The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 10: Lord of Light

Episode Date: March 29, 2016

The most expensive theme park there never was.

This is the way I heard it. It was supposed to be bigger than Star Wars, the most expensive sci-fi film of all time. It was called the Lord of Light, and it would be cherished by adoring fans for generations to come. That was the pitch. Anyway, truth is, Barry Gellar's wildly ambitious script was really an attempt to finance the mother of all amusement parks, a fantastical place called Science Fiction Land. Three times the size of Disneyland, packed with rides and exhibitions guaranteed to boggle the mind and stimulate the brain. Science fiction land would make six flags look like the dilapidated playground of a condemned elementary school,

a 38-story ferris wheel, a holographic zoo, an anti-gravity chamber, submarine rides and man-made rivers, a bowling alley with a thousand lanes attended by Androids. all of it housed on a thousand-acre parcel under a massive climate-controlled dome just south of Interstate 70 in Aurora, Colorado. Sure, there was money to be made, lots of money. But getting rich was not Barry Geller's primary goal. Barry was convinced that science fiction land would encourage innovation by attracting scientists and investors from all over the world, By providing a venue for their latest gadgets and inventions, Barry believed that freedom and democracy could be advanced for all mankind.

But of course, big dreams require big money. And since Hollywood wasn't rushing to green light, the Lord of Light, Barry looked elsewhere for the $500 million he believed that science fiction land would cost to construct. Enter Jack Schaefer, a business. man who saw real potential in Barry's vision. With Schaefer on board, other investors followed suit, along with all sorts of creative types. The makeup artist that designed Spock's ears got involved. Then the creator of Captain America and Spider-Man sketched the actual renderings for the park. In fact, those very sketches lined the wall as Barry and Jack Schaefer held a press conference

spelling out their vision for all to hear. The media ate it up, and when it was reported that science fiction land could pull in up to 19 million yearly visitors, Jack and Barry were ecstatic. So were the people of Aurora, Colorado. So was the Bank of Canada. They offered Barry and Jack

a $400 million, irrevocable line of credit. Barry's dream was becoming more real with every passing day. There was just one minor problem. It was all a lie. Jack Schaefer was a conman. He wanted his own zip code

to further his criminal activities, which science fiction land would all but guarantee. And the $400 million? Yeah. Schaefer made that up too. And everyone who believed him paid a price. The town, the media, and the people of Aurora, they were all victims of a giant scam.

Eventually, Schaefer went to prison for fraud, but Barry Geller was cleared. The court determined he was too naive to have been complicit. His punishment confess to his own gullibility on the record and returned the money Schaefer had stolen. But what about Lord of Light? Barry's ambitious screenplay would have no doubt languished in obscurity but for a most unusual group of producers who saw its true potential. Without changing a single word of dialogue, Lord of Light was optioned in 1979.

Days later, the producers flew to the Middle East to scout locations. The only change they made was to the title, which is why Lord of Light probably doesn't ring any bells. But you might recall the film that went on to win best picture 34 years later. That was the true story of six Americans

who had escaped from the Iranian embassy in 1979 and the FBI agents who brought them home. FBI agents posing as Hollywood producers who used

Barry Geller's original screenplay to convince the Ayatollah's regime that they were in fact legitimate. And that's how a forgotten script

once associated with an audacious plot to scam the Americans was ultimately used in an audacious plot to scam the Iranians. And even though the Lord of Light never made it into actual production and science fiction land never made it into actual construction,

Barry Geller did manage to advance the cause of freedom for six very lucky Americans in the film you know as Argo. A real movie. based on a doomed script, written to subsidize an imaginary land of science fiction that actually won an Oscar. Only in Hollywood. Anyway, that's the way I heard it.