far back as the old, oldsilent era tours.
Yeah.
They would have like bigopen-air tour buses to drive you
around because you had to getpeople through all of the orange

(20:51):
groves.
Well, let's take you over to thewestern lot and then take you
over there.
But as far as an actual tramtour with very specific spots
with the narrator, it's veryjungle cruise.
Yeah, oh, yeah.
And what I always loved aboutthe tram tours is they would
actually tell you what movieswere coming out because they
would put eight and a half eightby tens and lobby cards all up

(21:13):
on the under likeadvertisements.
Right.
So you're like, oh, that'swhat's oh wow, Psycho 2's
coming.
That's cool.
Whoa, gremlins, that looksamazing.
Yeah.
Oh, and then they probably talkabout it because they're
promoting the movies.
It was it was a self-sustainingtour to get you to go see the
movies, but here you are at thetour, have some fun.
Yeah.
Like the eat at the commissary.
Yeah, yeah, go eat at thecommissary.

(21:33):
Oh, and then and the studio tourwas not, it would actually start
in the old days.
You go to Universal City, you goto the big parking lot, but it's
at the top of the hill.
Right.
And everything kind of tricklesdown from that point on.
Yeah.
And you'd go through the maingates into the theme park,
Universal Studios tour, becauseit wasn't a theme park yet.

(21:54):
It was just the UniversalStudio.

SPEAKER_05 (21:55):
No, and it wasn't going to be really a theme park
for a long time.

SPEAKER_11 (21:59):
Yeah.
So you'd show up and go, wow,the theme the studio tour.
Yeah.
So it's a real studio.
Yeah.
When I for me, yeah, Disneylandwas cool, but my grandparents
lived closer to UniversalStudios.
Yeah.
So we tended to go there more,also because they knew even at
an early age, I was already acinemaphile.
Absolutely.
I was already I was alreadymemorizing pages from famous

(22:19):
monsters.
Yeah.
I was quoting movies.
I would talk about celebrities.
I was already reading up on filmhistory.

SPEAKER_05 (22:25):
I was literally just talking to my wife about my
obsession with the Dr.
Kildare movies when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_11 (22:32):
So I I I feel you.
So we went a lot.
So I have distinct memories ofgoing to this top lot.
You'd wait in these long, it wasalmost like cattle cages.
You'd have to wait in line.
Yeah.
And they would have costumecharacters come out, somebody
dressed up as Lucy Arnaz orsomebody dressed up as Charlie
Chaplin, who would uh usually bea fellow at first whose name was

(22:54):
Billy Scudder.
Oh huh.
Okay.
Billy Scudder, and it would alsobe played by another actor
later, Jeffrey Weissman.
Mr.
Weissman.
Mr.
Weissmann, who is a mutualfriend of ours, actually.
Yeah.
For those who who might be likeI don't really know him, but I
have met him.

SPEAKER_05 (23:09):
Okay.

SPEAKER_11 (23:09):
He's a friend of yours.
Uh yeah, I know Jeffrey, andhe's a very sweet gentleman.
For those who may not know thename, you probably have seen him
if you're a fan of the Back tothe Future movies.
Yeah.
He's he's involved with thecontroversy of replacing Crispin
Glover as George McFly.
Yeah.
He was working in the back lotsas a working actor.
He was in Twilight Zone themovie.
He was in Pale Rider.

(23:31):
And he eventually wound up uhbeing in Back to the Future 2
because he would have constantconnections with the casting
director because this is whereyou broke in.
You were working the studiotour, you were going to break
in.

SPEAKER_03 (23:44):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (23:44):
Yeah.
And uh there are several actorsthat that did that.
Either they were tour guides orthey were people that were
playing Conan or whatever, theywould wind up being extras or
stunt people in action movies.
Yeah.
And Jeffrey wound up playingGeorge McFly and Back to the
Future 2 and 3.
But Billy Scudder would portrayCharlie Chaplin at Universal and
actually wound up being theCharlie Chaplin that would

(24:06):
appear in all the old, I thinkit was IBM commercials on
television, in which it's it'seasy for you to use.
Word processing is so amazing.
And you'd see Charlie Chaplininteracting with his computer.
That was Billy Scudder.
Oh, interesting.
The point is that they wouldalso have costume characters as
Frankenstein, Dracula, themummy, and that kind of stuff.

(24:27):
And they were okay.
But every once in a while, acelebrity would actually show up
and get on the tram with you.
Yeah.
Like Alfred Hitchcock would dothis occasionally because he
didn't want to walk down thehill.

SPEAKER_10 (24:41):
I'm going to get upon this tram.
We're going to go on a littleadventure.
How do you do?
I'm going to sit next to you forthe next 25 minutes.

SPEAKER_11 (24:54):
Like, how thrilling would that be to get on a thing
and there's Alfred Hitch.
Amazing.
Yeah.
And the tram tour, when JayStein came on board, was only
two glamour trams.
Right.
Housed in a Quanzett hut.
Yeah.
That's it.
So it's interesting.
Right around that time, as Jayis up and coming in 1963.
Yeah.

(25:14):
We had Lou Wasterman, who wasthe president, asked his vice
president Al Dorskein to lookinto the feasibility of creating
a permanent tour, hence the tramtours.
So that's why it reopens in 64.
Right.
So it started in 63, thediscussions of this.
So it was very, very quick.

SPEAKER_05 (25:29):
Well, there was and and part of the reason they did
that was because other peoplewere giving tours.
Yes.
Like other people were justlike, get on the bus, we'll go
through Universal.
Yeah.
And they're like, well, if we'regoing to do that, if someone's
going to do that, why wouldn'tit be us?

SPEAKER_11 (25:46):
Right.
Right.
And originally you wouldactually board the tour on
Lancasham Boulevard, which isactually really far away from
the backlot.
Yes.
You can't really walk to it.
I know I've tried.
Don't ask me how I did, but Idid.
But yeah, you had a lot ofpeople working on this.
You had art directors, HarperGoff, we already talked about

(26:06):
him.
Randall Duell, who was adesigner of Jailhouse Rock and
Singing in the Rain, was one ofthe designers of the Trams.

SPEAKER_05 (26:12):
The founder of the Dual Loop, which is the kind of
theme park that Six Flags OverTexas is.
Yep.
It's a it's a instead of the huband spoke of Disneyland, it's
it's a kind of loop setup.

SPEAKER_11 (26:23):
Yep.
And then Bud Darden, if that'spronounced or Dardana or
Dardane.
That one I don't know.
He was uh a minibus designer.
So I think Harper made it lookgood.
And then Bud was kind of his BobGurr.
Like let's make it work.
Let's actually make it work.
Harper designed the famous CandyStripe glam trams.
Randall worked on the FutureTour Center, which is the

(26:44):
commissary.
Yeah.
Go get some food.
Before the opening, the teamdecided to debut the Universal
Tram, which was a two-carversion, which had a
six-cylinder engine and a manualtransmission, and arranged a
special inaugural tour of theUniversal for the secretaries of
Universal Studios.
Nice.
Unfortunately, the tram brokedown in a remote section of the
back lot, and the poorsecretaries had to walk all the

(27:05):
way back to their offices in thefront.
Dang it.
But on June 17th, 1964, theywere the tickets were being sold
out of a temporary trailer onLancasham Boulevard.
Wow.
The Universal Studio tourconsisted of two trams and a
handful of eager young tourguides.
Yeah.
Including John Ford III,grandson of famous Western

(27:28):
director John Ford.
Wow.
Dan Milan, son of Academy Awardacting Ray Milan.
Okay.
The man with X-ray eyes.
So this kid is a tour guide.
And the early tour was about 90minutes and included a stop off
at the Studio Commissary for aluncheon, a makeup show
presented by Michael Westmore ofthe famous Westmore family.

(27:49):
Holy cow! So the makeup artists,the Westmores have really
cemented themselves.
And for those who don't know,the Westmore family have been in
Hollywood since the beginning ofHollywood.
You can't you can't turn over arock and not find a Westmore
somewhere in Hollywood.
Yeah.
In its glory days in the 40s and50s, there was literally a
Westmore in charge of makeup atevery single studio.

(28:13):
There was one at MGM, there wasone at Warner Brothers.
Yeah.
The most famous being BudWestmore at Universal Studios.
Yes.
I have a love-hate relationshipwith Bud Westmore.
He did some great work, but healso had a bit of an ego that
got him into trouble many, manytimes and eventually got him
fired from he also had adrinking problem.
Yeah.
One of the issues was that hewas working on several films all

(28:36):
at once.
One of which was Abbon CostelloMeet Mr.
Hyde.
Dr.
Jekyll and Mr.

SPEAKER_03 (28:42):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (28:42):
And they needed a mask to a makeup design for
Boris Karloff to wear as heturns into Mr.
Hyde from Dr.
Jekyll.

SPEAKER_05 (28:50):
That's actually one of the few of the Abbott
Costello horror ones I haven'tseen.

SPEAKER_11 (28:54):
It's not the greatest, and don't get me
wrong, I still love it.

SPEAKER_05 (28:57):
Yeah, because it's Karloff.

SPEAKER_11 (28:58):
It's well, it's not just because it's Karloff.
There's some great gags in therethat you don't they're not
recycling all the usual stuff.
Yeah.
Yes, they do the candle gag.
You know all that stuff.
Yeah.
But there's some other stuff inthere that's actually quite
clever.

SPEAKER_03 (29:14):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (29:15):
And it ends with this tour de force where
everybody turns into Mr.
Hyde.
Why not?
Sure.
But in order to do that, theyneeded to hire somebody to do
that.
And it was a young woman whosename was Millicent Rossi.
Millicent Rossi got her startactually as an animator.

SPEAKER_03 (29:30):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (29:31):
Working with another universal legend, Bela Legosi,
on the film Fantasia.
Yeah.
Because Bela Legosi was themodel for the giant demon in
Night on Bald Mountain.
Chernobyl.
Chernobyl.
And she was one of the artistswho sketched him as he's
shirtless gesticulating to themusic.

SPEAKER_05 (29:46):
Yeah, and you can find pictures of this, folks.
You can look it up.
You can see pictures of Legosidoing Chernobyl.

SPEAKER_11 (29:52):
Yep.
Shirtless.
Millicent unfortunately fell inlove, well, fortunately and
unfortunately, fell in love witha fellow animator at Disney,
which was Verboten.
Yeah at the Disney Studios.
And unfortunately, everybodyknew what was going on that she
was having an affair with thisguy.
Unfortunately, his wife had amassive tantrum on the back lot
at Disney, at the Disney Studioson Hyperion.

(30:13):
And because it was a publicspectacle, she also committed
suicide.

SPEAKER_05 (30:17):
Oh no.

SPEAKER_11 (30:18):
But not long after they got married.
And his last name was Patrick.
She became Millicent Patrick.
And because she got fired fromDisney, she had to find work
elsewhere.
She worked at Warner Brothersonly on a cartoon and a half.
Yeah.
Because she was also involved.
She had then become involvedwith another actor who was the
voice of the big bad wolf inLittle Red Hot Riding Hood by

(30:40):
Tex Avery.
Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 (30:41):
How you doing?

SPEAKER_11 (30:43):
That voice actor.

SPEAKER_01 (30:44):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (30:44):
But this guy was nuts.
And eventually she said, forgetit, I'm not doing animation
anymore.
And she just became a sketchartist to the stars.
Yeah.
She'd be behind the scenesdrawing pictures of Kirk Douglas
and Gene Kelly and all theseother people.
And word got around that she wasa really good imaginative
designer because she actuallywent to the Chenard School of
Arts.
Yeah.

(31:04):
She was a classmate of ChuckJones's.
Oh.
She was hired by Bud Westmore,who had taken over the makeup
department from Jack Pierce, thelegendary Jack Pierce, who
created Frankenstein, Wolfman,the Mummy, the looks of these
characters.
So Millicent got a job work inthe makeup department, and her
first assignment was sculptingthe mask of Mr.
Hyde.

(31:24):
Oh, for Avan Costello and meetDr.
Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde.
Yeah.
And they were also workingconcurrently on a new project
called The Black Lagoon.
And they had designs of thesecreatures that look kind of like
an eel or a leech, and it justlooked more like a guy in a
scuba outfit.
Yeah.
And they and Melissa said, Can Itinker with that?
And he said, Yeah.
And she's the creator of TheCreature from the Black Lagoon.

(31:48):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (31:49):
I have I have to you loaned me that book, The Lady
from the Black Lagoon.
I have to read that.
Yes, you do.
I uh we actually have two copiesnow, weirdly.
Yeah.
I read I read the follow-up bookby that same author, which was A
Daughter of Danger about HelenGibson, the silent film stunt
woman.

SPEAKER_11 (32:06):
Yeah, yeah.
Amazing.
Oh, yeah.
The the um Mallory O'Meara.
Yes, Mallory O'Mira.
Mallory O'Mira.

SPEAKER_05 (32:11):
She's got a great podcast, too.

SPEAKER_11 (32:13):
Yeah, she does.
So, Mallory, thank you very muchfor a great book.
Yeah.
So, all the way back to BudWestmore.
We've gone down this weirdlittle colour cul-de-sac, but
it's a lot of fun.
Bud Westmore got fired fromUniversal, but the Westmore
family is huge.
And if you've ever seen the TVshow FaceOff, where they
challenge up-and-coming makeupartists.
I have a friend named JasonHendricks, who I worked with.

(32:35):
Hello, Jason, you're awesome.
He was on FaceOff.
It was a it was a way to testmakeup effects artists.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there's a young MichaelWestmore who shows up and gives
him advice.
That's the same Mike Westmorewho would do the shows at
Universal Studios.
That's really cool.
So when you got made up, youwould show up.

(32:56):
Now I didn't I didn't go to theoriginal makeup show.
I was I was pulled out of theaudience.
I was five years old, real tinykid.
They made me up as Eddie Munsterin the show that was called uh
The Land of a Thousand Faces.
Right.

SPEAKER_05 (33:10):
And that show becomes sort of transitions into
the Castle Dracula show later.
Yep, exactly.
Which we did several episodeson, so you go back and listen to
those.

SPEAKER_11 (33:19):
We're not going to really go into that much.
Yeah.
Except for the fact that okay,I'll just say it now.
Vern Langdon was one of theadvisors because of his
connection to Famous Monsters.
Yeah.
And to the Don Post Mask Studio,who had made the very expensive
masks that would be on the backof every famous monsters
magazine, otherwise known as thecalendar masks.

(33:41):
Yeah.
Then there was there was cheapomasks that you would see on the
inside, like the the vampirewoman, the bad mummy, the ape
man.
And there was a dollarninety-five for those rubber
masks.
And they were cheap, they wereflimsy, they they they had the
same thickness as a rubberglove.
Yeah.
But the Don Po studio masks wereHollywood quality, some of which

(34:03):
were actually pulled from theactual plaster cast of the real
celebrities.
So the original Frankensteinmask was from the cast of
Frankenstein worn by GlennStrange.

SPEAKER_05 (34:14):
By the way, Frankenstein meets the Wolfman,
really underrated.
It is kind of a great movie.
I actually really do like it.
I do too.
I think it's really interesting.

SPEAKER_11 (34:21):
Anyway, so Vern Langdon became one of the main
advisors on Castle Dracula.
Okay.
And would enter into numerousdiscussions and have constant
conflicts with how to fulfillJay Stein's J Bang requirements
on a castle.
Like, for example, as wementioned before, they wanted a
swarm of bats to fly over theaudience and like, well, they're

(34:43):
nocturnal.
Okay, well, let's spray paintpigeons black.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (34:47):
Well, it wasn't pigeons at first, it was parrots
or something.
Oh, yeah.
And they just left.
Yeah, that's true.
Like they opened them up, theyflew off, and they never saw him
again.

SPEAKER_11 (34:55):
And it was a huge amphitheater, so the effect
doesn't even work.
It was done.
There's already pigeons andbirds.
Like you've got mud sparrows andstuff living in that open-air
amphitheater anyway.

SPEAKER_05 (35:05):
Before we get to the amphitheater, which is
important, let's jump back tothe early transitions to the
tram tour.

SPEAKER_11 (35:10):
And how we're going to do it?
Yeah.
The Munsters.
Okay.
Let's hop on back to theMunsters.
Because Vern Langdon was alsoassociated with the Munsters
production.
And the Munsters is one of thegreat star attractions on the
tram tour.
Because they were still filmingit then.
Yeah.
And you could visit the house,and sometimes you'd see Grandpa

(35:32):
Munster or Herman or Lily orEddie coming out.
Or Bob Burns dressed up as Kogarentertaining the tram tour.
Yeah.
It was a real pain in the buttfor them.
But they did it because theywere all team players.
Yeah.
But eventually, when theystopped filming, people still
the Munsters were still verypopular.
Yeah.
So they actually made it a spotwhere you could get off, walk
through the Munsters House.

(35:53):
1313 Mockingbird Lane.
Yep.
And you could actually get aphoto with Herman on his bed.
Oh my god.
And it was just a dummy withsome electrical devices.
So it wasn't anything major, butyou got to see what a set looked
like.
Like everybody get out, and itwas like this little main
street.
And for those who want to seewhat this main street really
looks like, watch the Joe Dantemovie The Burbs.

SPEAKER_03 (36:15):
Uh-huh.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (36:16):
Because that is filmed almost entirely on the
exact same street.
Yeah.
And one of the houses in thatfilm is the Munster's House of
1313 Mockingbird Lane.
And it's this weird littlecul-de-sac on the back lot
there.
Yeah.
And once you've seen it, you oh,there's Leave at the Beavers
house.
Oh, there's that person's house.
So people are willing to seesomething a little bit more

(36:37):
fantastical on this tour.

SPEAKER_04 (36:38):
Well, and Jay Stein had had ideas.net, you'll find

(37:00):
some of the most well-consideredand insightful writing about the
Walt Disney Company, Disneyhistory, and the universe of
theme parks available anywhere.
Come join us atBoardwalkTimes.net.

SPEAKER_11 (37:28):
Well, and you know, Jay Stein had had ideas.

SPEAKER_05 (37:32):
You know, he was full of energy and he he wanted
to push what this tour could be.
Now the tour was successful.
He didn't have to save it.
Oh, yeah.
It was doing just fine, but hehad ideas.
The problem was that SidScheinberg wasn't that
interested in investing too muchinto it.
It was making money.
It was not the business of thestudio.

(37:54):
It was a sideline.
And he was pretty clear aboutthat.
But something really interestinghappens.
And Stein tries some stuffanyway.
Oh, yeah.
Like he's starting to throw somestuff in there.
But an interesting thing happensthe next year in 1968.
The Screen Actors Guild barsvisitors from visiting sound

(38:15):
stages.
So the Screen Actors Guildbasically reach reaches out
their enveloping arms to say weare protecting our actors from
visitors.
Oh man.
And it and slowly it becomeseverything starts to dry up.
Like the tour doesn't havethings to see anymore.

(38:35):
There aren't actors reallywandering around anymore.
A lot of the sets are inside ortheir own location now.
So Stein suddenly has a reasonto start adding some spice to
the tram tour.

SPEAKER_11 (38:49):
Absolutely.
And especially when you get toone of the first expansions,
which is down to Prop Plaza.
Yeah, yeah.
It's an intermediate rest stop.
And this was kind of like whereyou would be.
I mean, this is kind of inspiredby the Munster's House.
Like, okay, we can stop places.
You can actually let them offthe tram.
They're willing to get off, geton, get off, get on.
Yeah.

(39:09):
But Prop Plaza included thefirst animation.
It was a Model T Ford thatpeople could get in with a
rotating canvas backdrop, oldsilent movie stuff.
Oh, that's great.
Uh rotating around.
So you could pretend like youwere driving and you get your
Super 8 movie of you driving acar.
Right.
Kids loved it.
It was something stupid andsimple.
But it it it really wasincreasing in demand.

(39:30):
In its first year, the tram tourgarnered 38,000 visitors.
Wow.
38,000 visitors in its firstyear.
Yeah.
Okay, 64.
So by the time we get by thetime we get to Prop Plaza, it's
double that.

SPEAKER_05 (39:45):
Yeah.
So it's what?
Well, and and and by like 1967,they had had like a million
visitors.

SPEAKER_11 (39:52):
Eventually we wound up with another location that
really begins the legacy of JBang's, and it's all built
around, funnily enough, theBlack Lagoon.
Yeah.
The Black Lagoon is is uh builtaround a particular area of the
park.
Park Lake.

(40:12):
Yes.
Park Lake is actually thisgiant, muddy, green,
algae-encrusted lagoon.
Yeah.
With lots of palms and lots oftrees, mostly planted there to
serve as South America for thecreature from the Black Lagoon.
Yeah.
Eventually it would becomeportions of Gilligan's Island.
Yeah.
Oddly enough, there's a there'sa place called Bora Gora that

(40:35):
gets built on its shores, whichis built specifically for the TV
movie The Harlem Grobe Trotterson Gilligan's Island.
It would also be used in showslike Tales of the Gold Monkey.
It would also be usedoccasionally in the A-Team
Magnum PI, especially it's inorder to have like a dilapidated
South American or dilapidatedHawaiian tropical Jamaican

(40:56):
backdrop.
But the lake has someinteresting features to it.
First off, it ain't that deep.
Yeah, right.
But it's man-made, it's it'sman-made, and it ain't that
deep, but it's deep enough thatyou could fall in it as a stunt
person.
Like you could you can you canhave the creature grab Julie
Adams and then fall off the edgeof the Rita and go into the

(41:17):
water without getting hurt.
Yeah.
But Jay decides to add a fewthings to this.
One of the most famous is theparting of the Red Sea.
Yeah.
The Parting of the Red Sea, foryou don't know, is that the tram
tour, the actual drive, is on ais on a driveway, basically.
It's it's got its own road.
And the road just stops straightat the lake.

(41:40):
Yes.
Straight at Park Lake.
Yeah.
And at some point, the oh, we'regonna do some magic here.
We're gonna it depends on thetour guide.
Some people just go, oh, look,the water is parting.
Yeah.
But if you had a good tour guidethat would say, no, let's
pretend to be Moses.
Yeah.
We'll do some movie magic.
Yeah, we'll do some movie magic.
And the the waters would recedeon this one little trail, and

(42:02):
the tram would drive through.
The water would be up at youreye level at where you're
sitting.
Yeah.
So only the top part of the tramwould be sticking out of the top
of this.
Yeah.
If you want to know what thisreally looks like, watch Mel
Brooks, The History of the WorldPart One.
And there's a gag in whichComicus and all these other
characters are trying to escapethe Roman legions.
Miracle the horse is leading himaway.

(42:24):
And they said, Well, it'll takea miracle to get us out of this
one.
And Moses, played by Mel Brooks,is standing on the edge and he
raises his arms, and all of asudden the waters recede, and
the chariot drives through, andyou think the heroes have been
saved by Moses.
But actually, there's a guy witha crossbow aiming behind Moses'
back and keep them up.
And he runs off going there, ohyou son of a bitch, they won't

(42:45):
let you walk, they won't let youbreathe.
And he goes off cursing inYiddish.
And it's it's a great gag, butit gives you it's a nice little
time capsule as to how thatattraction worked.

SPEAKER_05 (42:56):
Yeah, yeah.
And and I remember I did it manytimes.
Oh, yeah.
The parting of the Red Seas, andit was super neat.
I thought it was cool.

SPEAKER_11 (43:03):
Yeah.
Now we had talked about AlfredHitchcock showing up on the
tour.
Yes.
There's footage of the tram tourthat was a souvenir, it was a
Super 8 movie that they used tosell at theme parks.
You get a Super 8 reel that waskind of like a highlights reel
of the theme park.
So you didn't have to you didn'thave to worry about the
lighting.
Like, don't don't worry aboutthe lighting.
Just enjoy the park.
You could take the movie and sayyou did it.

(43:24):
But on there is a certaincelebrity who's helping part the
Red Sea, and it's he's wearing ashort sleeved shirt with a
dickey.
And it's Charlton Heston, Moseshimself with his staff, and he
just looks happy as a clam.

SPEAKER_05 (43:40):
Oh yeah.
He just seemed he seems sothrilled to be doing it.
And he liked the tram tour.
He was one of those actors thatwould deliberately come out and
meet people.
Oh yeah.
He really enjoyed it.
And some stars did.
A lot of them had reached apoint by that time, though, the
late 60s, early 70s, that theywere a little more gun shy about
this sort of thing.

(44:00):
Oh yeah.
But yeah, it's it's great.
And they Stein and he's workingwith these designers, and
they're starting to add theselittle things.
They're starting to add like athe flash flood, which comes
1968-ish.
And he adds there's a burninghouse.
Pete and I, before we startedthis, watched a film footage of
the submarine attack.
Well, the submarine attack.

SPEAKER_11 (44:21):
I love that one because it was a full, it was a
f it was like a half-sizedsubmarine conning tower sticking
out of the water.
So they didn't actually build afull-size submarine, but they
did in order to emphasize thatyou were seeing a submarine,
they would line up all thesemodels from various war movies.
Yeah.
Because they used to actuallydrive you through the props
department.
Yeah.
And you could look up and youcould see all these props, and

(44:44):
you'd drive past the Edith Headbuilding and see where they keep
all the costumes.
I used to work as a prop guy.
Yeah.
And for six months I had accessto Universal's Prop Studio.
Right.
As in, I got to walk around andjust kind of look.
Yeah.
And go, ooh.
And a lot of it's justfurniture.
Right.
But every once in a while yougo, like, wait a minute, that's
that prop.

(45:04):
Oh.

SPEAKER_05 (45:05):
They um they just kind of kept adding these weird
little things.

SPEAKER_11 (45:10):
It was punctuation.
Kind of like a Jay Bang.

SPEAKER_05 (45:13):
Very much like a J Bang.
Like the collapsing bridge.
Eventually, once we move intothe 70s, we get uh like one of
my favorite things, which wasthe rotating ice tunnel.

SPEAKER_11 (45:23):
Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (45:24):
Which was originally a lot of people don't know this,
and I didn't know it for a longtime.
Originally, it was supposed tobe a tie-in to the Clint
Eastwood movie The IgerSanction.

SPEAKER_11 (45:33):
Yeah.
Wow.
Obviously, you didn't know iteither.
I didn't know that either,because that is so obscure.
Yeah.
But I don't think Clint Eastwoodknows that.

SPEAKER_05 (45:41):
Probably not.
But it got repurposed for a lotof stuff, most famously as the
tunnel behind which the Andrethe Giant Sasquatch lived in the
six million dollar man episode.
The story of Bigfoot.
I think it was a two-parter.

SPEAKER_11 (45:58):
Yeah, there's a story.
Like, isn't Bigfoot like a robotor something?
He's a robot played by Andre theGiant.
And and like he's from like thelost city of Lang or something
like that.
Like they just went, like thewriters were just like, they're
stoned.
They're trying to figure outlike how we got to come up with
a really good season ender.
How are we going to do this?
We got Andre to the Giant.
What could he have?
We could play up and playBigfoot.

(46:19):
What do we know about Bigfoot?
And they turn on a LeonardNimoy's in search of write all
this down.

SPEAKER_05 (46:29):
It's and it's so it was so great.
Like when I was a kid.
So, first off, this is, I think,the first time they built
something for the tour that thengot repurposed into actual
production.

SPEAKER_11 (46:40):
Oh, yeah.
And the collapsing bridge wasalso follow-up to that.

SPEAKER_05 (46:44):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (46:45):
I want to talk about one particular attraction there
that is kind of silly.
Uh-huh.
But because of my love for KingKong, it does bear mentioning.
Uh-huh.
In the early 70s, there was theAfrican village huts.
Oh, I don't even know aboutthat.
That were over by the Bora GoraInn.
Yeah.
And they're just like grasshuts.
It looks like Adventurelandthrew up in a little spot over

(47:05):
in the corner there.
Yeah.
But the best part was thismechanical gorilla hanging, he's
like hanging on a tree with one,with his foot on one part.
Yeah.
And it's the same type ofmechanism that operates the uh
the lost safari on the junglecruise.

SPEAKER_05 (47:18):
Uh-huh.
Yeah, just up and down.

SPEAKER_11 (47:20):
The just straight up and down motion.
But most of the time, he wouldactually be holding a severed
human arm.
As he was like this rampant,vicious later years they took it
out and put a banana in hishands there.
He was a vicious gorilla.
And I remember being terrible.
Oh yeah, that gorilla's got ahuman arm.
He's going to kill me.
It's like my dad made a jokeabout it.
He says, that's what happenswhen you put your arm outside

(47:41):
the tram.
And I thought, oh my God, that'sterrifying.
And it's and good work, Mr.

SPEAKER_05 (47:48):
Overstreet.

SPEAKER_11 (47:48):
Oh, yeah.
Here it is.
I've got a picture right here.
There he is.
There's the harm.
Oh, that's amazing.
Yes.
It wasn't, it wasn't anythingmajor.
It was just like a littlepunctuation.
And that's that's how J-Bangsreally kind of start.
It's like these little, like,hey, you're gonna have a
submarine shoot a torpedo atyou.
Yeah.
Hey, this bridge is gonnacollapse on you.
Yeah.
Hey, you're gonna pull into alittle Mexican village, and a

(48:09):
flood's gonna happen.
Flash flood.

SPEAKER_05 (48:12):
Yeah.
And and the J Bang, it was itwas a term that his staff used,
and it was a term that I thinkeventually he himself used.
Yep.
Which was it basically meant inwhatever the thing is that's
happening when it happens, whatis the thing that is going to
elicit the big response?
Yep.

(48:33):
And it can be a big emotionalresponse, it can be fear, it can
be joy, it can be anything, butthere has to be one and and it
has and it has to be big.
Oh.
And if you did not when when youwere proposing something for the
tour or later for the themepark, if it didn't have a J Bang

(48:54):
or enough J Bangs, because onemay not sustain it.

SPEAKER_11 (48:57):
Yeah, it would get greenlit because of that.
Yep.
Yeah, fla the flash flood.
Yeah.
I used to love the flash flood.
Yeah.
And all it is is just literallyjust them dumping a water coming
straight at you.
But what it's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_05 (49:10):
Yeah, it's kind of cool.
And Disney 100% ripped it offwhen they did the Disney MGM
studio tour.

SPEAKER_11 (49:16):
Yeah.
So we will get to later.

SPEAKER_05 (49:18):
Let's not jump ahead.

SPEAKER_11 (49:19):
Soon enough because yeah, that's pretty crazy.
There's also the avalanche.

SPEAKER_05 (49:23):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
With a bunch of styrofoam rocksthrown on you.

SPEAKER_11 (49:26):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, okay, there's a runawaytrain.
Yeah.
That went that almost hit you.
And then it starts to getimpressive.

SPEAKER_05 (49:33):
We hit this point like mid-six mid-70s.
Things are going well.
The tour's really taking off.
They're trying to figure out howto expand the trams.
Yep.
So they're they're likelaunching a tram like every two
minutes.
I mean, it's just it's crazy.
And they're they're starting toadd big stuff.
Now the universal collaborationwith Steven Spielberg starts.

(49:54):
But of course, at this point,Spielberg is not who he is going
to be.
He's making Jaws.
And Sid Scheinberg's nurturingSpielberg, and he's like, hey,
Jay, we're going to do somethingwith this movie on the tour.
Jay sees it.
He he he gets it.
So they start working on it.
And of course, they couldn'thave predicted how huge of a

(50:16):
movie that was going to be.
And they start working onputting the Jaws attack in the
middle of the tram tour, whichis still there today.

SPEAKER_11 (50:26):
Yes, it is.
And we did a whole episode aboutJaws.
That's right.
So in Amity Island and all that.
And go back to that episode,you'll be able to learn all
about it.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (50:35):
And to my mind, this is when the Universal Studio
tour kind of goes national,right?
Before that, it was like, oh,here's this thing that if you're
down in LA anyway, you might godo this tour.
There's a couple of fun things.
But when Jaws happens, oh no,this is a big deal.
Yeah.
It's the biggest movie in thecountry, and you can go

(50:57):
experience it live.
And Spielberg loved it.
Absolutely loved it.
Now Spielberg and Stein's uhrelationship could be a little
contentious off and on throughthe years.
How so?
Well, Spiel Spielberg wasprotected by Sid Scheinberg, who
was over Jay Stein.
So if if Spielberg wantedsomething, he got it.

(51:23):
And I then this is not to saythat he was a jerk about it.
No.
But Jay Stein was going to getoverruled because Scheinberg was
protecting Spielberg for goodreason.
Spielberg was going to make thisstudio incredibly rich.
Scheinberg was right.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
And and as as that partnershipgoes on, and that partnership

(51:45):
lasts to this day betweenSpielberg and the Universal
theme parks, even thoughUniversal's gone through many
owners since, there is there isa sort of unspoken rule that
Spielberg is the face that wewant to put out front.
So even though he's not reallydoing any of the work, and and

(52:06):
he's he's making very fewcreative decisions.
Most of the stuff's beingdesigned without him.
He has a certain amount of vetopower over his own properties.
Uh-huh.
But he's he's he's just kind oflike letting these guys do what
they do, and they do it well.
But Stein and his team do not,they are not the face.
They're in the background, butthey are also doing all the

(52:29):
work.
Yes, they are.
They're designing and buildingeverything.
And the there is a littlecontention there.
Stein understands the publicneeds to see someone like
Spielberg, or in Disney's case,someone like George Lucas
spearheading this stuff.
Sure.
But it also rankles a little.

SPEAKER_11 (52:48):
Oh, of course.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
I do want to mention anotherJ-bang here.
We're we're gonna do a wholeepisode about this, I'm sure,
because why not?
But ultimately, we do need totalk about this.
We some of the stuff is likeyou've got a talking car with
kit, but you also have you'vegot Cylons because you've got
the Battle for Galactica.

(53:08):
The Battle for Galactica.
Which, again, we're gonna do awhole episode about it because
it deserves its own.
It's fascinating.
But it is it's it's not quite abacklot tour and it's not quite
a stunt show.
It's everything and more.
Yes.
And overstays is welcome.

SPEAKER_05 (53:24):
Yeah, no, it's it's there for a long time.
It's there for almost like 13years.
I remember going through theBattle for Galactica, yeah, and
this was a period.
So this would have been the like77, 78 or so.
Yeah.
So this was a period where therewas no internet.
You didn't know necessarily whatwas going to happen.
I had no idea.
Oh, yeah.

(53:45):
And and I certainly I was a kid,I watched Battlestar Galactica.
Oh, yeah.
I knew what I was doing.

SPEAKER_11 (53:51):
Like in the back of the tram.

SPEAKER_01 (53:52):
Baltar was right!

SPEAKER_05 (53:56):
Baltar lives.
So I'm taking the tram tour.
I've I've done it before.
Sure.
But all of a sudden we turn thiscorner and there's a cylon, a
freaking Cylon with a gunpointed at us, demanding us to
go inside a giant spaceship.
Uh-huh.
And I had no idea that wascoming.
And that is like a kid's dreamcome true.

SPEAKER_11 (54:16):
Yeah, it's it's a quintessential jay bang.
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah, absolute quintessentialjaybang of like, no, this is
this is what we want.

SPEAKER_05 (54:24):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I agree.
I think we'll do a whole Battleof Galactica thing, a show
later.
But what an what an amazingpiece and expensive piece.
I think it was the first piecewhere they used their version of
animatronics, the theatretronics systems.

SPEAKER_11 (54:41):
Yes.

SPEAKER_05 (54:42):
Yes.
But but just just incredible.
And then we've got a a couple ofother things that come after
that.
We've got the earthquake thingthat comes in the 80s.

SPEAKER_11 (54:54):
Oh, yeah.
Earthquake, which you go insideof a San Francisco BART train
station.
Yeah.
And like a tanker falls throughthe ceiling, a Bartrain slams
into the side of your tram.
And that still happens today.
Yeah.
You can see that happens everytime that I commute.
Oh, no, you mean in the themepark?
Oh, yeah.

(55:14):
No, it's still it still runs.
It's actually a very, very, verygood representation.
You had those are all 80s.
And then you also have one of myabsolute favorites, King Kong.
Absolutely, yeah.
King Kong.
That again, that one has to getits own episode because we could
go for hours on that one.

SPEAKER_05 (55:32):
Yeah.
And and and that's that is inmany ways, that becomes the
symbol of the tram ride.
Um, it becomes the reason thatyou do it.
Like first Jaws was initially,and then sort of the Battle for
Galactica, but uh Kong was thething that was like, oh my god.
The Kong that was developed byMr.

SPEAKER_11 (55:51):
Bob Gerr.
Bob Gerr, man.
Yeah.
And it was covered in I think itwas bearskins.
Jesus.
Because they needed so many ofthem.
Oh no, that was the originalone.
That was the original head.
I forget what they got, but theythey had to get a special type
of fur to go over this gigantic.
And apparently the head was likeperfectly balanced that one

(56:11):
person could push it and move itif they wanted to.
Bob was such a great engineer.
Right.
But the other part, like Iremember when they launched it,
they made this big deal aboutbuilding the head, designing it.
There was a whole TV special.
And Jonathan Winters, for somereason, was filmed, was the host
of it.
And the best part, the firsttime I ever did it, they they

(56:32):
said in this special, oh yeah,he has banana breath.
Yes.
And he absolutely did.
Yeah, I know.
There's fake bananas.
It was fake bananas break.
It smells like laffy taffybananas.
Right.
And it was great.
It was like he has bananabreath.
That's awesome.
Well it engaged the thing aboutKing Kong, and this is what
makes it a supreme J Bang.
Yes.
You've got sound, you've gotlight, you have you have the

(56:54):
sensation of being shaken on thetram as Kong is shaking the
bridge.
And you've got the smell, you'vegot all of the senses are
completely engaged.
Yeah.
Completely.
And I think that's what makes itprobably one of the first of the
greatest of J Bangs of all time.
Right.
Because it engages every singleone of the senses.

SPEAKER_05 (57:12):
They have never they've tried King Kong
attractions since.
One done by Peter Jackson.
There's some stuff in Floridanow.
Yeah.
Nothing comes close.
That first giant animatronicKong was amazing.

SPEAKER_11 (57:25):
And that giant animatronic was actually
inspired, and again, we'll do anepisode where we go more into
it, was inspired by anotheranimatronic of Kong that was
developed for the remake, the70s remake, designed and built
by Carlo Rimbaldi.
Yeah, yeah.
Who is one of the inspirationsand one of the people who worked
on a film that would inspireanother very popular J Bang,

(57:48):
E.T.
Oh, wow.
He created E.T.
Yeah.
He was the designer and thecreator of it.
E.T.
being a very popular 80s hitbecomes a new attraction at
Universal Studios Hollywood.

SPEAKER_05 (58:00):
Yeah, but first it's going to become a new attraction
in Universal Studios Florida,which we haven't built yet.
Uh-huh.
So let's keep going.
So this gets us through most ofthe tram tour stuff that happens
in Hollywood while Jay Stein isin charge.
And he begins to kind of turnhis gaze towards Florida, but

(58:22):
something he builds somethingelse in between that is really
important.
And that is the UniversalAmphitheater.
Yes.
And that was Jay's baby.
Oh boy.
Yeah.
It was, they were using it forshows for a while.

SPEAKER_11 (58:39):
Famously.
Yeah.
Multi-million copy selling bluesalbum.
Oh.
Blues brothers briefcase full ofblues.
Yeah.
Which was the opening act forSteve Martin.
Wow.
Who got his own album out ofthat same concert that same
night.
That's crazy.
So when you listen to those twoalbums, Steve Martin's crowd is
completely worked up.

(59:00):
Yeah.
Because they've just seen theBlues Brothers.
Like they're laughing at jokes,or you're like, that's not that
funny.

SPEAKER_03 (59:05):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (59:06):
And that's because they're coked out of their
brains.
They've obviously visited MainStreet.
But yes.
But that album.
So that's the UniversalAmphitheater.

SPEAKER_05 (59:15):
But so so before it was a smaller theater that they
were doing other shows in.
And this was this was how Jaywas also peppering up the lot.
He was putting stuff on the uhon the lower lot that was just
shows like petting zoos andlittle little shows.
And he he they had a theaterthat was in the Universal

(59:36):
Amphitheaters place where theywere doing some stuff.
And they and and Jay decidesthat he wants to build a big
concert venue.
So they tear it down.
Oh God.
And they build the amphitheater.
Now the amphitheater is large.
Yeah.
It comes up in like 71, 72.

(59:58):
And they're not sure.
Uh-huh.
This is going to really pay off.
But how they end up selling itwith a big hit.
And this ties into JonathanWinters weirdly.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
Jesus Christ Superstar.
What?
They bring in a concertproduction of Jesus Christ
Superstar.

(01:00:18):
Wow.
That plays for a while.
It's sort of installed there.
And it is massive.
It is a huge, huge hit.
Wow.
And this is the point whereScheinberg and Wasserman are
like, Stein knows what he'sdoing.
That's cool.
Yeah.
And like the he he gets it.
And the reason that after allthis time, now we believe what

(01:00:42):
you're doing.
Well, at this point, he's onlybeen running the thing for five
years.

SPEAKER_11 (01:00:46):
Well, yeah, but look at them honestly, seriously,
like these guys take a lot ofconvincing with the sheer
numbers of that have increasedof the tram tour.
Yeah.
Of all these little littlethings that is now famous for.
That they're selling merchandiseoff of it.
Come on, guys.

SPEAKER_05 (01:01:00):
He he knows what he's doing.
He builds the amphitheater.
They put in there's a coupleother shows that are kind of
like, meh.
They put in Jesus ChristSuperstar, it explodes.
It just explodes.
Wow.
And the reason that JonathanWinters enters into this is that
Jonathan Winters lived down thehill.

SPEAKER_11 (01:01:17):
He lived in Universal City?

SPEAKER_05 (01:01:19):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (01:01:19):
I thought he lived in Santa Barbara.
That's wild.
Must have been later.

SPEAKER_05 (01:01:22):
Yeah, it must have been later.

SPEAKER_11 (01:01:23):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:01:23):
But there there were consistently noise problems with
Universal Amphitheater, as youmight expect.
Universal is nestled in.
There's not a lot of space inUniversal Hollywood.
And it it's this big hill, andthen there's people.
So there's there's noiseproblems, and finally Jonathan

(01:01:44):
Winters calls someone, and he'slike, Hey, this is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_09 (01:01:50):
Like you kids just tone it down a little bit here
because I'm trying to try tosleep down here.
I just got to sleep.

SPEAKER_05 (01:01:56):
Someone, someone gets sent down, it might be Jay
himself.
Someone gets sent down to talkto Jonathan Winters.
And they show up, and Winterspulls out a cassette player and
starts playing the soundtrack toJesus Christ Superstar.
And they're like, that's great.
Were you at the show?
He was like, No, I recorded thisin my backyard.

(01:02:21):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (01:02:23):
Yeah.
Probably not.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:02:27):
And then after Jesus Christ Superstar was such a hit
there, a year or so later, BetMidler came in and just exploded
the place.
She was huge then.
Oh, I know.
But talk about a noisecomplaint.
Yeah, right.
She wasn't even usingmicrophones.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (01:02:47):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:02:48):
Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
People adored her.
She was just, she was so on therise as a big star right then.
Yeah.
And that it was another big hit.
And again, they had to just lookat Stein and go, this guy, he's
on to something.
Yeah.
You think?
Yeah.
And the and the amphitheaterlasted till about 2013 or so.

(01:03:10):
And the only reason they got ridof it was because of the Harry
Potter expansion.
Wow.
Yeah, but it lasted for a longtime.
That is crazy.
So they they start in the early80s.
Stein starts to look at Florida.
It's you know, they've they'vethey've done kind of done what
they can do, they think, in inHollywood.

(01:03:32):
Jay has some ambitions, but heis looking to Florida to because
he's seen Disney go there.
Right.
And he thinks that they can justkind of nestle something in.
You know, they're gonna they'regonna put something in down the
road.
At this point, he and theUniversal and Disney are still
on good terms.
Okay.

(01:03:52):
They have a they start likebuilding up some designs for
building a park in Florida.
Sure.
Now the park in Florida was alsogoing to basically be a tram
tour.
They were pretty much just gonnatry and replicate their success.
So they start, they build allthese plans and they are like,
we need a partner in this.

(01:04:14):
We can't we can't go this alone.
Right.
So they reach out to Paramount,uh-huh.
Who is a high up at Paramountright then?
One Mr.
Michael Eisner.

SPEAKER_11 (01:04:26):
Oh no.
I see exactly where this isgoing.

SPEAKER_05 (01:04:30):
They meet with Eisner and a couple other people
from Paramount and open up thedesign books and say, This is
what we're thinking about doing.
Do you want to get in bed withus on this?

SPEAKER_10 (01:04:42):
Oh man.

SPEAKER_05 (01:04:43):
Paramount thinks about it briefly and then says,
nah, we're gonna get out ofthat.
And Stein thinks that that'sover.
Right.
1984, Eisner and Frank Wells aspart of a very kind of ugly
coup.
Yeah.
Um, which also saves the Disneycompany.

(01:05:03):
Sure.
But they are put in charge ofWalt Disney.
The next year, Michael Eisnermakes an announcement.
He announces that they are goingto build a studio tour tram ride
theme park in Florida called theDisney MGM Studios.

(01:05:28):
Oh man.

SPEAKER_11 (01:05:29):
It don't get no more blatant than that.

SPEAKER_05 (01:05:32):
No, and and and this is this whole thing is so ugly.
Stein and Scheinberg andWasserman are furious.
Oh, yeah.
They un they get what'shappened.
And and this is not the onlything that Eisner does to try
and keep Universal out ofFlorida.
Oh, oh no.

(01:05:52):
He is he is working a bunch ofdifferent angles.
He's hanging things uppolitically.
He's trying to keep grants thatthe state or the cities had
promised from getting toUniversal.
He's threatening contractors.
It's really bad.
Wow.
And and when a nice state yougot here.

(01:06:19):
Yeah, and there is there is apoint where where Stein actually
goes on the attack in thepapers.
Whoa.
And it's incredible.

SPEAKER_11 (01:06:31):
Like he just I've got one.
On May 7th, 1987, there's anarticle written by Katherine
Harris at the Los Angeles Timesthat says MCA official accuses
Disney Company of blackmailtactics.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And it says a simmering quarrelbetween two giant entertainment
companies boiled over Wednesdaywhen a high-ranking MCA official

(01:06:55):
accused Walt Disney Company ofusing blackmail tactics to
maintain its dominance in theFlorida theme park business.
MCA's fury was touched off byDisney proposals to build a$150
million to$300 millionentertainment complex and
tourist attraction in Burbank,just a few miles from MCA's own
Universal Studios toursattraction.

SPEAKER_05 (01:07:16):
Yeah.
So that was the other thing theytried to do, is they were like,
hey, we can also threaten you inCalifornia.

SPEAKER_11 (01:07:23):
Yep.
MCA Vice President Jay Steinalleged Wednesday that Disney
had privately offered earlierthis year to withdraw from the
Burbank plan if MCA would giveup its proposed Florida studio
tour.
Yeah.
According to Stein, MCAvehemently spurned the offer,
which has been relayed to topMCA executives by an
intermediary who said that hehad just met with a high-ranking

(01:07:44):
Disney executive.
The incident occurred six orseven weeks ago, Stein said.
He declined to publicly identifyeither the messenger or the
Disney executive.
Eisner! There's a bullet with aMickey Mouse hidden on it.
Two top Disney executives deniedStein's allegations.

(01:08:05):
Yeah.
And as far as I know, we'venever had a conversation with
them in that area at all, saidDisney chairman and chief
executive Michael Eisner.

SPEAKER_05 (01:08:12):
Except that he'd been in the freaking boardroom
with them looking at the plans.
Thank you.
Like such a blatant lie.

SPEAKER_09 (01:08:18):
Like, we're going forward with Burbank of the next
year.
Isn't that right, Mickey?
Ha ha!

unknown (01:08:21):
You bet, Michael!

SPEAKER_09 (01:08:24):
I have no idea what they're talking about.

SPEAKER_11 (01:08:25):
Anything AMCI does or does not do, or anything
anybody else does or does notdo, will not affect our plans.
Jeffrey Katzenberg, chairman ofthe Walt Disney Studios
division, called Stein'sallegation nonsense.
It sounds to me like it's sourgrapes.

SPEAKER_05 (01:08:40):
Of course, Jeffrey Katzenberg was about to no
longer work for Disney and soonhave an office with Steven
Spielberg on the MCA Universallot.

unknown (01:08:50):
Right?

SPEAKER_11 (01:08:50):
Like this is this is such a crazy, crazy time.
Stein, a veteran of MCAexecutive who has run the
Universal Studios tour for thepast 20 years, said that he
recognized the seriousness ofthis accusation.
There's no doubt in my mind whathappened.
Bang! He didn't say bang.
Stein's contentions couldpresent certain competitive
issues that would have to becarefully analyzed by federal

(01:09:12):
antitrust agencies, according toStanley N.
Gorenson, a Washington attorneywho headed the special regulated
industry section of the JusticeDepartment's antitrust division
for nearly five years during theCarter and Reagan
administrations.
If substantiated, the factscould be compared by at least
some people to the facts in theAmerican Airlines case, Gorenson
said, alluding to a consentagree decree signed in 1985 by

(01:09:37):
American Airlines and itschairman to end a government
antitrust suit.
Wow.
Yeah, like this, and it goes on.
Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:09:47):
I love the thing S Sidney Scheinberg said after the
announcement was made.
He said, the mouse has become aravenous rat.

SPEAKER_11 (01:09:58):
Well, he ain't wrong.
No, really, no, he's not.

SPEAKER_05 (01:10:02):
And and it was so ugly, and it caused Stein to
stop the plants.
Right.
And say, hang on.
In in some ways, it was like wecan't compete with them dollar
for dollar.
Right.
But in some ways it was, whatcan we do to make them look bad?

(01:10:22):
God.
God.
So they took out the tram tour.
They duh they decided that theywere going to, and this is from
this point on, this is howUniversal was going to do
things.
They start building individualattractions.
Right.
So there's not going to be aKong on the tram tour.
There's going to be a Kong ride.

SPEAKER_11 (01:10:43):
Right.
There's not going to be sayingit ain't going to be on wheels.
It's going to be a gondola.

SPEAKER_05 (01:10:48):
Right, right.
You're not going to ride pastJaws.
You're going to go on a boat ina lagoon where you have multiple
shark attacks.
Yeah.
They're like, they just theyjust changed what they were
doing.
They also figured out, sothere's a point where Eisner's
making a whole bunch ofproclamations about what Disney

(01:11:09):
M Gym is going to be like.
Right.
And Universal is like, thatdoesn't sound right.
So they they hire, and I'm notmaking this up, they hire an a
Vietnam vet who has a helicopterto go fly over the construction
site and get as close as hepossibly can so that Stein and

(01:11:31):
his buddies can take as manypictures as possible and figure
out what's going on.

SPEAKER_11 (01:11:35):
Wait, was his name TC?

SPEAKER_06 (01:11:47):
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, in
just a few moments, the windowto the magic podcast show will
begin.

SPEAKER_08 (01:11:57):
My name is Patrick.
My name is Calvin.
I'm Mousketeer Greg.
My name is Paul, and I will beyour guide through the wonderful
world of Disney soundexperiences.
This show is a weekly trip intothe world of the Disney theme
parks and resorts.
And this is the place where youget to use your ears to surround
yourself with the magic.

(01:12:19):
For your safety, please remainseated while listening to the
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Maybe there's a name for this,something like Disnotic of a
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Please visit window to theMagic.com for more information,

(01:12:40):
or you can find us on ApplePodcasts and in the iHeartMedia
app.

SPEAKER_11 (01:12:45):
Like I'm imagining the whole Magnum PI, but it's
Jay Stein doing all the stuff.
He's holding the girl up whileshe's snorkeling.
He's in the Ferrari and he looksin the camera with that little
grin, but it's Jay Stein withhis glasses and everything.
Flying over Orlando.
Wasserman is the butler guy.

(01:13:06):
Sorry.
Anyway.
And as part of this Jay Stein,PI.

SPEAKER_05 (01:13:13):
I'd watch that show.

SPEAKER_11 (01:13:14):
IDL of it.

SPEAKER_05 (01:13:17):
As part of this deal, they really tighten the
relationship with Spielberg.
Yes.
Spielberg gets a percentage ofthat park to this day.
Jeez.
Spielberg is probably richerfrom the percentage of Universal
Studios Florida than he is frommaking movies.

SPEAKER_11 (01:13:35):
At this point, probably.

SPEAKER_05 (01:13:36):
And and they're like, we he is our guy, he is
our figurehead.
We're going to base thingsaround his properties like E.T.
and Jaws and Back to the Future,which he produced.
And that that is going to be ourthing.
But the other thing that theydecide to do is they figure out
that Disney MGM says thatthey're going to be an actual

(01:14:00):
production studio, but they'repretty sure that's not what is
what's going on.
And they're going to make anactual production studio.
So they literally build massiveusable production facilities.
Disney's built some, but there'snot enough for it to be built in
the world.

SPEAKER_11 (01:14:19):
Well, I mean, there's only so many episodes of
That's So Raven that they can doout there.

SPEAKER_05 (01:14:24):
One of the things one of the things that they
actually one of the first thingsthat they shoot in Universal
Florida is the new Leave It toBeaver show.
Which says something.
They kind of change the plan,they refocus, they decide, okay,
we're going to go with somethingedgier.

(01:14:44):
We're going to go with somethinglouder.
No kidding.
And um hang on, I want to I wantto read this great thing that
Gary Goddard wrote.
Sure.
Gary Goddard is a designer we'verun into him before on Back to
the Future.
He there's there's some stuff.

(01:15:05):
Oh, we ran into him with Conan.
Oh, yeah.
There's some stuff with Goddardthat's a little uncomfortable.
But I know he wrote this thing,the Ten Commandments for Writing
a Universal Studios Attraction.
The Ten Commandments plus onefor writing Universal Studios
Attraction.
One, thou shalt honor the ruleof the J Bangs, and keep them

(01:15:28):
wholly burned into thy brainever and always, and never shalt
thou stray from them, or thouwilt face the withering scorn
and bellowing angry rage of hellitself.
Two, thou shalt cut to thechase, for truly there is
nothing to be gained by thewriting of long dialogue scenes

(01:15:50):
which causeth the audience tobecome bored and frustrated, and
which may causeth them toleaveth the park early?
For is it not written that wemust take every penny from each
guest before they depart thehallowed grounds?

SPEAKER_01 (01:16:04):
What the hell?

SPEAKER_05 (01:16:05):
Therefore, cut to the chase without mercy, that
thou might retain thy job.
Three, thou shalt not kill,unless thee devises the most
grisly and spectacular deaththat shall bring the masses to
their feet and spontaneous criesof ecstasy and pleasure.
For as surely as the rains fallfrom heaven, so too shalt thou

(01:16:28):
ensure that creatures with hugepointed teeth or razor sharp
fangs find favor in your script.
And blessed be he who will seethat such creatures shall drip
venom or blood as often aspossible.
For truly such writing will bepraised from the rooftops of the
high black tower.

(01:16:48):
Honor the well-timed explosionand spread them as you would
seeds for the fall harvest.
For hath it not been written instone that a universal show with
no explosion is like thestillborn calf who will never
see the light of day?
Therefore, be generous in thyuse of pyrotechnics, knowing

(01:17:09):
that explosions are to ourattractions as manna from heaven
is to the parched and starved.
Wow.
Six We're not even done yet.
Thou shalt cut to the chaseagain and again and yet again.
For should your writing everslow down the action, even for a
moment, then surely you will bedamned, and you shall be as with

(01:17:34):
the plague, and thou shalt bewritten up and reprimanded and
sent away to labor in the fieldsof crowd control or churro
sales.
7.
Never shall the attempt to penthe so-called message into your
writing.
For indeed you will be cursedfrom the highest office of the

(01:17:55):
Black Tower, as a message hathno place in a universal
attraction.
Let your pen instead seekabsolution through the use of
the Holy Trinity of universalattractions, explosions, floods,
and fires.
And if addition, if addition,thou canst devise a staged

(01:18:16):
pestilence of reigning toads orof windborne locusts or rivers
of blood or other horrificspectacles, then surely there is
a place for you at the covetedlunch table of Sid or Jay.
Eight.
Thou shalt not covet thyneighbor's attraction budget.

(01:18:39):
For surely it is known that themagic kingdom has a treasury
like no other.
Therefore, thou shalt labor tocreate massive and spectacular
attraction, attractions withbudgets that are but a fraction
of the kingdoms.
And yea, though you walk throughthe bleak and dark valley of
cheaper, better, faster, thouwilt find a way to succeed, or

(01:19:01):
thou shalt dwell forever in theland of cruise ship shows.
Nine.
And be not like the foolishwriter who crieth out in anguish
that he must create somethingwith heart and soul, unless, of
course, the heart is beingripped out of some creature, or
stabbed through with a long,sharp ice pick, or whilst the

(01:19:24):
soul is being tortured withgreat spikes or burned at the
stake.
Ten.
Thou shalt be as patient as Job,as you are beckoned to rewrite
and rewrite and to rewrite oncemore.
Yea, though thee are called uponto write one thousand times,
never shalt thou complain norrefuse, for truly the rewrite is

(01:19:47):
too universal as the gold is toMidas.
And worry not that notes thouart given are moronic or without
intelligence, but instead findthee a way to make it work.
And most surely thou shaltinherit a blessed parking spot
near the front of the lot, andbe granted an annual pass to the

(01:20:08):
park.
And the most importantcommandment, the plus one, thou
shalt always, always, alwaystell a great tale.
Therefore, with all of the priorcommandments in mind, be sure
that thine writing hangs theseelements on a great story with a
beginning, a middle, and an end,and another end, and yet another

(01:20:31):
end for maximum effect.
And let your tale be told in amanner that willst excite,
surprise, and delight themasses, and always in a manner
that puts each person in themidst of the action.
For indeed, the passive sit andwatch and skip and wave show

(01:20:52):
hath no place in the land ofuniversal.
That's exhausting.
It's Gary Goddard's TenCommandments Plus One of writing
Universal.

SPEAKER_11 (01:21:02):
So they had a lot of time on their hands on that one.
Makes you wonder like, was helike, did he listen to like a
lot of Bernard Herman musicwhile he was writing that or
something?
Yeah, maybe.
He was just in the mood.
Like pretty amazing, but wow.

SPEAKER_05 (01:21:20):
That's intense.
And and he did a lot of workwith them as they were starting
to design Universal StudiosFlorida.

SPEAKER_11 (01:21:27):
Wow.
Well, it definitely says, like,when you when you think about
what what we have, what Kellyhas just read to you.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:21:36):
And think of it often, ye shall.

SPEAKER_11 (01:21:38):
Oh, yes, ye shall.
It really does actually reflecta lot of the type of stuff that
they wound up putting intoFlorida.
Yes.
And also back in Los Angeles,too.
This attitude led to thesemonster rides.
Right.
Like Back to the Future, likethe Star Trek experience, like
the Conan Sword and SorcerySpectacular.

SPEAKER_05 (01:21:59):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's it's really interestingbecause what it did.
So the the Universal Park inFlorida got held up for a while.
Yeah.
Partially because they had torework the plans, because they
were like, well, we can't bechasing Disney, even though
Disney's stealing our stuff.
Right.
And but they also got held upbecause they were searching for

(01:22:22):
a financial partner, which was areal problem because they people
kept coming on board and thenbailing and coming on board
bailing.
But when they finally got itopen in 1990, it the first year
of Universal Studios Florida isconsidered something of a
disaster.
You know, it's it's Disneyland'sopening day, but over an entire

(01:22:44):
year.
It was brutal.
Yeah.
And they still outsold DisneyMGM Studios that year.
Wow.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 (01:22:50):
No amount of Rudy Belber, of the MGM uh studio
tram tour ride to entertain you.
Now sit back in your chairs andrelax as we take you through the
booby ride.

SPEAKER_05 (01:23:03):
But so they Jay Stein argues for a long time
because people keep coming tohim like, we're not ready, we're
not ready.
And his argument is it's betterto open and stumble for a while
and fix it than it is to delay.
And he's not wrong.
He's not wrong.

SPEAKER_11 (01:23:20):
He's actually not wrong.
As a show planner myself, I haveopened up haunts where I go, it
ain't ready yet.
Yeah.
Let's give them what we can.
And then the following week,well, that's when that's when
real crunch time kicks, is thatthe the week after your opening
day.

SPEAKER_03 (01:23:36):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (01:23:36):
Because you're going through going, fix this scare,
fix that one.
And okay, now it works.
Yeah.
It ain't exactly what we wanted,but it's what it works.
But you learn a lot, and thenyou'll never make that mistake
again.

SPEAKER_05 (01:23:47):
Yeah, and and you're realists.
That's what I love about JayStein.
Absolutely.
Like he he just is gonna go andhe's going to to fight, and he's
going to upset a lot of people.
A lot of people will leave, anda lot of people will become very
devoted to him.
Absolutely.
It just depends.
But he's gonna get the damnthing open.

(01:24:08):
Yeah.
And it's going to force Disney'shand in a couple of ways.
Yeah.
One is that by he had a choicewhen Disney announced they were
going to do Disney Gym, theycould have pulled back.
They could have said, we're justnot going to take them on, or
we're going to do somethingsmaller that has gets a smaller
bit.
That's not Stein's way.
No.

(01:24:29):
Stein was like, we are goingfarther.
Yep.
We're going to push harder.
We're going to do things theynever would have imagined doing.
And by doing that, he startsdrawing attention to what
Universal is doing.
And then eventually they'rereplicating the rides back to
Hollywood.
And he's forcing Disney out oftheir comfort zone.

(01:24:49):
Oh, yeah.
Like Disney has lived in thisbubble for a long time with
these sort of legacy charactersand producing their own IP.
And he's like, that's not whatwe're doing anymore.
We're getting IP.
We're talking to Spielberg.
We're talking to who whowhoever.

SPEAKER_11 (01:25:08):
Like we're going to plan it from the start.

SPEAKER_05 (01:25:10):
Yeah, yeah.
We're we're going to do Fivaland we're going to do Miami Vice
and Waterworld.
And he's like, and that's theway the industry's going to work
now because Jay Stein decidesthat's the way it's going to
work now.

SPEAKER_11 (01:25:25):
Yeah.
You're absolutely correct onthat.
And it it creates a whole newculture at Universal.
Yeah.
They basically started off like,we're not in a theme park
business, it's just a studiotour thing.
And then it was Jay Stein thatactually said, no, we're in the
park business.
We're entertaining people.
This is a multimedia experience.
That's what J Bangs really are.

(01:25:45):
It's this multimedia,multi-sensory experience.
Yeah.
That transcends what a dark rideis or what a roller coaster is.
There's a lot more to it.
This is essentially where dangerminus death equals thrills.
Yes really gets become part ofthe DNA at Universal.
And that Disney has beenstarting only now, only in the

(01:26:07):
past 20 years have they actuallyreally been catching up.
Right.
And even then, they're stillstruggling to catch up.

SPEAKER_05 (01:26:13):
His his plan and and certainly the Disney parks
outsell the Universal Parks, butnot by a ton anymore.
And I've made this predictionfor years, and I think it's
going to come true pretty soon.
I think Universal StudiosBeijing is going to be the top
attended theme park in the worldvery soon.

SPEAKER_11 (01:26:32):
I agree.

SPEAKER_05 (01:26:32):
As far as yearly attendance goes.

SPEAKER_11 (01:26:34):
Universal Now is with their Islands of Adventure,
with the Universal Monsters andAre you talking about Epic
Universe?
Epic Universe.
I'm sorry, Islands of Adventureis something else.
Yeah.
Sorry.

SPEAKER_05 (01:26:46):
And we need to talk about Islands of Adventure a
little bit.

SPEAKER_11 (01:26:48):
Yes, we do.
So why don't you go ahead?

SPEAKER_05 (01:26:50):
Well, so so Stein uh gets Universal Florida open.
They start working out thekinks.
They come up with a reallyclever plan, which is basically
just give everybody a free passto come back.
Wow.
Because things are broken andit's not working, and people are
taking trips to see thesethings, and you show up to see

(01:27:11):
Jaws, and Jaws isn't open fornine months.
Go back and listen to our Jawsepisode, everybody.
Like all of this stuff, it'sit's causing press problems with
the press.
It's causing public relationsproblems.
They come up with this idea thatfor the first year, basically,
they give everybody a free passto come back next year.
Which is great.
It was brilliant.
Yeah, absolutely brilliant.

(01:27:32):
That next year, of course,attendance is massive because a
lot of people get him free.
Yes, but they all go to thecommissary.
That's right.
They all they all buy theirMoe's donuts and whatever.
And and it's a success.
It's it really takes off.
And Jace immediately, evenbefore Florida opens, he's

(01:27:54):
talking about the next park.
And he's saying, Look, I can seewhat Disney's trying to do down
the road, and we can do itbetter.
He's like, I can see whatthey're doing with like a third
park and their pleasure islandcomplex.
Yep.
And he's like, we can do that.
We know nightclubs better thanthose guys know nightclubs.

SPEAKER_11 (01:28:12):
Oh, and he starts were probably written in one.

SPEAKER_05 (01:28:15):
Yeah, yes, probably.
But he he starts talking aboutwhat will be their second gate,
which is a thing he callscartoon world.
And his idea, so of course, thisis a direct attack on Disney.
He's like he's like, this iskind of our family friendlier
side.
We are going to try and buy theWarner Brothers characters, the

(01:28:38):
Looney Tunes characters.
And and I think we can really dothis.
Oh, uh this is a story worthtelling, too, along the way.
He's been suing Michael Eisnerfor like eight years.
Just over and over and over forinfringement.
Eventually, Spielberg has tostep in and tell Stein, like,

(01:29:02):
stop suing Eisner at Disney.
You gotta stop.
Not a good idea.
Yeah, it just it doesn't lookgood.
But Stein has a white, hothatred of these guys now.
Oh, yeah.
And to be fair, like they sendsome people, Stein won't go, but
they send other people over toDisney MGM who've seen their own

(01:29:25):
original plans, and they'rewalking around going, this is
exactly architecture out of ourplans.
This is exactly taken from thethings we showed Eisner.

SPEAKER_11 (01:29:36):
It's it's just it's true.
It's just who has the biggerlawyers.

SPEAKER_05 (01:29:39):
And now that park, which is no longer called Disney
MGM, but is now called Disney'sHollywood Studios, is it's the
worst park in their portfolio.
It's it's Disney's junk drawer.

SPEAKER_11 (01:29:50):
Yeah, no, that's a great part.
That's a great like the history,like it could have been called
the history of the movies orsomething like that.
Because they've got some funstuff in there.
Yeah, the Tower of Terror isstill.
There.
I love that.
The Indiana Jones stunts showspectaculars there.
You've got Gertie the dinosaurselling ice cream, which is
cool.

SPEAKER_05 (01:30:08):
And there's some really neat themed restaurants.

SPEAKER_11 (01:30:10):
Yeah.
And the the drive-in.
I don't think the drive-inrestaurant exists anymore.
No, it's still there.
The sci-fi drive-in, yeah.
Oh, good.
Because I love that one.

SPEAKER_05 (01:30:16):
Um and the primetime cafe.

SPEAKER_11 (01:30:18):
Yeah, the primetime cafe.
It's kind of this big meh.
It's just all over the place.
Yeah.
They they and you know, I thinkI was like one of the on the one
of the last few tours of themovie ride.
Oh, that was I love that ride.
It was it's pretty clever.
We'll talk about that particularride without bringing up Jay
Stein too much in a futureepisode.
But yeah, it's yeah, there'ssome good stuff to it, but it

(01:30:39):
doesn't have the cohesion thatsome of the other Disney parks
have.

SPEAKER_05 (01:30:42):
Stein comes in like with this cartoon world idea.
And to jump to the end of thestory, about 50% of that idea
gets built as Islands ofAdventure.
Yeah.
But Universal starts goingthrough ownership changes.
Yep.

SPEAKER_11 (01:30:58):
So Japanese company that buys them.

SPEAKER_05 (01:31:02):
Yeah, and Seagrams buys them for a while.
Who knew that Seagrams had thatmuch money?

SPEAKER_11 (01:31:07):
Yeah, well, they didn't last long as an owner.
No, they bombed out prettyquick.
Not enough people were going tothe commissary.

SPEAKER_05 (01:31:13):
And there's they are really struggling to get the
Looney Tunes characters, whichhave been licensed to Six Lags
for a while.
Yep.
And they could have, but therewas an argument between
Scheinberg and the person thatwe're they were negotiating with
at Warner's.
Oh dear.
And Scheinberg got mad.
Uh-oh.
So for not too much more, theycould have had those characters.

(01:31:35):
Scheinberg made it a point ofprincipal and held his ground
and they didn't get them.
So at that point, things startto look a little shaky for Jay's
cartoon world.
Right.
He's he is very rightly soconcerned about trying to make a
cartoon-themed theme park with awhole bunch of disparate B-level
cartoons.
Sure.
Like Hannah Barbera's great, butit's not enough.

(01:31:57):
So he's he's fighting.
Spielberg is about to releaseJurassic Park.
Yep.
Spielberg wants a land.
Oh yeah.
And Stein is like, yes, youshould have that, but not in
cartoon world.
Right.
Yep.
So there that that's going on.

SPEAKER_11 (01:32:15):
Yeah, this big hill that we could put it on.
Yeah, right.
Jurassic Park ride.

SPEAKER_05 (01:32:19):
Yeah.
And then at at a certain point,like you MCA loses control of
Universal, partially because LouWasserman's older and tired.
He's been with Hollywood inHollywood since the like late
30s, early 40s.
He is and he is part of adifferent time.
Yes, he is.
And he's ready to be done.
Sure.
Well, a Japanese company comesin and and buys them out.

(01:32:42):
Right.
And at that point, Stein isdone.
Yep.
He he's like, he's he's startingnot to be listened to anymore.
He's losing Wasserman, who is abig defender.
And he just decides to go.
And he's like, you can keep meas a consultant for a while.
And also, once they could notget the war the Looney Tunes

(01:33:05):
characters done, his cartoonWorld Dream was really falling
apart.
And he and he realized that theywere going to listen to
Spielberg if Spielberg wanted aJurassic Parkland.
Right.
So he he resigns.
1993.
And there's a a really beautifulmoment in Sam's book where uh

(01:33:27):
Spielberg calls him after heresigns.
And there's been some contentionbetween the two of them.
Jay's smart enough to know thathe's that Spielberg is the goose
that lays the golden egg.
So he's he's he understands heneeds to be good to this guy.
Sure.
But there's there's some things.
And Spielberg calls Jay directlyand says, What the hell, Jay?

(01:33:49):
Like, why why are you I I seeingwhat you're writing, yeah, this
is not it.
Right.
And finally Jay unloads and hesays, Look, like I'm I'm going
to have no more say that I'vedevoted what almost 30 years at
this point to developing thisindustry he has now built.
Oh yeah.

(01:34:09):
And like Florida's starting tothat park's flourishing, the
rides are coming back toHollywood.
Hollywood's flourishing.
They've got the top and thelower lot like really just
rolling in Hollywood.
Like horror night stuff isstarting to happen.
They're just they're making aton of money.
And he's like, I'm I just I'mnot in charge anymore.
It's not worth it for me.

(01:34:30):
And Spielberg kind of begs him,like, just sleep on it.
Don't don't do this.
Sure.
And and and Jay's like, no, no,no, I'm done.
Yeah.
But it's a r it's a it's areally sweet moment of kind of
humility of Spielberg going, no,no, no.
I know what you did.
I know how much you've done.

SPEAKER_11 (01:34:50):
Yeah.
Based on all accounts that we'veread and we've gone over, Jay
Stein probably was not the mosteasygoing of people.
No, he was very difficult.
Yeah, very difficult individual,which probably explains why
Universal Studios to this daydoesn't really talk about him
much, and even after his death,he hasn't even mentioned it.
So this is why Kelly and I havedecided to do this episode.

(01:35:12):
Yeah.
Normally with our episodes, weusually do a plus up.
Yeah.
I'm not exactly sure what thatwould be here.
What that would be here.
But I will say that to to we'rekind of at your zenith here.
There's a couple things.
One is I I do want to from apersonal point of view, even
without knowing who Jay Steinwas, I was already applying a

(01:35:35):
lot of these things to thehaunted houses that I do.

SPEAKER_03 (01:35:37):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (01:35:37):
You have to have and because I would treat them less
like Disney.
Now I have a friend named Stuartwho also does haunted houses.
He approaches his haunt morelike Disney.

SPEAKER_05 (01:35:45):
Yeah, I've met Stuart.

SPEAKER_11 (01:35:46):
Nice guy.
Yeah, Stuart Kurumoto.
Very nice guy.
He run he runs his own hauntdown in Santa Clara.
Really wonderful guy.
Hello, Stuart.

SPEAKER_05 (01:35:53):
I think he listens, actually.

SPEAKER_11 (01:35:54):
He does.
He's he's a wonderful, wonderfulhuman being.

SPEAKER_05 (01:35:58):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (01:35:58):
But he and I have always been different in how we
approach our haunts.

SPEAKER_03 (01:36:01):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (01:36:01):
I've always been more of a Jay Stein Universal
Studios type.
Where yes, you're gonna havemood, you're gonna have this,
but I'm gonna give you a couplethings that you're gonna
remember.
Yeah, right.
I'm gonna punctuate it with somestuff.
And Stuart does that well asalso with his shows, but he
tends to end it, he tends to aimit a lot more like Disney, where
Disney's approach is a lot moregentle.

(01:36:22):
Yeah.
Because Jay Stein was notgentle, and nor am I.
You're right.
And I actually I'm actuallypretty infamous in some of these
haunts to really take somechances.
Yeah.
Some of which actually havegrossed out even Stuart, most
notably a mannequin vomitinginto a toilet nonstop at one
point.
Oh my god.
Yeah, that was that was how wefirst met.
But that's I'll let Stuart tellthat story sometime.
Stuart, do you want to be aguest on the show?

(01:36:43):
Come on up, we'll do it.
We'll have some fun.
Welcome.
We'll grab dinner and we'll we'dlove to talk about your haunt.
Yeah.
But anyway, I would like to wrapup this show, as I think we
should, by talking aboutinnovations that are currently
coming out there that are verybased off of this kind of Jstein
attitude.
Yeah.
And one of which is theapplication of artificial
intelligence in the developmentof theme parks.

SPEAKER_03 (01:37:04):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 (01:37:04):
AI comes with so many issues, especially from a
creative standpoint.
However, I do like to say that Iwill say and come out and say
that look, AI can actually be auseful tool in certain
circumstances.
Sure.
Sure.
It can be very helpful when itis assisting you, not doing the
whole job for you.
And it's like small algorithms,that kind of thing.

(01:37:27):
So it's not an end-all be-all.
Yeah.
So to pay tribute to end ourshow, I before we did this,
about 24 hours before we'rerecording this, I sat down on
full disclosure on Suno.ai, andI wrote, I wrote the lyrics for
a song about Jay Stein.
Yeah.
In all in only a J-Bangy waythat would like work really well

(01:37:50):
at the Universal Amphitheater.
So you're going to have toimagine all the explosions and
no message whatsoever.
Yeah.
It obeys when you're reading theTen Commandments, it totally
read it.
We're going to put that at theend of this episode here, just
for fun, as a little tribute toJay Stein.

SPEAKER_05 (01:38:09):
I I will say, so I I have just the slightest plus up.
And and I will say, like, go outand read Sam Genaway's books
about Jay.
They're terrific.
We didn't at all touch on Jaysetting up the tourist trams for
the National Mall in Washington,D.C., which he did.
Jay running the concessions inYosemite National Park for years

(01:38:30):
and years and years.

SPEAKER_11 (01:38:32):
Where people definitely went to the
concession stand.

SPEAKER_05 (01:38:34):
They did.
There was a heck of a lot ofstuff that the guy did that was
that was amazing and impressive.
And I will say my sole plus upwould be Universal, come on,
acknowledge the guy.
Yeah.
He's he is he is where this allstarts for you.

SPEAKER_11 (01:38:51):
Yep.
And our our collectivecondolences also to Stein's uh
surviving family.
Uh we are sorry for your loss.
We want to thank him and all ofyou for supporting him
throughout all these years forchanging the industry that we
know and love.
Yep, absolutely.
So all right, it's time to cuethe lights.
Start up the Pyrotechnics.

(01:39:12):
It's time for our tribute.
I'm Peter Overstreet.
And I'm Kelly McGovern.
And you're listening to Lowdownon the Plus Up.

SPEAKER_02 (01:39:19):
Hit it, guys.
Our story begins 1959 at MCA,where young Jay Stein started as
a mailroom resident, and ineight years became the
president.
How'd he do it?
I hear you say, well, for badideas, there'd be hell to play.
OJ had a way of relating.

(01:39:42):
The biggest ideas were the same.
It's a J Black Here the peopleas they say.
Only big ideas could be thebaseline.
You can muster with old J Stime.
But soon the universal studiostour was revamped with trams to

(01:40:06):
add a luck.
The red sea farting and thelesson flesh blood and brothers
bubble with blood.
The tram tour's beginning tomake clouds.
He didn't care about expensenumber than a hassle.

SPEAKER_06 (01:40:23):
Boys, I want you to build me a castle.

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Not With a Whimper, but With a Bang! - Jay Stein: Father of the Modern Theme Park

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Not With a Whimper, but With a Bang! - Jay Stein: Father of the Modern Theme Park