Cold Open And The Eighth Wonder

Speaker 0:30

But now he comes to civilization. Maybe a country. A show to gratify your curiosity. Ladies and gentlemen, look at calm, the eighth wonder of the world.

What Makes Kong A Landmark

Kelly 0:58

Hello and welcome to the Lowdown on the Plus Up, a podcast where we look at everyone's favorite theme park attractions, lands, textures, and novelties. We talk in, over, about, and through our week's topic, and then, with literally no concern for practicality, safety, or economic viability, we come up with ways to make them better. My name is Kelly McCubbin, columnist for the theme park website Boardwalk Times, and with me as always is Peter Overstreet, University Professor of Animation and Film History in Northern California. Hey Pete. Yeah. What are we talking about today?

Pete 1:44

Today we're uh gonna talk about one of the biggest attractions in theme park history. Yeah. A primal attraction. A very primal attraction, yes indeed. We're gonna talk about King Kong. King Kong. That's right.

Kelly 2:00

The eighth wonder of the world. The eighth wonder of the world. One of the most foundational fantasy movies of all time. Many of the most foundational fantasy movies of all time. And certainly one of the most significant rides in theme park history. Twice. Yes. This is the attraction both at Universal in Hollywood and Universal in Orlando that propelled them to the kind of mass superstardom of theme parks that they they ended up at. No, it starts with Jaws and what Jaws did in the 70s, Kong did in the 80s.

Pete 2:41

Yes. I mean, and a lot of people really do consider this as like one of the big one of the big foundational pieces to do this. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Kelly 2:49

Absolutely.

Quick Park News And Ride Gripes

Kelly 2:50

Hey, before we started, I thought a couple of interesting pieces of just theme park news. Oh yeah, go ahead. And hey, Muppet News Flash. Just just him.

Pete 3:02

Kelly McCubbin on the scene. Go, Kelly.

Kelly 3:05

Oddly, there's probably Muppet news too, but I wasn't thinking about that. Hey, the Roger Rabbit cartoon spin. Yes. You can't spin it anymore. What? Yeah. It does spin, so the title's not literally wrong, but they've taken the ability for riders to spin it away from the riders. So now it spins on its own.

Pete 3:26

I think it's because vomit doesn't actually fluoresce under UV light, so it's harder for them to clean up. I think I think the vomit has a similar reaction to dip. Yeah. So I think, yeah, maybe I don't know. I remember going on a test run on that thing. I was gifted this remarkable opportunity of somebody pulling me aside. He's like, you want to try it? And got to ride that thing, and it didn't have any guards on the spin at all. So going through that ride, just going, ah, ah, ah, ah, it was crazy. But there's got to like I don't know. It kind of makes the whole point moot to me because it's like that's the story is Benny spinning around.

Kelly 4:04

Well, and it still does. I've watched some ride-throughs, and it actually spins quite a bit. In some ways, it might spin more than you could have done it on your own. Um, so that's interesting, but part of the charm was that it was teacups in a dark ride.

Pete 4:18

Maybe Roger Rabbit. I mean, this is definitely like maybe a future episode for us to cover. For sure. But I would definitely say, like, I can already kind of know what my plus up would be at this point, which is make the ride a trackless, uh, trackless ride system. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. That would be so much fun. Just no Mickey going, nothing can stop us now.

Kelly 4:39

I kind of love that song. I do too. I actually like it. Speaking of testing an attraction, my other piece of theme park news actually kind of weirdly dovetails into me testing an attraction once, which was I was at Florida, I was at Disney World in like the early 90s, and I think I was in line for the carousel of progress, because that's how I roll. Nice. And some guy came and and grabbed me and and my girlfriend at the time and said, Hey, do you want to try out a new attraction we're working on? Right. And we said, Okay. And so, because no carousel of progress, you get out of line, you're back in in 10 minutes. Yeah. And we tried out the virtual flying carpets of Aladdin attraction. They put headsets on us, and 10 minutes or so we fly flew around the desert in virtual reality. It was it was kind of cool.

Pete 5:33

Well, it's interesting you bring that up because I know one of the developers who worked on that.

Kelly 5:38

Yeah.

Pete 5:39

Then imagine your name Ken Cope. Yeah, yeah. And Ken is a former co-worker of mine from my video game days. Uh-huh. And I know Ken listens, so hello, Ken, you've been mentioned. Hey, Ken. And he's a massive Wizard of Oz fanatic. Oh. Very obsessed with the glass kitty cat inside of TikTok and all that. I'm sure he'll correct me on that. But also making stuff up now. Well, yeah. I mean, that's just me. But also, he is a uh massive Firesign Theater. Well, then he's a good person. And I think he dated for a time one of the Firesign Theaters guys' daughters. Okay, that's getting a little weird, but sure.

Kelly 6:16

That's taking fandom one step too fast.

Pete 6:20

My dad dated Ken Nordeen's daughter briefly, so there you go. Well, that's cool. Yeah.

Kelly 6:24

But but so, you know, and I have I did ride or experience I don't know what it is when you have a helmet on. I did experience the the uh flying carpets of Aladdin in the Disney quest that was in Chicago. Nice. And um, it was okay. Anyway, but that's not the attraction I wanted to talk about, but it's related. It is the 25th anniversary of what I might consider the dumbest attraction that Disney has ever put in a park. Aladdin's Flying Carpets and Adventureland in the Magic Kingdom. Oh I it it but it's the 25th anniversary. Uh it is it is rare that I look at an attraction and say, I would rather have had the path that was here. Wow. It's just it doesn't work. I I like that the Campbell spit at you when you're on it, but otherwise it's a dumbo ride that seems kind of out of place, out of place. Yeah, because it's like right across from Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah, like it's just like smack in the middle of the road. Yeah, and it's just it doesn't look great. Happy birthday to it.

Pete 7:36

Well, it should have, I mean, let's go back to plus ups. And what it should be, it should be actually Prince Ali of Boo-Boo's carousel of joy or something like that. So it's the whole parade, and they could play, you know, Prince Ali, fabulous he, and it's all done, and and genie's on top conducting this orchestra. It should have been carousel. Could have been a beautiful carousel, but they didn't they don't listen to us.

Kelly 7:56

I don't I don't understand why it's so hard to pull off an Aladdin attraction. You have in the Disney canon, I I can think of two movies that I most associate with sweeping fast motion.

Pete 8:09

Yeah.

Kelly 8:09

And it's that one and Peter Pan. And I don't and Peter Pan they nailed it. Like we got an attraction, we get that swooping fast motion in the dark ride. Why is it why is that never the way they go with Aladdin?

Pete 8:26

I don't know. I really don't know. I mean, it's it's yeah, it's a slippery slope. Yeah.

Kelly 8:31

Yeah. Anyway, I thought I'd bring those up before we started.

Mortality And A King Kong Obsession

Kelly 8:34

All right, so So King Kong. Back to the jungles of Skull Island. Now, Pete doesn't know a whole lot about the movie King Kong, so I'm gonna be kind of guiding him along. Oh, hoo fa. So Pete has written a book of King Kong.

Pete 8:53

And more specifically, yeah, not just King Kong. So a little backstory. King Kong was a movie that when I was very, very little, helped me get over my initial conception of mortality. Hmm. Okay. I had a real, I was about three years old, I'm sitting in my father's lap, and then at one point, I just suddenly realized, like, at some point, I'm going to die. And what is that gonna feel like? And it really scared me. Like I just like it does many of us. And I had a complete flip-out at three, but I couldn't explain what it was. I still remember it very vividly. Yeah. Um, we're sitting at my parents' house in San Jose, California, and I just started crying. And my dad, I didn't go, I don't want to die. And he's like, Well, well, you're not gonna, you're three years old. But he didn't get it that I that I suddenly had already at three years old understood the gravity of mortality. Wow, we went deep fast. Okay. Oh yeah, keep going. But in order, in order to calm me down, yeah, he goes, let's let's uh just sit on my lap. And he cuddled me. It was one of those rare moments where my dad really like snuggled me that I remember. And I'm sitting in his lap and he turns on channel two. It was late at night, and on comes Bob Wilkins and creature features on channel two. Yeah and there's there's Bob Wilkins. Hi, everybody. We're gonna show you a really good movie called King Kong, and it's really, really interesting. So just keep watching this movie. And for those of you listening right now, this is how Bob Wilkins sounds. Look him up. He really is he was he was the weirdest of horror hosts because he would sit in a yellow rocking chair and smoke a cigar. Yeah, he's this very unimposing little guy, but he was the right tone for the Bay Area. Yeah, he was. Everybody loved Bob Wilkins, real sweetheart, kind of a rise sense of humor. And I saw King Kong, and I fell in love with that movie. Yeah. Anytime that there was any new corded medium, whether it be uh CED discs, laser discs, DVD, VHS, Betamax, even a suit, we even had a Super 8 movie version of King Kong. I was obsessed from that point on with the movie King Kong. I don't know why, but it just hit a chord with me. And during the pandemic, I started showing my kid uh horror movies, old horror movies. Like, okay, it's time to show Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman. Yeah. And then I showed her King Kong, and she loved King Kong. She thought it was great. And while we were watching the credits, she goes, Wait a minute, it's written by somebody named Ruth Rose. Who's Ruth Rose? And I looked it up, I did a quick little Google search, and it just opened the door of like, wait a minute, who was this person who wrote the movie King Kong? Yeah. And it became this rabbit hole that I fell down into for three years researching and writing a book called The Eighth Wonder that I'm currently going through literary agents and editors right now trying to get it published. But yeah, it's it's like a it's like about a 400-page novel that's a dramatization of uh how this woman came to write the book the movie King Kong. Yeah. And I won't go into all of it, but I do need to tell you a little bit about her because it's pretty dang amazing.

Kelly 12:05

Well, it's a fascinating story. And I I've I've read an early draft of Pete's book, and it's terrific. And this is this is the the underbelly of Hollywood that we don't talk about anymore, which was um, women kind of ran Hollywood for a while. Oh yeah and then suddenly they were persona non grata and had to fight to get back

Ruth Rose Meets Doyle And Houdini

Kelly 12:27

in.

Pete 12:27

Yeah. So oddly enough, and it's interesting that it gets time to the pandemic, uh, the story begins during another pandemic, the the Spanish flu outbreak of 1919, uh-huh. Uh shuts down theaters in Broadway, and there was an actress whose father was a great playwright named Edgar Rose. I'm sorry, Edward Rose. Edward was at the time a big socialite. He actually hung out with Rube Goldberg a lot. And he hobnobed with everybody. I mean, he was big high society. Yeah. He owned his own theater. His wife had passed away when Ruth was only three years old. When Ruth was about 18, she ran away during World War I and served as a truck driver. And while she was driving this truck, she actually got strafed by German biplanes and survive. She has a thing about biplanes that she doesn't like them. Keep that in mind. Over time, she got back to New York. Her father just tried to keep getting her married off to some big socialite. She's like, I don't want to do that. That's not my life. I don't want that. I've I've had my taste of adventure and I want more. And she started telling this to her mentor, which was this guy who is famous for being the first person ever to play Sherlock Holmes on the stage on the screen. Yeah. His name is William Gillette. Yeah. And William Gillette is actually the person that we get elementary, my dear Watson. Yep. We also get the curly pipe that is famous for that famous Sherlock Holmes pipe. Right. And also the Deerstalker cap. That all comes from Doyle doesn't mention the Deerstalker cap? Nope. Interesting. That is not that is not a Doyle thing. That's actually a Gillette thing. Oh. Doyle would later include the Deerstalker cap, but that was after the dramatizations that Gillette had done.

Kelly 14:06

Interestingly enough, I just saw a thing where some theater in in Northern California is doing a retrospective of silent Sherlock Holmes films. Ooh. Oh, we may have to go.

Pete 14:16

Yeah, I'll see if I can dig it up. Okay. Yeah. So one auspicious day, uh, we know it's in June. We don't and we know it's, I think it's June 15th or something like that, but this is 1923. And in 1923, Ruth Rose is going out on a date with William Gillette. Now, I should tell you, Ruth at this time was in her early 20s, and William Gillette was rapidly approaching his 60s. Yeah. He had started off as a family friend, but Ruth had developed uh a kind of a mentorship relationship with him, and then eventually kind of a friends with benefits relationship with William Gillette. Uh-huh. So it was kind of the first, the first love of her life. Yeah. But he was, he, his heart wasn't really into having this long-term relationship with Ruth. Yeah. Plus, his heart was still attached to his wife who had passed away of tuberculosis. He they go out to a movie, and strangely enough, it's John Barrymore in Sherlock Holmes. She had to buy the tickets, and he said, I'll buy you dinner if you buy the tickets. They go out to dinner at an automat, this fabulous chrome automat. And for those who don't know what an automat is, watch episodes of Loki on Disney Plus. Right. Every time that he and Morpheus go out for key lime pie, they're sitting in an automat.

Kelly 15:28

These were real places. Oh, yeah. There's a really great documentary from a couple of years back that Mel Brooks executive produced about the history of the automat. It's terrific. They were spectacular.

Pete 15:38

I got to eat at one when I was five years old in Los Angeles, and now it's gone. So anyway, all of a sudden there's this little girl with red hair, big glasses, a little bit of an overbite, and she's wearing this beautiful little red hat, red pea coat, and she comes up to him with a piece with a postcard from Coney Island. Yeah. This is in New York, by the way. So Coney Island. And on a pencil and a little British accent. She goes, Pardon me, sir.

Speaker 6 16:02

Are you Mr. Sherlock Holmes?

Pete 16:05

And William Jelaic goes, Well, yes I am, dear. Why, yes I am, dear.

Speaker 6 16:10

Can I have your altergraph, please?

Pete 16:13

And he's who do I make it out to? Jean. Jean what? Jean Doyle. Jean Doyle is the daughter of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Doyle family were in New York City on a tour of another book that Doyle had written about spiritualism. This is after the Cottingley Fairies incident. Yeah. So the Doyle family were there, and Ruth was a big fan of Doyle's work, especially Sherlock Holmes. And she's fanboying out. And of course, Gillette introduces Ruth to Doyle. He says, Very nice to make your acquaintance. We have a bit of an appointment. Would you like to join us to go on a little adventure? And Ruth's like, Did you arrange this? And of course, Gillette looks at her and goes, Elementary, my dear Ruth. Elementary. And they get into a cab and they are taken to the tallest building in New York City. At the time, the the tallest building in New York City was the McAlpin Hotel. Yeah. And the McAlpin Hotel was having a symposium and all these red banners with S-A-M all over them. And for those who are in the know, that means the Society of American Magicians. It was their annual convention. Yeah. And Doyle, uh, Sir Arthur was a guest of honor. And when they arrived at the hotel, you've got Bill Gillette, you know, the first guy to play Sherlock Holmes, Ruth Rose, who would eventually write King Kong, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, they show up at the hotel to visit Harry Houdini. And everybody who's any, I have the program from this thing. They were serving quail, they were serving chocolate ice cream Sundays and all this kind of stuff. So, and and Bess Ronner, aka Bess Houdini, was passing out dollies that she had made herself of Harry Houdini that were sewn together with gold thread to celebrate Harry's birthday. Wow. The Doyles arrive and they're met by this guy in a straw fedora and a seersucker suit, and he's sitting there smoking cigarettes, and he's got these crates with him on a luggage cart. Yeah. And he goes into the hotel with them. Houdini is escaping from a straitjacket when they arrive up on the stage. Yeah. Show off as he is. And they get seated at a table at the very back of this long lecture hall. And after Houdini's showing off, they're seated at a table with the owner of the New York Times, where Ruth was working as a ghost writer. So it's like, oh, there's the big boss. Yeah. Doyle gets invited up onto the stage by Harry Houdini. And he says, So I understand you're the guest of honor. Ladies and gentlemen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And Doyle gets up, he pulls a little piece of paper, and he basically says, I know many of you have laughed at my expense over a certain account of fairies, and I appreciate the joke.

Speaker 6 18:53

I have something I would like to share with you.

Pete 18:56

And I'm going to tell you that it is purely scientific, and what you're about to see is real. So, Mr. O'Brien, if you would please. And the guy in the seersucker suit starts up this traveling motion picture projector that he had brought in those crates. And up on the screen, up on the stage, are dinosaurs cavorting and fighting triceratopses, a lost world, veritable lost world. One woman screamed at the violence of a Tyrannosaurus Rex attacking a stegosaurus. And people were like, Oh, what is the it's real? You have to understand motion picture technology was still in its infancy at this point. Yeah. And Doyle looks really smug as he watches Houdine watches with his mouth agape. Just like, uh and what it was, the O'Brien in question was a man from Oakland, California who had worked at the Panama Pacific International Exposition. Yep. Was gifted a camera by the Thomas Edison Corporation to do experiments with clay because he was a sculptor. He actually sculpted a lot of figures in the Palace of Fine Arts, which still stands to this day in San Francisco. This guy's name is Willis O'Brien. Yeah, the great Willis O'Brien. Who is a special effects genius? Yeah. And Doyle and O'Brien fooled a room full of magicians, including Houdini himself, with footage that was test footage for a motion picture version of Doyle's book, The Lost World. Yep. And Ruth Rose was there to witness it. So therefore, she wrote the article. Doyle Fools Magicians at Society Do. I actually have a copy of that article. And at the end, it finally fesses up. It was published 24 hours later. So Doyle just let him stew in it for 24 hours as a big F you over the fairy's debacle. Yeah. And at the end it says the footage is actually from a genius uh photographer named Willis O'Brien from Oakland, California. And it's test footage for a movie based off of Doyle's book.

Kelly 20:54

That is the first time that Willis O'Brien and Ruth Rose cross paths, yes. And and not potentially the most important time. No. Because they encounter each other again in the making of King Kong. King Kong. Absolutely.

Pete 21:10

I want to talk just very briefly, a little bit more about Ruth. The brief overview is that Gillette sets her free, basically breaks up with her about a year later. But the same day, about 15 minutes later, he had made arrangements for an explorer by the name of William Beebe, a very famous naturalist of his day. Yeah. He was the first man to go down to the bottom of the sea, quote unquote, in a bathysphere. And Beebe was organizing a voyage to the Galapagos Islands. And he needed a historian for his ship, so Gillette hooked him up with Ruth Rose. She sold everything she owned, and they go on this voyage that includes hurricanes and typhoons, etc. And Ruth's job was to basically write the ship's log. As a matter of fact, there is a book called The Arcturus Adventure that catalogs this entire journey. Yeah. Another one that you can look up. And it's there's a PDF available online if you can find it. It's worth a read. But Ruth was the actual writer of that. She took all of BB's notes. By the time they get to uh Cuba and they stop off, they're refueling the ship, the Arcturus, which is this big wooden steamship that when you look at it, there are models and photographs of it. When you look at it, you go, oh my God, it's the ship from King Kong. It's the venture. Yeah. It really is the model for the venture. And they get a message saying, there's a couple of filmmakers over in the Middle East right now that have been stranded by their producer. Yeah. They have no money. If we pay them, they have agreed to send them, send us their cinematographer, and he'll meet you in Panama. Yeah. The cinematographer, no joke, stows away aboard a real smuggler ship in Casablanca bound for Panama. He gets discovered, and the only reason why he's not killed is he's really good at playing poker. So he plays, so he plays the ultimate game of death versus the ship's captain, who lets him live because he beats the captain at poker. Yeah. He's like, I like this guy. So the cinematographer lives and he's I'll work, I'll do whatever it happens, whatever it takes, but I gotta get to Panama. We'll get you there. And he became friends with the captain, like he had a way of getting to know people. Yeah. So the Arcturist arrives at Panama. At the bottom of the gangplank, they see this guy in a white, beautiful white suit, Panama hat, looks total Hollywood. And he's got this big, ugly looking, tall, gangly thug with him carrying all this equipment for him. Yeah. And they're like, oh, that must be him. He looks like Hollywood. Bring him on board. Permission to come aboard. Yeah, come on up. And he says, Oh, you must be Ernest Shouldsack. And the guy in the white suit goes, Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm the travel agent. Yeah. This is Ernest Shouldsack. And there's the big ugly guy going, Hey, I actually wasn't ugly, but he was he was unshaven and burly. And he's got this camera strapped across his shoulder, like holding it across his shoulders. And these cameras weigh about 80 pounds.

Adventure Voyages And Future Directors

Pete 24:10

They're huge. Ruth is behind him because she's going after her pet who has gotten loose. She had nicknamed him Houdini because he kept escaping his cage, but his real name was Churiki. It was a little spider monkey that she had acquired in Costa Rica. No, not Costa Rica. Sorry. Belize. So William Beebe says, This is the captain, this is this. And that's Ruth Rose. Schutzak turns around, but as he turns around, he beams her in the face by accident with his camera. Right. Gives her a black eye, just boom, knocks her out. He just goes, women. And walks off. Like, what? And that's Ernest B. Schutzak. Yeah. Over the and they hated each other for the first couple of weeks of this voyage. Yeah. Hated each other. And during that time, they went to Albemall Island where they witnessed and almost died in an actual volcanic explosion with poisonous gas, lava flows, and dead boobies. The birds. Come on, you sick ups. Well, like they literally were running from a lava flow and lava bombs. One lava bomb actually destroyed the movie camera. Yeah. Right next to his head. So it could have killed Erna. They also went to an island in the Cocos Islands where Ruth tested out William Beebe's diving helmet and discovered a real pirate skeleton with real pirate treasure. Yeah. And like it's insane. Yeah. And she wound up with a ruby that she used in her wedding ring. Wow. And uh during a hurricane, Cheriki almost went into the water and Ernest saved the monkey. And then Ruth made him a dinner as a thank you. And they actually got to know each other by actually, I don't know, talking. And at the end of the night, he looks at her and he goes, Say, I guess I love you. And they fell in love and they were married on the ship. Yeah. And they got to New York and they were met by Ernest Shouldsack's business partner, Marion C. Cooper. Yes. Marion C. Cooper and Ernest Shouldsack, you should know, would eventually become the directors of King Kong. Right. And they have more adventures that are just myriad of like there's crocodile attacks and elephant stampedes, and I'm I'm not joking. And a man-eating tiger named Mr. Crooked. It's insane. Eventually, Cooper becomes the head of the of production development at RKO Studios. So Cooper comes up with an idea where there was a series of movies that were being made at the time. Most and I'm just going to warn you who are listening at home, if you are overly sensitive to racial stereotyping, now's the time to fast forward a little bit. Yeah. But this is history, so I'm going to say it. There was a lot of movies that were based around racist depictions of African American men lusting after white women. Yeah. Thinly, thinly veiled in the form of gorilla pictures. Yes. Movies like Ngagi and White Gorilla and that kind of stuff. Yeah. Where basically a gorilla grabs a woman and takes her off to sexually assault her and stuff.

Kelly 27:10

Yeah, it's uncomfortable stuff.

Pete 27:11

It's very uncomfortable. I've seen them all because I've been researching this book, and you have to know the stuff. And I refuse to watch them again because they're just utter garbage. Yeah. But the one thing out of that that is important to know was a guy named Charlie Gamora, who was Filipino, who was a stunt man who learned that he can make more money because he didn't really look like any other actor, but he was a really good stunt man. He had worked with Yakima Kamut and Joe and Joe Bonomo. And he said, Look, I need a different gig. Well, he made a pretty bad monkey outfit, and he started being in some of these gorilla pictures in this monkey outfit. And he became one of Hollywood's first gorilla men. These professional actors who own their own gorilla suit. And if you need a monkey, like if you had a three Stooges movie and a gorilla pops out and starts chasing after Curly, it's probably Charlie Gamora. And while this is all happening RKO, there's a photographer named William Mortensen. Yeah. William Mortensen is famous for making these photos. And believe me, guys, who are listening, you're gonna go, where is Pete going with this? Trust me, William Mortensen was a photographer who made these concocted photographs of witches and devils and swammies and stuff that were very creative. Yeah. But he also took a lot of pictures with Charlie Gamora in his gorilla suit with naked women. Yeah. Because that's what's sold. Yeah. A lot of these movies and a lot of these photographs were mainly sold down in the Bible belt. Yeah. Very especially in below the Mason Dixon line. Yeah. I mean, it's racism, thinly veiled racism and re repressed sexuality. Yeah. So anyway, William Morenson took a lot of photographs of this very beautiful, pert, naked, blonde woman with a scorilla. Uh-huh. She was living with him at the time. Yeah. She was also 15 years old.

Kelly 29:01

Oh dear.

Pete 29:01

Her name was Faye Ray. Wow. And when her mom found out about it, it was this big public scandal. Yeah. Only one photograph survives of the tons that he had taken because That's probably for the best. Oh yeah. Mom, mom sued him. I I've read her autobiography. Faye Ray was trouble on a stick.

Kelly 29:20

Yeah, though, though I will I will say, have having read that Frank Capra book that I read recently, later in her life, she really got things together and she married the great screenwriter Robert Riskin. Yes, she did. Who wrote like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and stuff like that. And and they were a powerful couple and really, really great people. Yeah, he he's the turning point for Faye.

Pete 29:46

Yeah. But we're not there yet. No. So William Morton said so those photographs were viewed by none other and used as inspiration for. They inspired Marion C. Cooper to go. I know what we'll do. We're going to make the biggest film ever. We'll have a giant gorilla and it'll be great. This big monkey. It'll be a gorilla, a gorilla hunt. It'll be like seven feet tall. It'll be great. And it'll go after this beautiful blonde girl. We'll go into the jungle, be perfect. Make another gorilla picture. Cooper does something really malicious. He hires Ruth to work in the writing department, the story department. He says, Look, what I want you to do is come out on a weekend. I want you to walk around and take a look. Maybe there's I got to cut costs because we're losing money. We've got this guy named Walt Disney. He's making all these cartoons and we don't, and they cost a lot of money. We're distributing these cartoons for him, but that's our only moneymaker. We got to make more money.

Kelly 30:36

Yeah.

Pete 30:37

So we need you, we need to find a way how to cut costs. You're a great editor. You're actually a pretty good writer. Yeah. Let's see what you can do. And she goes, okay. So she started becoming a script doctor.

Kelly 30:46

Yeah.

Pete 30:46

And while wandering around on a lunch break, she walks into this room that has all this camera equipment, and there's this little Latino guy sitting down with Clay modeling a stegosaurus. And his name is Marcel Delgado. Marcel was the business partner of Willis O'Brien. Yeah. She had wandered into the miniatures department where they were filming test footage for a movie called Creation, which is a pile of garbage. It got made? No. They wrote the script. The only footage that actually exists is all of Willis O'Brien's model test footage. But the rest, like I've read the script. In the uh Peter Jackson version of King Kong and the big deluxe DVD set that they put out. Yeah. In the supplemental materials, they have a section where they describe what the story was. Oh. It's terrible. Yeah. It's like no wonder this didn't get made. Yeah. But the test footage was remarkable. O'Brien had developed the O'Brien process of stop motion animation. He's considered the father of stop motion animation. Oh, yeah. Actually. Willis O'Brien has two kids. One is blind and one is slightly crippled. And his wife, Hazel, is a raging alcoholic. Eventually, like they become friends. She's like, You're that guy, you're that guy from the MacAlpin Hotel.

Writing King Kong And Hollywood Politics

Pete 32:00

He's like, Oh, yeah, I remember you. And they become friends. And so when Cooper's like, How are we going to make this movie, this gorilla movie? And Ruth's like, I got an idea for a movie. Yeah. And she starts typing up a script called The Eighth Wonder, where she takes her experiences from the Arcturus adventure and she starts writing that as the Eighth Wonder. She starts putting herself in the role. She is basically Faye Ray's character and Darrow. Yeah. The character of Jack Driscoll is based heavily off of her husband, Ernest Schudsack. And of course, Carl Denham is based very heavily off of Marion C. Cooper.

Kelly 32:33

Yeah, it's a very meta movie, King Kong. Very meta. Is that it has this self-re-reflexivity to it, where it's it's like we went out and did these nature documentaries and we worked on them, and what if they turned out this way? Absolutely. Yeah. So Marion C.

Pete 32:51

Cooper says, no, he hears like, well, we got to write a script. And we're just like, I got a script. No, you know what we need to do? We need to hire somebody with panache. We need somebody with style. We're gonna get uh Edgar Wallace. And Edgar Wallace was like this British playwright who didn't write a word. Yeah. He put it off for six months. He was on the payroll, didn't type a word until Marion C. Cooper locked him up at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Yeah. But this was during February, they both caught pneumonia. Yeah. And Edgar Wallace dies. He only gets screen credit because it was as his contract. Does he get screen credit? I thought it was, I thought it was her and Bruce Cabot. No, Ruth, Ruth Rose, and then the following writer, a guy named James Creelman. James Creelman gets credit. Okay. But Creelman, his script like made the budget go right through the roof. Yeah. Like, no, no. Like Cooper's like, we're trying to save money, dude. Yeah. And in order to save money, they worked on a double production where they double cast, they use the exact same sets for another film that they filmed on alternating days. Yeah. So one day you're filming King Kong, the next you'd be filming the most dangerous game. Yeah. All the jungles, they even have the log that King Kong throws the sailors off of. Yeah. It's in the movie, The Most Dangerous Game. It's King, it's the King Kong set. Yeah. Like they reused the castle set from Dracula as the background for the parents' house with all the heads on the wall and stuff. And but Creelman became the main writer on Most Dangerous Game. He's like, get away from King Kong and come up with it. And finally, finally, Ruth gets her shot. Yeah. And she becomes the writer on King Kong.

Speaker 1 34:24

Yeah.

Pete 34:25

And she helps Willis O'Brien. There's a whole bunch of other things that happened, but the main crux of it is that um she helps Willis O'Brien get his deadlines done. She stays on top of it. She collaborates with, I was about to say Elmo Lincoln, that's Tarzan. Yeah. Um, Noble Johnson, who's an African-American actor who was a childhood friend of Lon Chaney Sr. Oh, interesting. And hated the fact that so many white actors were going blackface, so he used to do the opposite. He used to audition for roles in Whiteface and get the roles. He was that good of an actor. And he and his brother started the first African American motion picture company for and by black people, the Lincoln Film Association. Yeah. And they made like three or four movies. It was because of him and Ruth Rose's relationship with him that Noble Johnson was actually able to negotiate comparable pay for all the African American Native actors to have the same rate as white actors. Yeah. Which is a bit, I mean, it's it's like because Cooper wanted to use a bunch of white actors and blackface, and like, and of course, like Johnson's like sometimes. Oh, what do you mean sometimes? This guy's a major, major jerk. And I only know this from your book. But Johnson, but Johnson's like, dude, I have a movie company with a ton of extras, and they're all, and I've got a whole bunch of dancing. Let's get dancers in here for real people. Yeah. So he got a bunch of African American actors real work. Yeah. So and he and Noble Johnson plays the chief in that film.

Kelly 36:01

Yeah. And and I just want to pause for a second and because we've talked about this before, and obviously we run up against it here. We recognize there's racial problems. With with movies like King Kong. Yes. And I I like to look at these things by saying, hey, this is a a great film, and it has significant racial problems that we shouldn't we should never repeat and we should learn from. Yeah. I like to I think both of those things can be held at the same time. They must be. Yeah. Yeah. King Kong's a really great example of that. Like when you watch it, it is truly a masterpiece and it has some problems.

Pete 36:39

It's got some problems. I mean, the very much the issue of once again, I mean, it's another gorilla picture. For sure. It starts off. Here's here's the interesting thing, though. Yeah. It starts off as Marion C. Cooper's movie. When you watch it, you can tell when the sh the tone shifts. Yeah. Where Marion, where Marion C. Cooper's totally in charge of it. Yeah. Because it's very much a gorilla picture of giant black man after white woman trope. Right.

Kelly 37:05

Yeah.

Pete 37:06

And then it changes after the T-Rex fight in King Kong. And then Kong is the hero of that movie. You suddenly realize it's not Anne, it's not Driscoll, it's it's none of the sailors. They're just the instigators and the provocateurs.

Kelly 37:24

Kong is the hero of the story. And we're gonna we're gonna see this interesting switch back and forth as we move through the history of Kong, even within the theme park rides, that Kong is sometimes the good guy and sometimes the bad guy. And it is unclear what you're gonna get. So, little note about the T-Rex fight.

Pete 37:47

Yes. The first kaiju fight, by the way, in film. Yeah. So for all you kaiju fans, this is where it all comes from. Yeah. While they were filming that, Willis O'Brien was going through quite a problem. He had a very public divorce. Yeah, he was going through a divorce and a custody battle. And while they were filming the T-Rex fight, his wife Hazel got custody of both the boys. And she was suffering from tuberculosis and a raging alcoholic and a vocally and physically abusive mother. And so O'Brien's like, what are you doing? But the courts tended to side with women at this time when it came to custody like this. So he had to kind of give in. Unfortunately, the day he found out was the wrongest possible day that Marion C. Cooper stride into the miniatures department and start yelling at Willis O'Brien. Yeah. Where he basically said, like, where's that O'Brien? You know, O'Brien, these two, you've got the T-Rex and Kong, they look like a pair of pansies like dancing around each other. This is this is not a fight. This is ridiculous. Yeah. You know, I'll show you how to fight. And like Ruth is like, uh, Marion, don't coop, don't do that. Go. And Marcel like puts his hand on her shoulder and goes, No, no, let's see what happens. Yeah. Because Marcel knew something that Ruth didn't. Yeah. Willis O'Brien used to be a prize fighter. Yeah. It is rumored he knocked out Jack London one time at a prize fight in Oakland. Cooper starts like shadow boxing with him and takes a swing and actually lands a punch on O'Brien. Yeah. Bad idea. Because O'Brien goes, Oh, okay. All right. You want to fight? I'll show you a fight. And they start really going for it. They're throwing each other into furniture. They're beating each other up. One of the models of the Starakosaurus got damaged in the fight until finally O'Brien had managed to knock Cooper down and started punching him furiously in the face, going, This is what you've done. You've taken him away from me. You've taken away, like taking his rage against his wife out on Coop. Yeah. And Schudsak comes in and goes, God, what's happening? Oh my God. Pulls O'Brien off of Cooper. Cooper's on the floor, bloodied. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody's like watching his Cooper is just sitting there, catching his breath. And Shouldsack's like, Coop, you all right? And he turns over and he spits out a tooth. Blood just and he looks over O'Brien and he goes, make it more like that, and we're good. And he walked off.

Kelly 40:11

Okay. And it changed the relationship after that. Absolutely. And we're and and O'Brien's gonna stick with us through this for a little bit because O'Brien actually ties into Universal's relationship with the the Kong franchise.

Pete 40:27

He does interact with Ruth again on Son of Kong, which was made the same year as King Kong. Yeah. They filmed it in six months, and it's a pile of garbage. It's not good. It's really bad. And Ruth just kind of goes away and raises her son.

Rights Fights To Toho And Universal

Kelly 40:52

Belowdown on the Plus Up is a Boardwalk Times podcast. At Boardwalk Times.net, you'll find some of the most well-considered and insightful writing about the Walt Disney Company, Disney history, and the universe of theme parks available anywhere. Come join us at BoardwalkTimes.net. The idea is that there is a giant Frankenstein that King Kong returns to battle. So big battle between King Kong and this giant Frankenstein creature. And Willis O'Brien thinks that this is gonna sell. So he he starts sketching out the story, starts mocking up sketches, and he gives it to John Beck, who says, Yeah, I think this maybe has some legs. So they start shopping it around. And they try to shop it to Arkeo, they try to shop it to Paramount, try to shop it to Universal, nobody's biting. Okay. So it starts to kind of die out. And John Beck, without talking to O'Brien, takes the idea to Toho Studios in Japan. No. Yeah. Oh my god. And Toho's interested. Now there's real questions at this point about who actually has the rights to King Kong. Right. R RKO famously didn't bother to renew them. Oh my god. But there was something that the Library of Congress found a little bit later, suggested that maybe they had done enough, but it's not clear. Oh, geez. So Beck goes and sells this idea.

Pete 42:55

By the way, real quick, the title of the film is King Kong versus Prometheus. It becomes King Kong vs. Prometheus. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kelly 43:03

Yeah. So it starts off as King Kong versus Frankenstein, then it becomes King Kong versus Prometheus. Right. And then it gets sold to Toho, the creators of Godzilla. Yep. And they buy it. But Willis is left out of the deal. So he he has he has absolutely been screwed here. Toho takes it and says, well, not so sure about the giant Frankenstein. Which is interesting because later they do make a giant Frankenstein. Yes, they do.

Pete 43:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Which is, oh my God. Frankenstein versus Baguran.

Kelly 43:37

Yes, it was. Yeah. But we've got Ishiro Honda, the director of the original Godzilla film, who's interested in making King Kong versus Godzilla. So since you've given us this outline of King Kong fighting another giant monster, we'll assume that you've given us the rights to that. Oh my God. And Beck says, that's great. I'm going to bring Universal in, we're going to found Universal International, and King Kong vs. Godzilla becomes the first Toho Universal International co-production.

Pete 44:11

To quote the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys, isn't it the fact that it's Universal International Make Universal Make It International?

Kelly 44:18

Yes. Anyway. So it's King Kong vs. Godzilla is a pretty mediocre film. Yeah. Even with the background of having Honda involved in it, it it's not very good. O'Brien starts to seriously decline after this. Like he's just crushed. He's not getting much work. This one idea that he had that he thought was good got stolen from him and made into a crappy movie. I've got a great quote from uh Marion C. Cooper, who was still around when this was made.

Pete 44:47

What he's famous for as a producer? This is Cinerama.

Kelly 44:51

Oh yeah.

Pete 44:52

That's Marion C. Cooper. That was his last big project. Anyway, go ahead.

Kelly 44:56

So they asked Marion C. Cooper about like the later Kong, and he said, I was indignant when some Japanese company made a belittling thing to a creative mind called King Kong versus Godzilla. I believe they even stooped so low as to use a man in a gorilla suit, which I've spoken out against so often in the early days of King Kong.

Pete 45:16

Which, by the way, I'm I'm gonna call I'm gonna call I'm gonna call absolute BS on that because the first person he called was Charlie Gamora. Anyway, go ahead.

Kelly 45:27

So the movie comes out, it does all right. I mean, it it makes some money. It gets released in the US and in Japan uh pretty close to simultaneously. They have slightly different edits, but it is a myth that they have different endings. Yeah. They do not, they they both end the exact same way. Yep. So then Honda makes a sequel uh called King Kong Escapes. Right. Also bad.

Pete 45:50

Oh yeah. Isn't that the one with Mecha Godzilla or something like that?

Kelly 45:53

I think it is, yeah.

Pete 45:54

Well, yeah. He's he actually has like a spinning light on the top of his head or something. That's so terrible. They're bad.

Kelly 46:01

But the reason this is significant, not only because it's the the uh decline of Willis O'Brien, who who dies a couple of years after King Kong vs. Godzilla comes out. I'm just despondent. Um but it's also interesting because at this point, Universal thinks that they have some sort of rights to King Kong. And and and there's there's some there's some reason to that. Sure. Like they've they've made these two co-productions with Toho that have King Kong in it. Right. They believe that there have been some verbal agreements with RKO who are still uh asserting their rights even though it's pretty tenuous. Right. And so Universal decides in the late 70s, and not late 70s, in like 1974, they're gonna make a new King Kong movie. Okay. But at the same time, Paramount Pictures and Dino De Laurentis are negotiating with RKO for the rights to make a new King Kong picture. Oh my god. So you know Hollywood being Hollywood, they all sue each other. Right. They they sue like crazy for a couple of years, eventually Paramount and De Laurentis win. And so the deal but it's not a it's not a like absolute win. It is they get to make their movie first, and then 18 months later, Universal can make a Kong movie. That's the deal.

Pete 47:31

Okay. Can I can I make a quick little last-minute little thing about Willis O'Brien here? So now we're on this timeline that take us into the 70s. Yeah. First off, Willis O'Brien died in 1962. Yep. Despondent, totally different. The year after King Kong vs. Godzilla comes out. Yep. Yep. And what's really wild is his last two films. One is a remake of Journey to the Center of the Earth. Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, which features dinosaurs. I kind of remember that. I kind of liked it. Yeah. Um in this version, however, instead of using stop motion photography, the production was so cheap he was forced to buying iguanas at a local pet store and wing fins on them, flashbording style. It was like, really? You hired Willis O'Brien for that? The last piece of stop motion animation that Willis O'Brien ever did was for Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World. Yeah. At the very end, you've got all the characters on top of a very tall fire ladder and it's swinging around madly. That's animated by Willis O'Brien. Yeah. And almost it almost is like a symbol where it spins around then smashes down. It's like that's that's the end of Willis O'Brien.

Kelly 48:40

Yeah. So Oh, bless him. What a what a great man. It is. So De Laurentis

The 1976 Film And Rick Baker

Kelly 48:45

made his huge, big budget 1976 King Kong film of directed by John Gillerman. Yeah. Written by Lorenzo Semple.

unknown 48:58

Wow.

Kelly 48:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lorenzo Semple. I forgot he wrote. Yeah. And starring Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lang.

unknown 49:06

Yep.

Kelly 49:06

And Charles Groden. And Charles Grode. Don't forget a very irate Charles Groden. Yeah, it's really mediocre. Like I I I wanted to be better, but it's just not. Um, they had obvious production problems. As as Pete pointed out to me earlier, they built the largest animatronic in history. It was a full-size con. Yeah. And you see about six seconds of it. Yeah, it's terrible. Because it doesn't work.

Pete 49:30

It's so bad. They did make they did have some breakthroughs with these gigantic mechanical hands. Yeah. That apparently were all hydraulic, and Jessica Lang almost got killed by them a couple of times because they'd knock her over because they're moved on forklifts. Yeah. The photographs of these things, they're insane. Yeah. And the production, yeah, and the movie's terrible. Yeah, it's just all wrong. While they were in production, in pre-production for the film, Rick got a call from a young filmmaker, young foul mouth filmmaker named John Landis, who wanted him to help him build a suit for this anthropo anthropoid character called Schlock. That's how you have to say it. Schluck! Oh, yeah. And the check out the trailer, folks, on YouTube. Schlock! You have to say it like that. But anyway, John Landis was the schl- uh Schlock Tropas. And if you don't know who John Landis is, he would go on to direct Animal House, the Blues Brothers, and American Werewolf in London that Rick Baker would win an Oscar for for his uh effects. Yeah. But it was with his schlock outfit and his gorilla suit that he made for Bob Burns in his Halloween show that he got the job to make the suit for. And because they didn't have enough money to hire an actor, Rick just built the suit to fit him. Yeah. So Rick Baker himself plays King Kong.

Kelly 50:50

Yeah. Yeah. In the 76 film. In in like the most big budget King Kong film to date, and they got a guy in a gorilla suit. Yeah. It's just, it doesn't work. But in if for Universal, uh it's they've kind of dodged a bullet here. Yeah. Like what they see happen is this huge budget King Kong film flops. So even though they're allowed to make another Kong film in 18 months, they don't. What they do instead is a couple of years later they start talking about making a theme park attraction.

Pete 51:25

Exactly. And that's by the way, it wasn't as big of a flop as many people think. Yeah. It was enough for Universal to go, no. It was a $20 million budget, but it made 90 million international. Yeah. But and that was enough for the people who are behind the theme parks, including our old buddy Bob Gerr. Bob Gerr, but also Jay Stein. Jay Stein. Jay Bang, man. Jay Stein and Bob Gerr to

Building The Hollywood King Kong Encounter

Pete 51:50

go, let's make there's enough people who are interested in King Kong still.

Kelly 51:53

They get together in like 81, 82, and they start talking about that they want to put Kong in the tour. Right. And at that point, so mostly what Universal is is like the tour and some places you can stop and walk around and look at things. Right. So this was the question was what that were they gonna do with Kong. And the initial idea was that they were gonna have a big show. And it was gonna be kind of like uh this is both happens in both the 33 film and in the 76 film. Kong is is chained up on stage and gets loose. Right. Right. That's gonna be the show, and you're gonna just watch it. But that idea doesn't have a jay bang.

Pete 52:36

No, it doesn't have a jay bang.

Kelly 52:38

J-stein did not feel there was a jaybang there. Yep. There's no moment of absolute exhilaration. Though I will say, if you've ever sat in the sideshow and watched the woman turning into gorilla strobe light thing when she breaks out and charges the audience, it's a it's a it's a jay bang, man.

Pete 52:58

If you've never, if you've by the way, what what Kelly's talking about, if you want to actually see what that effect looks like, yeah, watch Diamonds Are Forever. That's right, it's in there. It's in there when Bond, for some reason, is in Circus Circus in Las Vegas. And they take they slow down the whole story just to show off this effect. But for those of us who are into this sort of thing, it's like, thank God they stopped it. They got this piece of ephemera in this movie. Yeah, yeah.

Kelly 53:23

And I I've seen it in person when I was growing up, the the Texas State Fair used to still have sideshows. Yep. Uh, for better or for worse. And uh and I so I saw it happen once, and it's it's thrilling and terrifying.

Pete 53:37

The gorilla, the girl to a gorilla effect, which relies upon Pepper's ghost illusions. Yeah. So there you go. Yeah. And also remember, when you're in Hollywood, go to Universal Studios, ask for Babs.

unknown 53:50

Ask for Babs.

Kelly 53:54

So Stein decided that this stage show was not what he wanted. So he went to a really odd guy to ask to flesh this out. He went to an incredibly famous art director named Henry Bumstead. Now, Henry Bumstead did In relation to Dagwood? No, no sandwiches. Henry Bumstead did the art director The Furies. He did Vertigo To Kill a Mockingbird. Wow. He had a long-term relationship with Clint Eastwood and did stuff like Unforgiven. Wow. He was a very, very talented art director. Yeah. And Bumstead came up with the idea of why don't we put Kong in the tram tour? Nice. So you're not going to get off the tram and see a Kong show. The tram is going to run into Kong.

Pete 54:45

That's cool. That makes me actually get like chills thinking about that again. I was like, yeah, that is actually a great idea.

Kelly 54:52

Yeah. And so he kind of passes that, and we're going to hear about Bumpstead again a little bit later, but he passes the idea on Stein loves it. Stein hires Bob Gurr's new company, Sequoia Creative. So Gurr's gotten a little bit fed up with Disney in the 70s and has decided he's going to go on his own, which is probably a good move. You know what else Sequoia Creative did? Huh. They did the giant snake in Conan, the Conan State Show. Oh, nice. They did the animated light spiders for the Jackson's Victory Tour. Okay. Okay, that was just the thing I could think about.

Pete 55:30

Can you feel it? Can you feel it?

Kelly 55:32

But so Bob Gerr's company and uh another guy that we hear a lot about in Universal, Gary Goddard, start working to put a story together. So the story that they they come up with is that Kong now is going to the tram's gonna go into an area where they're in a simulation of New York, and Kong is going to pop up in front of the bridge and start shaking the tram. Eventually they're like, well, maybe you should shake the bridge. That makes a little more sense. So that's what they did. So Gurr, to sell this idea to Stein to say, hey, this is how it's gonna work, he builds a 30-foot-tall painted Kong and puts it on top of the animation production building in Arieta, California, just to show Stein how impressive it is. Just builds it and puts it on top of a building. Wow. Stein has the weirdest reaction to this, and I think it's hilarious. He says, it's great, it's exciting. Let's try a test with just the legs.

Pete 56:42

Jay, is there something you want to tell us? He's got a monkey foot fetish or something. Like, what is going on here?

Kelly 56:49

Gurr convinces him that maybe they should test with a head.

Pete 56:54

Well, using Kong as a head for scale and so forth is not a new thing. They actually built a fake replica head to take around to promote the movie. Yeah. There's famous shots of that. Yeah. My father has a connection to that.

Kelly 57:05

Oh, yeah.

Pete 57:06

Right around my father graduated the same year from high school that uh Will O'Brien passed away from James Monroe High School down in Sepulveda, California for a school prank. One of his buddies in high school actually, his dad owned what was left of that giant King Kong head from the 30s promotional. So they grabbed it and they put it on top of the administration building as a prank. So everybody pulls up and there's King Kong atop a James Monroe High. Wow. And so that's that's my family's connection to the King Kong head of that era. But yeah, that's that's a true story. Uh but yeah, I mean, Jay Stein wanting to see the feet.

Kelly 57:50

Yeah. Why? Why? Almost I can't think of any scenario where you could really even see the legs that much. Right.

Pete 57:58

Um, so and so I want him, I want people to feel like he's gonna step on you. I guess.

Kelly 58:05

Maybe anyway, Gur Gur talks him into the head. Thank God. They work for a while. The first head doesn't quite work out, the actuators can't quite move things well enough. Gur tries again. They they try a whole bunch of different uh skins. And eventually he ends up with the this fairly light skin on the head with these sort of air cylinder actuators. Uh and and they start and it works. And suddenly the Kong head is terrifying.

Pete 58:34

And it's a it's I mean, this is again a testament to Bob Gerr and his genius. I'm looking at it right now. There's a model that he made of the counterbalance mechanism.

Kelly 58:44

Yeah, I love that use for this. I think it's really neat. So what the reason he made that, there's two like counterbalance weights on the bottom of the frame. The reason he made that was so that if anything failed, Kong would fail upwards. Right? The counterbalance weights would go down and lift the rest of his frame up, and he he would stop until the next instruction came. Right. That's so he would not fall on anything.

Pete 59:08

Yep. Um, because he's big. It's it's quite I guess he would sneak people onto like Kong's body and they would take rides on it and stuff like that and swing on it and stuff like that.

Kelly 59:16

Yeah, there'd be there'd be like like nine people in the Kong head. Right. Yeah while the tram's going by. Yes. And this was this was not just when they were testing, this was after it opened. They would do it. Yeah. He thought it was great. So good. And also talking about testing the different materials, you can find a video of one of the early hand tests for Bob. They were trying a new kind of plastic, it wasn't working out, and they said, Well, it's gonna cost a lot for us to dump this. Why don't you take it home, Bob? So so Bob Gurr to this day has one of the original test Kong hands, and the plastic is disintegrating. Yeah. So it's melting into his floor. So the Kong hand is now a permanently affixed to his to Bob Gurr's carpet in his house.

Pete 1:00:11

I'm looking at it right now. It looks like Kong has been through an oil slick. It's gross.

Kelly 1:00:16

It's like even if you wanted to get rid of it, there's no chance. And Bob just, yeah, well, it's melting in my floor. The head of Kong was about 10 feet. Yeah. And one you know, one of the Just the head. Just the head. Just the head. Right. Yeah. And one of the rules of animatronics is that you don't want people to get a close-up look. But that ain't the rule with Jay Stein. No. Jay Stein, you're gonna be right up against this thing. So they had to really work at building actuators. There's like 29 different computer motions just in the head. Oh. They had it was so close that they had to hand attach every whisker so it would look right. I mean, the uh the the detail is incredible. It was beautiful. He had 32 separate teeth. He was beautiful and terrifying.

Pete 1:01:07

He really was. I remember seeing this in person, and he was gorgeous and terrifying. It's like, wow, they this is this is actually scary.

Kelly 1:01:18

Yeah, and so one of the interesting things that they do in this attraction, so you're on the tram ride, you've all done the tram ride.

Pete 1:01:25

Ask for Babs.

Kelly 1:01:26

Ask for Babs. So you go into this town soundstage, and you're supposedly going to New York City via the Brooklyn Bridge. You pass a bunch of tenements where something seems to have gone wrong. Um you're seeing like news reports and windows from these tenement buildings that's like Kong is rampaging the city.

Pete 1:01:46

I see a tram down there.

Kelly 1:01:48

Wait a second, and she pulls out a megaphone, like, you down there!

Speaker 2 1:01:52

You have to get away from King Kong.

Kelly 1:01:55

As they move forward, like you're seeing like fire plugs have been unearthed, and there's steam and water shooting everywhere, and things are on fire. Then at a certain point, a the fuselage of a helicopter, which was an actual helicopter, like full-size helicopter. Yeah, it was given to them by a Vietnam vet that worked at Universal, and it was a CIA spy copter. Holy cow. So they just took the innards out and put it on that crane, and the the copter kind of drops towards your tram. Uh, you know, if you watch it, the fire goes off.

Pete 1:02:27

Yeah. Yeah. You actually see like there's a silhouette of a helicopter because the situation's everywhere, and you actually see this paw swipe it. Yeah. And boom, and it hits it and all of a sudden down comes this helicopter. It is so in flames. Yeah, with Kong just growling away in the background there. It's like, oh my God, this is terrifying.

Kelly 1:02:46

And then you got to the Brooklyn Bridge, and Kong kind of raised up. His hands are on the cables of the bridge, and he starts shaking the bridge with you on it. Oh, yeah. And the one thing that they did that I thought was so brilliant was when the tram lands on the bridge, you land on this sort of Teflon plate that slides. Why Teflon?

Pete 1:03:10

Because it slides. So the wheels are actually not moving or the or the Teflon is moving?

Kelly 1:03:16

So the wheels are on the Teflon and the Teflon's sliding.

Pete 1:03:20

Spreading forever, chemicals, DuPont style. That's right. Okay, okay, go ahead.

Kelly 1:03:25

So when the when the Kong appears to be shaking the bridge, and what's actually happening is the bridge is shaking and Kong's just attached to the wires. Yeah. The Teflon slides suddenly back. And it it was startling. Oh yeah.

Pete 1:03:41

It really was like it would, whoa, that's not good. Oh, but going right towards him. Oh my God. And then I love the tram would pull forward for the next car to get wiggled around. Yeah, right. And then it would pull forward a little bit more and wiggle them and pull forward. Jeez, what you get the and like the tour guide, Babs, right, would basically say, like, you know, make sure that you gotta get the you gotta get the tram. Start it up again. Start hold on a second, folks. We're having some problems with the clutch.

Kelly 1:04:06

Like and it and the the whole thing was a tremendous hit. People loved it. Oh, and banana breath.

Pete 1:04:16

The infamous banana breath, which was a major jaybang. Major Jay Bang. Because I want I want to smell bananas.

Kelly 1:04:23

Yeah. Well, and and Jay was arguing that he wanted it to smell bad, like garbage. Yeah. And they kept coming back to, no, Jay, you don't you don't want to do that.

Pete 1:04:32

Oh, come on.

Kelly 1:04:34

You know. And finally they got a banana essence smell in the sort of air impeller. Yep. So that it would shoot very directly at at the audience. So you know it wouldn't spread throughout the whole uh building.

Pete 1:04:46

It smells like uh banana-flavored uh laffy taffy.

Kelly 1:04:49

That's right.

Pete 1:04:50

If you want to know what that what that smells. So grab a stick of laffy taffy, banana flavor, and smell it. That's what King Kong's breath would smell like in attraction. Right. By the way, the actress who was the news reporter

Spielberg’s Visit And The 2008 Fire

Pete 1:05:00

on the helicopter who gets killed, not really, the actress character gets killed, but the actress survives, is Sherry J. Wilson. She was a regular on Walker, Texas Ranger. All right. So there you go.

Kelly 1:05:14

But so and it's it's was just a great attraction. When they installed it, they uh it was just it was kind of a huge hit. It was a massive hit. Yeah. And um they like they they actually were increasing their audience numbers by a percentage larger than what Disney was increasing their audience numbers. I mean, just a really big thing.

Pete 1:05:37

Aaron Ross Powell A lot of people within the theme park industry actually credit this version of what eventually would be nicknamed confrontation. That's the official title from Florida. Yeah. Florida version.

Kelly 1:05:49

And I and you hear people also refer to this one as confrontation sometimes, and I think they might have used it in some ads. Yeah. But it's really officially the King Kong encounter. Yes.

Pete 1:06:00

So the King Kong encounter in the theme park industry is widely agreed upon as being a big turning point for Universal Studios. Yes. Like like McKelly just said with numbers, but also the approach of telling a story with big spectacle with an audience on their tram tour.

Kelly 1:06:17

Yeah, and it it keyed another thing to happen. When they were still working on it, uh Universal had been courting Steven Spielberg for a while. Yeah. To get him to work on stuff. And he was interested. Uh, but he had this kind of he was a little bit hands-off. Yeah. But he ends up going to visit where they're working with Kong, and he finds that one of the guys that's working on it is this guy, Peter Alexander, who's kind of a theme park legend. He was with Imagineering, he he worked at Universal for a long time. He ran uh the Totally Fun Company, which I think is still around, still doing stuff. And he was working on it. And Spielberg got there and saw him and was like, wait a minute, wasn't I best man at your wedding? What? And it turns out that, yes, he was. They just hadn't seen each other for six years. Oh my god. And he was like, oh my God, it's you. And and and so Alexander was like, You want me to show you put Kong through his paces? You want to see what he does? And Spielberg's like, yeah. And so he shows Spielberg, Spielberg immediately, because he Spielberg and Lucas, George Lucas, have been having kind of testy exchanges. They love each other. But but Lucas was showing off things like Star Tours. Right. And telling Spielberg that he was making a mistake to get hooked up with Universal. Uh-huh. So Spielberg sees Kong and says, okay, you guys know what you're doing. Let's see what you can do with Back to the Future. Uh-huh. So that comes from this. So the whole like Spielberg Universal thing, it existed before, but it launches here. And so you get the ET ride, you get Back to the Future, eventually you get Jurassic Park. All of that starts because Spielberg is thrilled watching Kong. Wild. Yeah. Interestingly, Spielberg never rode the Kong attraction in Florida, which is the park he's most involved in. Uh-huh. Because Steven Spielberg is afraid of heights. I had no idea. Yeah. He can't. He he's he never has done the drop in the Jurassic Park ride.

Pete 1:08:32

What a this is wait a second, that doesn't square up for me. Because is it no, you're right. I'm sorry. It was Lucas that ran across the rope bridge in Temple of Doom. That's right. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 1:08:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what's interesting? In 70 1976, also when it came out?

Pete 1:08:48

Yeah. Jaws. Right. Right, along with King Kong, there was actually an issue of Famous Monsters that has this great painting that a lot of people went, oh my God, I wish that was real. Right. It's a picture of Jaws attack about to chomp this woman in the water, but King Kong is hanging on to his tail. Uh-huh. And it covers the Ape versus Jaws. Yeah. You know, shark versus ape or something like that. And it's a very obviously a whole thing devoted to the King Kong movie and Jaws. Yeah. But there was another movie that came out not long after both of those that combined them. It's called APE. Okay. Ape. Yeah. And in parentheses, not to be confused with King Kong. Yeah. Because like Universal sue them like going. No. But the poster, it looks like a promotional poster for Universal Studios because it looks like this King Kong character. And it's actually based off of an old 1933 King Kong movie poster of Kong throttling a great white shark and wrestling with a giant Boa constrictor while standing on the wreckage of the Poseidon. It's insane. It's a Jack Harris movie. Defy the jaws of a giant shark, destroy a teeming city, demolish an ocean liner, vanquish monster reptile, ape. Not to be confused with King Kong. That's the funniest thing about it. Yeah, that's that is the best thing about it. And it was released in 3D.

Speaker 9 1:10:44

Miami Vice and King Kong, a dynamite duo at the Universal Studios Tour.

Kelly 1:10:49

When the King Kong encounter on the tram ride in Hollywood opens up, it's such a huge hit. One Sidney Scheinberg, who was, you know, occasional president, occasional CEO of Universal, Major Mentor to Spielberg. Yeah, major mentor to Spielberg. He takes out a full page ad in the Orlando Sentinel. So this is this isn't Hollywood, but he takes out a full page ad in the Orlando Sentinel with Kong's face that says, plan on seeing us in Florida one day. Wow. Which is totally just a swipe at Eisner. It's like we're coming. Oh my. Wow. And so it's it's a huge hit. It lasts for a long time. People love it. And then something real bad happens. 2008, the Universal Studios Fire. Yeah. It seems like the Universal Studios fire in 2008 started because a workman was trying to heat up some of his tiles that he was going to put on a building, so heat them up to make them softer.

Pete 1:11:56

Right.

Kelly 1:11:56

Um, and then walked away before they'd cooled completely and the fire started. It knocked out about three acres of the back lot, which doesn't sound like much, but it was a lot of warehouses there.

Speaker 7 1:12:08

Yeah.

Kelly 1:12:08

Took out a whole bunch of video and film and took out the Kong attraction completely. Now, most of the video and film, if not all, were it's it's a little unclear there was backups elsewhere. So that was fine. There has been an ongoing controversy about the audio masters that were held in those warehouses.

Pete 1:12:32

Oh no.

Kelly 1:12:33

Initially, Universal said none of those were affected. Later, it was found that some of them were. There were estimates up to like 50,000 separate audio masters might have been destroyed without backup. Oh. But it's very unclear. Like the New York Times wrote a long story about it, suggesting that the losses were really huge. Universal came back and said, this is just not true. Anything that we lost, we had copies of. A lot of artists came in and said either like we thought we had lost our stuff, but we now realize that we haven't. Okay. And some are like, no, we think our masters are gone. Really, really unclear. There were lawsuits, but some. Yeah. And for sure, we lost the King Kong attraction. That was the warehouse that burned.

Pete 1:13:28

And another thing about fire in King Kong at the RKO lot, which is uh now the Paramount Lot, they used to have this massive set, which was uh the giant gates of Skull Island. Yeah. Did you know what those were burned down for? Gone with the wind. Oh they're burned down to show the burning of it of Atlanta. Yeah. There's a shot where Gable has put the cover over the horse's head and they're running, and as they're running, you can clearly, clearly see the gates of Kong burning down behind them and falling. Wow. It is such a heartbreaking moment. And you suddenly realize how big that set really was. Yeah. And it's like, oh, it is such a loss. Yeah. It's interesting how Kong is associated a lot with big fire. With things being burned down. Yeah. Yeah.

Kelly 1:14:18

That ends in 2008. It ends up getting replaced in Hollywood with a 3D attraction that's based more on the Peter Jackson film of the time. Kong 360 3D. Yeah, and and it was fine. I mean, it is fine. It continues now. It's a screen attraction. It's a clever one, but it's not the same.

Pete 1:14:40

No.

Kelly 1:14:41

There's certainly no giant physical ape like jump like rattle. There's no banana.

Pete 1:14:47

Yeah. There's no banana breath. No banana breath. There's no J Bang to it, to be really honest. Right. No offense to the people who worked on that, but honestly, I'm really not a fan of the three I I like the Peter Jackson Kong. I do too.

Kelly 1:14:59

I I think it's actually a lot more fun than people give it credit for.

Pete 1:15:01

I agree. Yeah. But I do not like uh 360 for many, many reasons.

Florida’s Kongfrontation And Early Failures

Kelly 1:15:07

So so but we'll roll back a little bit to the opening of Universal Studios Florida. Yeah, baby. So in Confrontation. In 1987, Peter Alexander and uh Bob Ward, who's uh another designer, he worked with Disney. He actually worked with Raleigh Crump on Circus World. Um and he was one of the master planners of Universal Orlando. Okay. Ward and Peter Alexander meet at a cafe in Sherman Oaks and say, what are we going to do about Kong in Florida? Because they realized that they cannot open that park without a Kong. It's like trying to open Disney World without a Pirates of the Caribbean. Bad idea. Right. So they come up with this idea that you are going to be on the aerial tram to Roosevelt Island, which is a real thing. And that Kong is going to grab your tram, your your car, it's like a gondola and throw it. Oh jeez. So this is what they want to do. Um and then his his idea is that it'll be a longer setup because they've realized like we're not going to do this as a tram tour, we're going to do it as a separate attraction. So it's a little longer. Okay. So there's this whole setup where they're building New York and similar sort of stuff. The Hollywood one, like there's a path of destruction that Kong has has rent through New York. But this one's going to have two Kongs. What? Two Kongs? Two Kongs. Sorry, that's Rodan.

Speaker 7 1:16:42

What, two Rodan?

Kelly 1:16:43

Anyway. You go through New York, things are blowing up, similar sort of thing. You run into the first Kong that you get fairly close to, actually, and and a helicopter kind of shoots at him and he he backs off from you. Okay. You think you're free, but then you're going across the gondola to Roosevelt Island, which for some reason they're evacuating people to Roosevelt Island. I don't know why, because it's like three by three miles. It's New York.

Pete 1:17:13

What can he explain? What's to explain? Just go with it. It's designed by guys from California. What do they know about New York?

Kelly 1:17:19

And in the original plan, Kong's gonna pop up. He's gonna grab that car and throw it down, and there's gonna be a drop. Wow. And it's gonna be terrifying. But they decide we should kind of figure out how much people are comfortable with being dropped. Let's rig up something. We'll put someone in a harness and free fall them and stop them and see what that's like. And no one wants to do it, so Peter Alexander himself says, I'll do it. Okay. So they drop him and then they kind of lose control a little bit. Oh no. And suddenly stop him about three feet from the floor. That makes me twitch on so many levels. Two hernia operations later. Oh God. I'm not exaggerating. Two hernia operations later, they decide that this should not be a free-fall ride. No. So they they go back in and say, How about we just have him kind of shake it down a little bit?

Pete 1:18:25

That's a better idea.

Kelly 1:18:28

And so as they're building this, remember Henry Bumstead we talked about earlier? Yeah. So this time they call him back and they say, why don't you just design the whole thing? So he does. Henry Bumstead designs the whole attraction. You know, he's he's got to put Manhattan and a bridge to Roosevelt Island and a gondola in this like six-story warehouse.

Pete 1:18:51

Makes you wonder if they were like, let's make it like Peter Pan, only scary.

Kelly 1:18:55

A little bit. Yeah. It kind of has that feel. Yeah. And he's using a ton of forced perspective. Yeah. Also, he's using a ton of uh Jarrett's Black Valour. Oh, wow. Yeah. Which That's expensive stuff. It's expensive, but it's good if you want to hide stuff. That's true. And so and and along the way, they're they so once they kind of have the story knocked out, they have two companies make proposals for the ride vehicles. And one is Intamin and one is Arrow. And Intamin tries to do a ride vehicle that's actually on wires. And Arrow creates a w ride vehicle that's on sort of an accordion base. Huh. Okay. Now, interestingly enough, this is pretty similar to kind of how the Indiana Jones vehicles work. Mm-hmm. Like like a little bit like how Star Tours works. A little bit like how Star Tours works too. They end up going with Arrow, and that's that's the one they put in. Okay. So when you're on the when you were, it's gone now, but when the gondola was on the wires, uh, the wires weren't really doing very much. Uh you were actually on this motorized base that could go up and down fairly suddenly. And you would approach Kong for the second time, and one of the things I love about this attraction, they did the super clever thing because you know there's the helicopters are still playing in like they did in the Hollywood story.

Pete 1:20:18

Yeah.

Kelly 1:20:18

So you kind of round this corner, and there's a bright light shining in the tram. So people can't see very well, and the person in charge of the tram's like, helicopter, turn off your light. We can't see, we can't see. And as soon as they turn off the light, there's Kong.

Pete 1:20:38

Oh, that's brilliant. It's an elegant trick. I'm looking at it right now. It's that's brilliant. Yeah. Giant halogen.

Kelly 1:20:44

Yeah.

Pete 1:20:45

And it just boom, there he is. He's right next to you.

Kelly 1:20:48

Right. So you can get really close. Yeah, without knowing that he's there until he's there.

Pete 1:20:54

And his teeth are gnashing right at the windows. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, that's spectacular. And he's shaking it. Oh my God. I'm watching this POV of it right now. Oh my God.

Kelly 1:21:04

It's so great. It's really great. And they yeah. And so he has to, because his arms move, so his arms have to kind of move over the tram and then shake it down.

Pete 1:21:18

Oh, yeah.

Kelly 1:21:18

And at that point, the the accordion kind of lifts up and then drops down real fast. Yeah. And it was it was tricky because they had to line things up so that Kong's hands were in the right place at the right time when the vehicle went up and down. Sure. Now, what's really interesting to me is that they're trying something similar, kind of on a smaller scale with the Jaws ride. Remember the early iteration of the Jaws ride at Florida had the shark jumping and biting the boat and shaking the boat back and forth.

Pete 1:21:52

Right, exactly. They couldn't get it to time correctly.

Kelly 1:21:55

Yeah, and it worked every once in a while, and when it worked, it was supposedly spectacular. But they're trying to do the same thing with Kong here, like they're trying to get his arms in the right position to then shake the thing up and down. Okay. And it's not always working. Okay. And it becomes this kind of terrifying thing because if Kong if the car's in the wrong place and Kong's arms shoot forward and it go into the car, you could really have some problems. Oh yeah. So almost everything at Universal Studios Florida, when they opened up, uh it didn't work very well. Oh dear. The opening day of this attraction, they had a power failure. Oh no. Kong was being run manually by the operators. There was no computer. They were just like with Kong.

Pete 1:22:48

For a minute I thought the power was so out, there's like a bunch of guys like pushing them. Pushing him back and forth.

Kelly 1:22:52

Move you, damn monkey, move it. Like the computers that ran Kong were just kind of down, so they were just hitting actuators and making them go. Ow. There was a point, so Spielberg wouldn't ride it because he's afraid of heights, but he sent he brought some people to ride it. Of course. And as soon as he walked away, Peter Alexander took one of them aside and said, Look, I can't guarantee that this is safe. Oh jeez. This was on that day? Yes. Oh my God. And they kind of laughed it off. And sort of everything worked fine. Nobody got hurt. Um, but they shut the ride down that day. Yeah. And a lot of rides, like Jaws shut down a couple of weeks later, the earthquake ride shut down a couple of days later. Sure. It was a disaster. Oh man. And this is this is why, and we talked about this a lot in our Jay Stein episode. This is why for the first year, for much of the year, if you bought a ticket, you got another ticket to come back next year because so much didn't work.

Pete 1:23:55

Stick with us, folks. It'll be good, but we got to aaron this out. That's right. Yeah. And eventually, I gotta say. I know it sucks now, but trust us, it'll be good later. Come back later. It's like, okay.

Kelly 1:24:08

I mean, they completely rebuilt the Jaws ride from the ground up. They fixed the problems with Kong, they fixed the problems with earthquake. Kong had kind of recurring problems for a long time, which may have led to why they eventually got rid of it. But they got it working and it was pretty spectacular for a while.

Pete 1:24:25

Again, if you uh I'm looking at video, there's a video on YouTube. Also, for anybody who's interested in seeing what the Kong attraction looks like, yeah, look up the 1990 movie The Wizard. Yeah, that's right. There's a sequence where the kids are running around on the ride, which I'm kind of envious of. Totally. It's like I want to stand right in front of Kong.

Kelly 1:24:46

By the way, did you know that like for one of their like earliest uh Halloween horror nights at Universal Orlando, they turned it into a Dark Man ride?

Pete 1:24:57

Wow. Dark man. Yeah. Wow. I didn't realize he was that important to Universal. I think it really is.

Kelly 1:25:05

I thought that was going to be a bigger thing than it was.

Pete 1:25:07

Oh, like Liam Neeson, but you know we need James Voslo. He's perfect. Let's have Jeff Fahy be the top leader. I mean, he was fresh off a lawnmower man.

Kelly 1:25:21

So, yeah, so that was that was confrontation at Universal. It lasted for a long time. It was a true

Mummy Replaces Kong And Modern Reboots

Kelly 1:25:30

centerpiece to that park. And eventually, I think, you know, they won't say this, but they were still struggling with some of the mechanics of it for a long time. Yeah. They decided to replace it with the Revenge of the Mummy ride, which is a pretty amazing ride. It is. To be fair. It is pretty amazing. Yes, it is. But a little bit later, they came back and built the a new Kong ride, which exists there right now. Again, it's kind of mostly a screen ride, but it's Skull Island, Reign of Kong. And it is, as far as I know, the only ride where your tram operator gets uh taken away and killed. Nice! One of the like lizards or something like grabs them. Definitely ask for Babs. Yeah, definitely ask for Babs.

Kong Good Guy Or Bad Guy

Kelly 1:26:21

So before we get to the end, I want to I want to play a quick game. Kong, Kong Good Guy, Kong Bad Guy. Let's go through each movie. Which one is he? Uh 1933 Kong. Good guy. Yeah, I think so too. Misunderstood.

Pete 1:26:34

No, full-on good guy. Not even misunderstood. Okay. Think about he is a reflection of another thing from Ruth Rose's past. Yeah. She met Otabanga. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the Brooklyn Zoo. For those who do not know, this is one of the darkest chapters of racism in America, along with slave. I mean, right up there with slavery. Yeah. Where the this guy basically captured a pygmy from the Congo and put him on display at the Brooklyn Zoo in the monkey house. Yeah. Horrible. And he was so downtrodden. The poor little guy eventually committed suicide. Yeah. But at one point he got loose and he was there when Ruth Rose and Ruth Rose met him when he was running around on the loose. She gave him popcorn.

unknown 1:27:19

Wow.

Pete 1:27:20

And he's one of the influences of King Kong because think about it for a minute.

Kelly 1:27:24

Yeah.

Pete 1:27:24

A man taken out of the jungle and brought to the city and runs loose. There's a great, there's a great um article called The Girl in the Hairy Paw. And it talks about how there's this whole unspoken thing. I mean, we don't have to go super deep on this whole racism thing. Yeah, yeah. But it goes into the fact that they castrated Kong. Yeah. And it it's like, whoa, wait, what? No, it's never mentioned. Yeah. But it's like, well, uh so docile. You know, notice this, notice that. And whether it is like truly physical or whether it's metaphorical, it's there. Then when he comes back, he's he's he's uh shot off of the Empire Staple like enough of the dark cult effect.

Kelly 1:28:10

Uh King King Kong, uh son of Kong same kinda.

Pete 1:28:15

Well, I mean, because it's the son of Kong, yeah, he's a good guy.

Kelly 1:28:18

Yeah.

Pete 1:28:19

He's a good guy. He's he's he's a baby.

Kelly 1:28:21

Yeah.

Pete 1:28:21

And he saves and he's the noble baby that actually saves them by standing on top of volcano, holding them as the whole island is sinking underwater. So when he dies, they're sitting in his hand in the water. Yeah. It's literally like all I'm waiting for him is to put his thumbs up like Terminator 2. Yeah. It's ridiculous.

Kelly 1:28:37

Anyway. Um then we jump to uh King Kong's Godzilla, 1962. I think they both might be bad guys, but uh in that movie, but there's a question because um Kong sometimes seems to be protecting the city from Godzilla. It's weird. It's weird. It's really weird.

Pete 1:29:00

Like they really haven't I don't think they decided. No, I think I think we'll put them as like like somewhere neutral.

Kelly 1:29:06

It's like it's like a wrestling match when two guys come in and they kind of think they know who's supposed to be the good guy and the bad guy, but it such sort of doesn't work out that way. Right. Like that's what that movie is. Yeah.

Pete 1:29:16

Um that's right, big man.

Kelly 1:29:18

King Kong is going after Godzilla. Um King Kong Escapes, uh, which basically the same thing. Yeah. Um good guy in that one. I think he's more the good guy in that one. Yeah. Because he's versus Mecca Kong. Yeah. Uh the De Laurentis film, 1976. Bad guy. You think so? He's made out to be a bad guy in that one. Yeah, it's true. He's he's he's supposed to be scarier than than he is um some someone you're compassionate towards.

Pete 1:29:47

And it's more the reason why a lot of people don't like that film. Yeah. Because a lot of people want to root for Kong. Yeah, yeah. So the Peter Jackson's film. Oh, are we really gonna do that? Are you gonna skip past King Kong Lives? Oh, I forgot about King Kong. King Kong Lives. He's a bad guy in that one. He's a bad guy, bad guy. Okay.

Kelly 1:30:04

Actually, we shouldn't skip back to the skip to the Peter Jackson films because we should include the rides. Um King Kong Encounter, bad guy. Bad guy. Yeah. Uh the Confrontation, bad guy. Yep, bad guy. The two 3D rides. Yeah. So the the one that replaced King Kong Encounter and then Skull Island is running now. He's actually a good guy in those.

Pete 1:30:28

Yes, he is. He rescues you. Well, yeah, because Peter Jackson believes him to be a good guy, as as as shown in his films.

Kelly 1:30:34

Yeah, so interesting. Yeah. Um uh De Laurentius, bad guy. Uh Peter Jackson, good guy. Uh, what does that get us to Skull Island?

Pete 1:30:44

Skull Island, um, he's a force of nature in that one. He because he he's set up as kind of this godlike being that is indifferent to the people until the very end. Yes. And then we get to Kong versus Godzilla monarch style. He's the good guy. Yeah. And weird because like Godzilla fans are like, hey, hey, you're making Godzilla out to be the bad guy here. Yeah. It's like, well, he kind of is.

Kelly 1:31:09

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's I mean, that's always been confusing. Like, is do we like Godzilla? Do we not like Godzilla? It's like, well, if it's destroy all monsters, we like him.

Pete 1:31:18

If it's You're just saying that just to see the son of Godzilla blow smoke rings. It's really cute. It is.

Kelly 1:31:24

Godzuki. Godzuki. And then uh versus Kong uh the monarch one, it's New Kingdom or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Both of those, it's like, eh, he's a bad guy.

Pete 1:31:38

It's yeah, well, yeah. In the f in the in the first, he's the good guy. In the second one, he's really the good guy. Yeah. Like Godzilla is really kind of like second banana to him, no pun intended. Yeah.

Kelly 1:31:51

And like, you know, Godzilla is a force of nature, and he's a destructive force of nature, and Kong is different. Like he's something else.

Pete 1:32:00

Like in the monarch films, they make him out to be this god to defend tribes, like all the all the Titans guard certain aspects of humanity and the creatures of the earth. So Motara guards a certain level of like higher consciousness, almost Buddhist-like attitudes. Rodan is much more of a force of chaos. Yep. Um Bayolante is protective of the earth. Yeah. Gamera is, you know, tastes like turtle meat. Yep. Gamer is really neat. We've made a turtle meat. We love gamuta. Oh, we're getting punchy. Okay. Yeah. So anyway.

Kelly 1:32:36

So so I think that's that's all of it. It's interesting, right? Like he's useful both ways. He could be a good guy or a good one.

Pete 1:32:43

And it's all about cultural context and where he like who's making the film and who's taking it in. Yeah. So yeah, absolutely.

Kelly 1:32:50

All right. So I think we are at that point in our shoe. Whew.

Pete 1:32:55

We've made it. It's been a ride, huh? It's been an eighth wonder, tell you.

Our Plus Ups For A New Kong Ride

Kelly 1:33:00

Um we uh ignore all practical viability and uh safety and monetary issues and anything else that these stupid theme park builders get all hung up about. And we make these attractions better. Yeah. Um Do you want to go first?

Pete 1:33:17

Yes. Okay. Um I'm because I already know what mine is. All right. So I'm gonna pitch a new ride. Okay. Universal Studio, either Florida or or where, you know, or parks of adventure or whatever. And it's to go back to Kong's roots. Yes. And what the attraction is, is the King Kong experience again, only this time as the tram, Asphrababs, pulls up, and um, by the way, for those who do not know, Asphrabs is a reference from Animal House. Look it up. Yeah. Anyway, um pulls up to this lagoon type set area, and there's this huge, tipped-over, rusted hulk of the SS Venture. And what the tour guide basically says is you know, a lot of people talk about lost films and lost props. We have actually recently acquired a lost prop from the original 1933 film King Kong. This is the SS Venture, and it's a giant replica of the full-size ship. Wow. And when you're in and you drive into this hole that's on the side of the ship, and you're inside this tilted, like posid, but it's it's tilted so the nose is actually going underwater. Yeah. So the whole point is we're gonna take a shortcut through these holes in this thing. So you're as you're traversing through the ship, that's what you know, that's when you're attacked by Kong. Yeah. But in this particular instance, you also include Jaws, where you have great white sharks in the water. Where the shark is like so you're you're surrounded. So you got the Jaws shark on one side, and you've got Kong ripping the side of the ship open to get at you from the side of the ship, and water is pouring in like the earthquake experience or the flash flood in Little Mexico. Yeah. So you're like, you're getting wet, and the Kong's going for you, and you got like the shark doesn't actually come out and bite you or anything like that, but you definitely see like Finn's like, we don't want to get in that water, you know. And like as Kong reaches for you, the whole ship starts to shift like the bridge used to, and it would slide towards the water. That's when the shark is like right there. Yeah. So it's like, get out of here, right? And it just so it's basically taking modern technologies and extending them. So there might be some screen involved with Kong ripping open the top of the ship. That could be one giant screen, kind of like how uh the Shanghai uh Pirates of the Caribbean utilizes giant LED screens. Yeah. Um, but the shark could be it could be a physical thing, and the water is certainly physical, and you escape. And as you escape, you see the giant gates of Kong or whatever. So it becomes a nice little touch of Universal's history. Yeah. Even though it wasn't Universal, it was RKO. Yeah, it was RKO. But anyway, so that's that's what I would love to see is a more physical Kong again, yes, complete with banana breath.

Kelly 1:36:17

Absolutely. And and I love you tying it back into the actual filmmaking. Yeah. Um, because I I that's the one thing I would like Universal to start looking back towards is and did you know their slogan, ride the movies, was invented specifically for this. Um it was was that the early conceptions of this, you were supposed to be revealed at the end of the ride that you were actually part of a film. Nice. You were you were being used for a new Kong film.

Pete 1:36:50

See, that's yeah, that was magical. I missed that. I actually missed that that little touch. Yeah. Oh, you're like, you might be in a movie. Yeah. You know, like oh it was like the old days of Universal Studios, like taking the tour. It's like you might wind up in a movie. Yeah. And this is the same thing of ooh, yeah. I guess part of that is it's a generational thing. Yeah. Because today everybody's on video, everybody's on YouTube, everybody's on Insta, everybody communicates like that. So having that, ooh, I'm on video, ooh, I'm on TV, ooh, I'm in a movie, doesn't really have the same mystique as it once did. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like everybody is now immortal.

Kelly 1:37:27

Yeah. It's it's really true. Also, I think Universal made a choice at a certain point that said, we're not going to get uh too attached to any one idea. Um because they sort of saw that that makes things difficult for Disney. Yeah. You know, Disney's like attached to their origin story and attached to their mythology. Yeah. And then they struggle to stay modern because of that. Yeah. Universal does not care. Yeah. They are like we are going to do what we think's cool. Yeah. I think my plus up is actually kind of similar to yours because I wanted Jaws too. Um I wanted to do something again, the get rid of the screen rides. We're we're starting fresh. Yes. I don't mind some screens in a ride. Right. A little bit, but don't make the whole thing that way. Yeah. Yeah. And I like so it would kind of start off as a walking tour through Skull Island. Nice. So, you know, Skull Island's been quote unquote tamed. Uh Kong's gone. Uh, you just have to go on a tour, kind of kind of like the Arcturus to the Galapagos. You get to walk on this island and see this mysterious natural thing. But of course, as you move farther and farther, weirder and weirder things start to happen, and you realize that maybe the taming of the uh of Skull End is not as thorough as you were led to believe. Uh-huh. Until eventually you realize that Kong's still there. Nice. And you get roared at, and you have to get on a boat. Okay.

Pete 1:39:07

This is where Jay Stein's moment, Kong's feet could come into place. Yes. Where he stomps right next to you, like, get on the boat. Boom. Giant monkey foot.

Kelly 1:39:18

Just and just everyone loads into these boats, and then it becomes like a sort of rapids ride. Ooh. But with Kong appearing from here, you know, for every once in a while, like just a hand or a head. What I was hoping is like you do it and you do it and you go through this island. It'd have to be pretty big.

Pete 1:39:40

But hey, islands of adventure, man. Let's do it.

Kelly 1:39:43

And and like you're constantly Kong is popping up, or like you're riding by and you see Kong like throw a dinosaur. You could have all these encounters, it'd be terrifying, it would be thrilling, and then at the end, you cascade out sort of splash mountain style into the ocean. Through the legs of Kong standing over the track.

Pete 1:40:05

Yes, just the legs. Yeah. Yeah. And as looking down at you with huge dangly feet. Right. What did you think I was going to say? Swinging overhead. But yeah, I just, whoa, there's Kong.

Kelly 1:40:21

And just, and then like you end up in the ocean, you're safe. And then you hear the Jaws music and just see the fin. And that's the end of the ride.

Pete 1:40:34

Or back in the in the older days in the 70s, where you actually have they used to have like miniatures of warships. Yeah. And one would shoot a torpedo at you as you're going through the waters. Yeah. And then Moses comes out. Yeah. Right. And then parts of the Red Sea. The J. It basically it's one giant J Bang.

Kelly 1:40:52

Yeah.

Pete 1:40:52

That'd be so I I like the notion of it being a rapids ride.

Kelly 1:40:55

Yeah.

Pete 1:40:56

Like that, like combining our two plus ups would be great, where it's the rapids ride, and you're going like the big finale is actually in the venture. Yeah. Going through the wreck of the venture. And that's where the big escape is because you're because the venture is literally crammed on the top of a waterfall. Wow. And so you're going out to this rusted side and just go straight out the back end of the venture. Oh man, that'd be such a good ride. I'd be all over it. Universal, give us a call. We Kelly and I do have a history of predicting rides. That's true. So and this one is probably the Jason Sorrell. If you're listening, I'm up for designing. So just my name might not be Bumstead, but I'll definitely design a ride for you.

Kelly 1:41:33

Yeah. I may not have designed the Furies. But darn it. All right. Well, thank you for going on this long ride with us. Yes, it was quite a journey. The history of one of the greatest film masterpieces of all time and one of the greatest theme park masterpieces of all time. Yes, indeed. Yeah. So until next time, I am Kelly McCubbin. And I'm Peter Oberstreet.

Pete 1:41:56

And this is The Lowdown on the Plus Up.

Wrap Up And Where To Find Us

Kelly 1:42:07

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of The Lowdown on the Plus Up. If you have, please tell your friends where you found us. And if you haven't, we can pretend this never happened and need not speak of it again. For a lot more thoughts on theme parks and related stuff, check out my writing for Boardwalk Times at Boardwalk Times.net. Feel free to reach out to Pete and I on our Lowdown on the Plus Up Facebook group or send us a message directly at comments at lowdown-plus-up.com. We really want to hear about how you'd plus these attractions up and read some of your ideas on the show. Our theme music is Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy by Kevin McLeod at Incompitech.com. We'll have a new episode out real soon. Why? Because we like you.

Speaker 2 1:43:24

Jack Black wrote this song. So do yourself a favor, please clap along. Everybody now, clap with me, but do not sing. The singing's my job. You'll only mess up the song, trust me. One, two, three, kick! Open the ear.

Speaker 1 1:43:47

This is a green gorilla and it gives me a thriller and a woman's in the movie. You'll be feeling it, pretty grubby and a ruby.

Speaker 2 1:43:56

But I'm on the song that it wants to move.