Podcast: The Ride - The World Famous Universal Studio Tour with Drew McWeeny

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

SepTRAMber begins! Hear tales from the men that hosted tram tours of the Universal Studios Hollywood Backlot (Scott and guest Drew McWeeny). Hear about their celebrity sighting, mild calamities and their eventual firings!Get ready, we've got a whole a whole month of tram and movie magic ahead of us."Ghost Town Alive! with Eva Anderson" episode is up at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride⁠See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Forever! Dog! Warning, the following month may contain. Floods, facades, ferocious apes, fires, more serious fires that destroy the facades and ferocious apes. Plus, a tramload of memories from the best damn summers this host ever had. Proud Universal Studio Tour graduate Drew McQueenie joins us for the launch of Podcast the Rides, Cep Tramberg. Hello and welcome aboard podcast, The Rides, Sip Tramber, a month-long tribute to the world-famous Universal Studio Tram Tour.

My name is Scott, and I'm going to be your guide this, month as we take you behind the scenes of the place that takes you behind the scenes of some of Hollywood's hottest filming locations. Quick thing to mention at the top, unfortunately the DVD player is not working. It's been skipping all morning, and that

means that my planned co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Jimmy Fallon will be not at our disposal today or perhaps throughout the entire month. But we have the next best thing. I always consider you guys the next best thing to those two people specifically. Mike Carlson and Jason Sheridan, hi. Hi. Hi.

Hi, yeah, I'm here too. Now that you've said that the celebrities aren't here, we're really going to sound like shit. That was unfair. That was unfair. I built myself up with this tour guide tone and then knocked you guys in the legs. These beloved celebrities, how could we stack up?

No, egot. You're not any of the way you would love. I mean, but neither. None of us are any of the way to, you know. I'm but a W.N. A W.N., a W.N., a Riders Guild nominee. Well, that's not anywhere. No, that's not on the chart to. egot whatsoever. I won screen junkies movie fights a few times. So there, that's a thing, right? And that's winning, which I did not. That's true. Well, let me just, if we're doing a little like, you know, ping pong rally right now, what I will say related to today's topic is that I did win the universal tour guide short film festival. Okay.

In which, Ron Meyer, head of the studio and negotiator of the Tonight Show fiasco, I'm familiar. I saw my work, which of course led to nothing in particular, but it was fine. It was a good statue until it broke during a move. Oh, that's too bad. Jason, you want to brag about something? Yeah, yeah, let's brag about it. Let's get it. I won Tournament of Nerds exactly one time, and I'm trying to remember if that synced up with,

if it was the show before, after when Sasha Banks and Questlove were there, and the paparazzi what was the name before Questlove Sasha Gray is who you're talking about Sasha Gray is a former WWW wrestler Sasha Gray Scottia Gray Star of the girlfriend experience

also the film Yes But not the TV show No isn't that Steve Stoderberg? That's a Soderberg Yeah Oh geez Pauley Shore was on the show

as well Yes My credentials is a Hollywood expert melting away as we talk the very rare paparazzi outside of UCB Franklin in Los Angeles and you just see me kind of lingering in the background of shots

Jason is in the background of a paparazzi That's what the brag was In the background of a picture of Questlove Well and I won the competition Anyway though the brag was about that That was just the fault that was your like your Hollywood moment Where you could have pretended the photographers

were after you for winning the tournament Yeah yeah that was the one time my trying to write the funniest jokes and my desire to win actually sunk, you know, synced up. Because usually I would just write

funny jokes or take little pot shots. And I was like, well, I'm not moving at all, but I got the most laughs. So la-de-da, heading home. By the way, if you kids you don't know,

this is a comedy show we still do in Los Angeles, now at Dynasty typewriter, but we used to do it at UCBC theater. And I've seen Jason make somebody cry. That's all I'm going to say. It was an intense show. It was not intentional.

Not a joke. Our guest didn't know the kind of could-be monster, almost like a King Kong or a Jaws that could strike at any time. This guy's a killer. These podcast audience thinks, oh, gentle Jason, he just says the facts on the show or whatever. No, no, no, no. This guy's a fucking killer.

Let's see if he can do it today. There's a challenge. Can you provoke tears? I am just getting very defensive because I know our. guests is like a horror professional. Oh, oh, getting your, getting your knives out, getting your guard. Yeah, I'm just getting to fend. Yes, yes.

In case he ever tries to scare me, uh, I'll just get a mean with it and then kind of like not realized like, oh, that was step two farms over a sorry. Well, let me, uh, let me bring our guest into it. But with a, a tiny bit of intro before that, this is, of course, our, our long, overdue I don't know if long awaited maybe not because we haven't particularly said we're ever going to do it to the audience for us

for us perhaps this is our month about the Universal Tram Tour it is a crucial attraction it is what the entire global Universal Studios theme park operation is built on there would not be any of it

across the globe if it didn't start as a humble tour on a former chicken ranch so it's pretty huge as far as our topics go and there's a lot to cover here, hence the full month, but it's also important to me, because as most listeners know,

I myself was a Universal Studios tour guide. I was hired there nearly 20 years ago, which is half my life ago, which is a horrifying thing to say, but also a nice clean, you know, time to do this, perhaps. But it's, you know, I loved, I did love it very earnestly.

I'm sure that there'll be ways that we goof on this job and have fun with it over the course of the month. but like it has this like idyllic summer thing for me and it always will uh it's like it's a big part of me and i'm excited to talk to and compare notes with our guests today and i can't think of a better way to kick this thing off than with a distinguished alumni of the program himself we're gonna you know see what it was like in his era as opposed to mine and most importantly here's some of those dulcet tour guide tones i'm just i'm just happy to hear like another register of that he's a writer, he's a critic, he's a sub-stacker, it's Drew McQueenie, hello.

Hi, how are you? Hello, thank you for having you, absolutely. Thank you for, well, and also, you know, the little behind the scenes here, that, you know, this has been, I've been kicking this down the curb for so many years. Every time, you know, you can't, when you have the name Septramber, it can only be in September, right? Sure, you could do Subtranber in January, which almost might be better and funnier, but I've had kind of a rigid brain about it.

Every time September has been on the horizon, I've thought, will I pull the trigger on it? And I didn't want to do it during the pandemic. And I didn't want to do it when I had a baby due probably in Sip Tramber. But now's the time. Now's the time. But it shows you how long we've been talking about this, that I was like, oh, you know what? Then I can write Drew. And Drew could be on the show because we talked about doing the tram.

And then I checked and went into the DMs. I'm like, oh, my God, that was 2021. I wrote four years ago. I had no idea. Oh, my God. It was that long. You pushed these things. So this is, this is ancient as this is a full presidential term ago.

Excellent. Well, glad to finally be here, man. So excited you could. And now look, I don't want to, I don't want to go around, like, pimping you out to use one of those UCB terms that you guys know well. We do know. I don't want to just put the spotlight on you. But at the same time, I do because when you walked in the room, you went into a little, you showed off how much. the tour is in you.

Would you care to, could I introduce you one more time and have your response be the tour guide introduction? Let's do that. All right. Welcome to the show, Drew McQueenie. Hi, welcome aboard the Universal Studios Hollywood Super Tram, presented by Texaco. My name is Drew and I'm going to be your studio guide this afternoon. As you board the tram, please move to the center of the car, put all small children away from

the outside edges and keep your arms and legs inside at all times. If you drop something, let me know. I'll let Paul our driver know. and then we'll make sure to stop and pick it up. In the very last car, if you can hear me right now, go ahead and raise your hand. I want to just make sure, okay, wave, thank you, perfect. All right, we'll get started in just a moment.

Wow, wow. God, that was excellent. I feel humbled by that degree of that voice. It's just, it's perfect. Did you, and, you know, there's a thousand questions about you getting the job and how it was for you, but like that aspect of it, Did you feel like you had that in you before? Did the job bring it out of you?

Were you excited to show off that particular thing, that spiel, the manner of voice? I have a weird history with performance, because I don't think of myself as a performer. I'm a writer. Yeah, me too. It's very similar. In college, I went for theater. And in the theater program, they make you do everything. So, like, you end up having to direct, you end up having to act in other people's things.

You have to learn all of it. That's pretty smart. That's a good way to do it. It was a good training ground. So when I moved out, I knew that I wanted to try and find a job at Universal. I went when I was a little kid. I came out here in 1978, 79. And when I went Battlestar Galactica was the new hot thing.

The Cylon detour where they would take you to a side road. And a bunch of Cylons would come out and detour the thing into a drive-through. And you'd go through and it was all the Battlestar Galactica aliens and Cylons would shoot past you. lasers and like one of it like somebody split down the middle I think it's where earthquake is now I believe not to correct but that's the you know that's what we're doing is what happened where feels like that was the same kind of setup

I think what it was was the where it became like the base of the building that's back to the future now okay I think which was a like very side of the hills definitely yeah I think it was weirdly one of the first things you would do on the tram which is a weird place to start because that could very well be a finale but yeah it replaced Back to the Future replaced it

and it replaced a thing that I love which was just called Rock Slide where they just like shoved a bunch of foam boulders down Oh that's awesome shove them down a hill and then a net supposedly would catch them

but often would not like You got a hundred boulders probably they aren't all going to fit in that net I know which area you're talking about the base of what the Back to the Future ride was that's where we would take the VIPs to take them up for Back to the Future Oh you sneak them in through some elevators

There was an elevator all the way to the bottom because Michael Jackson came constantly and he would have to take him and his guests in the van to the bottom of back to the future. We go up, let him ride the ride, then bring him back down and go do the tour in a van. You say that with a tone that's like you had Michael Jackson multiple times. I have many Michael Jackson stories, yes. Oh, my God. Many. Jeez, that's insane.

Not just from that job either. Like, I ran into him a lot in my early days in L.A. I guess these kind of interests and things that you like to do. I, well, hold that thought. Let me, don't let me interrupt your flow. I didn't get hired originally for the tram. I tried two or three times, did not pass the audition, and instead ended up in Halloween Horror Nights in 91.

They did it then? Did it ever disappear and come back? Yes. Okay, okay. It was one of the early ones. And I ended up, speaking of awards, I ended up winning Best Scare in the Park for that. Oh, really? Winner, Best Scare.

scare. They put me in a packing, one of those giant metal packing containers and I was leather face and they had me on a harness so when I heard the tram, I was in the Greens Department

when the tram would come next to me and I would hear it, I would start my chainsaw inside the metal container so all they hear is this roving up inside and then at top speed I would run to the end of the metal container burst out of it and jump at the tram with the chainsaw and then the harness would

yank me back at the last second. Wow. And I had to do that like 60 times a night for the entire time. Geez, wow. It was just constant. So you got, so they do the, you still do a best scare at the end? I don't know. I only did it that one year.

But it was great. It was a lot of fun. And my roommate also worked there. And I definitely win the lottery. I got leather face. So I had like a costume. I had layers of costume. I had heavy gloves.

It was a great costume to wear. he was in one of the walk-through haunted houses and he played an alien. So all he had was an alien head and essentially a nude body stocking that he wore. And he said it was the worst experience of his entire life because he felt naked and then he would have to pop out

and half the time people would hit him. So it was just... And he was close enough to be hit. Yeah, close enough to be hit. So it was truly for him and ordeal as a Halloween horror night. But it was really early. they didn't have it down yet.

They didn't know what they were doing. The whole thing was, even while it was open, they would keep changing things, move people around, try new skis, like, was it?

Was it? Because I just saw a video of it. Maybe it was early 2000s, but it used to be like, there'd be like ladies and little shorts, like grinding and stuff. Like it used to be like dirtier or sexual. Little shorts.

Well, I'm just saying it was like there were like go go go, like sexy go go go dancers going on at horror night. Like, was it that way early in the 90s or was that like a 2000s? No, the early 90s, I think that's a 2000s one. The early 90s was really, it felt very rinky dink.

It felt like they were just, does this work? Can we do this? They didn't have the giant haunted houses, the specified haunts. Right, right. It was much smaller. Huh, huh. But it wasn't the tram, though. You were, you were a, there was a tram ride that was part of it, and I was on the tram route.

Interesting. Would it stop anywhere? Or would it, like, do the scary stuff like Earthquay through? It would go through, like, six points. Texas, and zombies would come out. Oh, that's cool. Okay, okay. Stuff like that.

So it was like you. were on the regular tram ride, but it was haunted. Oh, gotcha. Not the current terror tram that they let you out. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. So this is your first pass at performing there. I got in the system at least. Yeah. And they had an award winner in the system.

And because of that, I went back in in the spring when they had their spring class and that time I got hired. Wow. Yeah, and I realized immediately everybody else was a performer. Right, right. Almost everybody who worked there is an actor who's just looking for a job where at least you're in front of the, you're in of people and you're yes so they all had that voice thing down very quickly and i realized okay i know

all the info like i i can tell you anything about this lot very easily yeah but i've got to get better at presentation and so that became my real thing there where they taught me more than anybody like how to uh code switch into the tour go tour guide mode sure sure yes man we are cut from the same cloth it's exactly the same thing i like yeah where most most people are there from the actor background, the performer background, and they're excited on that level. For me, it's almost like a, like a pill to swallow as part of it. Like, I'm really excited about it, and I, and the info, and I knew pretty well. But I was not, I was never really in front of audiences until that, but I'd maybe done a little bit of UCB was new around that time, and I'd done the tiniest bit of

class shows or whatever. But I really credit that job with making 200 people. I forget how many fit on there. That's the one thing I should know is the exact. 182. It's somewhere around that number, but it made that amount of people not scary to me anymore, which is a huge deal. When I started doing like Hall H moderation at Comic Con, that was terrifying for just a few moments. And then I basically go into tour guide mode. You're like, it's just a big tour guide. Like, it's just a big tour bus. It's the same principle. It helped me in all sorts of ways, I think, in terms of when everything pivoted a video and I had to do a ton of video work as a critic. it was all tour guide training that I fell back on.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's like a polished mode that you go into, but that has to be genuine, too. If it's a little to this guy, then like your brainless, soulless. So it is, it's being yourself. I like the way that it's somewhere between, it's not quite stand up, and it's certainly not playing a character, but it's like it's presenting and that you've got a mission and what you're here for and the purpose of your presentation, but if you get excited about something, you could do that instead. You could veer off course. I keep thinking how it is very much like

what we do today that we call podcast the ride. Is it not? I always kept in mind that I did four or five trams a day. But for some of those people, that is the only time they were ever do the tram. Oh, yeah. So if I throw it away and I half ass it and I phone it in or I'm in robot mode, they're in a shitty tram, and that's what they're going to remember, is, oh, the tram's no good. Like, they're cynical, they're whatever, they're bored. I never wanted that to be the case. Like, I really wanted them to have the experience that I had when I was a little kid.

Jeez. Because I love that. I remember that for years. It was truly one of the highlights, because I lived a million miles from Hollywood. I didn't have the film industry around me. So that one trip to Universal really felt like the moment, okay, tactile, I can touch the place where movies are made, like, it's a real place. Yes.

It really was everything to me at a certain age. And at the same time, like, just being there is its own excitement. Just like, okay, so I like this place as just the kid who wants to see cool stuff. But it also makes it a little more tangible for you to maybe I could work in this field. Maybe it's not in outer space. It's not like being on Saturn. I could actually. These are the sets where the things that I love were filmed.

I could do it. But you go through a working back lot and you actually see stuff in production. You see people who are working there. You see offices. Like, it feels more mundane in a way. And that makes it seem more accessible and human. Well, yeah, it's an industrial tour in addition to an amusement park. Yeah.

A theme park attraction. And, yeah, I think being able to mix that with the, like, universal. We're a little bawdy, we're a little more frank than Disney, and we can be a little more, like, cutting. And then the other thing that sticks with me is how many parks have one attraction that is really, like, this is the defining thing of the park. Yeah. Maybe Epcot, because there's a ride in the big golf ball, as people have told me over the years. I've heard that many times, the big golf ball. But, like, this is the one where it's like we're here, go to studio tour first.

Or do some other stuff first because I want to go to studio tour in front. Ask for badge. Is that the, do people do it first? Now, I hope that this is the case. I think this might be a question through the series is this thing as vibrant as it was. Is it as important to kids today as it was to Drew or any of us? When I did it with like a full college program, it was everyone get there at this time. We're going to take a picture in front of the backdrop by the entrance to the studio tour this fall 2006.

So you may have been hanging around. It could have been me. I probably saw your tour once or twice back in the day because everyone else bought their tickets through school and I showed up with an annual pass that I bought myself because I'm like and you see excuse like, oh my dad's. coming out in a few weeks so I'm gonna be back and in my head I'm like I'm gonna be her every week I live down the street from a goddamn theme park for once don't ever don't let anyone make you make an excuse you know you want it reach out and grab it that's right and uh so so yeah so we did for sure go straight for that hmm it is interesting because like you were talking about like disney versus universal it does feel like Disney and I'm trying to remember how their back lot

tour, which is like half-fake backlot at MGM Studios because it was some exterior shot there in a little bit like they were doing real to some extent but invented from whole cloth. That's not like this where the land had been here since 1915. That's the thing is they specifically booked things in to shoot so they could

say they were shooting things there. Right, right. I lived in Orlando for, or not Orlando, I lived outside of Tampa but closer to Orlando for a while in high school. And as a kid, I lived in Dan Eden. So, like, I did Disney World a gazillion times growing up.

Sure. Work there in high school. Like, and it's such a different, it's a completely different thing. Their studio tour was truly fake. Just, yeah, yeah, sure. The animation building, I felt bad for the, the animators that were put behind glass, like, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, like animal. Yeah, yeah. Yes, it was a Zube set up. Universal doesn't feel like that. When you're going through, you know, and I don't know what you encountered, like what was shooting while you were working there, but we saw a ton of stuff shoot, and we would sneak on the sound stages. We would, like, any opportunity we had, we would go peek at stuff. Yes, sure, sure.

It's amazing how much of a up-close look you get at the process. If you're just a tourist, we were bringing a tram in late one night. It was my last tram of the day, and we were coming back through where Backdraft is right now. But it was before backdraft had been put in. And as we're coming around the corner of the sound stages, we hear two people arguing just going at each other. And we're like, good, okay. And I spoke on the mic just to let them know we were about to,

and I said, and coming up, we've got one of our productions actually shooting right now. They're having a late day. We come around the corner, and it's Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern, and they're standing outside the Jurassic Park stage. And they had just been fighting. And when we come around the corner, there were big smiles on, hi, how are you? We go by.

And it was like, so sorry, but this is where we're driving. Yeah, yeah, no. I mean to interrupt whatever. You're not trying to, yeah, you're not trying to butt in. This is the usual route, I swear. I'll show you the map. One of those moments where you're like, oh, yeah, this is actually a working, they're in the middle of something right now. Whoa.

Well, they were still, they were dating after that publicly, right? So, all right, so whatever that was didn't, you know, ruin the entire deal. It's a lover's quarrel, they call it. Jason, that's a quarrel. I feel like quarrel is a word you would use. It's an old-fashioned word. I try to avoid them at all. I'm not saying you're into quarrels.

I'm not saying you like the words. But I would certainly use it. It's in my repertoire I feel like. Please let us much quarrel. God, that's crazy. You know, you mentioned one before we started recording. It's not my own memory because I came into this like, oh, do I have any celebrity stories? And I think that is a blank area for me.

I feel like my era was light with stars. spotting. So I wish I had anything better in that regard. But I do remember my wife grew up around here as well, loved the tour very much, that she got a really good one, I think, when you were working there, which is just boring soundstage, nothing happening, no indication what's happening in there. And then just out the door, fully facing tram in costume, unquestionably, John Goodman as Fred Flintstone walks out, sees tram, clocks it, waves, yells yabadabadoo, everybody loses their fucking minds. That is so perfect.

I never had anything close to that. I was like, maybe I saw Jerry O'Connell getting in his car, and I wasn't sure enough to say it to the audience. Yeah. No, I was definitely there during the Flintstones, and not only did my fellow tour guides and I all take pictures sitting in a car with our feet. going through it. Cool.

Everybody had that photo. But we were out one afternoon, my buddy and I, and we're walking by the trailers, and we're walking down to get something from the store. And we realized that one of the trailers says E. Taylor on it. Whoa. And my buddy's like, oh, wow. And we used to carry little disposable cameras, because this was before everybody had the camera in your pocket all the time.

So we had our little disposables just in case. Like if you're out on the tram route, there's something fun that you can take a picture of and so my buddy was like get a picture of me with her door so he steps up onto her steps is posing by the e taylor and the door opens uh and elizabeth taylor stepped out and i don't recall ordering you guys but now that you're here and we both started laughing and all we could see where those purple crazy eyes and neither of us could say a word like it was just truly starstruck and she was

she made a joke out of it and then walk past us to go do what she was doing but oh wow geez well that not only I mean at the same time it's Elizabeth Taylor and then it's also

oh can I remember her is it like it's not Wilma it's slag hoophole what's do we know the character do we know her character's name Elizabeth Taylor I was wondering if you were going to say

that Michael Jackson came out of the trailer oh no oh yeah that would have been Oh, man, if you could get all three Taylor, Jackson, and David Guest. Oh, David Guests later. He might have been friends of them at the time. He might have been, you know.

Joe Pesci getting ready for Moonwalker or whatever it is. Pearl Slag Hoopal. Pearl Slag. Is the iconic role eventually played by Joan Collins in the sequel in Viva Rock Vegas. Am I right about that one too? I'm questioning every, every standard I hold myself here to now that we are in the, I've never seen Viva Rock Vegas. Oh, boy.

Oh, well, you got a... I don't know if you got a... What are you doing? Okay, I'll stop recording. You guys finish the episode, and I will go in the other room and watch Viva Rock Vegas on my phone. There is a...

If you are the kind of person who like seeing props on tours in the Magnolia Park District of Burbank, I just got tipped that there is a vintage store called It's a Rapp where they have some props and stuff and they have a bunch of Viva Rock Vegas stuff. You can see an old slot machine that's operated by a bone. Oh, that's good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a very cool stuff. That's the long vintage store stuff used in TV and film. Oh, yeah, yeah, there's probably some ancient stuff there. Yeah, there's lots of cool stuff in there, yeah. That's where stuff actually goes, as opposed to these back lots where, who knows at this point. Let me ask you a question about your time there. Yeah.

Did you guys get the John Landis rule? Hmm. I don't think so. This does not feel familiar to me. I'm just searching my brain. My guess is it was timing. Okay. Because when I was a guide, it was made very clear to us during the training.

Under no circumstances, do you say John Landis' name on the tram? Whoa. Just don't say it. Oh. And it was, I think it was individuals from the Twilight Zone. The stuff, yeah, because the lawsuit was very fresh. That's what I think. It was still fresh.

I think it was still in the air. So we just had a rule. You're not allowed to say his name. Whoa. And one of my encounters, I was stuck at the end of right by the Amblin entrance. And I was waiting to go out and the tram's just waiting. We've got trams in front of us. They tell us you've got like four or five minutes stall.

So I'm just talking about some of the things that have shot on the stages near us. And there's a hubbub from the back of the tram. And I'm like, okay, something's going on. And I look and coming up the side of the tram is John Landis. And he's just walking next to the tram. and people are noticing him and people recognize him. And my driver looks at me.

Don't fucking do it. And I was like, okay, I don't know what to do. All right. And then John comes almost directly next to me and stops and looks up in waves. And he smiles. And I'm like, does he know the rule? All right.

And you're, ladies and gentlemen. It's a Hollywood professional. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure many of you have noticed and on my side of the tram right now, If you want to get your cameras ready, get them out because you've got one of Hollywood's legendary filmmakers here. Please, everybody, say hi to Joe Dante. And the look on his face, he was so mad at me. I was just like, I'm not saying this like a name, man.

All right, there we go. It felt like that feels like a sting. Like they're trying to like trap the trapment or something. I was like, no. And people are weird about getting noticed or not noticed. Some people want the attention. Some people don't. Some people really don't want you to say their names.

I got screamed out one time by Lyle Lovett. Cool. Because we went by the Universal Amphitheater. And I was talking about how various artists are playing. And I believe tonight we have Mr. Julia Roberts himself, Lyle Lovett, and his large band are playing. He did not care for that at all. Wow. It's because of the large band.

I got a 10-minute lecture on all of his accomplishments and how he was not just somebody's husband. And I was like, I was like, I. I don't know what's going on in your marriage, but that comment was as innocuous as a comic case. It's a true fact. No judgment there. Who are you married to, sir? Tell me what I did wrong.

That's sort of the, you ended up in the Billy Bob Thornton hot seat. It was literally, I got down to the dispatch, and he was waiting on the phone, and the dispatcher was like, this is for you. He called the office? He called the office of the tram route and screamed at me. Oh, poor Lyle. I mean, what was going on with you? They were going through some.

things I think so. Wow. Wow. It was not the best use of his time, I think. He had a show that night. Yeah, it was his head. And now the story is public. If it wasn't already, now people will think that when they see they'll think Julia Robert's husband again. They'll think the story that was just told. Let me, because if we're, I think we can kind of like parallel tell our stories and compare experiences because you're at the top of the month. And you, but let me issue a blanket apology, by the way, if everything that I say about my time there I have said on the show

over the years, me, the person with the, you know, who was the, the, it was maybe the hardest on repeated stories. I'll just call out any hypocrisy right now and say that maybe everything I say I have said before. But if, although I think there's an aspect of it that I, I have not exactly because it was not only like a dream job for me to get. It was like at this very precarious time. I thought I was staring down the worst summer of my life. It was after junior year of college and I got dumped right before something. Like the first like real major breakup of my life, which I was, you know, too melodramatic about. And I remember in the moment saying something about like, you're going to be fine.

What about me, huh? There's nothing out there for me. You'll find somebody right away. You know what there is for me? Nothing. And I'm sorry to. Now that seems like it's important. my lexicon too with quarrels

like a Humphrey Bogart yelling at a all we do is quarrel don't you see you have a row but I'll take a quarrel because to have the warmth and comfort of a dame with me I'll do as many quarrels as I have to is it more of a row

do we call it a row sometimes to having a fight? Yeah I'm trying to think of other old timey words for having an argument well yeah well hit thesaurus.com we'll get them all out but yeah This is the energy that I came into the summer with. And then I was just weirdly between things.

I was bummed. And I'm like, what do I do? I know I need to get a job and I'm going to be sad all the time, whatever the job is. And it was between, do I go back and live with my parents for the summer after having studied abroad and been able to drink in Germany and I'm on my own across the world? And I've got to go be in my parents' house again and maybe go work at the AMC Promenade movie theater. Or do I do plan B? and do I stay down by Loyola Marymount where I went to school?

Do I live in Westchester? In this great situation, I found a guest house that was converted out of a garage that has a sliding door and no way to protect my valuables or lock the door in the night, which I did end up living at during the school year. This is how little regard I had for myself for my own comfort. That is, I will say, I don't think I would have been too scared to do that. Yeah, it's not a good idea. It's a very bad idea. I was I was all fine. Nothing ever happened.

Oh, also, other facts about that house, no bathroom in that situation. So to use the bathroom, I had to go into the house that was all these frat guys who weren't really nice to me. So would I opt for backyard sometimes? Yes, I would. Toilip boy's here. Toilip boy. You got to tinkle again? Toilip boy left to shed.

We've got to unclog the pipes, do you? We left you a mason jar, figure it out. So this is the situation. Oh, and in that situation, I would have gone to work at the movie theater at the Howard Hughes Promenade. So I was between two bummer, movie theater. What's the deal? Good or bad? Oh, is it a good one?

I miss that. Is it gone entirely? It's, yeah, there's a, I don't know what's there now, but it's not the I'm actually. screen they used to have. It was the biggest and the best IMAX screen. Really? Really? Oh, interesting. Huh. I never, well, then it would have been my honor to work there, I suppose. How long has it been gone? I think 2008, 2009. I don't think I realized that. Yeah, I didn't realize that either. What the hell is there instead? I don't know. It changed hands. It wasn't an IMAX screen anymore, and then another company came in and did something to it. Yeah.

Oh, geez. I would have been in the shadow. I would have, I would have, I would have, I would have, I would have gotten to seen Superman returns that summer most beautiful situation and resolution while sweeping the aisles and cleaning up the trash. I did drive like 50 minutes to see that in IMAX in Illinois, now that I'm remembering. Yeah, wow. It was an event. Oh, and you must have felt great driving back. Like, oh, yeah.

You know what? Yes, yes. It did feel like the old ones. Superman did return. That is right. They did what they promised. but so I would yeah

I was between like which depressing movie theater job summer am I going to get and then I was kind of like bumming around the like the student TV office at school and and thinking about what my summer was going to be

and bemoaning the breakup and then I looked on Craigslist and I saw that this was a giant tour guide hiring summer and they announced it several hours before and I had caught it within the window

where if I left right then and there and sped down from You know, there's a round L.A.X. Uh, two universal. Like, I could maybe still get there in time if the line was not insane. And I raced and my heart raced as I did it because this could be my salvation for the entire summer. And I still think about every time I'm going from, what would it be, four or five north

to one or one south, uh, or east, which way. But like, anytime I'm on that interchange, I'm like, I could feel it then. I was like, this is a fork in the road for me in my life. I can tell. Like, if I can have the goofiest, funnest summer with a job I wanted to have when I was a little kid, this will change everything. It'll all, I think my entire demeanor will change. I think my life will change. And I made it, and I made it to that audition.

We can kind of compare the audition processes, but I, that very first step was a real cattle call. Like, thank God the line was not too long. I could still get in there. And all it consisted of was like a quick conversation that was like, translation, are you crazy? They asked four questions, but all four questions meant, are you crazy? and then I got a handshake at the end which made me feel great like I am not crazy and I got like I and there was

I think maybe some indicator that I could come back and do the next step but even having that hope then changed everything because there's a few steps to the audition process but what that led to is then I'm like okay well all right you know what I'll do I will go back with my parents and you know I'll interview for the AMC job just in case and I did an interview and I was so

dreaming of the tour the entire time I was doing it and this guy who would have been my supervisor is like three years old and he probably said like it's long hours you're okay with that right? Yeah, yeah, of course and you're gonna have to clean toilets

you're okay with that right? Yeah, yeah, of course and you are gonna have to work on holidays because you're news you're definitely gonna have to work on every holiday that's yeah, okay, yeah, I think I couldn't do that. Okay, is there anything in the way of you doing this job

is there any reason why you couldn't? And I said, well, I am trying to get hired as a universal tram tour guide and he was like, whoa, like King Kong and stuff? I said, yeah. And he was like, oh, that sounds way better. You should do that. I was like, I'm trying to, my friend.

Did I mention there are toilets involved here? Yes, I believe in the turgai job I will only be using them as far as I know. And then sure enough, it all played out. And then just long story, this became this summer that like opened me up to, oh my God, I can perform, I can, you know, it's a comedy job, it's a job that makes me know that you can have a dream and achieve it. And by the end of the summer, it was the summer where I guested a group of people that included my now wife, who I impressed with my performance on the tour, and I've been with her for 19 years ever since. So it truly, and I knew it.

I knew it. I knew it on that interchange. This is going to be such a big deal for me. And I had just like the goofiest, most glorious summer. And every time, every time I yelled at King Kong, which is not necessarily what you're supposed to do. You can check out of that King Kong. experience. You don't have to be involved in King Kong or any of them whatsoever. But every time I stood, I leaned out the window, I did a performance, I stared in those sometimes flashing eyes

if that component worked. I took in the banana breath. I did it with such gusto because I knew how lucky I was to be in that situation. I loved it. So important to me. And it sounds like you're very similar in terms of like not wanting to have fast than wanting to give the ideal version of this thing. Well, and when I moved out here, I came out to write and to make films. And all my first jobs were about being near film in some way. I was a theater manager in Florida. So I came out here and immediately started managing theater in Sherman Oaks. And did you have to, what was the toilet situation? No, I was managing. So I was thankfully not in the toilet situation. But we did a lot of test screenings. And so I immediately started and trade screenings. So three weeks after I

was here. I'm like dealing with Jeffrey Katzenberg and with the filmmakers who were coming in and stuff. I had to learn very quickly to be around the industry. Jeez, wow. And then was that at the time, like, because the one where I interviewed to have the summer job, like became a big test screening place, was that, that Germanics one at the time was like a... Yeah, it was, it was, it was right at, uh, it's not there anymore. It used to be like a two on one side and then three on another side thing. Oh, I love that. When a movie theater split up.

I love that. The one's in a weird little box. Yeah. And the two by themselves, that's where all the test screenings and trade screenings took place. Interesting. So, like, I would open up in the morning and we would have, Clint East would come and show the rookie, and I would have to host a little breakfast for the trade people who

would come in to see the rookie, and then I'd have to deal with Eastwood all morning. Oh, my God. I'm 20 when I moved here. So, like, it was truly, you get thrown in the deep end. And then I worked at a Laserdisc store, which was almost all industry. Almost everybody who came in and bought stuff was industry. And that's where I had to deal with Michael a lot the first time because he was one of our customers. And he would come in once we closed.

His whole thing was he'd call and say, hi, I'm coming in. And then we'd be like, all right. And we'd close the doors, lock the doors. He'd show up five minutes later. We'd let him in. And then he could shop into the closed store. And he could take all the time he wanted. Is he living in Encino then?

He was in Encino. And he would drive himself in a minivan. Wow. Which was always just the weirdest thing. The minivan would pull up out front. Michael just get out, be by himself. Weird. And then spend three hours in the store browsing.

And you just, you'd have to talk to Michael for three hours because he'd want to ask you questions about every disc. You'd, like, recommend, like, oh, that's a go in a third act, that was a little rough, but. And then he'd come out with a stack of, you know, $1,000, $2,000 worth of discs for the night. Would he come back and say, like, I liked this, but I didn't like this? Yeah. Wow.

He had his taste. And my favorite Michael Jackson story for working there is we had a rental copy of every disc that had ever been made. That was Dave's whole thing was, I was a place was called Dave's video. And Dave wanted a rental copy of everything, including Japanese imports, including stuff from other countries. So we had Song of the South as a Japanese import. Michael wanted to buy it from us. So we were like, there's, that was a nightmare to get hold of. there's only one of them we can't, but we

do rent it. He was like, great, I'll open a rental account. And I told my manager, I'm like, we're never going to see that disc again. You know that, right? That's going to go by-bye. Excuse me, Mr. Jackson? What was it? Of course, six weeks later, we just charged him out for the disc and had to find a replacement, but

it was like, you know he's not renting this. I'm sorry. This disc is overdue, Mr. Jackson. He just wants to leave the store with it. You're just giving him an excuse. It's not. So are you aware now on the bad tour? Well, yes, your behavior was quite bad here.

But that place also was a lot of industry and a lot of people that you had to learn to deal with who were just very particular. And so I couldn't understand why I couldn't get over the hump with the tram. Like, I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get in. And I think it was because I approached it not as a performance thing. Yeah, yeah, right. And it was after Halloween Horror Nights and I was in the system. And they basically said, do you want to come back to the park? work at the park in any other department. I was like, tour guide. Yes, tour guide. So when they did

the spring thing, I didn't have to do the interviews. And they just put me through to the final part of the interview process. Oh, interesting. And they were like, since we already know you, we've already worked with you in attractions, we get it. Oh, oh. That helped enormously. That was my shortcut in finally. Oh, and you've like made an impact here and shown you can be a theme park. And the way you like thought through that and found your own little method to do that scare that shows you can, like, you know, be creative, think that's other best. And I think, and so they, the big thing then became, because I didn't know how to memorize stuff the way you have to.

And during that training process, you have to, we had to memorize like a binder. Yeah. We had that whole tour written out. And it was, at that point, there was no video component. There were no screens that played videos. Like, you talked the entire time you were on the tram. That's insane. And for us in 2006 or so doing that, we would discuss that.

and hush tone, love, like, in a way, like, you know how, you know how they used to have it back in the old days, you know how hard it was back then? And we really would all go, how do you do that? All we had was music. Do you get stuck for like, just music? So yeah, would you have like, you could say, back to the future filmed here and then you'd have a little clip of power of love or something. Exactly. And that's always power of love. It was the magnificent seven theme when we went into six points, Texas. It was the Jaws theme as we were heading towards. It was a few like bits and piece of the psycho theme. Okay. And we'd go by the house. This is flavor.

This is hardly like, right. It was something that could take over for you. And it would be 25 seconds of music. So you had really no break. Wow. And how long is an average tour then? Hour 15, hour 20. It depends on the summer day.

Like, it would start to back up the longer the day went. And so your last tour would take an hour 40 sometimes. Jeez. And that's talking that whole time. Oh, my God. And it's all stretching and it's all like padding, places where you get stuck. So my whole thing was just memorize as much about the park as you can.

So you have stories that you can tell any place you get stuck. And there were a few stories that they told us specifically as warnings about how things could go wrong, that then we were not allowed to tell on the tram or tell ever again. I'll tell one now. Yeah. My favorite, the unrated edition. My favorite warning story was, you know, sometimes people don't want you. to interrupt what they're doing.

Sometimes if you see a star, don't just yell at them because you don't know what mood they're in. They used an example where Airwolf was shooting on the back lot. And they were going through the Greens Department and Airwolf was using the Greens Department. And Jan Michael Vincent was having a day of it. And so when they came through the tram stops

and the tour guides like, there's Jan Michael Vincent. Hi, Jan, how are you? Jan Michael Vincent, who was shit-faced drunk at the time turned around and proceeded to answer by pissing directly into the tram. Whoa.

From where he was standing. He made it? Made it. Hose some tourists. At which point, everything shuts down. Ernest Borgnine comes out, does 45 minutes with the tram,

takes photos with everybody, make sure everybody's fine, signs things. Hey, hey, Uncle Ernie. Everything's good. Everything's good. We like that these people. Coming through in the clutch.

Well, they've wrapped Jan Michael Vincent in a carpet and carried him off the set because, but they were like. That was illusion pee. He had a little gun loaded up. Don't worry about it. You learn to make eye contact with somebody before you start yelling. Like, are you okay with this? If not, I won't. Do you have a penis loaded with urine and how powerful could your spray be?

what's your average length they think that helicopter's so great I'm the star I got three names too I'm a star they should call it they should call it

piss wolf oh no that's how I'm calling it like to see a helicopter piss yeah there were definitely there were warnings they had about how you interact with people and they really were

adamant that you you've got to make sure somebody's cool before you just start involving them in your tram. Right, right. Let me ask you, here's some really specific shop talk question, because I'm just curious if some of the same people were there when you, do you remember, was there a name of a guy Mike Sington?

Oh, yes. Yeah. Did he train you? Was he like the head of it? Oh, yeah. 100%. Me too. Me too. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah. Mike would also be the guy that came and rode your tram occasionally and hope you didn't notice him. He'd sit in the very last car. Yeah. Yeah. And trying to catch you. Yes, they would do that. They would do

Little Secret Shops, yeah. Little secret shops. Which made me so, it was good that there was that threat so that I wouldn't just screw around all the time, because that's all I wanted to do was try weird stuff. That's, I bring that up because I did wonder if it was the same guy. That's crazy, yeah. And also, some of me wanting to do this job, I guess I, you know, I did it as a kid, and I thought, like, I'm sure I clocked, Jungle Cruise guy, it'd be great to do.

This would be great to do, but it never went further than that. I never thought about how to do it. And then there was like a, I had to look it up. It was a travel channel special in like 2001. It was about the park in general and what's it like to be in the booth and water world or whatever. But the like the through line of the special was following people through that process and through the training. And I've brought it up on YouTube recently and it is the same people. And it's that guy is the same guy.

So I was watching that and then five years later doing it with the same people. At one point you watch him greet a guy like, hello, what's your name? All right. And I say you worked at Disney. That's right. And I'm like, I worked with that guy. He ended up getting the job and he was in the break room with me. It was so weird.

As I said, one of my dispatchers now runs operations at the park, a guy named Kirk, who he was my favorite dispatcher. And he was a guy who would occasionally act as well. So, like, because he did the trams and was in charge of the train, he ended up on Sequest DSV. Wow. He's like a member of the crew. That was an on-the-lot kind of show. Yeah. It was really.

I didn't realize that. Yeah. And so it was, like, he kind of did a little bit back and forth. And then I think eventually just had been at Universal so long and gotten so far up the food chain that he's running things. I've run into him in a number of events over the years. Jeez, geez. So, yeah, I'd really know.

What, there was a genuine upward trajectory that occur. That guy syncedon, though, I believe he wrote a book at some point that was about, like, how to talk to famous people out in public. He wrote an entire book about the etiquette of doing that or not. Now, did you guys have the VIP guides as well? Yes, yeah. Yeah, that was his ever VIP program. Yeah, yeah.

Because that was, that was, if you'd been there long enough, they would eventually bump you up to VIP guide. And you would get to do the van tours for famous people. Right. Where it's you, a couple of famos, and your driver, and you just do the back lot in a van. They have names, sir. They are not but famos. I think now they have like a more, like a gussied up, like a little trolley car. Oh, do they?

Yeah. It was just a charming little VAS. Very charming. I was just, I was at a wedding that was filled with four. former and current tour guides, like a week ago. Oh, yeah. And everyone, and then a lot of former, like, Potter singers and actors from Hogsmead. And it was interesting to catch, like, the little snippets or, like, my wife catching a little snippet.

Of people going, like, oh, yeah, I'm working on Tuesday. Oh, who's your buddy? Like, because the VIP, some of the VIP tour guides have two guides to, like, wrangle. if it's a big party. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, ours was much smaller. And even for like, because we would do events, they would have us work events as well, like when the MTV Music Video Awards were there one year.

Oh, yeah. We had to go from the Universal Amphitheater where the artist performed, pick them up, do a mini version of the tour with them in the vans, and then take them to the after party, which was in another section of the park. Okay. And so, like, van after van of, you know, the Judds would get in your van. You'd have to give a tour to the Judds. And then it was, that was a very strange way to do it.

So they had all these other ways they would use the guides when I was there. Oh, interesting. You were like a general, you could be deployed as some other just like public-facing person on the lot. By the way, I don't think it was, it could have been that VMAs. But, Mike, you ever stop and think about 98, the universal VMAs where with both Green Day and Bear Naked ladies. They're naked ladies performing in front of the globe and one of the Green Day guys climbing the globe.

That would have been... That would have been. It was a great. Trey is the wild one. Three. Of course. Well, you know the characters better than I know the character. But imagine being there. Imagine that would have been. Those are the days. That's the glory days. I don't think it gets any better than that. Yeah. Is there any chance, Jennifer Full of Hewitt was there? She had to have been, right?

Was she dating Carson Daly at the time? Perhaps. God, could have been. Perhaps. You say you're doing good covering that you remember exactly that she was there and what outfit she wore you did you you printed out a a clothed watermarked

photo for her I'll never tell I'll never tell if I know or not that's we just drop it from now at this point but I just like to know she was at CityWalk her favorite place oh yeah oh and she would have been that would have been the red carpet recently it came out

she loves CityWalk oh boy in a vulture article did your time we talk about City Walk an odd amount on this show Just something to tell you. And did you work there at a time that predated CityWalk? No, CityWalk was new. Brand new then. It was very new, and it was a big part of the expansion of Universal in general.

So, yeah, it was the theaters were there. Yeah, and it was the early version of it. It was fun. I actually am allergic to CityWalk at this point. I can't get out. Get out of this room. I'm like, I know that you guys are like, either love it or you hate, it's very divisive, you know. I can't.

I just can't do it. Well, let's hear some reasons. We got to, what possible reason could there be? I think I have a crowd claustrophobia that has developed as I've gotten older, perhaps because of all these crowd oriented things I've done over the years. Yeah, sure. Yeah, you're out of the crowd, I guess. That's the only way to get out of the crowd is to be on the stage. Comic-Con in general I have nightmares about.

But it's, it is truly, I think, just that when you go to CityWalk, there is just no getting away from people. You weren't just so rounded. Well, if you pick the right time, you can have it all tears. Like the end of the day, when it wraps up at 9 o'clock. Yes. No more night life. 8.59. Your night.

And then occasionally 2 a.m. for bars. But now it's like half the things are being flipped right now. And yeah, it officially closes at 9. Now, my 19-year-old, he has an AMC, uh, the, the, the, movie pass thing. The A list. Yeah. And he loves City Walk now. Okay, sure. He adores it. So he and his buddies go all the time there. Well, that's, I think it makes saying him right, by the way. It sounds like it. Well, you go there a lot when you're 19 or when you're 19 at heart like Mike. Right.

Yeah. Oh, I did that. You love a spirit of a 19 year old. He loves crowds. I'm Mr. Crowd. He loves crowds. I'm Mr. Crowd. Whatever you want to call me. Either way. Mr. Music. Yeah. Yeah. Mr. Mr. Rock and Roll. Uh, dude, did you ever go to Wizards? The wizard-themed restaurant and bar. Oh, three stories. Okay. Any memories of any of those places?

Honestly, you just unlocked that memory. I truly forgot that place. You just seemed stunned. Yeah, that was the early one. Yeah. And Saddle Ranch when it used to be up there. That's crazy, man. Wizards is one of those.

Just the other night was with someone who was describing it to me, as if, like, you all have no clue what I'm talking about. And when I produced the name, she was similarly. Like, how did you do that? Like, that was a magic trick to even know this vague thing I'm describing. That was one of those places, like, dive. You had to go at least once. Oh, yeah, yeah.

You had to go just to see what the hell it was. Right, right. And, yeah. Most of those places, you went once. Yeah. And that was that. Yeah, yeah. Did you do Marvel Mania?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, this is, you lived the dream, and he just dreams of the dream. I just dream of the old days with Wompopper.

You didn't even know that you were achieving a dream while you were eating a dry burger in Marvel Mania. Nope. And the Marvel, I think we went one time. Yeah, that kind of became a problem for a lot of these places. I do think so. I think that's a lot of the early novelty of City Walk was just, oh, there's nothing like it anywhere else in L.A. You have to go up there and it's the only place you can do this or this. Yeah.

And then once you've done it, you know, and I lived Lankersham and, or no, Moorpark. And Vineland. Yeah. Oh, I used to live around there. Yeah. I lived there for a while. And, I mean, it could not have been any closer or more convenient.

But we didn't come up there for a lot of those things just because they were bad. They were bad. Yeah. Sometimes. Cut his mic. Cut Scott's money. So we got Scott in 2006. True.

What years did you do the tour? Just confirmed. So 92 was when I started. And I did it through 94. Okay. And so I did it through the spring all the way through a year. And then I ended, my last night was that MTV Music Video Awards. And it was the one where No Rain by Blind Melon was one of the big winners.

I remember that because my friend who was also a studio guide, he and I finished our shifts where we had to drive everybody back and forth. We went back, changed, and then came back. snuck into the party. Oh, cool. And I was like, I'm going to that party. That party looks awesome. And we had a great time. We danced with the B-Girl from the No Rain video.

That's the same. The joke I was trying to form. And you literally did it. She was on the dance floor. We were like, well, fuck this. And we jumped right now. We're like, we're dancing with the B-girl. Look at this.

Damn. It's amazing. And we, there were all sorts of great thing. We were in line for a Peter Gabriel roller coaster VR ride thing that they had set up. Oh, man. My friend Tyler has told me about the Peter. Yes, I've seen. It's a nightmare to watch

It's restored on YouTube And my wife made me shut it off Because I can't look at this anymore It was like a little Like thing you got in And it did like a VR motion control ride Based on a Peter Gabriel thing And we're in line for that

And we're just talking about great I can't wait to do this And from behind me I hear Are you guys enjoying the party And I turn around and it's my dispatcher And I said yeah And he goes good Because it's your last night here

And we were like And I was like okay he's like I hope you had a great time at the party enjoy it enjoy the rest of it so is that a firing that was a firing that was a final one of war and the next the next morning when we called they were

like no you're off the schedule you can't go to the party and we were like okay but what a way to go out I know that's the best it was like I kind of don't care because I've been here long enough I did almost two years you might want to be yeah you know maybe you don't want to do it forever I don't know

I feel like that's a warning like, if you're due good at your job, I feel that's, hey, guys, come on. It probably should have been. But I think we were, we took a lot of advantage of that job. Oh, okay. The thing that I loved about that job was that you had access to the

back lot and we would, we would walk around constantly. We went into everything. We went in places that we weren't supposed to go. We saw the T-Rex on the soundstage. While they were filming, you saw the T-Rex in there. They had finished filming for the day.

What scene? Like the main attack, like paddock. The main paddock. And so they had the T-Rex, the full-sized Stan Winston T-Rex there. They had the mud set. They had the cars. They had everything. And nobody was supposed to see the dinosaurs.

That was the one thing you were not supposed to be allowed to see. And we were like, we saw the T-Rex. It's not before the T-Rex. It also just, maybe it's, I mean, movies, were they better in the 90s? But whatever, we don't have to debate that. It just feel like you were in like this magic sweet spot of Universal Studios. It was incredible. And they did a.

They used to do a lot of events for the, and I'm curious that they did these for you, a lot of events where they would just do things for the guides. They would have you come in at night and they would do like a presentation thing. Like one night we came in and Richard Donner came and talked to us. God, really? And just came in to talk to the studio guys. There's anything that cool. They would do like, you know, here's like a, there's an improv workshop that they'd show us movies. Like all fun stuff, but it wasn't, it wasn't Richard Donner.

When Jurassic Park was coming out, they, three weeks before it came out, took us to the Alfred Hitchcock screening. room, which is where they did the sound mix for the film. So the same room where the sound was mixed. And they showed it to us. And they said, we want you to talk about it on the tram. And up until that point, nobody's in the dinosaurs. So they just showed us the movie three weeks early.

We lose our minds. And for the next three weeks, they had evangelical lunatics sitting on the tram going, you have to see the dinosaurs! Oh my God! It was you had this secret suddenly. Wow. Wow. They did a lot

a filmmaker events and things where they brought in Michael Lantieri one night, the mechanical supervisor who he did Back to the Future. He did Roger Rabbit. So anything where Eddie Valiant is interacting with something and like water has to physically come out of it, Lantieri figured out all those

effects. He was the mechanical effects guy for Zemeckis. Yeah, yeah. And he came in and just showed us clips and talked to us about how he did. I was like, I don't know why you're doing these, but these are great. These are an amazing thing to have access to. That's Yeah, I wonder, I'm curious anybody else's, you know, I, again, I liked the job and it did feel like this, this fun little, like, a foothold in the industry.

Like, you feel like you are part of it. And I went and took the tour, by the way, for the first time in a while last week. And I was reminded of how, just with the tour guide's vernacular, that there was a lot of we. Like, you know, we here in Hollywood love to create illusions and we love to make you feel like you're, and I forgot that aspect of it. that is almost a little culty in a way where there's I guess kind of as naive 20 year old

I bought into it I was like yes we I'm part of it I'm part of the magic but I guess like a little hardened down the road I'm kind of like what do you and I go back to like that didn't like lead to anything for me

you know or you know they callously fire you just for trying to see the Peter Gabriel VR me I get spoiler I get I get just fired via a form letter down the road there was no we

we were not but it's kind of cute though it is kind of I don't know it's like telling the kid they helped with the you're in the family and just like a family your allowance is much lower than it probably should be was the dispatcher supposed to be at that party

I love that you're mad about the firing we're litigating the fire but he was and yeah call us well that's a good question isn't it? Well, is that a power move? Is that him pulling rank? Or did somebody tell on you? Did the bee girl say these people shouldn't be here? Like, did

you get ratted out by someone? Blind Mellon said, this guy doesn't seem like a rocker like us. He's not cut from our cloth. Hey, I'm the B girl from the, yeah, just won a bunch tonight. Listen, a guy who drove me around in a van earlier was out

here cutting a rug with us. And, you know. Is that supposed to happen? don't fire him this should be a warning I just want to make sure you know to give a no what you're going to fire him no no no that's too far no on internet well don't say it came from me don't say it came from me girl then

it was a perfect job for somebody in their early 20s yeah yeah and I thought it was a lot like those it was very much like a theater company in the fact that your guide class that you got hired with you guys go through this thing together yeah and at the end of it you come out I was surprised how many couples came out of that?

That's a theater company, all right. The girl that I was with for five years after that, we met as guide. She came in a class after mine. Wow. And so it was just, it was a friend that I lived with for several years beyond that. Also a guide, who I met.

Wow. And I met him because he was, again, no, he was a class ahead of me. So when I got hired my first day, my time card was out in the time card area. He comes in, my time card and I just hear from the front McQueenie, whose name

is McQueenie? And then the door flies open and he goes, show me McQueenie! And I raised my hand and he goes, we're going to be friends. That was terrifying, but okay, if you want. Well, yeah, no, I recall that too, a lot of camaraderie and like people who are friends to this day and like

people who like, a lot of like just funny great entertainers who I, like I was launching my YouTube run of stuff and it became now like oh now I know all these great performers I can put in all these things and people help me out with my early stuff I also

you know I can't believe if I've waited this long to do it but here now I bend away from the mic and I bring out oh my goodness the sacred text the green pages oh my god the viner does this feel familiar does this feel like what you had the official studio guide here and let me just dip the microphone

down a little bit as I there we go it's good sound right good uh good clunk yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah we can we can do a yeah yeah no make it sound a little more like the Jurassic Park we were just talking about like kind of a big pound like a dime of foot

that would that would and then I kind of juice up that moment horse comes in and grabs it with its mouth and gallops away and then there's thunder that strikes well folks you might recognize that horse from war horse war horse but I now the book is one thing

and it's you know and yes here is like, you know, many decades of accrued movie knowledge. But what really tripped me out was seeing in the, like, in the sleeves on the inside, like, I mean, my own notes. And then, like, this is a pre-smartphone time. So it's, like, addressed, like, written out. We did have MapQuest, but you had to then, like, physically write it. So I got cards that lead to places. Like, here's directions to somewhere. I don't know where it is. But there was another address that I looked up that's in the Burbank Hill. and I looked it up and I was like is this what I think it is

or wait yeah and it's I remember look I wrote down the address and then it says swimsuit underneath so this was like tour guides are getting wild bring the swimsuit dude's parents are out of town that means we got our run of the pool and what I now to your I now I did not meet my wife but I kind of like really you know lit the spark with my wife

who I knew from I had gone to high school with her and I impressed her when I did the tour and that started the whole thing but that's not another guide you know did lead to romance for me but what I remember

I remember this party very specifically and I'll tell you why because I got a smooch I got a smooch from a fellow tour guide and I and here's why that might not seem like a story but it is because I've only kissed like six people in my whole life

and one of them was that and it was just a random thing she came up and did it and I was like oh great another one for the list, because it's not a very long list. So that helps puff up my numbers. I don't remember her name now.

That's me. I don't even, she smooched me and I don't even remember the girl's name. Wait, wait, so hold on. So she just was you talking to her and then it happened, or she walked up and did it and left? Just ran up and did it and ran away. Almost like kind of like playground thing. Just like, whoa. These people

are wild. Did you follow up? No. Because she wasn't somebody I really talked to much before or after. That's Hollywood, baby. Yep. Yeah, yeah. I always felt like the break room for the studio guides was a performance space.

Like, people really came in and it would be on. You had to be a little on there. Yeah, yeah. The thing I always say about it, I might have said this on the show before, but something I remember is that was a lot of like, like did you have a TV? Were you watching movies in there? So, yeah, that was a lot.

And like, maybe you could slip one in and maybe you could get something going that's kind of like weird. taste, but then you might get called out on the tour and then it would come back and it wouldn't be playing anymore and they bailed on it clearly. But what I remember is just, I mean, people kind of did just want to watch the basic, you know, like the Back to the Future trilogy, which is no chore for me. And my most victorious shift was Labor Day 2006 where I did one tour in the morning. They'd like way overbooked because it's a holiday. So I think they thought there'd be more guides going out than they thought. So I came back, started back to the future one, made

it into two got through lunch they didn't call me out made it into three oh my god am i gonna is my and it's a double pay day that day so i'm like am i getting paid double to watch the entire trilogy and only do one tour and then i got called out like god damn it guess not uh and i'm sitting there and i'm about to go and then they realized while out there i was going to go past then it would get into overtime so they yanked me brought me back in and i finished the full trilogy there you go that was my day at work that day um but all but that all of that all of that to say that it'd be that kind of movie and what I remember has a lot of like

debates about the most obvious movies in the world like to me Spielberg's greatest Jaws I'm going with Jaws no no you're crazy close encounters close encounters is the bed it's Jaws dude obviously

be a lot of like really getting into it about the 10 most famous movies ever made you should track down Duel like Duel's really interested you can see all the other that's far deeper than it ever.

For me, E.T. Can I throw E.T. Can I be controversial and say E.T.? And then just conversate, someone pipes up. It's Schindler's list and then conversal. Then we up. We can't argue with this. That's a room killer.

No. Guy, that is correct. It's very important. I'm so sorry to suggest jaws. That's for you guys. Hopefully you guys at tournament of nerds never had to argue against Schindler's list. That was a lot tougher to promote on the train in Jurassic Park. Oh, you were there.

Yes, you were there because the year of dress of work is also the year of Schindler's list. It was easy for us to go, oh, my God, dinosaurs. It's a lot harder to, like, upsell the Holocaust on a tram ride. It's not really the easiest thing. And in the tone, like, want to take a sobering look at one of the darkest moments in human history. Yeah. All right. I hope you all enjoyed the peak at Sequest DSV.

We're now going to change roots, and we're going to talk about Oscar Schindler. Oscar Schindler. he did all he could and I tried his best and yeah um you know what it's all about it's all about segways as you know in the tour business and if i could use this moment to segue uh this might leave us in dark territory a little bit but it's a good segue into a little bit of tour history because i got curious about the whole uh you know just how the how the operation came together how did how did they start hosting outside people on the tram and how did it become the or sorry on the lot and then how did it become the Tram Tour.

And as they push a lot now, it does all, it starts with Carl Lemley. And they seem to have one piece of footage of Carl Lemley and only one piece of footage of Carl Lemley. And I feel like with that, they've tried to extract him into the new, into their Walt. And I've always wondered, like, what's the, what's the, if there's like, if this is all they got on him, then, like, I get, basically, I've been poking around, like, what if he's a guy? That's a term that we use on the show of like

kind of a blustery gentleman who has a bunch of nefarious stuff that they did if you start Googling a little bit and I was almost like oh it'd be funny if like their Walt is kind of a guy like he did all this bit and I look it up the opposite he is a very good man he in fact personally paid

to relocate hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust he is uh he saved many many lives Carl Lemley is perhaps one of the best men Wow, he's not a guy at all. Not a guy at all. That's great news for the world, but it gives us a little bit less. You can't goof on him nearly as much.

But it's nice to know that you're walking in the footsteps of a, this entire operation was started by a very good man. Well, he was, I, I'm going to shout out a listener who pointed me in this. Cody Lawrence suggested watching the universal, he's, studios. I think it's just called the Universal Story, which a lot of the music for the tour, I believe, is drawn, comes from. Okay, gotcha. And there is, apparently there's a clean copy of it on the posers website. I put up what I thought, the composer's website. Oh, sorry. Of all the means. Okay. I put on a copy that looked pretty good that was on YouTube. However,

the audio and video gets out of sync pretty early. Oh, that's awesome. After all the interesting historical stuff where it just kind of becomes clips of movies? A lot of clips of movies that you likely could get

on home video at that point. Right, right. And of course, they're showing the classic ones. They're talking about award-winning ones. I knew the audio was out of sync when it was like, Orson Wells and Charlton has been on screen from Touch of Evil.

Wars and well, of course, wearing an insane body suit in that. Charlton Heston, of course, playing a Mexican detective. Yes, one of the great castings. One of the great castings. But they're talking about, like, and that was just one of Rock Hudson's many fun light comedies he starred in. As they both look like they're dying on screen. It's okay.

But that was... Bad copy. The beginning of that was really interesting. It's nominated and Richard Dreyfis narrates it and his... on camera for something. And the Lemley stuff, he talks about, like, trying to start, you know, a movie company and make movies and break, like, the trust that Thomas Edison had. He was trying to get paid on his patents.

And so Lemley keeps poaching actors and crew from there. And there is a very interesting clip of Mary Pickford being interviewed. And she's like, well, we all had to fly. lead to Cuba at one point because we were in danger we were shooting something once and the crew and actors were getting shot at so we had the

late low for a while because of like Edison was trying to and then eventually so Lenley starts his own company why are they getting shot though wait Edison was a hard playing hardball Edison was determined nobody else was making movies

okay he was going to get paid for anything that ran through a camera anywhere so people were so he hired assassins? He hired, like, yeah, probably figured. He was a guy. Edison was a guy. Edison was a guy, big time. He crushed Tesla.

He tried to crush movie making. Edison's armed guard. Edison's armed guards, yeah. Is he like DoomBots? I think so. He has the patent on DoomBots. But I, I think it was an early filmmaking location and eventually one that company is close.

and then people moved Hollywood because it's not 30 degrees most of the year. And it was as far from Edison as you could get. Yes. That was the whole point of the West Coast. That's why Hollywood came to Hollywood? Yeah. Edison's East Coast and they're like,

he's not going to know what we're doing until it's too late. Whoa. Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. The entire West Coast Exodus is all fleeing. It's all based on patent and trying to avoid it.

I mean, it helped that it was so sunny out here and they needed to light for that early film to like really. expose it. That's fascinating. Oh, my God. I haven't, and it's funny we all now, like, I don't know, like kids read books about him like, oh, the genius Mr. Red is like. Oh, yeah. This was such a twisted motherfucker. You thought all those famous guys were great. I thought anybody you've ever heard of. It's the way it works today. All the most famous people, the more headlines you have, the better of a person you are. A hundred percent. That's fascinating. Carl Lemley is not Lou

Wasserman, who I think is the one in Florida. hell because their names are different. Well, I know, I know. I'm just trying to keep alive. The blank is not blank that I feel like used to do a lot more. But in Florida, that statue, Lou Wasserman, a later hire at Universal,

who was an agent, is that, I think. And he brought a lot of people with him. He's like the modern Universal. Yeah. He's responsible for what we think of as Universal from the 70s on. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. And some of the some of the tour aspect.

of when it becomes the tramp. But there's this, you know, when they're weaving the whole tail, as Whoopi Goldberg does a speed round of in the video that was a must play for my summer. And we should talk about some of those, like the video aspect of it. But like, you know, in the Waltification of Carl Lemley, it is a, you know, he, like, he bought a former chicken ranch and he started inviting visitors to come watch movies getting made. They could sit in the grandstands and get a, uh, for 25 cents, watch a movie being made

and get a boxed lunch while they were at it, which feels like a very Jason-coded fact. I always am imagining what was in those boxed-boxed lunches. What type of weird hot meat was in those boxed lunches? Ooh, liver and onions in the Sanford-Dand-Avalley heats. Yeah, and unshaded bleachers. While you watch like a really confusing, like a silent movie that has,

like where they say action and then 300 people all run around barely rehearsed if that no that way no to the right now those must have been insane well you could look you could look and see a bunch of room in centurions if you turned to your side you could just see a like shootout at the okay corral this is I am so curious that you know you'll recall this this is something that you had to say all the time drew but but like um obviously the heyday of the of the backlog is or where a lot of backlots rise is in the Western era and it's all undeveloped and desolate around there and just nature on anywhere that was an early backlots. So they all had tons of Western sets and Western streets. And one of the big universal attractions on the backlight is Six Points, Texas, which you mentioned

earlier. And they, as I learned from Whoopi herself, a fact she stole from me that I didn't get to say on the tram. They let her say it in the video. But they call it Six Points, Texas, because there's six different streets all jutting out from a central hub and they could film six westerns all at the same time. It all look like different kind of western areas. How often was that actually the case? Wouldn't that be fucking, regardless, I understand that there was no sound

but wouldn't it still be a big confusing muck to be shooting six movies next to each other? I doubt it was ever actually all six shooting at once. I'm sure you could dress things while something's shooting prep one and cruise works. Yeah, yes. I think he gave you the ability to prep while you're shooting

and then break down while you're shooting So you can constantly keep stuff going. Yeah, yeah. Because at a certain point, just even if everyone is being quiet, it is still a bunch of bodies. I mean, that feels like the setup for a silent comedy when they're shooting six different silent comedies of it.

Oh, yeah, and then the, yes, and then the gags from one start impacting the other and the Buster Keaton building falls on somebody who was like in a pie fight. And they all start clashing with each other. So, yeah, I like all this all timey stuff in the footage that you see of kind of the weird. Something I didn't know is that before Lemley bought

what is today universal, which, by the way, that was in March 1915, 235 acres. His down payment was $3,500. And for that he bought what, like, every, the way that today they are trying to use every single parcel of that land for more, more rides and more shops and whatever, which I hope doesn't start eroding the amount of space that's used on the tour too much. But yeah, all of that He started with $3,500. But so before he bought that property, he had another plot of land that he also called like movie city or something where he would also invite people to watch movies being made. And that today is Forest Lawn Cemetery, which is in the Griffith Park Hills across the, like it's across the river from the Disney studio lot. And it is today the home of many, the body.

and corpses of many of our favorite references on the show. That's where Liberace is buried. Wow, yeah. That's Lucille Ball. Right. That's Telly Savalas. That's sloppy Telly himself. Universal icon. Yes, yeah, yeah. This is, we like to tell this story about at the

Universal Sheraton that he, that Tully Savalas just lived there for a while and just like, he didn't want to. He raised kids there. He raised kids. His daughter grew up there. And the bar was named after him. Oh, yes, that's right. Yeah, it was Tully's bar because he would just pop down. That's just crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every night you'd go and, like, play pool with him or something. Like, he'd just be hanging. Just in a bathrobe, unsure if the underwear on or not beneath that. Nobody checked. But, you know, but he likes it because he could be sloppy telly. You live in a hotel, I could be sloppy telly. I drop my towel, I drop my food.

Somebody takes care of my house. I have to take care of sloppy telly. There's a clip, did I, have I said this before on the show, there's a clip that's going around where he's trying to hit. He is hitting on a reporter. He just keeps trying to say that I'm. make great babies. That is his line.

He goes, I make great babies. And she's like, oh, well, and she's like trying to get out of it or whatever. And he's like, why are you trying to avoid it?

He goes, why are you trying to avoid it? Make great babies. Does he have the lollipop in his mouth like cojack? I don't think so. Anyway, it's a wild clip. I look,

I feel like I do too. I love both of my children. I've made a good baby too. I don't know that I'd phrase it that way, though. Let's see how it feels. Let's both tell each other, let's look each other in eye, I'd say, I make great

babies. I make great babies. That's how I would say. I didn't mind it. And yours seemed really at ease, actually. You seem perfectly comfortable saying, I make great babies. Well, again, now, in a scenario where I'm trying to cheat on my wife, that might be a different scenario. I might say it in a different way. I've been told that I might

have the... Proclivity to possibly... You know the infidelity is good when you start with, excuse me, um... Madam, Ma'am, miss, I'm sorry. What do I call you now?

I've kissed a number of people. I have. One was just a tour guide at a party. I don't recall her name. I'm experiencing kissing is what I'm saying, and I think you would be a great addition to the list. I make great kisses. Telly would be so upset with us if we did that.

Hey, be confident, baby. Hey, you never cheated on your wife before? Come on. No, there's a magazine. Didn't we find a magazine where he, like, wrote, yes, yeah, I cheat on my wife. I swear to God, there was something on, like, a magazine. He probably got that probably attracted a lot of people to his cheating program.

Some people live differently. He does, eh? Some people live differently. And he lives in a hotel I can go to any time and he's always at the bar. The only thing. They're Monday. The only thing that he and I have in common is that we love hanging out in the vicinity of city walk. Sure.

That's the only thing. And you both love lollipops. Well, you know what? I'm not as big of a lollipop guy. All right. Then do that hard candy in general. Yeah. Well, if you don't love hard candy either.

Not a big hard candy guy. Jason, are you a sucker guy or you lollipop guy? Oh, I like a hard candy every now and then. I feel like too much of that kind of like Jolly Ranch or Lollipod. I feel like it gives me, no, my teeth are okay. I feel like it gives me a headache. What? Just that much sugar?

For like a Jolly Rancher? Well, if I eat a few of them, I mean, I think I start to get dehydrate. It's a pretty concentrated sugar delivery system. Yeah. You are, that's all you're getting. I think you've got to have 20, though, before you get a head. Well, it depends on what he means by a few. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.

This guy can take down candy. Three or four? Three or four is not, well, for me at least not a headache, I don't think. That doesn't seem like enough sugar. Listener, how many ranchers? How long can you ranch? I think. Drew, candy preferences while we're...

Candy preferences? I'm a big Reese's guy. Sure, anything in the Reese's family is pretty good. Yeah, yeah. So, very keeping with the brand, like E.T. himself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you can't go wrong with it.

When Lemley moved his operations from current Forest Lawn to where it is today, he wanted to get the word out in a big splashy way that you can come see movies being filmed and that's actually an exciting thing. It's not clinical and functional. We're going to do big old events actually is what we're going to do. And the first day in, I think, 1915 that he did this, this is actually very predating tram tour stuff. He staged a fake disaster where a dam broke and cowboys and Native Americans, were washed away in a flood, which sounds exciting, but also, like, to what I was saying, with 300 people, like, they all got hurt, right? They all got sent to the hospital or told you can't go to the hospital and charge it to, like, how that could not be.

That was just full actual injuries of everyone involved. Oh, yeah, it was the age of filmmaking where, like, Cecil B. Mill would say in the morning, I'll give $5 to any man who's willing to die on camera. You'd be like, great, let's go. Well, anything, like, anything involving horses, And, like, we're restaging a Civil War scene and, all right, all you horses, and you're, like, you're fully, you're just watching horses collapse and maybe not make it back from the collapse. Yeah, I think I've brought this up before this, like, Ariel Flynn Robin Hood, where somebody jumps from a tree onto a horse, and it's the craziest, sloppiest, there's no way that horse didn't get badly hurt.

Yeah, the guy didn't get badly hurt. God. Just insane stuff back then. Just watching, well, then, how about this? on the second day of the grand opening ceremonies, come watch aviator Frank Stites. Frank Stites is going, we're going to film a daring aerial scene

that we're going to use in an upcoming film. So you can come watch that, and 2,000 people were there, and they watched like crazy aerial maneuvers. And then this pilot, Frank Stites, hit an air pocket and he plunged to his death in front of 2,000 people. That's day two of the universal basketball.

You ever heard that story? That's brand new to me. Yeah. That's insane. I'm sure Lemuelley's like, man, day three's got to be awesome. We really set the bar high. That was something. We shouldn't have left Edison.

Edison knows how to mass kill. Yeah. We were going to have the elephant electrocution, and then Edison, we were using cameras. That's how we know he's twisted. I forgot about the elephant electric. Yeah, he's horrible. Then the weird aftermath of that is that that was, that was, that was included in a film called the Mysterious ContraGrav.

And the box office for the mysterious contragrav was not huge. So they decided to change the name in the Los Angeles market where people knew the incident. And they started calling the movie Frank Stites' last flight. Oh, God. They just told you, they just marketed a snuff film. You were going to see a man really die in an airplane. This is a wild. Like, it feels, that's like, I mean, I guess we have a.

been in that particular century for a while, but it's not that long ago. No, not that long. All told. Yeah. It had a 19 in it. I have a lot of memories that have 19 in the century, and it was a century where that could happen. Yeah. Yeah, that's why. And then, what, 70 years

later, the Twilight Tone accident happened? Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, he was really just paying homage to Frank Stites. Probably, yeah, Frank Stites, or that Howard Hughes movie was directing the Ariel one that just took years and years. because he wouldn't do all that flight stuff for real.

So insane. But anyway, that's, you know, they, they, well, I said some of the history they don't like to talk about, you know, particularly about Frank Stites. But they do like to talk about the chicken ranch and the box lunch, and it all started there. But of course, then movies start using sound. We can't invite hundreds of people to watch movies being made. Everything also moves indoors. So that is not the official start of the tour. The official start of the tour comes in the 1960s when really,

The driver of the entire thing was the commissary isn't doing well. Nobody's eating in our commissary because not enough people actually work here and go get pancakes there or whatever. What if we could get a bunch of tourists to come have to use our commissary? And that was combined with the idea that, wait a minute, look, there's a bunch of buses that come and just look at the gates of the studio. What if we had something like that, but we could actually take you behind the gates and maybe even show you. you something a little more beyond that. And then most importantly, we would say, all right, lunch, everyone. And then that would be an extra fee.

So it was all, like, I guess the theme park spirit of hidden upcharges and pricey meals is what fueled the entire operation. Well, I heard that they would give scripts to the bus drivers too. And then eventually are like, why aren't we just doing all of this? Oh, really? Oh, okay. And these should be separate jobs. You probably should not be.

separate jobs and then the names Buzz Price who is involved Harrison Buzz Price who we talked about recently because he's the guy who picked the Disneyland Sider was fundamental in the development of the plan there yeah he was part of the plan

here as well he like assessed that there was potentially a massive market that no studio had really tapped into of being able to see how movies are made in any significant way it's almost impossible to think of a time where there was not like a tourist end to all this. But there really was you would go to the Chinese theater, but that doesn't

show you how movies are made. That's not part of the process at all. So I think they quickly assess that there could be something here, but also in his initial report, he really called the entire thing because he said there could be a market here, but also there has to be a component of the movies coming to life and something that is tailored to this experience specifically so that you're not just looking at empty fake buildings all the time because that could sort of run its course. So that feels to me like the seed of not only do you see where movies were filmed, but there's a little bit of magic on the back lot and around any corner there could be

some crazy illusion that happens. So it was really, I don't know, it was all there in that, you know, in whatever dry document that guy presented and that leads us to the tour we got to that and figured it out immediately. I just remember as a kid in the 70s, how many TV shows would have the episode where something happened on the universal lot? Yes. And so they would have to feature four or five moments on the tram route. You get the Jaws thing.

You get, I remember the Hardy Boys did one. I remember BJ and the Bear did one. These are new to me. Do you remember any specifics of it's this character doing this? Oh, I remember BJ and the Bear one, it was either that or it was Sheriff Lobo. It was either one or the other, but it was definitely them driving, doing a chase through the back lot. and like the chase past the Jaws attraction and the shark pops up and yeah but I just I was always fascinated by these special episodes where it was clearly built around showing off the universal backlog tour yeah the best I think there was a there was a Colombo I don't know if they did much tram stuff but it definitely was finally the one where like so this is how movies are made uh yeah and um that was about like kind of like a that's the Fisher Stevens one right yeah really good where he's basically playing Spielberg yeah he's like what if Spielberg was psycho yeah yeah yeah What if the director of our pilot was our second pilot?

Oh, that's right. That's very much the joke, I think. It feels like they're acknowledging that they have a history with Spielberg and they're joking about it. Oh, that's fascinating. I hadn't thought about that. Wow, wow, that's great. There's also, I think it's called prescription murderers. There was an earlier Colombo pilot before the first one that Spielberg directed about the two mystery authors and one kills the other one.

watched the Spielberg one. It's good. Yeah, it's good. There's got to be a lot of Kojak because he was there. Probably. That's when he started living there. Yes, yeah. While he was shooting Kojerk. I mean, it's just like if you start running out of ideas and you start running out of, like,

how do we repurpose the Western set and how do we reuse the New York sets and the Brownstone Street? So at some point you're just going to go, let's just use the trend. And it'll be everybody's favorite episode. And then we get to waste a bunch of time. We've talked about this on the show a lot. We love any sitcom because in the night. because in the 90s it became the TGIF shows going to Disney World

and then just fully doing all the beats of the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular. Let's just watch DJ's boyfriend Steve. Do you ever just do all the run away from the boulder, avoid the spikes? And like, it's the best deal for everybody. They don't have to write new scenes. I don't have to watch new scenes. I don't care about the story. I just want to watch the Indiana Jones Stunt Show.

I think this came around at the later 2000s. I mean, obviously the good place. The European streets are the good place. It's one of their bigger, yeah, coups. That kind of lights people up who take the tour today, yeah. But I feel like a lot of TV shows. They're hit a point after 2006 where it's like, well, a lot of stuff is filming on location or in Canada. Yeah, right.

We can, we make TV, let's shoot our TV show. Let's build sets in these empty soundstages and we'll save some money. The other thing is commercials. I can just like, I can watch two seconds of commercial and just go like backlot. Yes. New York streets. Same with the, whether it's one of the two residential streets, there's the Desperate Housewives one, there's Wisteria Lane, which is very recognizable for a zillion things. But just the way the street bends, I'm always like, if I'm on a little, if I'm watching a commercial and it's a weird little cul-de-sac that bends thus, I, yeah.

It really makes you unable to, I guess if you're not just a tram, but a universal fan like Jason, you can't unwatch. You can't unsee this stuff. Well, I was in, during that time in college where I was not being cool, I was just going to theme parks over time when I was out here. Hey, take that, take that knot out of that sentence. Theme parks and comedy death are like stand-up shows at UCB. I was an intern on the back lot in a bungalow. And it was reveling... Is that gladiators?

Well, after, before gladiators, but it was the same company. Okay. So I was an intern there, and they were at the time making the office, ugly Betty, and the biggest loser. Oh, okay. All of those shot very far away and were very locked down. So we're pretty much just running scripts between bungalows, unpacking soda pallet. There was always fridges and fridge. ridges of soda, and reading scripts where it's like, oh, boy, this is a stinker.

And then a couple of years later, you're like, so-and-so attached. And you're like, oh. But my celebrity story on that, I've probably told on the show, was like, me and another intern were going in a golf cart to pick up a bunch of people's lunches from the commissary. And a golf cart had broken down. And they did tell you you couldn't eat all of the lunches. They did make that clear. Uh, well, yeah, well, it was, it was also the, like, the, the mid-20-year-olds, there were the assistants,

we're sending the 20-year-olds to go get lunches. And they were pinching pennies, too. So it's like six people ordering soups. And we're like, what, how are we? Okay, we'll figure it out. Um, uh, but this golf cart breaks down and the people are smiling laughing and they're like waving us around and the other intern who I feel like was only ever there for like week oh it's like huh that was Ben Stiller and I'm like dude we we were so far away at that point and I was like we had a back seat we could have picked up Ben Stiller and hey you getting our soup cart we hadn't gotten the soups yeah we hadn't gotten the soup but I'm like well that's even better that would have been an incredible story to like pull over like hey you and

You're going our way? You want to hop in? Ben Stiller and child. Hey, big boy. We're on our way to soup, but we can make a detour. Unless you got an ass and soup. He was either at offices or was doing something there. And it's like, why did you let Ben Stiller with us?

We could have picked him up and then like. But what if he, I guess he could have needed a ride? No, we ran out a gas. Derr golf cart ran out of gas and we stopped dead in the road. Okay. So we were in another golf card, which that was one of our duties with filling up with gas. But they never told us how big the gas tank was. And the gas dispenser by like all the vehicles was not an automatic off.

So you're like trying to eyeball like. You don't want to go over and you don't want to go over and cover yourself in gasoline. Does it, do we, have we tried soup? Do we think this thing could run on soup? because we had a lot of soups in this bankers box. Soup power golf cart. That's a billion dollar idea. There would be the head of the company if they take us up on that.

There is a podcast to ride where I think we're imagining Jason stealing gas from the universal lot. And I can't remember the scheme that we had cooking. The siphoning, yeah. We did spend a lot of time. I'll fill my mouth with soup. You talk to Ben Stiller and see if we can get him to buy it. Hey, you're a fancy. What do you think about this?

What if I got you the cheapest gas in town? Open your thermos. You just put it in the golf cart for later. Will that make you turn left, Mr. S? Let me have said... Can I call it real quick? We're talking about it was Sterlingane. I was trying to find a clip of Cojack or something.

Yeah, yeah. But I found that they shot on with Sterey Lane, Nellyville. The Nellie music video. My friend, my friend. Would you believe? that we had a clip of this music video and that this what would happen another thing I've forgotten

is that if you could go onto that street am I correct that it was Colonial Street is that the official name of it that you know it's been on the lot for a long time a ton of stuff shot there Munster's house is there but it was very much repopularized

by Wisteria Lane for me it was the Burbs that's all right right every time I see the street the Burbs is what I think of this might be the clip from the tour because it starts with the Burr Oh, so maybe it's the full package of here's the other stuff.

Oh, sure. You know, a lot of that stuff is archived, guy named Cal missing. That's what I'm going. There you go. Thank you, Cal missing for what a memory lane it was for me to like find all the things that were from the tram DVD, like exactly. Because those things are locked in my head. I remember when that music you comes in and when that line is said.

But I was really thankful to have that clip because you got nothing after that. Maybe you recall this too. everything from it's a long trek uphill with nothing to talk about from Wisteria Lane yeah but it takes a while to get to that too

and I forget if Psycho House is after that you do Psycho House then you go up to Wisteria Lane but you have the big nothing until you get to the Great Outdoors House did it move around I don't know because in my head today because Psycho House has moved a little bit

in my head today it's Psycho House right into War of the Worlds which is kind of here Falls Lake but Psychopause has moved, I think, so it might have been different when you were the worlds, then by Whoville, which is not there anymore, and then to hysteria lane, right? But these things do all, these things all move, and, you know, this is what we can talk, with the luxurious space of a month, we can talk about different arrangements, different transitions I have to make. Sometimes you'd have to go from earthquake straight into flash flood. How do you do that?

I'm used to going straight into jaws after that. That's the kind of thing we complain about in the break room. It's like, I got no seg for that. I got no seg. What am I saying? They didn't even warn me I had to dig. But, anyway, sorry, just long wood to go back to, like, a big stretch of time with nothing. So I would always play that music video and then just play, like, dorky white tour guide singing along with it.

That was always a guaranteed theme party laugh, was me, like, kind of dryly reciting it. No matter what I do, all I think about is you. Even when I'm with my boo, you know, I'm crazy over you. Is that the Kelly Rowling? That was a guaranteed killer, me saying boo, all stiff. I think, yeah, Kelly Rollin. Kelly Rowland? Yes, yeah, yeah.

Oh, they love me saying that just even, like, Nellie featuring Kelly Rowland Dilemma. It was really the way that I could, like, max out and utilize my white stiffness. Hopefully, do comedic effect. There's the full list, or like, a pretty full list of things that shot on the street, including Kojak. Ghost and Mr. Chicken, Don Knott's favorite of my families, apparently. I didn't realize that. There's the Beaver show from the 80s. Oh, yeah, the one with Brian Wilson, yeah.

Hawthorne's Still the Beaver 83 to 89 Oh my God People That many still though Six years People got rich off of Still the Beaver Whatever it's called

Let me use what you're saying To seg into I think something to ask you Drew What were the things that you were genuinely Delighted to share What were the thing Like as a nerd for this stuff And somebody who did like sharing the

Information What were the sets that you were like Wow I can't believe that was there Or were you like Actually like seeing the audience light up But, well, oh, this is that. Courthouse Square was always a smash. You drive into.

You can wait to have that in your pocket and know that it was coming and share that with people. It would kill. Because that is so recognizable and such an immediate, yes, I've been here. In my head, I've been here a hundred times. I always like New York Street, the various New York sets. I love some of the stuff that shot there. There were things, it was funny, because I did get excited about things that shot on the lot. And then I would say things every now and then.

And you could just tell, like, nobody in this tram has ever heard of this movie. Nor do they understand why I'm excited. And so I would filter things out. But I remember there's a, there's, in New York Street, there's a back to one of the facades where it's balconies and like a fire escape thing. And each fire escape has like a big sort of platform on it. And then it's the next one down. That's from, it's a gift, the W.C. Fields film. There's a whole sequence where he's trying to go to.

sleep on one of the tears and it's everything around him that is just causing chaos and noise and making him crazy. It's one of the funniest sequences in that film and it's when you're looking at it's so recognizably the same thing and hasn't been changed since the 30s. Wow. And I kind of love that stuff. I love the things where you can go, this corner literally has been here forever and has been the same thing. And then there is a lot of repurposing where things you know, get painted over, get moved, get whatever. But I love the little corners that were real,

that you could really point out film history. And when you go home and you look at this movie, you'll see this spot. And it'll bug you out forever. You'll always have that, I mean, to what we're saying with Jason about commercial, you'll just always have that ping pong in your head and you come back to the tour. Now you've seen it from a new angle. It just always

get this fun, surreal, dreamlike bug out anytime you're at these play. Yeah, it's a neat. Did the WC Field fire escape? Did that survive the 2008 fire? I don't know. I don't know. That's a good question because I predated all that.

Right, yeah. I know some stuff about what made it into fire and what didn't make it. Perhaps the fire will be dealt with. That's a big old chunk, I think. Yeah. We talk about King Kong. I just remember how that night it really felt like something got lost, just knowing that pieces of the back lot burned.

Right. Because it really is, this town has a terrible tendency to pave things over. We don't take care of our history here at all. There is so much of that. Are you bummed about Warner Ranch? I kind of,

you know, not far from here. We all live near an area. It's like this Warner lot satellite that is becoming just a bunch of boring sound stages and buildings. But it was, it's where the Friends opening was filmed. It's the Partridge Family's house. It's the Griswold's house from vacation,

lethal weapon. and I got to film there a bunch for Conan and some of my favorite stuff I ever got to do was that like having the run of that that was a special little all that entire Warner lot is cool but that that zone especially is really special and it's it's sad that that's I worked there for years oh the my CWPA job was there located there right right and Warner animation was there so would you take like walks around that yeah I happened upon I turned a corner one day and the giant WB sign from the promo that they used to run with Michigan and J. Frog was just hanging out. Oh, yes. You could sometimes see that from the street depending on where, yeah. Wherever they had put it.

So, yeah, you'd walk around there. That were immaculate promo. They filmed so many. They'd, like, they'd film for days, I feel like. Night after night after night. That's one like... You were giving... You had, like, a stack of DVD dubs of stuff.

I still, like, throw that out. I stole from the CW. You were giving a... A bunch of us were at your apartment once. You were just giving out Riba Dubs. Reba dumps. Dubs. Well, you accept the word dump, though?

Yeah, sure. Wow, Carlson's doing Arriba dump. There would be just cabinets full of DVDs because they would hand them to the executives to watch or whatever. Probably not watch. Or probably not watch. And, yeah, there's just a ton of them. Have you signed off on ARIBA season three episode 16 yet?

Yeah, let's fine to me. I think I was supposed to dispose of them. But I was like, I could just take them. And impress my friends. Right. Drew, spoiler, we do not have a parting. gift of a Reba Season 3 DVD for you. I have them somewhere, I think.

I'd not be a good host. You promised. Yeah, I'm sorry. That's how we lured you in. We lied. I, no, that Brownstone Street, I really loved, which was prominent to me from Home Alone to Lost in New York. And what a mind blower to go, it wasn't really filmed in New York.

And then you go, well, no, most of it was, but that specific that zone. That's like the cousin's house or whatever that where he sets the traps. The Sting was there a lot, too. That's the one they touted. I think that's the thing that the sting was a big one, obviously. But that's the thing that I think at its best Universal can do is connect you to real film history. As opposed to so much of this town where we've gotten rid of lots where things were made, we've gotten rid of buildings where things were made.

And it's heartbreaking to me. I think every one of those sites should be a historical site that should be protected in this city. I don't understand how we don't see that that's our cultural history. Yeah, absolutely. I think it is because when you look at how much land Universal has, everything's constantly in flux. Everything's fair game for rethinking or reusing or repurposing. Which is exciting, I think, to us as theme park fans, but then, like, you get bummed about that. One of the big things, I'm sure you said this all the time, big thing they like to push in mythology to tell your audiences, stage 28 and no one dare touch where the Phantom of the Opera.

And they've never taken down the stage even. If you can, if you build a new set in there, you have to build it around the Phantom of the Opera Theater because it's haunted. And you don't want to upset the ghost of Lon Cheney and you dare not disturb unless we want to build a pretty disappointing Mario Kart ride in which case, fuck you, Lon Cheney, haunt wherever you want. Yeah. It's, I mean, there's, I mean, it seems like we're going to lose more of it. That does seem just like the reality in the near future. start winnowing, and you do feel it today. Have you done the tour recently?

I think the last time was about four years ago, three or four years ago. Yeah, yeah. And it's a different experience. It's a radically different experience. How long is it, is it 45 minutes now? That's what they build it as, and that's about where we'd rounded to and they're even telling you, like, we're halfway through so not too much, so it's nowhere near

those run times. You were doing 90 minutes. You were doing podcast the ride runtimes on that thing. Seriously, it would be an hour 15 typically and then on days where the tram route would get backed up, we'd do an hour 40, hour 45. Jeez, boy, wow. And you're just out there talking.

What's the most desperate you ever got? The most, like, I got nothing. They are bored. I don't know how to. I have no more stories left in this. The worst place for me to get stuck would be outside of earthquake. Okay, yeah. And during the summer, that would back up.

So you'd end- Earthquake's new-ish when you, it's not brand-new. but newish to where there's probably, there's possibly delays. They had redone it. So earthquake had been souped up. And I think it was a problem. Okay. It was just on a technical level, it would sometimes take forever to reset.

Okay. And so on a summer day, you'd end up like six or seven trams right there, right outside, just stuck. And you're close enough that you can hear the other trams. I had a roommate who was insane and did not memorize anything from his book. So he would just make sure. shit up on the tram. And there were times where I would stop talking because he had such a booming voice and was lying so aggressively to keep people entertained. He described one time the earthquake soundstage before he went and he said, yeah, when we go in there, the ABC wide world

of sports is set up. And there's a motocross competition today. So we're going to go in and the motorcycles will actually be crisscrossing directly over our heads doing stunts. And we're going to go and there's going to be explosions. And I'm promising you, motorcycles, motorcycles. motorcycles, motorcycles. And the rest of us are just like, I don't know what's going on up there, but we're just going to let him go. Like, okay. And he was loud enough that you're just like, I can't compete. And he's more entertaining than what I'm going to do.

But it was, there were places where there was just nothing to talk about. That zone, having done the gig, I know what you're talking about. You have just passed through, this was a zone where I'd get a little bored because I was ready for the hits to start coming. Because not far from that, you get earthquake. That's going to be a big jolt of energy. You get jaws probably right after. So, like, the stuff they came to see, you're almost there. Now, if you're into the monster movie history, maybe you get a little excited when you hear about the Court of Miracles where the Hollywood monsters, but it's also not that interesting to look at.

It's just kind of one little zone with a fountain. And then past that, it's just trees and kind of, you're just between sense. It's a parking a lot, essentially. Yeah, yeah. So the fact, so getting stuck there for potentially 30, 45 minutes. Oh, my God. Or getting stuck before the Red Sea. Oh, yeah.

There's a no mention yet of the Red Sea, the parting of the Red Sea. And the Red Sea was the one that guaranteed, disappointed everyone every time. There is nothing interesting about it. And at this point, it is any tourist understand, oh, there's a thing and it moves and then the water gets out of it. Okay, and then we drive on a train. It's so bad. It'd be more interesting to watch if you were outside of it. Yes.

If you were out on the street and in a golf cart and you see a, like, boy, wait, is that trim going into the water? water, oh my God, it's submerging, but it re-emerges dry. Being in it is just like, guarantee that water is right next to me and it smells. Oh, well, not good. And the mid-2000s, they try to double dip and put some miniatures in there of like, and this is how they film some of the sequences for Peter Jackson's King Kong. Oh, yeah.

Watch is a movie. Look, I don't think I've seen it in 20 years from when it came out, but it was a movie that feels like he came out and they tried really hard to be like and of course this is a universal classic and it's like this has been out for two weeks yeah um yeah uh there was so much of that at the time i think that that particular thing was new that was not a not a miniature don't anyone call it a miniature that is a bigature which is our term for big miniature which i don't think is a real thing that anyone ever says but anyway it's a peter jackson word a hundred Well, get ready to see a spectacular bigoture from, and then you'd have to play a music cue, and nobody would find that interesting whatsoever.

It got more interesting when they brought back the parting of the Red Sea, so you could do the Red Sea. All right, part waters, and then now we are free to see a grand bigoture, like kind of a bad melding of, I'm Moses, but now look at some Peter Jackson stuff. Very strange, but then obviously you got that King Kong 3D thing. after the robot burnt down. Now, I did the old King Kong. Yes. Me too. I was there for actual mechanical King Kong.

Oh, my God. You and I, we are among the people who had the joy, one of the greatest joys. How fun was that? That was one of my favorite things. That's my job is to see that every day. And then counting how many people would puke during the avalanche, during the snow tunnel. Oh, yes. The spinning tunnel, which for you was, it was ice at that time.

It was the ice tunnel. And we go in the ice tunnel, and I would. guaranteed see at least one person maybe two or three people puke every time seriously full on puke every single whoa it was so aggressive and I learned when we would go in

I would just do this and I'd look at the floor of the tram and then I would look up to people and I would just watch people who were getting the full effect of it and like leading and their inner ear was screwed up and you'd be like this is a thrill for me

I don't know what you're getting out of it But this is awesome. That effect was, that definitely worked. Yeah. It bugged out and you watch video of it and it works if it's done from the right angle. I love that. I know. I missed that thing a lot.

It was because it was the Brennan Frazier Mommy. Oh, okay. Yes, a very confusing overlay. Over. And will we go over? No, sorry, it was lava for Dante's Peak. And then it became like you're in a revolving tomb. Yes.

The premises. Well, and don't forget. gets covered and eaten by she gets killed yeah you watch Whoopi Goldberg get consumed by insects that was the other and we should talk a little bit about videos and stuff and now that's changed the gig

but the other you know that was one example of it like with apologies to everybody involved in these videos and to Whoopi herself this was a big what you know I was hired 2006 was a big summer there was a lot of new stuff stuff that we'll talk about down the road we got a bigoture now

we got Fast and Furious Car as the dance to gasoline and we hired a bunch of, like I was hired in a PR way where like the press came and like there were articles in the newspaper and news packet. Every like once in a while they do they remind you that this is a job that people want. Look at these freaks coming in to do this silly thing. So 2006 was big but a big part of that was the new host Whoopi Goldberg and you got a big pile of new videos to play and you had to play all of them because they were brand new. they were all must plays and the first time they took us or you know it was like i got accepted to the training program which is the first step not guaranteed you'll get out of that but uh but you know

first thing you do is just like hey welcome take the tour i'm like this is the best job i've ever had and uh they they're excited to show off the new clips and boy i i immediately like these don't work they aren't like nobody's going to pay attention to these these are not funny if i have I'm going to lose these people every time I play one of these clips and then sure enough when I started getting audiences dear God they all died they all ate shit and

the worst one the worst one the production bungalows is interesting to me it's interesting to see where Alfred Hitchcock worked or whatever and you know today you pass by a TED that's fading in the song The dirty Ted. Now there's plenty

to see but at the time it was kind of a dry zone right and this whoopee clip she'd talk about how like when you're here you got the ear of all the biggest producers in town which reminds me and she gets out a megaphone and says a slow I'm going to speed it up because we're deep into an episode I don't want to waste anyone's time but it takes forever for her with a megaphone to say hey here's a suggestion in Hollywood producers fewer movies with giant monkeys more movies with me fewer movies with the giant she repeats it it dies the first time then you have to watch her repeat it and you can't understand it because she's on a megaphone and the speaker is tinny. I've never watched anyone

even lightly smile at this clip. There was such a miscalculation and it was a bummer. I actually appreciated the Fallon clips when they came in a little more because I think they were thought through as like from people who make studio audiences laugh every day.

Although those have started, they try to not even use those today. But when we DM'd, I think you seem to be like you don't like these videos. You know, this takes away from the specialness of the... I really do think it's... Part of what was fun about it was that you

could customize your tram spiel to the crowd. You understood what was playing and what wasn't. I would always pick like three people in that first car that I'm playing to. Sure. Well, that's the highest amount of anyone who will be paying attention

to laughing. And I'm trying to use them as focal points. And if I can get laughs or responses out of them, then I have to assume somewhere else in the cart might be playing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Because you got nothing. You can't see people in the, like, it's the, you have demolished if you are

hearing a laugh past the first car. Then you've done the funniest thing you've ever done in your life. But that is not the day to day of the tour. You're just hoping that you're treating them like human beings that you're talking to. Not a robot speeding through it. And paying attention to their

reactions. Like you're really trying to make sure that they're having an experience of some kind. Yeah. And I feel like with a video, you have zero control over that. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. You know, and I think it's up to the individual guide. I didn't feel, other than like when they told you you have to play these certain ones.

But it really, it depended on the day. I'm like, if I'm getting a response from people, then I will customize it and I'll do more stuff for them. If I am checked out, then it is Video City. And it was nice to, don't want to make you jealous, but it was pretty nice on a longer tour. Oh, I bet. with a more bored crowd on a hot day to be in video city. I would imagine the experience was like when I was a backdraft host, because towards the end of my time there,

they also would have you work backdraft shifts. Oh, interesting. So you would come in and you'd do half a shift as a guide, and you would go over and you'd work backdraft for the second half of the day. And backdraft was much more, hi, here's my little bit of thing I'm going to say, I'm going to press a button, this will happen. Hi, let's go in the next room.

I have another little thing to say, press a button, these things happen. And that, to me, was very mechanical. Yeah. Yeah. That was almost the entire experience there was about making the other person in the backdraft attraction laugh. Is that a room to do then? You would, I would say little things that the crowd would, if they heard it, they were like, did he say that? Like, I introduced Ron Howard frequently.

And ladies and gentlemen, the only man I've ever loved, Ron Howard! And then we put that up. And the other person in the room would be like, he did not. Yes. And you're like, nobody else is going to remember that. It's not, you're not looking for a laugh from the audience. You're looking for like, it's entirely. Did I, yeah, confusion.

Yes. My favorite to that, you're talking about the guide who would lie about stuff. My absolute favorite thing that I would do was we had a pretty pleasant clip that was a montage of universal bloopers where you see Jim Carrey. As the Grinch biting off the prosthetic nose of Jeffrey Tambor or like stuff with the clumps or whatever. So you're getting smiles out of that. I would, that's an easy one that'll work. But something that I like to add to it was the information that bloopers were named after an old character actor named George Bloop. And he worked back in the 1920s when there was kind of the transition from silent films into movies.

And he would forget his lines all the time because he would forget that he even had lines because he was used to working silently. So they compile the footage and they call him bloopers after George Bloop. So remember George Bloop and watched this utter bullshit. But that was the one where I started to feel a little bad because I would see people in the front go, really? Really? Like, it's buyable enough and interesting enough that why not? And I'll pass that on to the podcast audience as well. Try telling somebody about George Blu.

I love this. You buy it. You can buy it. People who have told that story to people since then. I think so. Who are walking around going, no, George Blupe. He's for real. I'm just imagining a guy, like, leaning against a bar, like, first date.

And they started talking about movies. It's like, hey, you know where Blue Brist comes from? Yeah, it's what. It's a guy named George Blub. Anyway, I make beautiful children. So you want to know. Oh, no. I'll tell you, as a guest, one video I always liked, and it probably helped I was a big movie guy.

Like, after Jaws, when they would play the montage of like stills of shooting Jaws, and then the clip, I think it's of Dreyfus going, we would always hear wherever we were on the island. The shark is not working. They repeat, the shark is not working. I always like that. Little megaphone noise. And if you know they called that shark, Bruce, A-F tour, Stevens, Wilburne lawyer. Like, I sat next to a bug main on the tour once.

I believe he said the shark is not working. Yeah, yeah, he's obsessed with that one. Yeah, yeah. And then when they keep talking about Skull Island. Oh, yes. During the Peter Jackson stuff. We're back, we've returned. Are you ready to go back?

Well, we're back. We're back, we're back on the island And it's Skull Island And here we go, we're back and it's Skull Island It was before the movie Skull Island Yeah, so to know that Skull Island was part of it The implication that like, yeah, everyone out here You're all just in like shivering with anticipation

Of being back on Skull Island, yeah Is there anything else like that that's like lodged in your brain forever That you love to say with that musicality Or that gives you nightmares Is it like your skin crawl saying this or that? I do occasionally have stress dreams about being out on the tram and suddenly realize we're in a section of the back lot that I've never seen before. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And I'm like, I don't know what happened here. I don't, and you're, and that's just a panic dream that I'll have sometimes. Yeah, yeah. It kind of happened to me. If I'm sort of weaving my story throughout this, the, like, basically, I stayed on the schedule, even though I got another full-time job with benefits, I stayed on the schedule so that I could park for free at CityWalk.

Nice. And I was like maybe once in a while I'll do it. Like it was loosey-goosey enough that like, why not? But that did require you to pay attention to the emails and to like call out to send an email and say, can't do it this week. And if you forgot to do that, you might get pulled in out of nowhere

and have to cancel plans and maybe you haven't done it in a long time. Yeah. But so this is I want to say like this is late 2009. And I truly have not done it in forever. And I got my bluff called. I had to go in and do it. But I was like, I know this thing, like the back of my hand. Another aspect of it is that with the DVD, you've got a little like, it's like a, it's like a phone pad.

Like you enter everything like, all right, it's on this disc and this number. It's T286. And I know that's bloopers and that'll sail. And I'll talk about church bloop and that's going to work. Then this is where it gets into stress dream territory. I get in there. and I, they immediately tell me, you know, you haven't done this in a long time, so we're probably going to, somebody's going to secretly jump on and supervise you.

Oh my God. Okay, so, and I'm realizing how sweaty I was with it. And then I was like about to go out. I was really close to going out when somebody told me, you know all the DVD numbers changed, right? So it was no longer just like, and so there was not a single thing that I knew how to pull up. I couldn't access one of them. They all changed every single. single one of them changed.

And when I started the job, I had a lot more, like, panic stuff going on. I had a thing with gagging that would happen to me before school sometimes when I was younger. Oh, yeah, I was so nervous about it. Really, having you two? Yeah. You were both gaggers? We're both gaggers. We're a couple of gagers here.

Eventually going to stress puking. It's insane that we talk for this long day after day when we used to be gagged. Look how far we've come. I thought Jason was a lolly gagger, not a regular gagger. I didn't know. No, he's still a old word. I was still a lot of gap. Yeah, I would wake up and, like, be nervous about going to school and gag, and I was like, well, worst case, I threw up and I say, I'm from school, that's not bad.

And they're like, no, get dressed, you're going to school, you're fine. You gag every day. Yeah, it kind of was. It wasn't enough. And I'm saying, yeah, oh, God, well, that problem came back for me hardcore when I got this job because I realized what it was to have an audience in front of me and do I know it. And I worked out so much, like, performance anxiety. that I'm glad is gone. But it came back so hard,

and I remember the moment that it hit because this was the only time that I worked the job in the window where the host of the Tonight Show was Conan O'Brien. And so it was a new part of the route where they pull you in front of the Conan O'Brien stage. And you say, this is where Conorne O'Brien will be hosting the Tonight Show forever and ever.

And then you play a... Whereas rain will go for decades. And then you play a video, you know, some little, hey, I'm Conan O'Brien, and something that he made for the tour. which I was excited to see because I love Conan. And I'm like, oh my God, and they did something special for this. But instead, before I was about to play that,

and I'm just trying to find how to play it, it was the worst I ever froze on the whole thing that I'm there in front of an audience. I'm going, but this is, but this is, and I barely got it on my mind. And then I think I did. I did like duck down and throw up a little bit.

And this is at the beginning. I had the entire thing to go. And in my head, maybe the secret shoppers are on. I'm like, how am I going to make it through this thing? Another thing to add, our friend, Nick Mundy, the guy who bullied us into doing this podcast at all, the patron saint of the show. I was so cocky. I'm like, come take my tour today. And I thought he was going to come later.

And then I called it off. Like, oh, kid, it's kind of busy today. And what if he's on and I'm getting secret shop that I'm vomiting? This is a guy named Charles. This is the Lord is Bruce. I really. thought is going to last the entire like I had a that's the nightmare we do life that can you imagine you actually do throw up a little bit in front of a crowd like like true hot sweat nightmare I think

they told me that I didn't shave properly that day too everything the could have gone wrong went wrong is like so bad and that made me go maybe this isn't worth it to me anymore this is I can't do this like the back of my hand uh and then a couple months later I got fired via a letter and I never did it again and that was my my worst tram ever was It wasn't a, it was the VIP tour, and I got, I had to give a tour to Jean-Claude Van Dam and his wife, girlfriend at the time, I don't know which it was, but without disparaging anybody, I will simply say both of them seemed to be pharmaceutically enhanced that day, and they spent the entire time arguing. Wow. But every time I would stop, he would go, do they tour! And I would

So I'm doing the tour for two people who are screaming at each other in Belgium It was insanity My driver could not stop laughing at me He was red-faced from laughing by the end of that Amazing Just awful Utter boy

I don't know I don't know what he just said But all of a sudden he's gone full Jan Michael Vincent The stream's flowing now I think the last time I tried to do a version of the tour, I was doing a junket for Scott Pilgrim, and they did it at Universal, and I had one-on-ones with everybody in the afternoon, and my last one was Michael Sarah, who I had met on the Toronto set, and so we'd had a little bit of back and forth already, and we're getting ready to do the tour, or getting ready to do the interview, and he comes

over and we're talking, and I said, yeah, I used to work here, I was a tour guy, he goes, really? I said, yeah, and he goes, hold on, goes around a corner, comes back, without telling the publicist he goes we walk around a corner there's a golf cart he goes let's go we hop in the golf cart and we just disappeared from the junket whoa

and so we took off onto the route and I just gave him the tour as we drove around and eventually we went back and the publicists were losing their minds they were like where were you I was like with Michael I was with Michael

oh man whatever you're upset about is because of Michael We opted into Ramona Flores' infinite sidebag, and we just went. But that was a fun way to try to do it again, because I was having to piece it together, having not done it in a while. Holy shit. Wow, wow, geez. But his whole thing was do the actual, like, do it. Really?

Don't just talk to me. Do it. Do the whole thing. Don't do like a dirty version. Don't say lies about bloopers. No, he was like, oh, that's fine. He really wanted the experience. Jeez, geez.

Man, that rules. That's so cool. Wow. So you still go. it you still is there anything is there anything about it that you wish you wish you could do to this day like the opposite of the stress stream are you like boy I'd love to get another swing at that thing I really do I think of it as maybe the best like job job I ever had because working at Disney World in Florida was totally different it was a totally different kind of

experience would you do there they had a spring break program where you would work during spring break and then if they liked you they would hire you for a real job so during the spring break thing they would move you so we did a day of attractions actually we did two days of attractions and then my third and fourth days were supposed to be kitchen somewhere and they put me at

the Picos Bill Cafe and it was Easter Sunday and there was a nationally televised parade that ended outside of that restaurant so the restaurant was a mad house all day

and my job was The toppings bar is stock. And all they said was your job is to just go get trays and bring the trays back to the kitchen. Jason's dream. He's in charge. Yes, no problem. The toppings will remain intact. They will not be eaten by me.

They will not be pocketed for later. Attention. Ten huts, sir. And my day ended early because there was an accident in the kitchen where they had a giant row of industrial friars. And there was a dude who was, all you would do is take the friar basket out, put it on a hook, take the next one out, put it on the hook, and he's going down the thing, and he goes to put one on the hook, and it misses the hook, and he wasn't thinking, and I think he automatically reached out to catch the basket, and got his arm

wedged in the friar. Oh, no, that's worse than I thought it was. They couldn't get the basket up, they couldn't get his arm out, and that was the end of me ever working in a kitchen again. That was the last thing. I was like, I'm traumatized. I'm not coming back ever. Yeah, yes. Glad for your And just outside on a loop In your ears about it With all the frills about it

Yeah So I did not last long But it was supposed to be like two days At all the different parts of the park And then they would decide where to put you When you put it that look, yeah I didn't have to clean the AMC bathrooms After the Superman return screenings

You didn't have to get your arm burnt in the friar the tour it's really a hell of a thing I got this binder out is there anything that you feel like you'd like to give a go would you like to give a whirl to anything relive your past oh man give it a spin

let me see the binder real quick yeah sure the script is in the face the green pages oh yeah I remember the green pages flip to a random page and just like tell us about you know some universal films that came out in 1990 say some fun facts about ghost dad or talk about the how much have they built the front of the Evan Almighty arc.

Yeah, that was my time. When I was doing it, there were so many arc pieces everywhere. Art pieces and land of the lot, did they build like a jungle for land of the law? My first two summers, one summer was Evan Almighty, the next was land of the loss. That was the home of the cursed

comedy. Those two films together cost $250 million. Yeah, I was... Got zero laughs. I feel like even the trailers, I don't recognize your script at all. Oh, man. Well, this is your stress dream. This is the word. Yeah, you don't know how to do Whoville. This guy's never been training.

I've never done more of the worlds. I've never, like, all that stuff is so different. It's funny because they talk about a lot of things that were shooting when I was there, like talking about Jurassic Park or talking about. Yeah. That was what was cool, was just the access to real things, man. Yeah. Yeah.

I miss that. I miss being on the lot every day. Sure. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I don't know how frank I can be, but. Very. I was in my 20s. And so there were afternoons.

where we would walk down around the sound stages, smoke a joint, then walk back and do our tram routes. And I don't remember those tram rides, but I was the most garrulous, talkative. I would get on the, and I'd be like, okay, you're getting the good one today. And that would be where I would let all the information go. And I would just be like, and those were the days the drivers were like, you were good today. I was like, yeah, believe me, I would have the best time on the tram route. There was just something about having total run of a, a thing.

backline. And this, and you've like no, it's like as kind of unvetted as you can be to have a theme park audience at your disposal. Yeah. It feels like you can sort of do whatever you want. And the people up in the the Conan stunt show or Water War, they can't just like go into a tear

and make up some lies because they feel like it. Nope. It's pretty good. I do think it was a unique amount of time they would give you with a an audience. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy that they would leave you out there for an hour to house. with a bunch of tourists.

We kind of met him. We kind of met him along with 70 other people on the same day. And as far as I know, he's not going to smoke a joint and do whatever he wants. Yeah. This is where you and I are different. You are wrong. If I smoked a joint, then I would have just, I would have been quiet for 23 minutes. And then just muttered like, I don't think I'm nice enough to my mom.

I think I'm a jerk. Might have been some gagging, too. Yeah. Bl, ugh. I miss the no stakes fun of that job where there was just I'm giving a tour of a back lot. Because I figured out quickly, I'm here for goofs and giggles. I'm not going to do it in the VIP. I'm not going to train all the way up this, you know, I got other, I got silly stuff I want to do.

So it really does, it gives you a nice, I'm not supposed to be here, the kind of, if, if, if, If I could quote clerks, is that right? I'm not even supposed to be here. It's a job that if you're even remotely interested in, you should try to do it. Because if you do it for summer, it's a great memory. It really is just one of those perfect job experience. sincerely people listening, yeah, if they do these, if you catch wind of the day, I'm sad that Mike and Jason didn't get time.

I like, did you ever, did you try? Yeah, I, I, oh, I, no. I don't know what, like, I had like this long-term PA job that ended. I don't know why I didn't just hop over and interview summer 2008. Yeah, well, yeah, grab Ben Stiller, head up the hill. Grab Ben Stiller, head up the hill. I know him. He's not a hostage.

I interviewed in 2009, so we're talking recession, we're talking everyone's trying to get a job. Yeah. So the line to get to that, the bill. where the interviews are wrapped down to like hot topic in city like this line was huge the news the line wrapped a sector five yeah i don't know what sector it was i forget local news was there going well a lot of people trying to become universal studio store guys this year i don't think i do this i don't think i need the the interview process was like okay you were going to ask them questions and you're going to tell us about it yourself you have about three minutes

and when you hear a bell, you are done. So it was a whole room, and then they add just a bunch of, like, old-fashioned hotel, like, ding, ding, like, bell. So I am like, I love the empires, I love the universal, I come here all the time. I've done improv class, I'm an intern of the UCB. I would be respectful to any toppings bars in the theme park.

I will take only my allotted amount of tomatoes. And I went with my friend, Peter Cameron, who I didn't get the second level, he did. Okay, okay. And he's a little more improv experience, and he's a tall, handsome-looking guy. Mm-hmm. And I believe he did get hired and do it for a little while. Okay, okay.

Peter Cameron now, a writer on Wanda Vision. He wrote The Werewolf by Night Special. Okay. He wrote for a bunch. He wrote on a bunch of the Marvel TV stuff. I did feel like a troll compared to a lot of them. A lot of the guys were. They're very pretty.

There were some good-looking people there. And I'm like, I love movies. That wasn't the point of me. I brought a different energy, I feel. I'm the exuberant nerd. So, yeah, just put me out on the tram, and it's different. I will tear. I'm going to show you guys in the room, and I went and found a bunch of photos from my tour guide days.

There was one time where I was like, I do want to commemorate this, because, like, I don't want to lose these memories. I'm just going to take a lot of pictures today. And there were a few where I was like, um, 20 year old Scott are you trying to do like sultry poses on the tram is that what this is I was pretty mortified and once I swallowed the mortification I realized I needed to share them with you in the audience I'm like trying to be all all coy in this tour guide selfie look at me eyes I got that I got a driver and shorts on the phone behind me what am I well you're saying I'm dating Aaron there I'm not not trying to create a sexy MySpace profile oh why am I and look at this one what is this

That's smoldering. That's like, come hither. You're saying come hither to 300 people, and please, we'll lower the, don't lower anything. Please go all the way into your row. I'm trying to bring up a person who's been recurring through the show. I'm trying to do Zoolander. Yeah. Trying to do blue steel.

Do you look like Tyson Ritter from the All-American Rejects there a little bit? Like you're kind of doing a little. Oh, my God. Can you picture me? Can you picture it jump cutting between me and 40 different locations? I think I could. Pouting and sing and move along like you. know you do? I think I could picture it.

Geez, you know what? Of my complaints about them recently, one of them is not the looks of Tyson's. If you're comparing me to Tyson. He's a handsome guy. Yeah, yeah. Hey, I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, anyway, so that was me attempting to be one of the hot people, but

I think to mixed results. One of my favorite things to do at the park was when we would leave, we'd have to go up the starway all the way, you know, walk through the park physically. There was no back way. Did you leave? Was your, was your, was your tour station at the bottom where Jurassic Park is now yeah okay okay so that's that's where we would go from in the afternoons and you have to walk through the whole park wow and my friends

and I really got adept at stepping into people's photos I loved right when somebody's taking a photo step in and behind them and then just keep moving I must be in hundreds of photos oh wow from the time I was there because we it was a game of ours it was like see how many photos you can get in before we get all the way back to where we change. And it was so much fun. Like, people would have their family photos and in the background, just the two of us. Wow, wow. I guess listeners check yours.

Yes. I'll check mine. It is, but you were doing it in the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If we can collect them all, it is great. Like, you were doing it when I fell in love with it, when I went like that is so. Isn't it about, what if you were the guide who planted the seed that is what, that I want to do that someday.

It is distinctly possible. It's possible. You know, it's a dream factory. It's where dreams come true. It came true for you and me. Let you know that, which I feel really bad saying all this now that Jason is just told us that it didn't work out. And you've been thinking about old Peter Cameron the whole time. Yeah, he probably has not thought of it.

He's at writing jobs at multiple children. So I don't think. Can I say I believe that you did say all the stuff you said you said, but then you added something crazy in there. Like, I'm going to kill. I'll kill, I swear to God. I'll kill. There was like a five seconds that actually disqualified me from it. Do you need my blood to resurrect Carl?

Yeah. To resurrect Mr. Lamley? I know what happened to Frank Stites. I'm going to get revenge. Yeah. Listen, I'm going to blow the lid off to Frank Stites incident if you don't hire me for this $10 an hour job. You had strapped hot dogs to yourself. Like, looked like that.

He flashed him really quick. They might be ontogs or my pet dynamite. I can't tell. Well, look, I hope this has been a nice memory lane for you. This episode justified to me doing it as a month because I think we've only scratched the surface. Yeah, we haven't really. There's so much to talk about. But I'm so glad we got to do it this way with this overview and a walk-down memory lane with a fellow member of the fraternity.

Of the nerdiest fraternity that there ever could be. It really is. And I'm amazed how often I run into people. who have done it or talk to people who worked the program at one point it's crazy how many people have gone through those doors yeah yeah yeah um because they don't pay enough to keep people from continuing

through the doors that's right there should be like an SNL 50 where all the tour guides get together oh we all get to do our classic bits yeah all right well no it's car motorcycles motorcycles he drowned us all out none of us got to ours motorcycle guy dominated But, you know, hey, thank you for being part of this mini-reunion, Drew McQueenie Survive Podcast, The Ride. Let's exit to the gift shop, anything you'd like to plug.

You can find me, my two newsletters. One is called Formerly Dangerous, and that's at drewmikwini.substack.com. My other one is the last 80s newsletter you'll ever need, which is the last 80s newsletter. That one is I am reviewing every film released in the United States in theaters, in order. Jesus Whoa Wow It's quite a project

Where are you now? 85 Okay Wow Wow wow And yeah Doing July 85 right now So back to the future

Is the next one There you know Where I know what was Finn I know where it was filmed too Wow That's wonderful And then yeah My new podcast is called

The Hip Pocket You can find that anywhere You get podcasts And that is we have people on We have them pick Three movies That are their Hip Pocket movies

the movies that you love to show people, that you love to test people with, your litmus test when you're getting a new friend or whatever, and then we pick a response movie and we just talk about a four. Okay, yeah, yeah. I got to go, Jaws, close encounters,

and this one might be controversial, Eatsy. Taking a big swing. Your favorite movies also seem to have a lot of merchandise racks. Yeah, yeah. Even though they're obscure, they've managed some nerds of wanted the merch.

Oh, I will shout out, because we've mentioned draws so many times. But it was very funny last month, because on the 4th July, all I did was I just watched draws. We didn't really do anything. And then, no, just the one time. But then

shortly after that, I keep hearing about this Draws 50 documentary and I'm combing through Peacock trying to find it. It turns out, it was out, but it was on Hulu. So Peacog was doing full court press of all the Jaws movies But the documentary about Jaws was on it different

Worthwhile watching So it's pretty solid documentary But does it get into the nitty gritty? Like do you find out what Bruce the Shark was named after? Scott Fuck a lot Because you're gonna find out I've been wondering

I've never been trained in this matter Well thanks again Drew for joining us For the full Sip Tramber experience Check out Podcast the Ride, the second gate, which is really going to come in handy here, because that's really where it's going to get a nitty-gritty. Or get the September Bona bonus episode on our VIP Tier Club 3. You'll find all of that at patreon.com slash podcast The Ride. And let me be cheesy.

And hey, when in Rome, why not end this month by saying, hey, till next time, we'll see you in the movies. This has been a Forever Dog production, executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gerdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Silio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit Foreverdog Podcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team. and liking our page on Facebook.