Podcast: The Ride - The A-Team Live Stunt Show/Miami Vice Action Spectacular with Matt Gourley

Episode Date: August 2, 2019

Matt Gourley (Superego, Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend) talks improvising at Disney, Push The Talking Trash Can, and two long gone Universal stunt spectaculars! Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus Universal Starway episode up at The Second Gate: https://www.patreon.com/podcasttheride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever Dog with special guest Matt Gourley. I love it when a podcast comes together. It's Podcast The Ride, hosted by three guys who never get starstruck unless they are meeting the voice of a theme park trash can. I'm Scott Gardner, Jason Sheridan, Mike Carlson are here. Yes, and that is what's happening today, among other things. Hi, yes. is for me i'm excited to be here no kid the only thing where the the list seems to rival your podcast list is the theme park sadly yeah no these are the most excited of the funnest of areas i'm so glad we could talk about people have tweeted us a lot of like you gotta have gorley on you gotta have yeah i've seen a lot of those yeah yeah well and we got sort of like i feel like we were like almost like set up on a podcast blind date by a listener who approached you somewhere and said, when are you going to do Podcast The Ride? Yeah.

Which I was thankful to hear about. Which I think when, and I heard the response there was that you were curious about Waterworld, but Jordan Morris dove in and got there first. Yeah, I saw that and that immediately hit me hard. That's real good. Oh, my podcast wars started first. Yeah, I saw that and that immediately hit me hard. That's real good. The podcast war started new. That was the real sea war. Yeah. But I understood it and I

thought maybe that's an invitation for me to go one, maybe even two levels deeper. Yes, yes, both. And this is really the bones of the, like there could be no Waterworld Alive Sea Wars Spectacular without the essential building blocks of Miami Vice and A-Team. Which are the burial ground, like the poltergeist Native American stunt show spectacular burial ground on which Waterworld is on top of. Sure, sure. Sure. And any problems that they encounter, if anyone were to get hurt, it is probably stemming from that they would dare to exile all the Crockett and Tubbs.

Yeah, all the ghosts of the stunts that happened. The bones of the poor man's B.A. Baracus will come out of the Waterworld Lake because they were literally on the same grounds. I guess that's clear, but maybe some people don't know that yeah yeah yeah water world's from around the 95 96 i think is when they made that switch i don't want to say 95 and uh yeah miami vice before that and 18 before that that's always been the sectioned off stunt area for in the for the most part properties that go longer than the thing that it is based on. Well longer, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, because Miami Vice is still going in 94 when it's been off the air for four years. Four years, I think. Yeah, yeah. Both of them, yeah. Both of them ran after, until after their show had gone off the air. The show went till 1990? Yeah. Oh my God.

What did they do with their fashions? Did they update them? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know where they landed. Well, seemingly in the live show, they started to get a little looser. They were like sort of like ponytail crockets. That's right. They let them hang a little

bit, at least the ones you can see on YouTube. So, I guess they weren't being held to the you know the proper style standards right no crockett style standards yeah 1995 like children watching the miami vice stunt show were just like well this is cool i don't know what it is yeah it's just neat yeah and water world's now like many generations deep oh no yeah um uh before we get into all these excellent topics that you got into we we got to ask you about the history uh uh the uh i mean there's a number of things push among them the

soap opera beast i'm not i'm not sure where to start if you want to take us through your because i think more than any guest we've had you've been uh you you've logged a lot of time in the parks. Yeah, I guess so. So, I think it all began in 2001. I can't remember. I think it was right after 9-11. Great, great. Would you say that's why you got into theme parks? Because of a transformation that happened? It was an inside job.

Yeah. I got this job doing this thing called the Soap Opera Bistro at Disney's California Adventure which was a soap opera themed restaurant based on the ABC soap opera. So, every room of the restaurant was a different set like a mansion, a wharf, a surgery room. And so, there was this group of improvisers and we were all- we all came from the same circle. So, it was like my best friends, we were all doing this thing where you'd go in once an hour for about 10 minutes, improvise a soap opera scene while people are eating. And you'd like put your hand on the shoulders of some woman and go like, my wife Monrovia here left me.

And, you know, and the people just ate it up. You're wearing doctor's scrubs all day. It was the easiest job I will ever have. It was a union performer's job. Wow. And then also the park was doing so poorly that we'd come in for like a 10 o'clock shift and they go, we're not going to open till five. So, just go ride some rides. And it was a union job. And then also the park was doing so poorly that we'd come in for like a 10 o'clock shift and they go, we're not going to open till five. So, just go ride some rides. And it was a union job. So, you'd be paid for it. And I mean, this is really how Super Ego started because we,

I had already had like my friend Jeremy that I do Super Ego with. We were already friends, but Mark, we all kind of would just have so much downtime that we would just goof off with each other and straight man each other for bits and things like that. And we all became fast close friends and then... Wow. Super Barbra Bistro didn't last that long. I was gonna say, I don't even know how that's like really that's opening day California Adventure, early, early stuff.

Yeah. Did you last till the end of it? Yeah. Wow. Well beyond. Well beyond because that closed fairly early. And then basically everybody who was doing that job transitioned to a new show called Department of Untapped Hilarity.

Duh. Duh. For sure. Yes. I have questions about duh. And actually that first was something called the... I think it was called the Wrong Brothers instead of the Right Brothers, which took place in the aviation area.

And we were like airplane mechanics doing improv on the street. Yeah. I'm just remembering a lot of narrow area. I know. Like, and Aaron Hayes from all kinds of TV. She was part of it. Wow. Chris Tallman, Jeremy Mark from Super Ego.

I'm trying to think of other people that some people took off i forget was this a rain was it like sort of random uh auditioning for this or were they aware of your pocket of people as we should it was random auditioning but the guy who was basically running it all frank maciel was a friend of ours so it was kind of like he pulled from the talent pool that i think he knew. Okay, sure, sure. And then that turned into Department of Untapped Hilarity, which was the big stage show in California Adventure where we dressed like Mormons on a mission and rode bicycles to set each set. It was so strange. But then we did like a whose line is it anyway type show for about 20 minutes. And that was really fun and did fairly well but then they shut that down

too and then i moved to like i did laughing stock i did uh billy hill and the hillbillies briefly i did push the talking trash can for years and then i taught improv workshops through their entertainment program and education program and that was basically my run wow wow oh geez so you'd like facilitated anything that was improv-y around the party which there is a lot of stuff when you add all that up and even like down to the like the characters or the walk around characters it's improv star wars there's so much improv going on yeah it is a you forget what a big hub of yeah it's like it's one of the it's like one of the, maybe the only in a way, like real world applications of here's a place where improv is needed.

One of the few you get paid to improvise. Yeah. Right, right, right. And it was a great job because I was in my 20s when I started. And I think it was like, I want to say it was like 20 or $25 an hour and you got full benefits. Wow, pretty good. Yeah. Geez. Wow. Yeah. And. Much you got full benefits. Wow, pretty good. Yeah.

Geez. Wow. Yeah. Much better, by the way, than I will get to. There were some labor disputes in the A-Team stunt show. Oh, really? That's one of the only Google results. There's not a ton online for the A-Team stunt show.

But they would have been more than happy with those rates. And they were like hurting themselves. They were risking their lives every day. And I think maybe Universal, I could speak to this as a tour guide i think maybe the disney pay is for performers is superior to universal potential because there's also wasn't there a guy at least in the wild west on show and there were two incarnations of that that one guy fell off the like zip line and broke his neck oh jesus i remember that happening too really yeah oh man i don't know that one wow wow yeah uh no injuries on the job for you uh just like emotional i guess no actually that was a really good time of life because it was it was like the first time i felt

truly independent had some disposable income i was with my best friends we would go get a beer after every time and you know it it was great. Was there a hangout spot you would have after getting off the job? You mean in the park? Yeah. Well, anywhere really. We would go to the Block at Orange, which by the way you take a street called Shoppertainment

to get into. And go to this place called I think it was Alcatraz Brewery. Because a few of us lived in Long Beach. Most of us lived in LA. I lived in Long Beach. And this was a place where we could go while we were all down there. We know traffic, which is considerable.

You're pretty trapped down there for sure. Wow. Wow. Block of Orange, solid. They got the sagebrush cantina now. Oh. The creepy mannequins outside. Excellent El Torito.

Yeah. The massive El Torito. Have we been in that El Torito? I don't believe so. We went to one by water. We went to one by the John Wayne. Okay. We've been to a different El Torito down in Orange County.

A different Orange County El Torito. Well, you got to hit them all because they're just vastly nuanced. They're like the Fry's electronic store. They're just way different. Oh, yeah, yeah. Hey, stay tuned for that one. I can't build up our eventual Fry's episode. We're doing a Fry's episode. Are you? Oh, for sure. It's themes.

That's true. There's a radical amount of theming in all of them. They're all totally different. Like Roman space. There's like, yeah, there's like oh yeah there's there's island ones there's like alice in wonderland what where um down the note canoga park yeah yeah but like scratchy lewis carroll era illustration alice in wonderland so it's a little horrific that is so specific and it's really for an electronics superstore.

Really intense. Like they put more attention into theming than they do into their stock. Having stuff in stock. Yes. There's so much missing. Everything I've ever bought from their breaks. It's not a good store. But a surprising selection of

snacks. Yes. A very well stocked convenience store a not great stocked electronics yeah and every time i've been in there on display on the big tvs is always like um the four woman electronic violin ensemble playing like live concert dvd you know i think they're called bond actually oh really yeah but nothing to do with bond right oh weird but like one of those are they like the piano guys like all the guys yeah like together play piano and like deconstructed yeah piano guys like play trump's inauguration i think oh boy everyone that's real but like something around it is real yeah yeah but they're not political that's a thing

like they would do any president they're apolitolitical. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank God. Thank God at least politics haven't gotten the four piano guys. Yeah. They've gotten snare. They're harking back to a better time. Yeah. When bipartisanship ruled. Well, so, Push.

Let's talk Push a little bit. Yeah. I feel like I'm mainly aware of Push because of your association with it. I don't think I ever met push when i was in the party do you guys interact with push because push was only out here no it was was he in florida every park i think i feel like i met maybe i did meet push what years were it i forget uh well into like the i think late 90s into the 2010s i remember a moving trash can but not necessarily a talking trash can well i bet that was it but the like intercom was broken because

it was always breaking down okay yeah so perhaps in florida i there was a moving trash can yeah we had frequency issues all the time where were you Where were you do it from? They moved it around a lot. So, it was at one point in Tomorrowland, then it was in California Adventure in a few different places. It would move a lot and it was frequently moving because of frequency issues like with all their radios and stuff. And there was two. There was one called Push and one called Shove.

And they looked identical. But, you know, one always worked better than the other. But even that. And then also, even though it might have been working, there were some push operators. I'm not saying I'm one of them who would like milk that it wasn't working to get off their sets a little early. Oh. Yeah. How would you just be like, I'm trying and it just doesn't.

It's not going. And again, it was definitely not me. Right. But if you worked. If you did it. I'm not saying it was doesn't, it's not going. Yeah, and again, it was definitely not me. Right, but if you worked, if you did it. I'm not saying it was not me. Fair, fair. But when I did do that. And were you far away in a room where you were watching a camera or were you close by?

No, you're very close by. You got to wear your own. Oh, this is a great thing. So, this was another union job and you got to wear your own clothes and then they had to pay you for wearing your own clothes. So, you got an extra bonus. Oh, wow. You get a bump. Sure.

So, you'd wear like a ball cap and you just wore like a lavalier mic. But instead of putting it on your lapel, it would run down your sleeve like under a watch into your hand like this. Like you just kind of have a semi-closed fist. And then a duffel bag over your shoulder with the controller on your right hand. And so, I just kind of put my hand up to my mouth like this. And then I would only have to talk like this and it would modulate my voice up.

And I was usually about... I could get as far away as I wanted but if you get really far away, you can't hear what the people talking to Push are saying because Push had no like two-way microphone. Oh, you had nothing in your ear. No. So, i had to be close to hear them live and so i would usually just whoever it was talking to i'd stand somewhat behind them and they couldn't hear me because the microphone the speaker was louder but the parents all knew you know most people would i i didn't try

to hide that much yeah yeah you looked like serp. You looked like a plain clothes cop wearing a wire. Yeah. I mean, it definitely must have looked creepy with a guy in his hand and his bag. Maybe that's why they stopped doing it because it was probably like, oh God, who's this? Watch out for Push's friend. Yeah. I wondered because they have now, we all were in Galaxy's Edge at the same time. Yes.

Oh, yes. Day one. Day one. Yeah. I talked to you there. And we had interacted with R2-D2 and I wonder was there a guy- I didn't see R2-D2. He's in the Droid Depot. And I was just going-

He's available for purchase, but they also turn him on and they'll beep at you. And he can tell if your intonation is a question or- Wait, you can buy a full-sized R2-D2? At $25,000. $25,000. Wait, they're selling something for $25,000? Yeah. It got some weird press in that it was, it was almost like a weird, you know, like a novelty bragging point of the place.

If you really want to throw it down, there's a $25,000 item. God. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think I saw him. You saw the control? I saw the guy. Oh, because that's what I was wondering.

Was there a person behind me? Because I believe so. I think I did at least. But I think he was fully in like a cast member garb. Because that's a tiny room. It's in like a tiny room where you, I bought Rex, so he's sitting over there. There he is. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Rex? He was bad. He's in the corner looking at the wall. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. He's Blair Witching it. Yeah. The dog doesn't like him either.

Oh, really? Oh, that's stupid. Oh, he wheels around. Oh, yeah, yeah. I haven't done a lot of interacting with i have carpet too so rex can't get far but yeah rex is really a pre or not a pre-push similar to push you need a bb8 for carpet right oh i guess that might be easier point oh yeah because there's no part with wheels like it's all i don't know how they work really did you do a droid did you get

a droid no i couldn't even get in i couldn't even get in. I couldn't get in the cantina, couldn't get in the lightsaber thing. I had a pretty bad experience at Galaxy's Edge. That makes sense. Well, you were part of you were the second group, right? You were staggered. So, like, now you're competing with everybody. That was the first time that

group one and group two were all mishing and fighting. We were bad boys and cut in line with someone to get into the cantina. Good for you. We joined an existing party. We didn't cut in line. But we were bad boys. I just want to acknowledge it. So, if we had been

more in communication, we may have been able to tell you what the whole situation is, which is regrettable. I'm sorry. Now you can just walk in. Now it's wide open. You can make a reservation for the bar whenever you want. The thing that killed me was that when we went to go into the cantina, there was this

young, just as most Disney employees are, just full of fear. Guy saying, you can't go in. And we're like, well, can we get in line? No, you can't. Bright Sun's off-worlder. You can't even get in line. And so, he had to continue talking in this vernacular that they make them talk, but I'm sure they've given them a limited vocabulary of

things to memorize. So, he didn't have the words to deal with people going, wait, why can't we at least get in line? Like, it's our choice if we want to get in line. Oh, off-worlder, I regret to inform you the First Order has a, oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. And he was like near tears and I felt horrible. We backed off for his sake. Yeah. But it was really strange. You know?

What do they call lines or buzzers or apps? Right. It's unclear. The cosmic queue that you... The galactic queue is at capacity. Oh, God. And he was just like imploding. And everybody was so stressed.

Can I break and use Anaheim language, please? Please, I'm stuck. Yeah. I'm going to turn the universal translator on. Oh, please don't get in line. Turn it off again. Hi, job. They're watching me.

You don't understand. It's not the first order. It's the middle managers. They're over there in chinos and plaid shirts and straw hats. They're after me everywhere. An upsetting amount of business casual middle managers. They're over there in chinos and plaid shirts and straw hats. They're after me everywhere. An upsetting amount of business casual middle managers there that day. There is more of them than workers at Disney. It is.

That's the unsettling thing about Galaxy's Edge. When you work there, and I'm not doing that thing where I'm like likening Disney to a fascist regime. However, they do have a culture of fear and like cult there for their workers who go there thinking like this is a dream job because it's paradise. And everybody's so kind of afraid of messing up that nobody makes a decision. So, getting an answer from someone has to go way up the chain. Right. It's a strange place to work. We were always separated as the like

union performers but watching it happen and my wife was a princess there too and she she yeah and tokyo disney too god you guys should have her oh wow yeah yeah yeah she she worked in tokyo yeah for six months wow did she start here and get like was offered yeah she was a uh ariel um a mary poppins and a cinderella and i think a sleeping beauty i think wow that's a lot did she have to learn japanese to do this no i guess not i don't think so and there is a they do hire white people to portray the princesses. Right. Correct. Like... In Japan? Yeah. Yeah. Because, yeah, you do not see Japanese. Like... Right. They want them to

look American. Like, be American. Not look American. Be American. All the princesses are American. Yeah. Well, yeah. Right. They are. That's the way they are. Little mermaid lives in the sea next to America. Yeah. Mulan is from Chinatown San Francisco She speaks English

We know they want American performers because I was trying To get Jason years ago to apply To play Austin Powers at Universal Japan A British band Yes I was like come on just go do it we're not doing anything here We didn't have a podcast yet Yeah in retrospect

I should have done that Were you working there? No no I just saw it online and I go hey Jason go do this It'll be funny if you go to Japan and play Austin Powers Yeah You're just checking job listings for Jason Yeah yeah Anytime you have ever sent me a job listing

It's not like hey this would be a good job This would be good pay it's like this would be funny If you did this yeah sure and you have yet to apply to one of them i know yeah your current one is like you should be the uh you should apply to be artist director at ucb oh my god yes ladies and gentlemen if you're listening to this now support jason sheridan to be the artistic director of ucb they've had a great few years. Everything's going good. I want you to be there as soon as the ship goes down. I want you to get revenge on all of our enemies. I want it to all happen.

I support this. Yeah. Let's do it. And do it all dressed as Austin Powers. Like go in there for the interview going, I get comedy, baby. Yeah. Look at my impression. Do I make you horny is not a question that any artistic director should be asking at this point in time.

But it will replace don't think as the official phrase of the UCB theater. Yeah. Where were we? What were we saying? Japanese princess. Oh, my God. So wait. So, OK. cb theater yeah um okay where were we what were we saying uh uh japanese princess oh my god so wait so okay but because you were you were governed by the union so you were outside of the but you're not saying gestapo like tactics of the rest of the disney yeah we were managed by them still but they they didn't quite treat us like the characters and the like ride operators and the regular employees. I see, I see.

Was it Equity Union? No. It is in Florida, but it was AGVA, the American Guild of Variety Artists, which was a useless union. It has a no strike clause. Literally, like there's no power in this union. We couldn't strike. So, negotiations were always like, oh, we got an extra vending machine for you. But, you know.

And I think like Phyllis Diller was the president for a long time. Wow, really? Did you ever meet her? No. It was like a holdover from Vaudeville, I believe. Literally. That's interesting. The union, yeah.

Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. We've had past, I think, Ify, past guest Ify was talking about how there were different like cliques, essentially, depending on what department you were, like princesses versus like, do you remember this? And there's like a whole social structure in the park. Did you experience that or were you just doing your own thing? I guess that, yeah.

I know that the face characters, because my wife Amanda has told me this, were kind of the top of the food chain in terms of characters. And then the fuzzy characters were below that. And then we were disconnected from it all. But I'm imagining we were higher on the food chain because I know all those people wanted to be Agvas. Like the goal was always to be an Agva. That's what you're called an Agva

because you got good pay and you got you know, respect. And I say that loosely. Uh-huh, sure. Respecting your aviator stained overalls. Yes, yes. Riding a bicycle. I'm going to fix this plane up. Was there any job

in the park that you were like gunning forever or was it just not in the realm of it were you even just like i want to do a day of haunted mansion or something because that always seemed like fun no um i think i it was the reason i think back on it so fondly is that it was the easiest job yeah it required nothing like it's a job that you truly left behind the minute you clocked out. And if anything, if you carried it with you, it was something like you're still hanging out with your friends. There was no pressure, no high stakes.

It was so breezy. And like, the stakes were so low because you... I guess some people that don't do improv, it would make them tense. But anybody that does, it was the lowest stakes improv. You were often reusing a lot of the same theme park jokes. Right. It was not high art in any way. But it worked so well that the people love like Push alone.

People just ate it up. I don't know why they still don't do Push. It's one person on a job and it gets so much for its, you know, like investment. And like pulls people out of lines and crowds for a while yeah like this will eat up 50 people for this run of time and delight them and i would get these huge crowds and circles just surrounding this trash can and like the kids were in awe the parents were laughing i probably couldn't do a lot of the things i was doing at the time because like i i would make the trash can like flirt with people

or bump into the other trash can and go like Sheila why did you divorce me you know and like hound people for their churros I was like you know like to borderline harassment like throw your god dang churro away

so push would have been cancelled I would have been fired Yes I would have been fired Today I would have been fired Push the problematic trash can And I would like Someone would throw away a beer And I would just do a whole set drunk as push Oh that's great

Or they'd pour beer in me And I would just like go bump into things And then like roll up to one And go hi how you doing it was horrible it feels like that would be you could get away with that now at like horror nights yeah they should do a push trash can

at horror nights yeah they should and then he could say we did an episode I guess it's actually coming out the star way and like they can mention weed on the announcements they can be like don't smoke on the starway and like they can mention weed on the announcements they can be like don't smoke on the starway uh even weed or something like they can say weed even which is crazy so bold-faced i know there were times where like kids would a lot of kids would kick it like pre-teens would

like kick it and sometimes their parents were there and i would just flat up roll up to the parents go why aren't you doing something about your child? Do something about your child. And then I would get the rest of the crowd to shame those parents. Wow. And it was just sometimes it got tense, you know. People like a little comedy. Like people like a little, especially when it goes against the Disney type.

Yeah. Like they're relaxed, they're on vacation. They're like, oh, okay. Yeah. I'm into this. A lot of jokes about how expensive things were. How nice. type. Yeah. Like, they're relaxed, they're on vacation, they're like, oh, okay, yeah, I'm into this. A lot of jokes about how expensive things were. Mm-hmm. Nice. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I think I was sort of like, part of me wanted to get fired because part of me at that point pushes a solitary job and my friends were gone and I would break with like a lot of the characters and there was a handful of them that i broke with regularly that i loved they were like my family but then there were these others that would come in and just like eat a banana with their mouth open the whole time next to you and it was just it was and they'd always like put on a disney movie on your break in the break room and you

couldn't escape it and i started to go a little crazy and so there was part of me that was like i want to get fired. Sure. Yeah. But it was like being in a like bad relationship where you sabotage it rather than have the balls to break up. I was like, the money is too good, you know. So, I was just kind of daring them to fire me and they never did. When in the unlikely events that you're being supervised to such an extent that you like,

that you actually, you slip up and say something like they would have to line up you know like that would require like three different things to happen as opposed to you uh quitting which you'd have to like go do that you have to arrange a meeting well a lot of the middle managers were kind of afraid of the agvas for some reason they i think because they knew the agvas didn't care so they didn't have the like unspoken like discipline of fear over them and i remember there's you know we would get away with saying weird things i remember there's a guy in the laughingstock show that got some little kid to come and volunteer and he was talking to this character clam and he's like this kid's the only

one with nuts enough to challenge you on fullm. On full mic, you know. And like, I remember another guy was like, Jesus Christ. They never meant to do it, but it would come out. Or like, we were doing an improvised song about Aladdin. And my friend Gail, she's like, I want you to come into my cave of wonders. Like all this sexual, like we do a lot of sexual innuendo. And it was funny. I mean, we had so many regulars.

Like I hesitate to call them stalkers, but they were like anywhere from just super Disney fans that would come to every show every day to like special needs people that were dropped off as a cheaper way of care. We'd see this at Universal as well where special needs people were dropped off often in groups of two and they were just given annual passes because it was cheaper to have them be at the park all day than to have specialized care. And they were lovely, wonderful, but you'd see them every day and they'd volunteer every time and like or yell your jokes out before you could get them out but that was more my fault or our fault for reusing the same jokes we found a pattern yeah but this is can also be rare in comedy is like an audience who's happy to be there or like an audience who you know really wants to be because it's like well i already paid for that. This is free. I can sit down like at the very least.

And they actually somehow liked repetition. They almost didn't like new things. You know, you could imagine your everyday Disney guest who comes every day is probably into things not changing. Like they like the stability, you know. Oh, yes. The internet makes that very clear just move a plant or something peruse the mice chat message boards and you'll see yeah i can't believe i can't imagine if we

were working there in the days of reddit because there was burgeoning message boards and we had seen some of them and i had an issue with a stalker there and she would post on some things. And by the way, she was in her 70s and she was a strange stalker that admitted to me she thought I was like sending her coded messages on stage and stuff like that. It was... Oh, no. Yeah. Whoa. So, retire those jokes, I guess. Yeah. If you know what the code is.

She found my email and it was strange. And she would come with her like middle-aged son who would wear cataract glasses and sit separate from her. But they both would come to every show every day. Whoa. And yeah, she was very sweet, but she was something was off. What's the procedure for dealing with that? Well, that's a good question. I'm sure there's a super protocol for that now.

I just walked up to her and she, because at one point she emailed me going, oh, I don't like when you hug and kiss Gail on stage. Like, and I, she came up to me after the show and I'm like, I just want to clarify, A, that's just an act. And B, that's kind of not something you should say. And she's like, well, aren't you sending me these messages? Like, you're throwing references my way. And I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm not. And then she reached in her bag and I like hunkered down. Oh, God.

Oh, my God. This is it. And then she just said, I guess I'm just going a little crazy. And then pulled her hand out of her bag and nothing was in it. And I was just like, what is happening here? Oh, my gosh. Yeah. You didn't ask for like, well, by virtue of me being a performer, I'm putting myself out there for things like this.

You should expect this kind of thing to happen. It was really, really strange. Oh, my God. Which is a little microcosm of if you were a very famous person, the kind of insanity you would deal with. I can't imagine. I can't imagine. And that's the only time anything like that's ever happened to me. And I think even that was totally harmless.

She didn't have anything in her bag. But it's the first time that you were like cause it gave you cause to ever consider that kind of thing. So, it was really strange. Yikes. and the surroundings of my classroom and thinking like I've never had to consider that something tragic could happen here and it kind of made took the joy out of teaching it was horrible yeah yeah sure yeah oh god yeah well that's a rough area but if you're

listening and you think you've been hearing coded message messages from us you're absolutely right we're talking to you and please murder us please murder us. Please murder us. That's me. I've been hearing coded messages and I'm here to murder you. We invited you.

We let the wolf into the hen house. I developed super ego and podcast to get to this point. Wow. Long game. The Heath Ledger Joker. It's such a long con. It's such a long con to talented Mr. Ripley. The Heath Ledger Joker. It's such a long con. It's such a long con.

To talented Mr. Ripley. That's a longer one. That's a better example. I admired the strategy. Matt, what did you... I have a guess, but what did you do at Universal? Oh, I'm curious to hear what your guess is. Were you a working class Brooklyn man who yelled from the windows?

Close. I was the spinoff of that, the short-lived spinoff of that, the British yelling person up in a balcony on the British street. So, you should have been Austin Powers in Japan. No. No. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's this thing, the people up in the Brooklyn window just yelled down at the park guests.

They thought, let's do that with the English street and this was I guess I think this was 2011 and I it was summer and I had come out of a fairly long relationship and I was feeling like a lot of my friends lived in LA and I'm like I should get social again because I'm kind of like I skew towards the reclusive homebody and so I decided I decided I'll go, my friends are doing this. It'll be like, maybe it'll be a rehash of Disney where you're seeing your friends and you're doing improv. And then I went that day and auditioned. And then for the first day of orientation,

we all had to stand up and introduce ourselves. And my wife stood up and I just, I remember literally saying, uh-oh, like, who is that? And we hit it off that day. We hit it off and we're basically like, she's like, it was crazy. It was one of those true, like, I don't want to say like love at first sight, but we both were all in somehow. I don't know how it happened or what. And so, we worked that summer together and we were the first ones to open that show the first day together and just as soon as

we were like officially a couple i quit because i didn't really want to do that job and i'm like oh my god not only did i get to see my friends but i think i met my wife and so like i don't need this job anymore wow got out of there she worked there a little while longer and then she also did the special effects show and the the jurassic park dino expert or whatever it is that walks around yeah yeah wait what was was the were you with a dinosaur for that or i think there was like a cart that you had like animatronic puppet oh the egg i think it was like the egg yeah the puppet hand puppet egg yes yeah that's right and now it's much more advanced like we saw the full-sized raptor full full-sized Triceratops.

Yeah. I want to say it was called Dino Chasers, but is that something else? That sounds like something else. But maybe, I don't know. That's a cartoon I watched as a kid, I think. Maybe, yeah. You watched all three seasons and yet don't remember a drop of it. I don't know.

Yeah, anyway. But anyway, there's a movie coming out, I'm sure. I am the gateway to so many people if you want them. Like Mark, Jeremy, Amanda, they all had so many jobs at theme parks. Like I'm trying to think. Wait, Mark was the mayor, is that? Of Disney. Of Disney?

Yeah, yeah. Probably. We also all did a bunch of special events. That was the other thing. Like corporate special events that was the other thing like corporate special events improv things i was also a thing called a swing which if you did enough shows you would just come in for the day and in case they needed you so you'd sit around all day and maybe you'd do a couple of shows to keep fresh that was the greatest wow wow did you guys then like sort of fall in love wearing like monocles and bowler hats and she's got she's missing it's

worse than that yeah so originally yes it was like a tweety upper-class british man and a posh woman but they for some reason wanted to do away with that so she was dressed like a spice girl and i was dressed like keith richards it was awful it was truly awful uh how did it compare like work like i universal i don't think is union it was union it was you yeah yeah i don't i they do have a small union section i was thinking when you were talking about the the disneyland union that there was some i just remember there's a lot of grumbling when i was a tour guide of that at one point in time like before 1995 or something the tour guides and the drivers were in the same union. And then the guides were like, we need to be our own union.

And that caused the rates to go to like half of what the drivers make. So if there hadn't been the split, because the drivers do great and they should, because that's real work that they're doing. Because if they aren't doing the tram, they're like driving equipment around for the studio. They should be good. But for some reason the union happily walked off a cliff and cut their wages in half. That sounds about right. I bet you it was

Agba. Yeah, it could have been. I forget what I was then. What were my tiny paychecks? What TV legend was your head of your organization? Well, there was. I don't know if I should say that. Oh.

Oh, I was just trying to. Well, no, he was not a union person, but one of the higher-ups in the tour guide program was the youngest son on the nanny. Oh, really? Wow. Still there. He was at the Jurassic World open.

I didn't say hi. Gosh, you've been keeping this secret from us for years now. But he's not a union. He's not a person causing... He's not the man causing the wages to stay low. So let me make that very clear. He was very nice. He's not some

agva crony. But so this is insane. The way specific Spice Girl or the general? No, not. And no, it was never even you are a Spice Girl. It was just modeled in that. And like I wasn't a Rolling Stone. It was just that kind of thing.

A generic. Yeah. So, it was like a UK shirt maybe, like a flag? I have a picture I'll show you. Actually, I think in the picture, it was our first day working i think i actually think she might have still been the posh lady but i was the rocker for some reason so i had like a wig with a headband and scarves and like a tight shirt and tight leather pants it was awful i'm tempted to ask is there a chance you remember how the voice sounded? I think it went a little bit like this, Governor. What are you doing down

here on the street, huh? I go run, get me popping corn. That's really, I mean, that's great. I would enjoy that if I walked by today. Would you harmlessly make fun of people's clothing or hats? Yeah, I think so.

It was blazing hot though because it was summer and we were in the direct sunlight sure everything is entirely polyester yeah nothing for you yeah yeah you're tapping in to get them to the greek mania yes yeah definitely had that feel yeah i love that's one of my favorite theme park tropes is the look of rock and roll entirely divorced from music. It's like, all right, headband, surly cockney British emaciated guy. No music, no music, but just that vibe. We know that to be rock and roll. Semiotic says that's the symbol that communicates rock and roll.

And who's been that for a long time? Who's been the big rock star who is British and shirtless? You know what the vibe you're describing is like Tom Cruise in Rock of Ages. Like, yeah, Johnny Rock or that Dennis Leary show. But yeah, name a new star since Oasis who is of this nature. That child band who sounds like Led Zeppelin. What are they called? Oh, yeah.

The child band. The child band. I thought he was a teenage girl. Oh, yeah. I assumed Grand of Land Fleet was like Joanna Newsome type. With that name. And they're like in their early 20s.

The little singer, he's adorable and he's just so fresh-faced. He's like Annie. He's like orphan Annie. And the black smoke rises. God damn far. And then I like, that song is so

goddamn catchy too. Well, I saw them on Saturday Night Live and I remember feeling the same way when I saw Future Islands on Letterman going, what is happening? And I will investigate this hours for hours. And I did. I went down such a Future Islands rabbit hole after seeing that. Have you seen that when he was on Letterman? Yes.

He's doing that speed skating dance and looks like Brando in the 50s but not as well put together and I love him. I did a similar shorter research on Greta Van Fleet

and the first article was like Greta Van Fleet says they do not like to be compared to Led Zeppelin. That's every article. And that's their own fault yeah yeah i don't like to go to the grocery store but uh look some things are uh you can't avoid it yeah yeah what do you want um i get me i'm like i ate all the food i guess i gotta find it god damn it people know me as the grocery store guy if i'm at one yeah i can't if i can't avoid the gardener does not want to be known as the grocery store guy i don't know i don't like why did i say that even i don't mind going to the grocery store you don't i hate the grocery store i hate it i hate it i hate it i

don't know why parking crowds sure what What if you're dealing, if it's Trader Joe's specifically. Oh yeah. I don't know why. Because I'm also someone that like I won't eat, I'll forget to eat so going to the grocery store is like going to do something that I may forget to use anyway later. Yeah. I'll go

I'll be like I should go to the grocery store and then I'll just go to McDonald's which is next to the Sprouts over here and then I'll just go to McDonald's, which is next to the Sprouts over here. Yeah. And then I'll just come home. I understand. I understand that. So, I'm like, well, I took care of the immediate need.

Yeah. I'll just put it off until later. Yeah. I'll go and there's a very short window where it's all like in the fridge and the cupboards and I feel great. Yeah. And then after I've eaten a little bit of it, I'm like, oh no, it's going to be gone soon.

I'm going to have to go back. Oh no. How many of you guys live here? Just me. Just you. And my girlfriend, Lindsay. Lindsay Kate. Oh, yeah.

I know Lindsay. Yeah, of course. Oh, my God. Well, I'm curious. You're in her house. She's not here. I want to see your refrigerator after. Oh, I don't think it's in good shape.

No. I'm just kidding. You can't. You can't. You can see it. I can see it. Do you want to see it live on mic? Let's take a walk.

Let's see. Does it stretch that far? A person's fruit flavor is like strangely intimate, you know? Yeah. How is yours? Yeah, even if mine is clean and there's people over, it still feels like, don't, yeah, it's like looking in your closet or something. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, we can peek in Mike's and see what fruit flavored soda he has this week based on like, oh, look, a new artificial sweetener is out. No, I'm not. I'm more of a stevia man in general. Oh, right. But I don't have any zevia, which is what you're referring to. Yeah.

No, but I think there's going to be a hyper stevia. There's going to be stevia too. You think I'm going to go all in on a new crazy stevia? Yeah, maybe. There's stevia in that kombucha that I like that i drink oh right yeah i am a big stevia fan but sometimes i drink too much and i get a stomach ache mike does not want to be known as the stevia guy incorrect fire away he says mike starting a podcast about stevia soon headline mike loves being called the stevia wait that's stevia no way stevia yeah okay s-t-e-b-i-a i believe artificial sweet the

thing that killed lydia on breaking bad spoiler yeah stevia killed her yeah well yeah yeah i guess not oh you. Yeah. Other contents in a packet. Okay. Yeah. Anyway. But, you know, you don't have to worry about going to the grocery store with HelloFresh, which I imagine we'll be having to read an ad for soon. Does this count?

Do we not have to read one if we do this now? I don't think we hit the talking point, so I don't think it counts. Ah, shit. All right. We can cover both. If you have one to read anytime soon, too. Sure. Blue Apron.

Yeah. I think this counts if, just cover both. Yeah. I think this counts if you do it here. Yeah. Well, Miami Vice, I guess. We could start. But hey, we can make our way from Little Britain or whatever you call that mostly unused UK zone over there. Yeah.

Let's keep walking down to the stunt zone, but also into the past. Oh, man. Okay. So, I grew up in Southern California in Whittier, which was fairly close to Disney, a little farther from Universal. So, for my birthday, I always had my dad take me to Universal. I was more interested in that. Because also, we got to go to Disney through

his work once a year, like have the park just for the gas company. And that was cool. And I would end up at Disney probably two or three times a year. But have the park just for the gas company. And that was cool. And I would end up at Disney probably two or three times a year. But Universal to me was like the movies. It was so exciting. It felt more grown up in some way. A little bit, yeah.

When I talk about this, we thought it seemed like cooler, edgier up there. Yeah. And maybe more at the time, certainly, and Miami Vice included, more recent properties. You feel like you're, you know, going into your favorite show of right now as opposed to like a fairy tale from the 50s. Yeah, there was no characters, really. They didn't have

like the Marvel, well, they used to have the Marvel things and then the Shrek. None of that. The only people they had walking around was Frankenstein, Dracula, Charlie Chaplin. I think there might have been a Marilyn. Lucille Ball. Lucille Ball, yeah.

Yeah. And there was a chaplain who would do warm-up for the stunt shows. Khmer Kassoun, I think was his name. And he was like the lifetime chaplain impersonator. Wow. Really? Yeah. Down in like, especially the Western stunt show.

God, there's also the Conan one. Yeah. That was amazing. At one time, there was five shows and a tram tour. And that's what you could go see at Universal. There was like- Oh, yeah. Oh, wait.

Let me see if I can name them. Yeah. Okay. So, it was the Wild West stunt show. Yes. The Conan stunt show. The animal actor stage. The special effects show, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. The like- When I remember it is like it was heavily heavily based on an airplane tragedy crash movie. Cool. And they would use people in the audience and then you could buy a videotape of it afterwards. Like you had to jump into water at one point. Yeah.

Oh, wow. And then... Oh, Miami Vice. Miami Vice. Miami Vice R18. Miami Vice R18. Okay, yeah. Though also, our A-team. Though also, we covered it recently. There's another thing where you could buy a

video and then take it home. Do you recall the Star Trek adventure? What was it called? I don't remember that. They would put you in Starfleet uniforms or a Klingon off, I forget.

Oh, yeah, that does sound vaguely familiar. It would be DeForest they would put you in like a Starfleet uniforms or a Klingon off. I forget what. Oh yeah. Yeah. That does sound vaguely familiar. Yeah. And like it would be DeForest Kelly doing he like they had done parts and then they would just cut it in poorly. So like live shot on stage. But yeah, you're a Klingon.

Yeah. It was all shows at a certain point. Yeah. Not no rides, no separate rides from the tram until E.T. Yeah. I believe. I think that was the first one, yeah. So, Miami Vice was my favorite of the three.

And don't get me wrong, I love all three. Well, A-Team isn't fair because I'll talk about it in a minute, but it was a weird version I saw. But Miami Vice, oh, the set. Just all the pains they took to pre-place pyrotechnics, reloadable pyrotechnics, the feel of the fire, the smell of that heavily dyed water, you know? Yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah. And it gets splashed around and those bullets get shot up.

Yeah. You get those big jets of it and it kind of mists onto you. Yeah. Yeah. Smell of pyro, smell of water. God, I loved it. There was a lot of boats. There was a speedboat and multiple jet skis and a fan, like miniature versions of all these things.

Yeah. It was incredible. And I wasn't even a Miami Vice fan. Like I'd seen the show. Same thing with Waterworld. I did love a team but um those there's just something about the amazing technical achievement of those stunt shows but also the cheesiness of the scripts and the the like you've got a shelf life once those stunt shows go in of about maybe three months and then after three

months every actor is phoning it in completely there's no energy in the punches the delivery is like get up there you've got to save them and then there's always like a stage manager and cut this is a real hollywood set you know and i just love that artifice of it that's not in the water world one i wish there would have been no water world kind of condenses the story into like 20 minutes and then miami vice a guy in a tucked in polo shirt comes out and is like, I'm the director and we're going to walk you through this. And the stunt guys don't really talk besides doing bits. They do some bits.

They do a lot of wacky. Yeah. Wacky and wholesome bits. That wasn't a thing on Miami Vice, the TV show. No, it wasn't stopped by the director. Not at all. I know that that wasn't. Miami Vice is some cool meta show.

It was hard boiled. Indiana Jones does it too. There's a stage manager that interrupts the action. Yeah, yeah. And all under the guise of we're shooting a real Hollywood action film. And I just, oh, God, I love that. Which is so, like, why? Why would they be doing it here now with an audience with one direction that you can't see?

I know. And the Indiana Jones one goes so far as to have fake cameras on dolly tracks. Why would they be doing it here now with an audience with one direction that you can't see? I know. And the Indiana Jones one goes so far as to have fake cameras on dolly tracks and a crew. Yeah. That's the last one hanging on like that with like, you know, there's, it's just them narrate. Like, they're the MC. They move the action along and then the stunts happen. Yes.

Waterworld, I mean, a lot of that dialogue is like cued from the booth. Yeah. And they have to hit every mark. Yeah. And then there's always the thing at the end now where they give the credits of the stunt workers. Yes. Who's like, from CSI Miami. Yeah.

And they've just done some stunt work on there. Right. So, like we do these series of stunt spectacular sketches on Super Ego and they're all based on just stopping the action and narrating it through the stage manager that is just the most needless role. And they have that cadence too. Like in a Hollywood show, you've got to get ready for some action. There's danger abound. And it's just this weird cadence that must not be taught, but is somehow assumed. And I can't understand why. It's like the same thing as like modern prayer cadence of father, God, we just want to thank you. We only want to praise you. We just merely want to thank you. And it's the same vernacular and it's like an unspoken dialect. And I'm fascinated by those like miniature subsets of society that speak in the same way, but no one ever acknowledges it.

Or like one person genuinely talks that way like 70 years ago and everything's been an imitation of that person ever since. It exists in medical waiting room people when they come in for matthew right this way for for jonathan or like hotel concierges like i'm sorry we're fully committed they don't say we're full but like there's these weird vocabulary usages that just get set into it and i know that's what you had me on here to talk about anthropology yeah bizarre prince theme park talk uh is is very fascinating yes um and and yeah you're i think you're right that like yeah someone early on was like let's try it this way and they're like well we did this way long enough i guess we do the next one yeah and it's all come full circle actually there is a reason to talk about it with with galaxy's edge because they have a literal like list of

things they're supposed to use like bright sun's offworlder and hello traveler or whatever you know yeah maybe the first instance of a specific set of like a language and terminology only for theme park yeah they tried it a little bit with uh pandora oh really but i think they gave it up very quickly yeah i bet they do at this one too yeah well up here the first day there was already like a lady in the droid depot who was just like all right uh this is 30 yeah okay here you go like she didn't say anything yeah she like was like kind of trying to figure out what was even happening i feel like so i feel like with my friend he got the blue milk which was the highlight of galaxy's edge for me i thought it was amazing it is good but they were like because i think someone in their party had dietary restrictions and so they're like what's what's in this well that's the blue milk of the bantha

yeah but what's in it well it's the milk from the No, no, I need you to tell me or I will die. Yeah, and finally the person says, it's just rice milk with a fruit additive. I'm sorry, I don't mean to get us back off Miami Vice. Do they have food poisoning on this planet? Is that a thing you have? Do they have foaming at the mouth and needing to go to the hospital? We call that the Sith's revenge. Do you have the Sith's revenge?

Come on, man. The middle managers all like, I asked one for directions and they're like, the refreshers, the bathrooms are that way. They said it and then they're just like, no, I just want you to just go. I have to go somewhere else. The refreshers? The refreshers.

That's what the bathrooms are called. Really? Oh my God. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. else yeah the refreshers the refreshers that's what the bathrooms are called really oh my god clearly not a fan of any of this there's no batuvian magic coursing through your veins i like that stuff when it's done tongue-in-cheek but i don't know i've said this before on a podcast or two oh i don't even i don't want to get negative let's talk about my advice a show set in our world set in the grinding world here's the quality that you could compare oh god have you guys watched it on youtube or did you ever see it live i watched it the whole thing is available on YouTube and this is one of my favorite things to pick

up on of like when home video cameras caught on because that's really helpful for us doing research like okay, I could see the whole Miami Vice Stowe show. There is but A-Team little too early. There is 15 seconds of

footage on YouTube of the Ath show yeah uh but there are multiple full versions of the miami vice one and the 18 footage is silent yeah there's no audio a pretty good sizzle reel yeah but uh you can see the whole thing for multiple years i saw the 18 one in person and it was in its last days. And I've told this story before too, but it's really pertinent here. So, we... My dad and I went, I think I'm sure for my

birthday again. And by the way, I also remember a merchandise booth outside the stunt show and you could buy all of the A-Team action figures and they were the heads of the four A-Team guys guys but they had paramilitary primary color bodies that were

pure rip-offs from first series G.I. Joe. Like the bodies were. And they were cheaper plastic. I bought those and you could also buy an AK-47 toy gun. That was really cool. But also I remember in the show they didn't have AK-47s gun. That was really cool. But also, I remember in the show, they didn't

have AK-47s. They had M14s with banana clips. I'm getting so nerdy here. But everybody at school was like, they got AK-47s, like any gun with a banana clip. And I was, you know, junior high at Matt Gourley. Like, pardon me. Okay, hold on. No, no. And so, we go into the

stunt show and it was like near its it was already, I think, announced that it was closing soon. It was a rainy day and out come B.A. Baracus and Hannibal in the A-team van. They do a little opening stunt thing. And so, only those two characters come out and then Hannibal excuses himself, goes back in the van and the same guy comes out dressed as Murdoch and you never saw a face. He was never in the show. What? And it was just like clearly they weren't putting money into it.

They didn't want to hire all the people. People had called in sick or it was raining. The whole thing was so lackluster. It's like Avengers with only Hawkeye. Yeah. And so, then when I came back to see Miami Vice, my mind was blown because it was probably newer and they were into it. And like, it was a real step up.

There was suddenly a lagoon and boats and explosions. And then the like helicopter comes up. It was incredible. I think there was a helicopter in the 1812. Because they then sold that to Magic Mountain for their Batman and Robin stunt show. I remember seeing the same helicopter. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.

I think I'm pretty sure. I mean, that's only going off my own recognition of that. But I think you can take that to the bank. I remember seeing the same helicopter. What? I didn't know that. Yeah, I think I'm pretty sure. I mean, that's only going off my own recognition of that, but I think you can take that to the bank. I think you're right. I wouldn't dare. That's right. That's fact. We'll just say that as a fact. The Batman and Robin stunt shows that Six Flags would do for like three weeks a year

and then it would be like, oh, it's closed. Sorry. Sorry. Just during the busy period. It was just done on the street. There was no real set except the helicopter was above a facade. So, that would come up. But like the rest of it was just kind of like gymnasts on mats dancing and stuff. Or not dancing, fighting. But that's the other thing.

They never seem to regiment stuff at Six Flags because I saw Batman's stunt show. And I think we talked about this on like the second or third episode um but that was in a whole amphitheater what whoa and then there was another there's another one where it's like the batman stunt show was on the body of water yeah there was a water there was a water show and it looked like it just opened up into a swamp yeah like it just looked like there was a big body of water and there were boats, but there was no like backing or anything. That's where the woods was behind it. Great Adventure in New Jersey had the lethal weapon stunt show.

Oh! Which was, that's where I got the bullet case. Like at the end, they were like giving away the casings to kids. Like they were giving them out. Wait, was there a stage manager in that one? Like a cut guy who would yell cut? That one was more like,

it was more like story based. It didn't break the fourth wall. Yeah, I like my realistic sense. It definitely was a lot of drug dealers getting shot. Like it was like a Miami Vice one. Like, well, this would never fly nowadays. I guess there's some gunplay in Waterworld. Before like the internet

Knew so much about people thought they knew So much about movies and announcements from movies Were there people that probably went and were like Wow they're shooting a movie today I bet Probably right and some like You know international travelers Of like this is a big yeah they must Really be shooting I feel like you were like

Hey honey whatever happened we saw that Indiana Jones movie shooting two years ago. Did that ever come out? I think we're in it. I think, yeah. Like, remember the guy next to us? He went down and he did a stunt. Like, when did that movie come out?

My favorite thing was that you would see these stunt shows pop up on other TV shows quite a bit. So, like, if there was especially like a kind of low budget syndicated show that shot on the universe a lot they invariably did an episode where one of the characters would end up on the miami vice stunt show set like out of this world do you remember that show oh yeah she one time was on that set there was another one where they end up on it and they would just be like cheap sets and they would like use some of the pyrotechnics if you're shooting on that, you'll find a way to use Flash Flood. Yes. You'll find a way to use even like something from a movie. Like I want to say Knight Rider

went to the Psycho House twice. I'm sure. I'm sure. I could be wrong at least once, but. There is a picture, there was an A-Team episode where a fish man gets on the trolley that used to be up by where CityWalk is now. A guy in a fish

costume. Like, that sort of thing. Was it Hannibal in disguise? I couldn't tell. I just saw still pictures. It might have been one of them in disguise, but you can see Womp Hoppers in the background. The long-gone restaurant Womp Hoppers we talked about before. What's the two letters

P something L Womp Hoppers? What used to be Sagebrush Cantina, the second Sagebrush mentioned today. Yeah. There was this weird like old timey restaurant called Womp Hoppers. I don't remember. There was a restaurant themed after a, it was supposed to be a wagon wheel factory

and a guy walked around who was very much like a Dream Finder and literally played by the same guy who played Dream Finder. A guy in a beard like, I'm H.L. Womp-Opper. Was that, so that wasn't in the park? That was outside the park? It was right outside the park. Do you have a picture of it?

Somewhere. It's online. We'll pull it up. It was right where Saddle Ranch was, right? Yeah. Yeah. It was like a big, honestly, a building, I was thinking, not too different from the Miami Vice set. But it looked like it. It's this rusted out warehouse kind of, or, you know, like tin roofs and kind of

collapsing sort of vibe. C.L. Wompopper. C.L. Wompoppers. And we'd like to get the rights to that character so we can do things, so we can make a movie. We're trying to collect all the unused IP that isn't, nobody's doing anything with how many

rights can we hold by the end of this podcast i hope we have yet to get one though so no no no or look into how to do it yeah well i i asked a friend once casually and he said i don't know thrilling conclusion any old friend well he knows things You know, he's into like looking up things. So that's as far as I went. That's as close to a lawyer. I asked about, there's a character named Marvel McFay who was a Six Flags character. Also an old timey beard man. Like a charming old beard man.

We love old timey beard cartoon character men. In top hats. All three of these things we've described. Dreamfinder, Womp Opera, and Marvel McFay. men in top hats all three of these things we've described dream finder wampum yeah and uh and i said hey where do you think marvel you think where would like where would we even go about this and he goes that's probably like in the warner brothers vault probably you'd have to like find a lawyer to find it in warner brothers oh my god because like they bought well they know they owned it already when it was marvel and faye but then they just got rid of him and then they

just made it a six flags like. Like a standard. Wow. That was Astroworld. So, we got to break in in an Ethan Hunt fashion. We have to get, it's like the Indiana Jones warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant is and there's like all of these, there's like shelves of like cartoon characters, comma, racist. Cartoon characters, comma,

not racist. I'd like to be in on this. Yeah. Join the heist. Please. Large bearded, fantastical cartoon men. And we'll only get chased out of this warehouse if we enter, not because they're hiding secrets, but because if we

start poking around, they have to do work. Yes, right. We're going to take the crane. I'm going to put the gloves on if you have to. Oh, God, I saw something on YouTube. I was watching like a Disney history thing and they had like the original print of the illustration

of the Disneyland Park and a woman at the archivist thing was handling it for me and she had white gloves on, but they had those three dashes like Mickey Mouse has. And I was just, fuck off. Are you kidding? You have to theme your fancy archivist gloves i don't care it's too much if you're a disney archivist you're probably gung-ho on that i know i have a complicated relationship with disney as you can tell how did it change working there

versus i never had a reverence for Disney. I loved going to Disneyland, but we're similar. It's not like we're so we don't love like, oh God, you guys want to watch so dear to my heart. The 40s lamb movie. Whatever. We like the rise and stuff. What is that one? Maybe I do.

That's the deepest reference I could have pulled. It's some weird old live action. It's like a family raising a lamb or something. That's not Lambert the sheepish lion No, because that's a cartoon. Yeah, okay. So dear to my heart is a boring old live action. I've never seen So Dear to My Heart. Wow, I don't know where I've

heard of So Dear to My Heart. That's a good poll though. Yeah, as long as it exists. Let me look that up while we keep... If it's not real it wasn't a good poll. If so, I had a really specific dream. Oh, here we go. It's from 1948. The war has...

Combines animation and live action. And it looks incredibly boring. The war has been won. A generation comes home to the homeland. And this is what they're rewarded with for entertainment. Family raises a lamb. Now relax and watch. Now relax.

Yeah. Jeremiah names. Do not address your PTSD. Watch the lamb. Watch Burl Ives as Uncle Hyrum. Now I'm in. Now I'm in. Now I'm on board. I didn't realize.

We're all Burl Ives fans, I assume. Okay. So, let me alter my previous statement. We didn't care about the movies until we found out about So Dear to My Heart. Yeah. You were a ride person more than a Disney historian person. Yeah, yeah. And like I said, I think I was more into Universal.

And then when I was a teenager, Magic Mountain was the place to be because it was hip. And I'd gone to Knott's a ton because I lived pretty close to knots like 10-15 minutes away from Whittier yeah it's neighbors to Buena Park basically do you still go we love talking up knots as much as I haven't been in a while I would love to go to knots again and not for I don't want to go I don't want anything to do the Halloween horror nights okay sure yeah all right I like that yeah this guy defected and started liking haunts we went we went for the their their um what's it called not scary farm yeah uh and i got it i'm into the mazes now but we were all scared when we started this podcast yeah i'm an excitable person and it scares

me but my friend jeremy works at knots from super ego he currently does he does the ghost town alive thing and then he does the hanging show and all that. Oh, he's part of the hanging. Yeah, and my friend Ken, I believe, I can't remember if he's still directing and writing those. I'm telling you, I'm your connection to these people. My ex-girlfriend was in the

Waterworld stunt show. Wow. Helen? She was a Helen. She was a Helen. Oh my. Yeah. Do we interact? We talked to Ghost Town Alive people. We met a deputy mayor. We went to the opening of the new Reskinned Rapids ride. Oh, my God.

Oh, it's been reskinned? They rethemed and they incorporated it into the Calico Ghost Town. You got bears catching salmon. You got a crazy old lunatic on a porch. With a musket. Is that animatronic? Yeah.

Like not crazy. It just rocks back and forth. But you get a little bit of movement. You go to go check out all those robot rides. Whether or not you do coasters, do that if you want or not. But we're just all about these charming robots and that Knott's Chicken Dinner restaurant, which they like hippified a little. And now it's like a little bit more like a gastropub or something.

Should we just go straight there after this? Oh my God, that boysenberry juice too? Yeah. Boysenberry beer. Oh, they have boysenberry beer. They sure do. Well, they have a whole boysenberry festival. That's right.

In March. My dad went to high school with the Knott's, the Knott brothers. Also, he worked as an ice cream scooper at Disneyland early on and met Walt Disney. He was backstage and he and Walt Disney, his wife, came by and were like, how are they treating you here? What? Wow. Oh, crazy. I think Tony Baxter only met Walt once as a – or did not meet Walt as a – I don't remember.

I'm a second generation Disney employee. I just realized that. Wow, that is, yeah. Your grandfather. My son or daughter better go to work there. You will work at Disney. You will do the family line. We have a lineage to keep up.

You know what? We were talking about Knott's, about this new, you know, they did a lot of work on that Rapids ride. And I think I forgot to bring up a fact I had found out about Knott's. Buena Park, in terms of an entity, is like a town or a city, has only existed for like a couple decades. Before that, it was kind of an unincorporated area. And as such, the Knott's security team was deputized. Like to assist with the sheriff. Was deputized to assist the orange County sheriff's office.

That makes sense. Cause I also have a friend who was a dispatcher at knots for security. Yeah. So they would talk about that sometimes get dispatched to help with situations and stuff. And the head of the security for a long time was a knot, was a knot, a knot.

So I thought you were going to say something else. Yeah. Yeah. Keep that word going. It was a knot. not so i thought you're gonna say something else yeah yeah keep that word going it was a not a not is it true is it myth or true that no one can be pronounced dead on disney grounds and so if someone dies which they have to take myth that's yeah there's public records saying as much yeah but as soon as their soul leaves their body that's technically it's not then it's a fairy

land and it goes right to the haunted mansion if you die on Disney grounds they give you the option of when do you like to go to work as a grim grinning ghost how's your baritone yeah we don't say they passed away we say they're now a happy haunt

gone to a happier hauntier place oh ick um i okay so does that mean that technically like a ghost town sheriff could that's what my question was going to be arrest somebody oh too yeah and as a ghost town like bandit breaking the law. The Knot Stunt Show. Oh, God. That was one that didn't change for years and years. It's different now, but I had that thing memorized. I loved that thing so much. Is it a western one? Yeah, I wanted to be in it so bad and I

went and tried out when I was in college. I was a really little guy in high school and really wiry thin in college and it was just like no way I could pass for a man and I even wore like a plaid vest to kind of like butch myself up but that doesn't do that

and I think I generally got laughed out of there. They didn't have like a nerd or a dorky barber who they could pull his pants down or something? No, they had an audience plant in a Hawaiian shirt but even that guy was like a bearded they were all men like they were like the beaumont bear was like the big hollywood stuntman that came down to the berry

pick and knots berry farm and like the main guy was like a real fancy dude and the beaumont bear was a hollywood stuntman who would come bully him around and then there was just those two guys in the audience plant who'd like come on stage in hawaiian shirt and the main was like, all right, I'm going to throw a Hollywood punch to you. He's like, hold on. I just had a taco, you know? And you think he's really a plant because he's also got a wife he's sitting with and then he's the one that ends up getting shot and doing a high fall at the end and you're like, whoa.

Oh, yeah. That's great. Oh, I miss that one. Because now it's kind of like there's like a big Gatling gun. And it's just like trying to be a bit more blockbuster-y like Waterworld. But it's somewhere in the middle and it doesn't work. There was something really quaint about just the three-person stunt, man. Yeah. We saw one a couple of years ago, which I think is the bigger scope probably one.

I think so. Nats is getting back, I think, to the charm though with the ghost town. I got to get up to that. It's slowly like trying to charmify the park again. I think it's my friend Ken who went to work there. Ken Parks who used to work at Disney and is responsible for a lot of that stuff because he's great. And he brought, I think, some of that Disney style stuff over. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. Geez. Well, yeah. Mission accomplished. It is. It's just getting more and more charming by the year. That's what we want. Charm. Yeah. Same. Geez. Well, yeah. Mission accomplished. It is. It's just getting more and more charming by the year. That's what we want. Charm.

Yeah. Same. Same here. We love charm. Chicken and charm. Tear down the coasters. Yeah. Bring up the charm. That's the main thing that this stunt show happened under the shadow of a roller coaster that just every 10 seconds. That's right. That was not the case originally because that's one of

the fairly newer ones i see yeah yeah right right i missed that stunt shot um jesus um miami vice though um i you know well you know you were also talking about uh you were talking about the set being cool i want to give a little shout out to the i think that i think this i think the miami vice thing was landscaped beautifully. So beautifully. Yes. Yeah. Lush vegetation. Looks like you're in the... Because you're supposed to be... You're on some sort of like all drug smuggling island.

Yeah. But do they ever mention drugs? You know what? I saw like copy in... Oh, wait. Hang on. Smugglers and arms traders. Yeah.

Yeah. So, smugglers could be anything. It could be like rare exotic bananas. It could be just any like... It was definitely that. Yeah. Yeah. I have the phrase, he says, Caribbean crime boss and his gang of sleazy smugglers.

I see. And action. So they're smuggling like gold teeth. Also, the sound systems on these things were amazing too because like in the music blares when they start and you get that like, what are they called? Timmmons drums or i always get it wrong simmons or timmons drums with those like oh yeah yeah and those in the arena oh god it's sort of like tinny speak it's like music the miami vice theme is perfectly suited yeah to be played on those kind of like

yeah uh like not great car speak it It's cassette rock, I think. And if I remember correctly, like Waterworld, they do use blanks. They do use blanks. Yeah. In Miami Vice, it was sound effects and they had dummy guns. And they were doing the like recoil because I remember like there's a Crockett and Tubbs, especially maybe one or two of the goons have blanks at some point. Yeah.

But Crockett and Tubbs have like the same guns. They just keep tossing back and forth the whole time. And the sound doesn't – it's not always 100%. No. It's either dead on or it's a little off. And the best part again is like you get into the zone where they're phoning it in. So, even the recoil of the gun is just this like lackluster, you know. Yeah.

And there was a thing where they pull back, shoot one guy with a shotgun and he's hooked up to an elastic cord and he gets like drawn back through these main two doors. And it's so slow and elastic, but it's so funny. Like you shoot someone with a shotgun and then they fly back at like a medium pace through the air. It's so strange. And I just love the artificialness of it. I don't know what it was. How could you possibly go through those motions and not just get limper and limper?

I don't know. As time goes on. I mean, I have that question, but I've never been in a play either or anything that ran for a long time. Yeah. I don't think I've done any performance more than once ever. So, I don't know how anybody like gives it their all. Like, yeah, imagine like doing Shakespeare 300 nights in a row. But I still want my theme

park employees to you know give it all you got yeah there's some like like uh crockett does a flip at some someone does a flip someone kicks someone else in the face those are those seem like they're the fun ones to do because they they give it their all yeah they have to to literally like get over to flip and also to not land on their head but their faces are still dead that's the crazy thing they're doing all this stuff and their faces are dead i will say this in i worked at disneyland for 10 12 years i don't know i never phoned it in that improv stuff even in soap opera bistro like i would give it my all because i think i was i think it just came from doing theater in college they're like it's embarrassing if you're not convincing you know yeah but if you're a stuntman you're not really trained in acting and so uh-huh I and I guess there would be a drudgery to it though at the same time I've

heard the other complaint about stuntmen that they go so like I've heard people who have to say like he does not be like what would a real person do not just this like huge swing back and like oh right like like hammy deaths can be i think maybe some men have a hard time like finding that yeah that middle yeah i went i remember taking a whole roll of film once of like you know kodak film just shooting pictures of the stunt show. And then I went home and tried to build a G.I. Joe stunt show. So, I would like... I had like... As a young age, pretty much learned how to do like blood pack squibs. And so, I'd set up these little model rocket igniters to batteries and put little...

I would drain piccolo peat powder out of piccolo peats, put them in these like toothpaste caps and made this little diorama. And then I'd made like a little brass tube that I had my neighbor drill with like holes that got smaller and hooked a little rubber tube up to like a Bic lighter and hid that. So there could be like a line of flames that would come up and then hit the button and they're like a little explosion. And I made little mattresses for my G.I. G.I.

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G.I. G.I. G.I. G.I. G.I. Yeah, they got to redo it. And I'd have to clean the like white powder burns off them each time. But even so, on the set, I liked the powder burns because the Miami Vice thing was covered in white powder burns, you know. Oh, yeah. Because they reused like any like time like there was a bullet hit on the walls. It was just like a little plug cap they'd put in there.

And so, I would sit there in the beginning of the show and go like, oh, that's a bullet hit, that's a bullet hit. Because it was just stained white from all the powder, you know. Oh, yeah. Which causes this set that's supposed to be rustic to begin with to age up as it goes. It's bearing the scars of its many performances. That's pretty cool. Would you watch movies

as a kid and be like just kind of fascinated by the process more than the movie itself? Yeah, and anytime I could take a peek behind the curtain, like in diehard, when they go up to the roof and the helicopters coming and John McClane shoots his gun up in the air to get the people to go back downstairs. And then the helicopter shoot the roof. There's two shots where you can see the whole web of wires for the squibs on

the ground. Like they didn't even bother to hide them. They're just laid out. Wow. Bare wires with little squibs. I'm trying to remember. Oh, in Platoon when Willem Dafoe's character is running out in that huge moment, he's wired with tons of squibs, but they didn't work. And there were so many, it was such a major shot with so many cameras, helicopters and explosions that

they kept going. And there's a couple of shots where you can see him pressing the button in his hand, nothing's happening. And then he lets go. And then later, the wire is just dangling from his hand. And like wide open shots. He's just a wire hanging from his hand. And did you notice that as a kid? Yeah, yeah. Wow.

So, you were really just paying attention to that. I'm so into squibs. I had this podcast called I Was There Too. And I would always ask these guests, have you ever been squibbed? And then on the 50th episode, I'd asked so much that this special effects house reached out to me and I was going to be in New York for super ago. And we did a whole documentary on me getting squibbed. It's called the squibbing.

And I finally got to realize my dream. We did one individual squib and then we did a shot of four machine gun squibs on me. And it was so fun. Wow. How'd it look? It looked great. Yeah. I mean, you can just Google the squibbing and it's a documentary. Wow. How'd it look? It looked great. Yeah.

I mean, you can just Google the squibbeting and it's a documentary online. You can watch it. Were you happy with your own performance? Do you think you rode the stuntman line? I don't think I did it well because I was too, well, A, it was too new an experience and B, I was too relishing the moment to act, you know? Oh, sure. Yeah.

You can't contain that smile down. No, I couldn't. I couldn't. I was too happy to get shot. Wow. Wow. Are there moments like that? Because you're a big James Bond guy too, right? You have a James Bond podcast as well. That's right. Are there any moments you ever caught like in the classic

Bond movies? Like, well, there's I can see that. I can see. Good question. I'm sure there is. Let me think. Especially around those 80s ones. You also designed, did you design a hypothetical James Bond park or stunt show? I did. Okay.

So, yeah. This is slightly embarrassing, but I did three, I've done three prints of James Bond theme park stunt spectaculars. So, I did the Thunderball Aquatic Extravaganza, which is like in a big tank. And then I did Live and Let Die Stunt Spectacular and Honor Majesty's Secret Service. And they all take place at fictional,

like Six Flags over Squaw Valley Snow Resort. Six Flags over Baton Rouge. and then there was one in florida and if you go to macwelly.com you can see those or purchase them oh my god yeah and i'm thinking about doing some other movies you know like uh like a friday the 13th or you know like stunt spectaculars or something wow wow wait and wait and what is that art What's in it? How do you convey what the piece of it is? I treated it like a poster from the time. So, it's not like a drawing of what it would actually look like. But I remember the like newspaper ads for Miami Vice.

And so, you would see the elements of the actual set as they were, but it was still movie posterized where everything's kind of coming at you. And it was like kind of fictional looking and explosions like it's it's not meant to be linear so it incorporates all the elements of the movie that would be in that stunt show yeah yeah that's a great idea wow wow so like there's sharks in the in the thunderball one and a jet pack and you know um and then they're like this honor majesty secret service one has like a bobsled track. Oh, sure.

Have you guys ever covered this? You probably know about this. At Six Flags Magic Mountain in 1984, when the Olympics were big and not the Los Angeles Olympics, but the Sarajevo Yugoslavia Olympics, there was a ride called Sarajevo Bobsleds at Magic Mountain. Nope, never come across this. It was based on the Olympics. Oh my God. Wow. It's funny you say that because I was at Bush Gardens Williamsburg during the

96? 94? Which was the 90s Olympics? I think it was 96. And then Izzy, you remember Izzy? The little mascot? Oh, yeah. They had built a small wildcat roller coaster that was themed to Izzy. Oh, wow.

Really? So... A type Izzy coaster? Yeah. Magic Mountain was big on just buying prefab roller coasters and then loosely theming them. Yeah. But I believe they shut the bobsleds one down because it was dangerous because it was loose bobsleds in a...

Jesus. It's just a regular bobsled. With wheels instead of blades. Yeah. And it was just in a U-shape like a water slide track. Whoa. Yeah. Which is the kind of ride that feels very action point. Like the kind of thing where they would totally fuck you up

and skin your knees if you fell off it. Yeah. Yeah. Geez. That's a dangerous thing. You know, the Miami Vice Stunt Show was written and put together by at the uh guy phil henema who's come up on the show before part of the star trek thing we talked about a little while back but he got into theme park world after having designed the opening and closing ceremony of the 84 la oh my god which is totally insane insane where a UFO lands and a spaceman comes out

and like, you know, he essentially said, it's not this, it's some message about like why I've seen you humans now at your finest, at your most harmony and does that imply that he was like going to kill us but then the Olympics convinced him not to? I did not remember that until you said that stuff

because I went to some of the 84 Olympics as a kid. Oh really? I didn't go to the opening ceremonies, but now I want to re-watch that. That sounds nuts. I only barely did it out the door. I got to sit and watch the whole thing, but also Lionel Richie killer all night long performance. Wow. 84.

Those are, yeah. Coming back. Super solid. Yeah. Yes. Will it be as fun this time? Will it be? Will it destroy the city? Will it make it no longer possible? That feels like that Super Bowl halftime show before they would just get like an old rock act.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When they had skits. I want skits in my sports entertainment. We're going to start doing stunt shows at halftime because actually that's a lot more football based than putting like Justin Timberlake in. Like imagine you do an action stunt spectacular at the halftime. Do you know about?

Yeah. We all – we're all challenged. We can't wait to tell you. Sorry, I got to go. No, please. All right. I'll write you a letter about it. There was an Indiana Jones halftime show promoting the Indiana Jones adventure opening at Disneyland.

And it was so the star of the stunt show is just a man you've never seen before as Indiana Jones. And it is it's stunts. It's passing of the Super Bowl trophy back and forth like Marion. It's Marion. It's amazing. In between performances from Tony Bennett. Tony Bennett. Tony Bennett sings Can You Feel the Love Tonight, I believe. The Lion King song.

Patti LaBelle? Patti LaBelle, I believe. Yeah, with a big shock and hair. Cap shot's in there singing Anything Goes. Oh, yeah. It's kind of that vibe. It's a little bit of like the 40s cabaret club or whatever.

Indiana Jones falls from the sky. He skydives into the arena. I've got to see that. It's so nuts. I think it was, from everything you read about it, it was a disaster. It barely came together. And I think people did maybe get hurt. There was some weird

thing where, at least during the one run through they had, that Patti LaBelle's high heel got caught in a grate or something. And like she almost tripped and fell down the stairs. Really insane. But it's like all the stuff like spikes coming up from the ground and Indy avoiding it. But live during the Super Bowl. Did you guys ever see the miniature stunt show they did in Disneyland for Indiana Jones? It was kind of in the

jungle area bazaar. Oh, we talked about that. Where he punches a woman? Yes. We never heard of it until we looked into it. Go to hell. I don't think he says go to hell. Is she possessed or is he possessed? She's possessed. I saw it. So it's fine. He's really

punching the devil via this woman's body. He saw it. So it's fine. Yeah. He's really possessed. He's punching the devil via this woman's body. He doesn't want the devil to be there. And then he throws her into the cave of wonders. You're right. A lightly disguised the old cave of wonders set. He does kill her eventually. Yeah. It's okay. He kills her.

It's fine. He puts her out of her misery. The humane thing right were you working there when that happened i uh i might have been but i don't remember that seems like that could have crossed over um what am i missing from miami vice is a very i mean there's some very impressive so the helicopter is very impressive i do wonder if the helicopter what worked more often the helicopter or the water world balsa wood plane yeah that balsa wood plane gets canceled if there's too high a wind is that what it is yeah

yeah they don't do it which would be a real bummer what do they do they just they just they just set off all the fireworks i think right i think yeah i think so but then they there's a weird thing at least when i saw it when i was much younger there's a weird part where the deacon goes there's a crash. He hears a crash and he looks back where you can't see and says, oh no, my plane. Oh yeah. Which I loved. He still does the fire fall.

I think I love it. I don't know. Maybe it's not a theme park stunt show unless there's stuff that doesn't work. I agree. Lame stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The other cool thing in Miami Vice was when they ride in that mine car. Oh, that's the best.

The mine car is insane. And it explodes and they go flying out. That just blew my mind. That's a crazy stunt. I don't know how they do that. That is like, you can't half-ass that. It seems so whiplashy. I know.

It just suddenly hard stops and they go flying out. Yeah. And they do like a full flip, I believe. Yes. Forward flip. Both of them. That's what's also impressive to me is that they both flip out of it. Yeah. And you'd think they would, like their heads would

collide regularly, like it would happen all the time. But maybe it did, I don't know. Yeah. The articles when this was opening, in the LA Times, the MCA's corporate safety program director, because MCA owned Universal

at this time, said, quote, our industry gets a lot of publicity when things go wrong, said Paul Holhouse. Hell of a name. Hell of a name, Paul Holhouse. Director of the MCA's corporate safety program. But Waterworld and Miami Vice,

at least like the water and the landscaping looks pleasant. It's aesthetically appealing to look at. The 18 looked like a dirty field, like a dirty demolition derby monster truck show. Yeah. It was like a Mexican villa or something or I can't remember. I think it's the border. I think you're at the currently relevant US-Mexico border. And you're watching it through, like, there's a fence in front of you with barbed wire that

like bends, that feels like it's trapping in the performer side of things. So, that was like a safety thing? There was like a chain link fence? Or it was theming or safety or maybe all of it together. I don't remember that. I don't know. But it's so dreary. You're watching like a very depressing pen essentially.

Footage of that has to exist. Like archive footage of that thing. Yeah. I wish they would release that. How could it only be... Yeah, definitely made it hard to find much about. But yeah, I saw a couple of photos that were really miserable. And then I read about this sort of miserable like

union organizing situation. There was a successful walkout by the A-team. I guess not successful in that. I don't think they got it. By the A-team. They did it. They banded together. The A-team doesn't fight their way out. I love it when a plan comes together.

I love it when a union comes together. Collective marketing. You don't got to solve everything with punches, fool. By the way, I rewatched some of the A-Team originally. In the first season, his catchphrase, or at least the first few episodes, it may just be the pilot because they actually recast face, I think, and did some recasting. His catchphrase was not, I love it when a plan comes together.

It was Hannibal's on the jazz. What? It's like, I'm on the jazz. some recasting his his catchphrase was not um i love it when a plan comes together it was hannibal's on the jazz what it's like i'm on the jazz that was his way of saying like i'm i'm in the like the rhythm i'm in i'm i'm on the prowl i'm making it happen in the pocket i don't know what but well it's my catchphrase now we will we will, we will find a proper moment to say it later on. Um, yeah, well,

that's another IP that we can buy up because nobody's using it. They never made t-shirts of on the jazz. So it's ours now. Great. Um, so the, yeah, they were like,

the 18 percent performers are very unhappy with what they were making on the thing. And they even quoted them. Like somebody says, we don't feel we should risk our lives for a lousy $250 a week when I could go dump trash and get paid more. $250 a week? I was going to assume that's a five-day work week. So, that's $50 a day for stunt work.

That's crazy. Because around what I got paid as a tour guide. But then, yeah, in 85 and it's stunt people. Yeah. That's really shitty. They proposed to Universal a $5 per performance raise. That's it?

And Universal said, how about a $15 per performance cut? They like just got the request and just said, fine, we're drastically cutting your salary So they all walked out But the universe was like fine And they just put up a newspaper ad for more

Which maybe is what happened when you saw it Maybe they were just like well we found three of the guys But not all of them You gotta go back and forth you're Murdoch too Stunt scabs The lowest form of life That's what Haim Saban did at the Power Rangers They were like hey we want some money because this is so popular

And he was like no I will replace you And he did And like as a kid I was just like oh that sucks I like them Anyway I'll keep watching Weird that that cool doesn't like Bernie Sanders Or Elizabeth Warren Weird yes it is weird I agree They also

Released a statement Another bizarrely named universal person, Patty Casino. Whole House and Casino are on the job. Another Whole House Casino production. Patty Casino took to the papers to say, you know, the stuntmen say that

the A-Team is one of our most popular shows, but actually it's not as popular as the Western show or the Animal Show or Conan the Barbarian. She went out of her way to say it's actually not doing well for us. That's like when Disney was like, you know, Lord Miller weren't doing a very good job making this solo movie. That's why we fired them.

Yeah. They must have had ghost writers on all their other mega successes because these guys were really shitting the bed on the set. It does seem a little claustrophobic to me, the idea of going to Universal and doing the tram and then five shows. That seems like a lot of sitting. Yeah, because there was no

lower lot theme park area at that point. Until they installed the Starway. Upcoming topic, the Starway. Is that the escalator? Yes. We got an episode in the can about the escalator. We had a lot to say about the escalator. Is that out yet?

No, no, no. Why does that sound familiar to me? Yes, similarly mundane. Okay. Although I think it will be out by the time this comes out now that I'm thinking about it. The world will know The world will have changed

It sounds familiar because of all the awards it won You're getting like a future flash I think is what's happening That's the 84 Olympic ceremony One day you will have the world's greatest escalator I believe in you humanity The same quote from the guy Who doesn't like

His $250 salary for some reason He is the guy who plays Mr. T and in the beginning of his Quote to the press he says I pity the fool who takes my money Oh my god He did his newspaper quote in character I don't know if I like that

I don't know if that helps his case a little bit He should be out of care. He should be enjoying this fight. Or maybe he should. No, he's showing how good he is. Yeah, that's true. The probably unspeaking role in the show. Right. There was a Mr. T who worked for Universal until he died. There was a Baracus

who became... Like a walk-around character? Well, he became a tram driver after the show closed. I saw that name on the studio tour. JJ. I don't specifically remember that person but it does sound familiar he went to the stronger union I guess worked for Universal until he died in 2014 so that's nice

lifer the what have I what have I missed the there's sorry I was gonna say Miami Vice yeah I have there was I watched it behind the scenes which which was billed as a making of. It's like two minutes long. I just see that.

There's a Conan one that's kind of long. Or Conan. Yeah, yeah. There's super tech going on with that. Because if people don't know that show, the dragon that rises up from the lasers. Yeah, yeah. And lasers, the highest tech thing of all. Rain curtain. lasers yeah yeah lasers the highest tech thing of all rain curtain somebody in the video is like

you know there's 50 stunts in 18 minutes and it will be radical i wrote that down too i can tell you it was radical yeah it certainly was and i wrote i also heard that guy who says that kind of looks like randy johnson a little bit oh yeah mustachioed baseball yeah uh yeah that is a great moment my other favorite part of that video is a guy practicing doing practicing taking shots from like a zip line so he's there choreographing when the shots would take place and watching a man slide down a zip line and go really really fun yes that is good yeah yeah um good video good video it's a short one though they also oh wait and then there's a part where a guy says yeah you got to be careful and choreograph these things right because if not this can happen and he raises his arm and it's in a full cast like

at a crazy angle and then the narrator says but when it all works right which is almost all the time in a casino whole house production no spared no expense put the money on the screen there's a way there is an odd joke in miami vice the one joke where i'm like well that really wouldn't fly nowadays is the the director mc guy picks up a rifle and he's like of course everything is the sound these are fake guns we never use live ammo and then he points it at the ground a bunch of squibs go off in the water

and he's like whoa I guess this thing's loaded and I'm like 1995 when did Brandon Lee happen like I was just like oh I don't this seems uh I don't know about this one. Yeah, right. That's right. The Crow stunt show was not ultimately.

Yeah, it did not get off the ground. That's the thing with this show in general that I do, I think today if a new theme park stunt show was put together, I don't think it would just be guns. It is a show all about guns. I know. Nothing but guns. And in the case of Miami Vice, we're ignoring all of the moral complexity

and ambiguity of the show. That is mainly a show where people talk very soberly and like, nope, it's guns. They shoot each other. Big gun stunt show. I say bring it back, but 2006 Miami Vice. So it's a lot of like... I love that movie. Can't get the encore. Do you want more and like there's

the weird colin farrell weird haircut they keep saying go fast boats get in the go fast boats yeah get in the go fast it's just the boats and a lot of lighting and digital video from the time and and the jay-z lincoln park mashups yeah oh right that's what you get to see i've never watched it does sound pretty crazy. I like it a lot, actually. I know I'm in the minority, but I think there's a growing appreciation for that movie again. It's come up a lot lately and I'm like,

I gotta re-watch that. I don't think it's better. I think Collateral is still a better movie, but like that, it's interesting to see what expensive digital film looked like at the time. What I remember about that movie is that somebody came to speak to my film school who was working in the post department of that movie. And they said that during editing, Michael Mann would come in and watch the full movie every day. He would not just do a part of it when he got there.

I love the thing. I'm not just me. I'm a fan. Look how cool that light looks. Crack of dawn. Public enemies is dog shit. Don't watch public enemies, though. Oh, I never heard that.

Dillinger one. Right. Too bad. I should also say the, you know, what's weird is that Universal Florida had this show that was on their lagoon. They had a stunt show for a long time that was not Miami Vice, but it starred like two Miami Vice-y dudes. And they played the Miami Vice music through the whole show. It was all scored by Miami Vice music, but it was not specifically the Miami Vice stunt show. It was called Dynamite Night Stuntacular.

Did you guys ever see Stay Around at Night and watch Dynamite Never? Yeah. I missed that. If there's any way to make this better, making it a little less brand. Off-brand. Miami Vice stunt spectacular. Generic-a-sizing

it up a bit. I never remember seeing that. I probably saw it from a bad viewpoint. Only when I went in like 2012 or 2014 where it like happened to be eating at dinner at Lombard's, the seafood place on the water. Oh, nice. And they're like, oh, you can

go out on the patio and just watch. And at that time, it was Morgan Freeman telling you about the importance of movies, like the magic of 100 years of movies. Okay. That was less spectacular. That's extremely dull sounding. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. But I guess like I should mention this with the gun thing too. I asked this question like and when there was this new Miami Vice that sort of got back to the roots of what it was going to be. Like I don't know the show unbelievably well. i have not watched the full run of the show but it does not seem like i feel like i know so much more the the theme park version of it but it does not seem like it was a show that was all ass kicking all the time you know what i mean like and i even saw youtube comments that said this is more like Rambo to me than Miami Vice so which I don't mind I don't know I think it's cool that it just

like takes all the top moments of the show and you know boils it down but does not necessarily reflect its source material not at all yeah yeah yeah it was way more Rambo-y yeah for Tango and Cash kind of thing or something oh sure sure yeah yeah which

apparently in the same guy I mentioned Phil Hedema, who planned the things, he said in the newspaper article, the tour had been planning a new live action addition to the studio since last fall, but the executives didn't decide on a Miami Vice theme until February. And this article was from July. So. Wow. They were like, they were building a stunt show without knowing.

Oh, right. What it was going to be. They probably knew it's guns and it's boats. Maybe they're building the lagoon, but not... Which maybe it was some other... Or they were toying around or keeping it generic in case the Rambo rights came through or something. Yeah. I know that there was concept work done for a James Bond stunt show for, I believe, Universal. In fact, Ralph McQuarrie did the

artwork for it. You can see it online. It's the volcano set from You Only Live Twice. That's insane. That scene's awesome. Is James Bond reflected in theme park world anywhere? I don't believe so. Yes. Oh, he is? Briefly, at King's Dominion,

when it was in the Paramount Parks, they had a motion simulator theater and for the longest time, it was Days of Thunder. And it was slightly more movement than D-Box or 4DX. You kind of sat in chairs like that

and it would be like the NASCAR race. And then in the mid-90s, they flipped it to Pierce Brosnan and James Bond. Oh, wow. But I never got to see it and that only lasted a year or two and then in the mid 90s they flipped it to Pierce Brosnan and James Bond oh wow I never got to see it and that only lasted a year or two and then they flipped it to like Stan Lee presents the age of heroes like one of

those generic superhero things that like they'd slap Stan Lee's name on oh with no heroes you'd recognize no oh no no no no all new it's the new universe of heroes like they're just colors blue man yellow man i feel like stan made up as many character or had an involvement with as many characters in marvel as he did outside like he has 300 characters you never heard of yeah yes

like just trying there's some audible thing right now. Yeah. There's all these different ways. I was, I just, when I was a comic and I was like, is Stan's most popular creation outside of Marvel Stripperella? It is for me now. It had a TV show. There was a Pamela Anderson

voice TV show on like Spike TV. Makes it recognizable. Right. So like that might be it outside of anything he did at Marvel. Okay. Final thoughts in Miami Vice related stuff. As you were saying, hearing that score blare through those speakers, fantastic. The Jan Hammer. Jan Hammer.

Did you use, I mean, the temptation is to say Jan Hammer, but I think it's. I think you're right. I think it is. I think I got it right the first time. I felt pretentious saying it or something. Jan Hammer, but I think it's... I think you're right. I think it is. I think I got it right the first time. I felt pretentious saying it or something. Jan Hammer. I was looking up the rest of the Jan Hammer discography.

I discovered that he was Keyboard Magazine's best studio synthesist for two years in a row. Jesus Christ. Which I'm surprised you had to look that up because I assume you know that. I've got four years of synthesizer. Yeah, I've got him loaded up uh yeah yeah he he took the reins from greg fillen gaines uh you know obviously the guy to beat uh uh but uh you know i'm reading all the you know

the the bods and ends about uh jan hummer and then i get to the end of the most recent thing on june 25th 2019 the new york times magazine listed jan hummer among the hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal Fire. This has been a couple times now. We talked about that crazy fire that burned up all the Music Masters a little while ago. And then who was it? It was like the gentle band that does the Woody's Roundup

music. Like these nice guys who play their fiddles. All their masters were destroyed in the Universal Fire. Oh my god. This is going to have to be like copy pasted for guys who play their fiddles all their masters were destroyed in the universal fire and now this too this is gonna have to be like copy pasted for every episode for any time we talk about a musician deal with that fire

anyways but his music lives on in the best quality that you can find it which is on camcorder videos of a stunt show where it's that is that's like probably if you're like which is on camcorder videos of a stunt show. That is, that's like probably if you're like programming drums, that's how you want it to sound.

Like it's coming through several mediums at once. Get that crunch. It also has the music guys like that pan, what is it? Like a flute of some kind. Right. Like a pan flute or synth flute or something. It's like the intro to Thunder in Paradise, which I love the Hulk Hogan syndicated show. show also if there could have been a stunt show of anything yeah yeah thunder in paradise any of the properties that jump out to you if you i mean

rambo you mentioned rambo would be amazing stunt show i mean they made a kid's cartoon out of it was there really yeah there was yeah whoa how did they like handle all the Rambo-iness of it? He was just, it basically was a team format where he would go help some village every time, I think. And there was like a general villain that was after him or something. He was in like, Tierra Libre was the country he was in. God, I don't know how I remember this. There was a Rob robocop cartoon yeah that's right yeah yeah robocop stunt show that'd be good yeah oh my god that would be the best i

feel like some of these might have existed in like germany or australia or because there was like a stray police academy stunt show in a couple of odd places but a star wars stunt show an actual like stunt spectacular would be amazing they They've never really done that. There's always some twist to it, like a Jedi Academy or something that just shits it. Yeah. I feel like the promise of some of Galaxy's Edge was like, there's going to be like flash mob scenes. And like, I don't know if they're going to roll that out eventually, but you would feel like they could do a full, cool, awesome, like within the land stunt show somehow. And it's a property

where getting violent is not so out of the question. It's fine. It's great. It's all lasers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Lasers. Right. Now bullets. That's great. Oh yeah. True. Yeah. And they're aliens. We don't have any attachment to them. Aliens are robots. Stormtroopers. Yeah. I wish they'd just do full on

adult franchise theme park stunt shows, like a Saving Private Ryan stunt show. Oh, my God. Platoon. Diehard. Diehard stunt show would be amazing. Watch.

The guy getting his fingernails pulled out. Michael Clayton. Yeah, Michael Clayton. Oh, man. But that's a guy just fixing all the problems after the stunt show. Yeah, yeah. That'd be good. A car explodes in that, right? Yeah, a car explodes, yeah. Oh, man. But that's a guy just fixing all the problems after the stunt show. Yeah, yeah. That'd be good. A car explodes in that, right?

Yeah, a car explodes. Sure. That happened before the show. Oh, okay. Yeah. You just see him go through everything. The theme park having to buy the property to have an accurate size Normandy to get the scale of the beach correct.

They have to close down their adjoining water park so that it all becomes a much sadder beach. And then how do you handle the German soldiers or Nazis? Because didn't they used to have swastikas in the Indiana Jones stunt show and then they took them all out? Now it's just kind of generally red and black. Yeah. It's just X-Lags. They're jerks. It's the jerk patrol.

Yeah. Well, we might be on the precipice of a new generation of stunt shows with those Marvel robots. Have you seen those? The stunt robots? Oh, yes. Yeah. Like these crazy things that fly through the air that can make a super heroic pose. Yeah.

That's scary. I mean, they're obviously going to kill us eventually, but it's... The least they could do is do some stunt shows in the meantime. Do a little stunt show for us and then murder us in a couple years get our get our defenses down right false sense of security warm our hearts we're just here to do stunts spectacular it doesn't matter that they're multiplying if they found a way to mate i feel like it just means more stunt shows there's more than today because that just means more stunts for us. Right. Everybody gets a personal stunt team in their house now.

And they keep talking about two weeks till go time. Must be a stunt language. I don't know. Wouldn't it be very like apropos if we were all killed by a bunch of superheroes? Like they took over our cinema and now they're in our homes and like Spider-Man is

choking us all out. Yeah, we deserve it, I guess. They probably would just make me breakfast or something. Some dweeb, like his life being choked out of him going, ah, who watches the Watchmen? See his soul leave his body. That's the way I want to go. For one, I welcome our robot stunts, eventual overlords. But they would not exist without the brave stuntmen who literally did break their arms to make the Miami Vice show what it was.

Thank you for coming and talking to us about it for a while. Matt Corley, Survive Podcast, the right. I'd do it all over again. I feel like there's more to talk about. There's probably, yeah. Send us a voice memo addendum. If you're leaving here, just

call me, leave me a message. We'll just add it to the end. Sounds good. We should make that an option for all of you. Oh yeah, that's true. On the way home, if you just want to talk on your phone. I forgot. Sometimes Tubbs would wear like an orange suit that looked cool. Alright, that's it. Bye. Yeah, thanks so much for being

here, Ed. Let's exit through the gift shop. Is there anything you'd like to plug? Oh, gosh, I guess not. I mean, I said macwelly.com so you can find everything there. Yeah, these prints sound incredible. I'm glad I know about this now. Any podcasts I'm doing,

I think Suprigo's coming back later this year. Okay. So, all that's there. Yeah. Thank you, guys. Absolutely. Thanks for doing that. And show porn from your days at the – wait, which one?

Wait, what did you all do together? Some of it was Soap Opera Bistro. Most of it, yeah. We started in Soap Opera Bistro and then around that transition period, I think, is when it happened. And you started saying, can we play parts that are not Doctors or – Yeah. I think is when it happened. And he started saying, can we play parts that are not doctors or. Yeah.

It was like we were doing such straightforward mainstream improv. We wanted to start, we'd get off stage and just start denying each other as a like venting thing. And so we wanted to just break the rules of improv. And that's how Super Ego was born basically. Jeez. Wow. It's like math related to the theme park experience. That's pretty crazy. Is there like an oral history of this yet? I'm like

imagining like the Tom Shales SNL book where you're like talking about the soap opera bistro and like you guys were all there together and like. People have asked us to do like this group of people to do a podcast about it. Like just the stories behind. I remember some middle manager took a picture of me with my shirt off

in the dressing room and emailed it to me. It was a weird place. Yeah. He was a creepy Disney guy who'd come in every day with a giant Cheshire Cat smile on his face going, are we all having a Disney day? Yeah. Jesus. He was gross. That exists?

That's like what you'd show in a movie about working at a theme park. We used to have this running joke. I won't say his name here, but let's say his name was like uh leonard barato and we'd always go leonard barato for county molester vote leonard barato for county molester leonard barato i think first of these robots who are eventually going to kill us yeah he was an early prototype oh he was a yeah yeah that makes, he was. Yeah, yeah. Gentlemen, what else we got? Live show tickets still available.

August 24th, Anaheim. August 24th, Anaheim. October 24th, Orlando. Where in Anaheim are you doing the show? At the Anaheim Hotel. Near D23, the Disney convention. Same weekend. During that convention? Yes. Not affiliated.

Legally, not affiliated. And what's the subject? I don't think we know yet. We were just throwing ideas around yesterday. We're cooking something up. We're not ready to say yet. I don't know what to say. Yeah, yeah.

But if you're not all paneled out by the end of D23, please come join us. Come to a different uh ballroom a different sweaty ballroom okay that's good i said yes to them having a person there with their cash bar we don't get any money from it but oh enjoy but if i get booze from it then then i'm all set and yeah sure as good as money yeah better sure. Sure. And check us out on the second gate on Patreon, our Twitter, our Facebook. T-Pub, all of that.

Yeah. You know the things. Yeah. Thanks for listening, everybody. It's been radical. It has been radical. Jason was on that jazz. Forever.

Dog. This has jazz. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. Engineered and mastered by Alex Arche. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcast.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

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