Speaker 1: It's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling podcast with Jack and carn
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Speaker 4: Osada, a real king of swing when the bell.
Speaker 3: Goes hang and a kick like me throming in the
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Speaker 3: from start the close file of Your Benefit fah fickt Polls.
Speaker 2: Welcome back.
Speaker 5: This is part two of our conversation with Brian Penry,
Speaker 5: who was the WWF's creative director from nineteen eighty four
Speaker 5: to nineteen eighty seven and created so many iconic visuals
Speaker 5: that we associate with the absolute boom period of the
Speaker 5: WWF and in the mid eighties from the WWF logo
Speaker 5: that we all know and a door to the WrestleMania
Speaker 5: logo Saturday Night's Main Event logo, as you recall last
Speaker 5: time we were with you. That's what put our scent
Speaker 5: on the trail of Brian because he's listed in the
Speaker 5: credits on the very first Saturday Night's Main Event as
Speaker 5: the logo designer. So we simply had to find out
Speaker 5: if he was available, and my god, did we luck
Speaker 5: out because Brian has fought Boss a font of wisdom
Speaker 5: and memories of.
Speaker 6: My god, it's it's absolutely incredible. Some some stories I
Speaker 6: was not expecting at all. I mean not that I
Speaker 6: was affecting any stories, to be honest, but I mean
Speaker 6: just I knew we would go in certain on certain trails,
Speaker 6: so to speak. But man, already, I'm amazed at kind
Speaker 6: of the the places we've already gone to, and I
Speaker 6: can't sound for more such a wild place to work.
Speaker 6: If you do want to remind our listeners that Brian
Speaker 6: is going to be available, if you want to go
Speaker 6: meet him, you can check him out at gamer Con Connecticut.
Speaker 6: It's coming up with the Mohegan Sun Casino on Saturday
Speaker 6: and Sunday, March fifteenth and sixteenth. Brian will be in
Speaker 6: his own booth in the Artists Ali and he'll have
Speaker 6: signed to numbered prints of the WrestleMania logo available. So
Speaker 6: you really want to stop by and say hi to Brian,
Speaker 6: let him know you heard him on the podcast, and
Speaker 6: check out his stuff. Just go online to ctgamercan dot com,
Speaker 6: Ctgamercon dot com for more information on the venue and
Speaker 6: the event, and Brian really looks forward to seeing everybody there. Brian,
Speaker 6: we're just getting started. It feels like after a wonderful
Speaker 6: array of stories and personalities, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 4: Thanks yet, glad to be well.
Speaker 5: We talked about the creative director role, and I guess
Speaker 5: I want to get a little bit more into what
Speaker 5: exactly the creative director does. How Titan defined the role,
Speaker 5: because honestly, we expected to just talk about low go
Speaker 5: in graphic design, but you're giving us hands that you
Speaker 5: were involved in designing costumes for some of the wrestlers,
Speaker 5: involved in designing WWF's print publications. Now the magazine laid out,
Speaker 5: So give us an idea of what all a creative
Speaker 5: director does and what Vince tasked you with in these
Speaker 5: formative days.
Speaker 4: Well, the term creative director originally comes from the advertising industry,
Speaker 4: but you find it in other industries as well. And
Speaker 4: ad agencies originally were my background. But you know, in
Speaker 4: a typical ad agency you have designers and copywriters who
Speaker 4: work under copy directors and art directors, all of whom
Speaker 4: work under the guidance and oversight of what's called a
Speaker 4: creative director or CD. And I, you know, I experienced
Speaker 4: that background. I was far from a CD. I was
Speaker 4: a working proll. I was the guy doing paste uff.
Speaker 4: I wasn't even a designer when I started out, But
Speaker 4: you know, and paste up the term is run over
Speaker 4: now by everything being done on computer. So, but my
Speaker 4: role at the w w F was really all encompassing.
Speaker 4: There was that print design aspect of creative direction. And
Speaker 4: you know, there were actually billboards done at times for
Speaker 4: the w w F. It was interesting. They weren't they
Speaker 4: weren't public billboards that you would see out on the highway,
Speaker 4: but they were. They were billboards inside of the ad agencies.
Speaker 4: It was really quite interesting. We just did all manner
Speaker 4: of kinds of things. But as you pointed out, yeah,
Speaker 4: I worked on the WF w w F magazine and
Speaker 4: on occasion I illustrated covers. You may recall it as
Speaker 4: a cover with sergeants Slaughter and a Christmas sleigh issue.
Speaker 4: That was one of my illustrations.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, did you do the rowdy Piper Christmas cover too?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, and Hogan on the sleigh with all
Speaker 5: the baby faces behind him and the Christmas catalog. All
Speaker 5: those are wonderful drawings.
Speaker 4: That kind of thank you, that kind of caricature fun
Speaker 4: look was was my signature. And yeah, poor Roddy so
Speaker 4: longer with us. But uh, I run into Slaughter now
Speaker 4: and then at comic cons and so forth, and but yeah,
Speaker 4: I would. I would make recommendations on costumes. Uh, you're
Speaker 4: just in a in a in a very general stylistic way.
Speaker 4: And then you know, sometimes I would go out and
Speaker 4: find the actual seamstress or in the instance of the
Speaker 4: of the guys at the Equestrian shop to create the
Speaker 4: details of a costume and so forth, and I art
Speaker 4: directed photo shoots. That that was a big deal. I mean,
Speaker 4: the real prose would would would know how to pose
Speaker 4: on their own and have their own very distinctive style
Speaker 4: of of how they were posing, uh just for solo
Speaker 4: shots or in relation to other wrestlers, for promotional shots
Speaker 4: for you know, leading up to events and so forth.
Speaker 4: But it was it was really fun when when Cindy
Speaker 4: Wauper was managing Wendy Richter, things like that, I would
Speaker 4: our direct photoshoots with Cindy the guests for various WrestleManias,
Speaker 4: including Muhammad Ali. You know, just it was fascinating that
Speaker 4: that was a really really fun period working on that.
Speaker 4: All aspects like that. But just the fact that I
Speaker 4: do illustration and I write copy. I didn't write. I
Speaker 4: wrote some of the copy for the original program, the
Speaker 4: first WrestleMania one program, but that wasn't something that I
Speaker 4: did generally that the public would see. But I would
Speaker 4: write copy for what what you would call trade brochures
Speaker 4: that went out to other networks to potent sponsors. We
Speaker 4: did tremendous amounts of advertising in the trade so to speak,
Speaker 4: to attract advertisers, television advertisers to sponsor the shows. That
Speaker 4: kind of thing, that sort of copywriting of was in
Speaker 4: charge of.
Speaker 5: In addition to the graphic, that's a lot of responsibility. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's wide ranging. We'll get we'll get more into some
Speaker 5: of your memories of some memorable w W photo shoots
Speaker 5: because there's a lot of stuff that came out of
Speaker 5: the magazine and just in pop culture in general. Is
Speaker 5: WWF just raised its profile so much that you had
Speaker 5: a hand in. So look forward to talking about some
Speaker 5: of those photo shoots. But you've mentioned the WrestleMania logo
Speaker 5: and we can't leave that unaddressed in more detail. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's another one that endures to this day and JP
Speaker 5: that WrestleMania logo is where it's at.
Speaker 6: Well again, the shiny metallic look, that chrome look that
Speaker 6: you were describing regarding the original WWF logo, it's I mean,
Speaker 6: these are these are logos that for me as a
Speaker 6: fan from you know, starting in the early nineties, I
Speaker 6: was late to that golden era, and these are logos
Speaker 6: that I still cherish, like, this is what I kind
Speaker 6: of want wrestling and to be all the time. This
Speaker 6: is what I want the logos to look like. It's
Speaker 6: absolutely spectacular, and you've created designs that are kind of
Speaker 6: symbolic for a lot of people's childhood.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, yeah, tell us about that Wrestlming a logo.
Speaker 4: Brian, you guys are making me blush a little.
Speaker 2: It seriously is like, you know, that's that's always it.
Speaker 4: Well, I'll tell you. I mean, designing anything is a
Speaker 4: is a process. And typically, if I were going to
Speaker 4: design a logo for a company and that that is
Speaker 4: pretty much the kind of thing I do all the time.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna want to sit down and understand the company
Speaker 4: and what they're all about and every little nuance of
Speaker 4: what they're about and try to make something that just
Speaker 4: at a glance, projects an image that's accurate to what
Speaker 4: they're all about. Now, I was already in the game.
Speaker 4: I'm behind the scenes. I knew what the product was.
Speaker 4: I understood the wrestling and the wrestling mentality, and you know,
Speaker 4: let me just talk about that for a minute, because
Speaker 4: I think, I mean, this has been said a million
Speaker 4: times before and depressed, but I don't think the core
Speaker 4: impetus that the emotion behind watching pro wrestling goes away,
Speaker 4: and some people just never really think about it. They
Speaker 4: just watch it, they love it, they get a kick
Speaker 4: out of it. But when you think about it, it
Speaker 4: all starts with something like having a brother in law
Speaker 4: that you can't stand, like this right. The guy can't
Speaker 4: hold a job, he's a jerk, he's not very nice
Speaker 4: to your sister. Basically, you want to take him out
Speaker 4: in an alley when no one's looking to show him,
Speaker 4: but the consequences. And then there's the boss that is
Speaker 4: just obnoxious, and no matter how hard you work, that
Speaker 4: boss will be critical and just set some sort of
Speaker 4: goal that's absurd that none of the employees can you know,
Speaker 4: rise to let alone you. So you, similarly, you want
Speaker 4: to take your boss out. You just want to haul
Speaker 4: off and slug the guy. Obviously there's consequences. You probably
Speaker 4: wouldn't be working there much longer. And you know, so
Speaker 4: what you align with the babyface, and you confect that
Speaker 4: bad guy brother in law, boss schmuck that cut you
Speaker 4: off in traffic with a heel, and you project all
Speaker 4: your anger and your angst about these jerks in your
Speaker 4: life onto these jerks in the ring, and you just
Speaker 4: sit back and have a beer and revel in the
Speaker 4: fact that the babyface of your choice is just taking
Speaker 4: the varnish offs the guy that you can't stand. It's
Speaker 4: so great. And here's the big mind blowing thing. This
Speaker 4: is the basis of Greek tragedies and plays. Four thousand
Speaker 4: years ago, guy in a toga figured this out. So
Speaker 4: imagine Vince in a toga.
Speaker 5: WrestleMania nine. I think he wore a toge on TV
Speaker 5: one time. I don't know if you know that, Brian.
Speaker 4: It's that basic. It's that basic. And what you're really
Speaker 4: doing is you're giving people an outlet so we're not
Speaker 4: killing each other daily. It's brilliant. I think, you know, Oh,
Speaker 4: what's that Peace Prize out.
Speaker 5: Of Nobel Peace Prize?
Speaker 4: What is it? What do they call it?
Speaker 5: The the Nobel Prize, Bell, the Nobel Yeah.
Speaker 4: They should give the Nobelt Evince. They think not anymore.
Speaker 5: But I take your point. Maybe once upon a time,
Speaker 5: but the WrestleMania logo was so reflective of all we're
Speaker 5: talking about here.
Speaker 4: I digress. I apologize, but I kind of started at that,
Speaker 4: not like, Okay, this is apex, this is the high
Speaker 4: pinnacle of wrestling. WrestleMania is going to take all this
Speaker 4: energy and all this blood, sweat and tears up to
Speaker 4: this high, high, high plateau where this is going to
Speaker 4: take place. So this logo really has to be something.
Speaker 4: It has to be masculine, it has to be commanding
Speaker 4: and exciting, and above all, it needs to be powerful.
Speaker 4: It has to look like if it were a hammer,
Speaker 4: it could just take you out with one whack. So
Speaker 4: I kept with a metallic finish that we had with
Speaker 4: the WWS logo, but I stylized it a little more.
Speaker 4: I thought, you know, it all starts with an M
Speaker 4: and a W. So the M and the W were gold,
Speaker 4: and they have these breath growing out of their tops
Speaker 4: and bottoms, so that horizontally frames the other characters in
Speaker 4: the words WrestleMania. So you know, the R through the
Speaker 4: E and the A through the A and Mania are silver,
Speaker 4: and so there you've got the contrast. And again, you know,
Speaker 4: this photoshop was not even a glimmer in somebody's eye
Speaker 4: back at this point. And so I would pencil out
Speaker 4: very very tightly the exact dimensions and the with height,
Speaker 4: very precise proportions of the type characters, and the original
Speaker 4: this thing was maybe twenty five twenty eight inches across.
Speaker 4: It wasn't that huge, but I mean, this has to
Speaker 4: work on a work on a drawing board. And I
Speaker 4: subcontracted an airbrush artist, phenomenally talented guy named James Kritz
Speaker 4: and Jim no longer is with us on the planet, unfortunately.
Speaker 4: But this this guy allent and his little finger than
Speaker 4: most people build up in their lifetime. I mean, he
Speaker 4: was just gifted beyond belief. And I'm just joking a
Speaker 4: little bit here. I mean, he was a great guy.
Speaker 4: But Jim would be the first to tell you that.
Speaker 4: And there was there was a joke art director, creative director.
Speaker 4: You know, people that did what I did around Fairfield County,
Speaker 4: New York, we all would get together, so I used
Speaker 4: to blind us some associations of people that are in
Speaker 4: the same business. And the joke was, if you want
Speaker 4: to know how good Jim Kritz is, just ask Jim.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, no, he was.
Speaker 4: I got to tell you. If somebody was had license
Speaker 4: to brag, it was him. He he wasn't obnoxious about it.
Speaker 4: He said, Oh, he was the kind of guy he
Speaker 4: would come in your office to show you what he
Speaker 4: just you're gonna love this, You're gonna love this. He
Speaker 4: just wouldn't stop extolling his own virtues, you know that
Speaker 4: kind of thing. But when he showed you, you just
Speaker 4: felt backwards because he was phenomenally talented. And but but
Speaker 4: here was here was the downside. And he had done
Speaker 4: several projects building up to WrestleMania for me. But he
Speaker 4: was that kind of guy that I learned very quickly.
Speaker 4: I had given him a pretty tight deadline on something.
Speaker 4: Granted I can't remember what it was, a week, ten
Speaker 4: days or something, and this wasn't something you did, did
Speaker 4: overnight and brought back. I got what I needed two
Speaker 4: weeks later, and I had to reschedule the promotion that
Speaker 4: it was for. And you can't. You can't do that
Speaker 4: kind of thing. You can't run a business that way.
Speaker 4: And I was I was very stern with him, to
Speaker 4: the point of just almost threatening, We're not going to
Speaker 4: do this again if you can't get this together. And
Speaker 4: I didn't go to the length of saying something like that,
Speaker 4: but I wanted to make clear that he understood. So
Speaker 4: I just sort of played a game I hate playing.
Speaker 4: I actually had a four week window to get the
Speaker 4: This wasn't the WrestleMania logo itself, but it was the
Speaker 4: cover of the WrestleMania program WrestleMania one, with Hulk and
Speaker 4: Mister T on the cover. And there's a story right
Speaker 4: there about photographing those two. If you recall, on the
Speaker 4: inside back cover opposite page. On the left, there's a
Speaker 4: photo of Hulk and mister t with the old Twin
Speaker 4: Towers in the background. I have a story to tell
Speaker 4: about that. Just taking that photo was a feat. But
Speaker 4: the cover of that program was was all important, that
Speaker 4: that was a big deal it was. It was also
Speaker 4: used promotion prior to the show, so it wasn't just
Speaker 4: the cover of the program. And I had I had
Speaker 4: exactly four weeks in actuality, but I told them I
Speaker 4: needed it in two, and I said, don't screw me
Speaker 4: around now. I mean, there's a lot of machine machinery
Speaker 4: and wheels turning towards this event. It's mind bogglingly complicated,
Speaker 4: and you cannot do what you did before and another gig.
Speaker 4: I need this art in hand because then I'm going
Speaker 4: to do some drybrush detailing on it, and it needs
Speaker 4: to be scanned, and it needs to be printed along
Speaker 4: with this program. By the hundreds of thousands that we reprinted,
Speaker 4: way more programs than just for the event. They were
Speaker 4: they were sold as keepsakes and so on and so
Speaker 4: forth after the fact. So what happens at the third week.
Speaker 4: I'm biting my nails. I'm freaking out I'm like, what's
Speaker 4: going on. I'm working on it. I'm working at it,
Speaker 4: I kid you, not two days before my drop dead.
Speaker 4: And that's if nothing else goes wrong and the printing
Speaker 4: plant doesn't burn down while the thing's on press or whatever.
Speaker 4: I just I think I started going prematurely gray when
Speaker 4: I was thirty nine. That would have been that that time,
Speaker 4: thereabouts thirty eight, something like that. I'm like this, this
Speaker 4: guy's killing me. And the trouble is he had he
Speaker 4: had done some crazy gigs. He painted murals inside the
Speaker 4: jets of Saudi Arabian chikhs. They would they would contract
Speaker 4: him to do these these Greckel Roman murals on the
Speaker 4: inside private jets and these salons, and he'd work on
Speaker 4: these for like weeks on end months whatever. And if
Speaker 4: the guy had to go somewhere, he use another jet
Speaker 4: in the fan or whatever. You know, no problem. I'm
Speaker 4: sure you guys do the same thing like I do.
Speaker 4: You know, if someone's painting my jet, I'll use my brother.
Speaker 4: But that's the world he lived in, and he had
Speaker 4: these almost endless deadline things where he just took a
Speaker 4: sweet time, and so he wasn't very good about deadlines.
Speaker 4: But The illustration was just an utter and complete knockout.
Speaker 4: You may recall it. I have all of one copy
Speaker 4: in my own personal files. They're hard to come by,
Speaker 4: but I'll tell you, he just he just took it
Speaker 4: right down to the bare bones. And I'd done a
Speaker 4: lot with him. I used him for one project after
Speaker 4: that where I didn't have a very tight deadline. But
Speaker 4: it just drove me crazy. He was so good, but
Speaker 4: and I appreciate all the time and effort he put
Speaker 4: into it, but it was it made the thing so
Speaker 4: damn stressful. It was. It was really really tough.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the unique thing of working in a creative
Speaker 5: capacity at a company like this. There's this like this
Speaker 5: day where everything has to be on the rails, and
Speaker 5: this is their first kind of venture with this kind
Speaker 5: of scale, so everyone's it doesn't necessarily have the reps
Speaker 5: in now. Are you describing I'm trying to picture this brighter?
Speaker 5: Are you describing the picture of Hulk and Mister t
Speaker 5: that's on the cover of the Coliseum video release of
Speaker 5: WRESTLINGIA one where they sort of look I don't know,
Speaker 5: how would you describe a JP kind of like bronzed.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it looks almost almost like a drawing Photographyeah right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, no it's not a photograph.
Speaker 5: Oh I assumed it was justled over or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that's krits Is that good? That? Wow? That
Speaker 4: was airbrush. That was done airbrush. And then I did
Speaker 4: these minute little yeah, pitpoint highlights on top of on
Speaker 4: top of his highlights to just contrast it even brighter
Speaker 4: before we scanned it. And and that that also has
Speaker 4: the ring ropes or red white and blue with sort
Speaker 4: of an electrical this thing going down the rope. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we're talking about the same illustration. Yeah, that that was
Speaker 4: There were a few sleepless lights lights there where I
Speaker 4: was having bad dreams about running down the streets, you know,
Speaker 4: naked being chased by rabbit dot Vincent sicked on me
Speaker 4: because I blew the deadline. That was creepy and just quickly.
Speaker 5: You know what I love about this this image because
Speaker 5: it's so they've never really tried, and maybe because it's
Speaker 5: just the remarkable talents it took to pull it off
Speaker 5: to present their wrestlers like this again, you know, usually
Speaker 5: the way the rest is are presented, they they really pop,
Speaker 5: their eyes are wide, they're sort of they're trying to
Speaker 5: basically make these people look like cartoon characters. This is
Speaker 5: like kind of more of a class presentation. Like I
Speaker 5: was always taken with how Holt's hand is like present
Speaker 5: nting mister T. You know, he's not pointing at you,
Speaker 5: he's not menacing and growling and snarling. I thought that
Speaker 5: was such a cool, kind of counterintuitive way to present
Speaker 5: them for this, this this debut of WrestleMania.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, and and and and and in fairness to Jim,
Speaker 4: you know, bless his heart. He he drove me a
Speaker 4: little crazy, but he also made me pretty happy. He
Speaker 4: made me very proud. His work was just extraordinary. He
Speaker 4: is to be honored, you know, for what the class
Speaker 4: and the and the pomp and circumstance he bought to
Speaker 4: the whole thing. He was a hell of an illustrator. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he did rob me of some sleep.
Speaker 5: But fair absolutely this is Please go ahead.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you the interesting thing about that photo opposite
Speaker 4: the inside back cover. Vince wanted to get some sort
Speaker 4: of grand image with New York City in the background, right,
Speaker 4: And I mean there's just no no planning here, none,
Speaker 4: And it's it's crazy scheduling because you know, hulks in demand.
Speaker 4: He's wherever he is for for shows. He's just living
Speaker 4: in and out of a car and a plane, going
Speaker 4: between point A and point B all over the place.
Speaker 4: Same thing with mister t He you know, this was
Speaker 4: in the A Team era, and he's he was, you know,
Speaker 4: a big deal in his own right. And he was
Speaker 4: actually a very nice guy. You know, every time you
Speaker 4: see him portrayed in character, he's he's this tough dude
Speaker 4: he was. I mean, yeah, he's a formidable character when
Speaker 4: you see him face to face. But he was just,
Speaker 4: you know, very polite and mild mattered when you you know,
Speaker 4: met him in person, and he's he's not in character.
Speaker 4: And I think it's like a quarter to four, four
Speaker 4: point thirty something like that. In an afternoon, Vince calls
Speaker 4: down to my office says, I got Taylor. He's gonna shoot.
Speaker 4: I want you to our direct. We're going into the city.
Speaker 4: I got a hunk, I got no time. They just
Speaker 4: had to move heavy the nurse to get him in
Speaker 4: the same place at the same time. We're gonna meet
Speaker 4: down at the Empire State Building and shoot on top
Speaker 4: of the building. I said, does anybody at the Empire
Speaker 4: State Building know about this. No, just get your ass
Speaker 4: in there. Yes, that's it. I'm like, what okay, So
Speaker 4: I just grab everything, jump in my car, drive down
Speaker 4: to the city. Thank god, we actually had the infancy
Speaker 4: of cell phones then barely so anyway, Actually, no, I
Speaker 4: think I got yeah, I think I think they got
Speaker 4: my first I had. I had an in car cel phone.
Speaker 4: I think that was that. I got that. Yeah. I
Speaker 4: don't think we did have a phone. It was just
Speaker 4: it was mayhem.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And I'm in the lobby of the Empire State Building
Speaker 4: and there are elevators up to the what did they
Speaker 4: call it there, there's a there's a term for that,
Speaker 4: the this gallery where you could see out around the city.
Speaker 7: They have that's almost yeah, yeah, but they have a
Speaker 7: skywalk or something like that where the public goes to
Speaker 7: view the city from from the top of the building.
Speaker 4: Very Vince has a whole other vision in mind. And
Speaker 4: so I see Vince and Nelson. Nelson's get this look
Speaker 4: on the face. Tell me about it. It's like he's
Speaker 4: caught off guard. This is one of Vince's last minute
Speaker 4: wing dans that you never know what's going to happen.
Speaker 4: This is very typical stuff like this would just happen
Speaker 4: pretty much all the time.
Speaker 5: So, Brian, did you ride up the elevators with Hogan
Speaker 5: and Tea and what did that create a scene?
Speaker 4: Oh well, here's here's the deal. It's thinning out. It's
Speaker 4: like quarter to five now, and people are mostly elevators
Speaker 4: are just coming down, Tourists are spilling out. Steve's there,
Speaker 4: Nelson camera, Cruise sound guy, myself, Vince and Al and Tea,
Speaker 4: and Vince pulls out a lot of hundreds, with which
Speaker 4: you know, I'm sure like me, You guys, everybody you know,
Speaker 4: you get up in the morning, you pick up your wallet,
Speaker 4: you pick up your phone, and a lot of hundreds.
Speaker 4: I mean, we we all do that, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, the million Dollar Man gimmick was based on
Speaker 5: him handing out cash.
Speaker 4: But but seriously, we're just thinking, how are we going
Speaker 4: to pull this off? No, no, no formal contact with
Speaker 4: anybody that's a building manager. I mean, you don't just
Speaker 4: wander into a place like that and take command of
Speaker 4: the situation. Uns. So there's this little dude, I don't
Speaker 4: even think he spoke English who operated the elevator. He
Speaker 4: could barely speak English. Vince whips out a hundred and said,
Speaker 4: going up. Wow, guy's got a six inch grin. All
Speaker 4: of a sudden, everybody piles into the elevator, the camera crew.
Speaker 4: It's just it's just insane.
Speaker 5: Okay, So so Vince glided the path there. You didn't
Speaker 5: have to deal with mobs necessarily.
Speaker 4: The guy the guy. But but this is the magic
Speaker 4: of this whole kind of thing, because you get to
Speaker 4: the top, it opens into that gallery viewing area or
Speaker 4: whatever they call it. There's a couple of guys, a
Speaker 4: security guy who's all up in arms, then swips out
Speaker 4: another one hundred, a couple hundred, another guy like, oh, oh,
Speaker 4: there's the mister t They're like, they're all excited. He says,
Speaker 4: I don't want to shoot near I want to be outside.
Speaker 4: I'm going to go on top where the microwave dishes
Speaker 4: are and they'll look at each other. So we have
Speaker 4: to go up another flight and thee there and we're
Speaker 4: actually on top of the freaking building. And you know,
Speaker 4: you see microwave dishes and that kind of stuff all
Speaker 4: over the place, and they've been around for decades, but
Speaker 4: you can't really safely stand next to these things. They
Speaker 4: can fry your gonads.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're making some noise, yeah, some worrying.
Speaker 4: It's sort of like this when you're standing eight feet
Speaker 4: away and you got you got dozens of these things
Speaker 4: around you and it's just going and you think, oh god,
Speaker 4: it's just weird. And Steve's looking at me like I
Speaker 4: was planning to have kids, and I said me too.
Speaker 4: It's it was really the weirdest. We set that shoot
Speaker 4: up faster than you could make a pop tart. I
Speaker 4: mean we were we were just scrambling because it's really
Speaker 4: not safe to be up there that close to these
Speaker 4: things when they're alive. It was just the weirdest deal.
Speaker 4: And Nelson his guys, they shot very brief video footage
Speaker 4: and I came up with this. I can't remember what
Speaker 4: the exact wording was, but the headline on the photo
Speaker 4: was the oh yeah, it was the Twin Towers, I mean,
Speaker 4: referring to mister T and Hulk with the World Trade
Speaker 4: Center in the background. The spoof being that the World
Speaker 4: Trade Center was known as the Twin Towers, but in
Speaker 4: this case the twins were the boys, so that that
Speaker 4: was the caption on the photo in the program. But
Speaker 4: just capturing that photo was a matter of paying off
Speaker 4: all this all this, you know, elevator operator and security
Speaker 4: personnel in the building, and Vince did what he had
Speaker 4: to do. But but it was between that and just
Speaker 4: the fact that these guys were so enamored that mister
Speaker 4: T and Hulk were actually there and they were they
Speaker 4: were making this possible. But the hundred dollars uh, you
Speaker 4: know payoff was just sort of like icing on the cake.
Speaker 4: They were just enjoying being there and meeting these guys.
Speaker 4: So it was fascinating. But it's a real name fighter
Speaker 4: because I just said, man, if we don't get this shot,
Speaker 4: what are we gonna do. We're gonna have to go
Speaker 4: to the Syde text machine and guys and you know,
Speaker 4: with a stock photo or something. It's just this this
Speaker 4: was this this kind of last minute crazy, you know,
Speaker 4: do or die approach to doing things was just garby
Speaker 4: gur It was you know, a given. It was how
Speaker 4: things are done. You know, you got with a program
Speaker 4: and became part of it and went along with it
Speaker 4: and made it happen, or you get off the train.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's so funny because you look at so
Speaker 5: many of these promotional materials and how they up their
Speaker 5: game from a you know, just a promotion perspective around
Speaker 5: this time, just you know, everything looked more polished and
Speaker 5: professional and you would think that maybe, you know, that's
Speaker 5: because now they have more time to be more studious
Speaker 5: and planning ahead and taking their time and not at
Speaker 5: all now. It's just it's almost a small miracle as
Speaker 5: some of the stuff came off with such polish.
Speaker 6: It's it's so surprising that it was such gorilla style,
Speaker 6: uh you know production, you know, like just a.
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
Speaker 4: Yah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, They've always kind of and they stuck with that
Speaker 5: spirit forever. I'm in sure now it's much more you know,
Speaker 5: professionalized as far as like permit pulling and stuff. But
Speaker 5: they would just show up and shoot scenes and places
Speaker 5: that the people that were there their heads would spend.
Speaker 5: They'd be in and out, you know, and shot somebody
Speaker 5: going any idea what that was about.
Speaker 4: I don't know that that level of energy and excitement
Speaker 4: around this is still there to that level, because I
Speaker 4: don't know that you could do this this day and
Speaker 4: age unless it was a totally different new shtick of
Speaker 4: some sort that somebody came up with that was you know,
Speaker 4: just all encompassing for the public's imagination. But these characters
Speaker 4: were literally bigger than life. And it wasn't it wasn't
Speaker 4: a Marvel comic kind of thing where that's completely contrived.
Speaker 4: These are actual people, actual, really big people. And you know,
Speaker 4: I mean but that that was just so sensational. That
Speaker 4: but between Vince cajoling people with a couple of bucks
Speaker 4: here in there, and just the fact that he had
Speaker 4: these guys in tow and you could just you know,
Speaker 4: see them right there or they shake your hand, you
Speaker 4: know whatever. It was just mind blowing and people people
Speaker 4: would just pitch in and make it work no matter what.
Speaker 4: It was wild. And that reminds me the first time
Speaker 4: meeting Hulk. You know, I'm I don't know, I'm about
Speaker 4: five five ten, five ten and a half something like that.
Speaker 4: I'm not a huge guy, but I'm not little guy.
Speaker 4: But you know, the first time I met Hulk and
Speaker 4: we shook hands, his grip grabs it's like halfway up
Speaker 4: my forearm.
Speaker 5: Wow, and.
Speaker 2: Big dudes, it was.
Speaker 4: It was as comical. I was getting a kick out
Speaker 4: of it, you know, And he was as nice as
Speaker 4: he could be. And I remember the first time meeting Andrea,
Speaker 4: I don't know where my hand went. His group engulfed
Speaker 4: my arm practically up to my elbow.
Speaker 5: Well, you're just lucky you didn't get an oil check, Brian.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you know what those are, but
Speaker 5: Andrea was famous for those.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, no, that I would have been in I
Speaker 4: would have been in a jar.
Speaker 2: Well I assume you were familiar with his flatulence.
Speaker 4: Well there, you know, you say that so kindly. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, I'll tell you something about that guy. He
Speaker 4: he was really fascinating in his own way. And you know,
Speaker 4: it's just it's kind of weird even I how do
Speaker 4: you put it? How do you put it? He he
Speaker 4: had a completely different upbringing from ninety nine percent of
Speaker 4: the guys that make it into the ring as a programmer.
Speaker 4: I'm in whether whether you're with whether you whether you're
Speaker 4: with WWF or whichever syndicate whatever. You know, a lot
Speaker 4: of these guys came from nothing. They grew up in
Speaker 4: a trailer park. They you know, they barely scratched a
Speaker 4: living together doing some kind of bront work or everything
Speaker 4: from being a lumberjack to a truck driver to uh,
Speaker 4: you know whatever. Uh, I'm not knocking that one bit.
Speaker 4: You know, their they're you know, salt of the earth guys.
Speaker 4: Andre on the other hand, he was born to a
Speaker 4: very very wealthy family and you can find a lot
Speaker 4: online that they were farmers. Somebody threw in a lot
Speaker 4: of crap to uh tone that down. His family raises
Speaker 4: the French equivalent of the finest race horses in this
Speaker 4: country that you're you're you're going to find at the Belmont.
Speaker 5: Such a huge, huge ranch in South Carolina.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he grew up.
Speaker 4: He grew up in a very well healed world. And
Speaker 4: in other words, he didn't come to this because he
Speaker 4: had to or you know, it was some sort of
Speaker 4: goal he needed to attain to make money. He didn't
Speaker 4: need money. It was like reverse psychology. It was it
Speaker 4: was like where you know, the the average rust event
Speaker 4: is very curious about the guy in the ring and
Speaker 4: what they're all about. There. There there's some I don't
Speaker 4: I don't mean to make them sound like some sort
Speaker 4: of circus attraction, but they are, in a manner speaking,
Speaker 4: an oddity of a sort. They're not normal like you
Speaker 4: and me. These are big people, and they're people that
Speaker 4: are still despite their girth and their height and their weight,
Speaker 4: they're still agile. They're able to do things that most
Speaker 4: people couldn't do if they worked out twenty four to seven.
Speaker 4: They're amazing people, they really are. And Andre suffered from gigantism.
Speaker 4: Everybody knows this. He had oversized organs and that's what
Speaker 4: ultimately took his life. It's very sad. He had a
Speaker 4: very very serious medical condition. And he knew he was
Speaker 4: an oddity. That's the thing. He knew. He was a
Speaker 4: really strange guy to most people. And he was curious
Speaker 4: about the audience's curiosity is intellectual in a way, and
Speaker 4: he was sort of fascinated by the fact that he
Speaker 4: was fascinating the other pe and he got in the
Speaker 4: ring to just sort of see to peer out from
Speaker 4: the ring out at everyone else. I mean, think about that.
Speaker 4: It's kind of it's kind of wacky. It's interesting, you know.
Speaker 4: And I'll tell you the boys are are not a
Speaker 4: bunch of choir boys. Let's put it that way, okay.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not unusual to find some of the
Speaker 4: guys down on an Eleventh Avenue bar in Lower Manhattan
Speaker 4: banging the crap out of each other. Now, the same
Speaker 4: thing can be said about major Major League ballplayers. They're
Speaker 4: a rowdy crowd, A lot of them, not all of them,
Speaker 4: but a lot of them. And Andre, on the other hand,
Speaker 4: Vince would would would throw these very elaborate parties for
Speaker 4: the employees of the w W. He and Lunda were
Speaker 4: very very good about showing their appreciation for their employees
Speaker 4: and I mean by the staff people that Bob McMullen's
Speaker 4: of the world, and you know, they on occasion, sometimes
Speaker 4: annually for a while there would throw a party at
Speaker 4: the Rainbow Room in New York, a very swanky place
Speaker 4: on the on the top of the city, many flights up,
Speaker 4: and they'd have this big swanky dinner in a ballroom
Speaker 4: with an MC and a band, a live band in
Speaker 4: an orchestra, and just like crazy stuff. And it was
Speaker 4: it was sort of like high society out of the
Speaker 4: nineteen thirties or something. It was really something that everybody
Speaker 4: would be dressed up and sometimes it was black tie,
Speaker 4: and you know, you really couldn't expect the boys to
Speaker 4: be into this stuff, but he'd could joel a few
Speaker 4: of the heavy hitters to show up, you know now
Speaker 4: and be part of the festivities. And Andre came to
Speaker 4: some of these, and but he had like this little
Speaker 4: private bar area at the Rainbow Room where they knew him,
Speaker 4: and they had a special goblet for him that was
Speaker 4: like ten or twelve inches across and fourteen inches high.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is like a wineglass on steroids. And
Speaker 4: he drank nothing but chitola feet the rothschild four hundred
Speaker 4: bucks or whatever a bottle. It took a bottle to
Speaker 4: fill the goblin, and he would have six or seven
Speaker 4: or eight goblets in the course of a night. I mean,
Speaker 4: Ziz Louise. Most people they're hard for used to drink
Speaker 4: a bottle of wine and stand up at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 4: this guy was a big dude, and he had a
Speaker 4: capacity for alcohol make a tanker truck look lame. He
Speaker 4: just it was utterly amazing. But he was just very gentlemanly,
Speaker 4: very composed, very you know, he wasn't rude and boisterous.
Speaker 4: It just wasn't his thing. He actually owned a three
Speaker 4: star I mean like Michelman Star restaurant in Montreal.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 4: Hear this guy and it's just sort of fascinating. And
Speaker 4: you know, he played his character for all all he's worth.
Speaker 4: And you know, his role in The Princess Bride is
Speaker 4: is kind of you know enshrined in Hollywood lore at
Speaker 4: this point. He's just one of a kind in every way.
Speaker 4: But I just I'm not a big party person and
Speaker 4: at the time I was single. I met my wife
Speaker 4: after my time there, and you know, I would just
Speaker 4: bring a date to these things, or or I wouldn't
Speaker 4: necessarily I just hang out. I would just wind up
Speaker 4: and go in and sit next to Andre and shoot
Speaker 4: the ship with that.
Speaker 5: Speaking of that, I guess to be kind of tawdry
Speaker 5: about it. We asked about flatulence, and that's not a
Speaker 5: small part of Andre's legacy. He tended to leave his
Speaker 5: essence behind, didn't he, Brian.
Speaker 4: It's honestly not. There's that, Yeah, that's that whole side
Speaker 4: of things. But there was one time that Steve and
Speaker 4: I had to grab a photo shoot with Andre and
Speaker 4: it was just one of those classic fly by night
Speaker 4: you know, you've you've got no time, you've got no
Speaker 4: forewarning to get anything set up. He was available, you know,
Speaker 4: his driver had the car waiting. He had to get
Speaker 4: back to the airport to get to the gig. Kind
Speaker 4: of thing. You guys have have you know, an hour
Speaker 4: or two in between the have a photo shoot. Well,
Speaker 4: we don't even need that long, but you know, you
Speaker 4: have to set up a backdrop and lights and what
Speaker 4: have you. And Steve didn't have anybody being a roadie
Speaker 4: for him or anything, you know. I just helped him
Speaker 4: put his lights up. And basically we were in some
Speaker 4: rented space in Stamford that wasn't really formally a WWF office,
Speaker 4: but there wasn't. The place was just crammed whatever office
Speaker 4: space they had, it was just clerical stuff. We found
Speaker 4: a storeroom on a parking level under this building that
Speaker 4: was relatively empty enough. We found a couple outlets we
Speaker 4: could set up Steve's lights and power pack and everything
Speaker 4: for his camera, and set up a backdrop and do
Speaker 4: a quick and dirty photo shoot with Andrea for a
Speaker 4: few shots. This is for the magazine or something I
Speaker 4: can't even recall, but so Andre just you know, sitting
Speaker 4: on a stool. The stool's howling and pain. I'm joking,
Speaker 4: but you know, all of a sudden, Steve and I
Speaker 4: it's a sound like like a six foot wide water main,
Speaker 4: that's correct, and this gush of liquid like thousands of
Speaker 4: gallons pouring through it a hour or something, but there's
Speaker 4: nothing going on, and we're looking at for the sea.
Speaker 4: It's not coming from the ceil, and we're looking sideways,
Speaker 4: it's not coming sideways, What the hell? And then there's
Speaker 4: this banging, like like you're in a steel mill and
Speaker 4: and some guy's banging on the side of a caldron
Speaker 4: with a sledgehammer, like that's what the hell, and another
Speaker 4: just like me and I were like what, And that's
Speaker 4: his gut. That's like some crap going up, you know,
Speaker 4: he's hosting a steel convention or something in his stomach,
Speaker 4: and it's just I've never heard anything like that before
Speaker 4: or since in my life come out I kind of
Speaker 4: out of anything, never mind a human being. But this,
Speaker 4: this guy's gastric system was was like a cave full
Speaker 4: of steel smelting equipment or something. I mean, it was
Speaker 4: just bizarre, totally bizarre. And Steve and I were just
Speaker 4: like like speechless, like humans can't make sounds like that, right,
Speaker 4: And Andre is just like completely unfazed. He just had
Speaker 4: sort of like this sleepy look. I think he was
Speaker 4: like dog tired. He was just catnapping on cars and
Speaker 4: planes between gigs, and He's just like, oh, big deal,
Speaker 4: you know. But we were we were just fascinated I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, I wanted to. I wanted to you know,
Speaker 4: alert the Scientific Press or something and right investigation, you know,
Speaker 4: like you have six stomachs and they're made of steel
Speaker 4: or so. I don't know. It was just weird.
Speaker 1: Lapsed Fan Wrestling podcast with Jack and and j Bisaro,
Speaker 1: The Lapsed Fan Wrestling Podcast, something.
Speaker 5: Like being around these guys, Man, what unique career experiences U.
Speaker 5: But we touched on earlier the photo shoot for a
Speaker 5: lot of the photo shoots you did. I know you
Speaker 5: helped with the wrestling album Okay and this is big.
Speaker 5: We can all picture the cover of the wrestling album
Speaker 5: that out with in eighty six. I think it was
Speaker 5: with Grab Them Cakes and Real American and all kinds
Speaker 5: of the songs that they would use and associate. I
Speaker 5: think Tutti Fruity by Mean Gi is on their standback
Speaker 5: by Vince unbelievable. So tell us about I mean, that
Speaker 5: is just like a oh my god, that's like a tapestry.
Speaker 4: What is it?
Speaker 5: A just a whole scene of all these wrestlers faces.
Speaker 5: It's like a tableau almost of the era. So tell
Speaker 5: us about that one.
Speaker 4: Well, I got to tell you that was a process
Speaker 4: that took over a period of weeks, and for those
Speaker 4: familiar with it, it's a double album. But when you
Speaker 4: open it up, there's a recording moment the Hit Factory
Speaker 4: in New York, where you know everyone from Billy Joel
Speaker 4: to you name it, major stars. He recorded over time.
Speaker 4: Very very few of those people were in that room
Speaker 4: at the same time.
Speaker 5: Oh wow.
Speaker 4: And in many instances people were elsewhere. And for example,
Speaker 4: when you look on the cover and Vince has his
Speaker 4: arm on Geno Glun's shoulder, you're they were shot against
Speaker 4: a backdrop and dropped in. They were shot elsewhere because
Speaker 4: they just were That was done at a show where
Speaker 4: they were Gene was a ring announcer and Vince was
Speaker 4: doing commentary and so forth. They were just shot and
Speaker 4: dropped in. As most of these people, everyone was a
Speaker 4: different wrestling events around the country. Whatever the ticket was,
Speaker 4: they weren't going to disturb the flow of events for
Speaker 4: wrestling fans. So whenever people were in New York for
Speaker 4: a show, or close by, say Poughkeepsie, New York, where
Speaker 4: a lot of taping used to be done, we'd send
Speaker 4: a driver and get him in town. So some of
Speaker 4: these people were actually shot in the studio room, and
Speaker 4: it was also done around the time that the studio
Speaker 4: was booked for different recordings, so it was a major
Speaker 4: feat to put this thing together. It took and this
Speaker 4: was all done on this side text machine, so I
Speaker 4: can't even begin to tell you how many hours went
Speaker 4: into creating this image. But a few of the wrestlers
Speaker 4: were actually shot in the room, but we had to
Speaker 4: map out where they were going to be and sort
Speaker 4: of roughly gauge where they would be, what their stance
Speaker 4: would be, what their proximity to the camera would be,
Speaker 4: so that when it was all put together electronically, which
Speaker 4: even now this day and age in photoshops, this would
Speaker 4: be a monster taking to try to do. But it was.
Speaker 4: It was utterly mind blowing the amount of time and
Speaker 4: resources that creating this image.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I can't believe that it was different places different
Speaker 5: I would have swore it was everyone in the same
Speaker 5: you know, under the same roof, because they shot that
Speaker 5: music video to play on We Are the World and
Speaker 5: everybody was there, so I thought they just did it
Speaker 5: it that thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I mean, I'm just to give you a
Speaker 4: really really really crazy just not go through the whole
Speaker 4: Blessed thing. But obviously because you know Jesse Ventura front
Speaker 4: and center on the cover and our old buddy Hollie
Speaker 4: right behind him holding the mic. You know, the Killer Bees,
Speaker 4: Randy Savage, you could pick out your your favorite you know,
Speaker 4: wrestler manager whoever throughout some of the some of the
Speaker 4: funnier things to me are the uh the gal on
Speaker 4: the trumpet at the far left, that was a makeup
Speaker 4: artist and an old girl of mine, old girlfriend.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, wow, look out for that.
Speaker 4: She she made scary sounds come out of that trumpet.
Speaker 4: We asked her to stop, but to save her life.
Speaker 4: You go three people to the right and you see
Speaker 4: the gal with the Rickenbacker guitar. That's Cyndi Lauper, Oh wow,
Speaker 4: aka Mona Flambay.
Speaker 5: Mona Flambay, right, that was like a pseudonym wearing a.
Speaker 4: Wig, of course, and George the Animal Steel holding a
Speaker 4: soprano sacks upside down.
Speaker 5: But yes, of course, what was the reason for Mona Flambay?
Speaker 5: Was that kind of like she wanted to mask that
Speaker 5: she was on the album or something.
Speaker 4: You know, It was just it was it that wasn't
Speaker 4: really even thought out. She just thought it would be
Speaker 4: fun to be in there. Yeah, I mean, and yeah,
Speaker 4: it was. It was just such a crazy deal. Every
Speaker 4: aspect of this thing was was was was really really
Speaker 4: comical to me. And what's his name? One of the producers.
Speaker 4: I'm just going to the credits. I mean, there's so
Speaker 4: much stuff about this. I I I haven't looked at
Speaker 4: this in eons until just recently because I was starting
Speaker 4: to sort up my flat files I I have. I
Speaker 4: have tons of samples of things that I worked on
Speaker 4: in these flat.
Speaker 5: Files and very interesting.
Speaker 4: Oh my god. But what's what's his name? The well
Speaker 4: Well executive producers Dave wolf Well. That was Cindy's manager
Speaker 4: and then boyfriend. Yes, back in the air. Uh but
Speaker 4: but but Rick Rick Springfield, Okay, Rick Rick Springfield. He's
Speaker 4: the producer you know, screaming on the mic behind the
Speaker 4: control board at Rowdy Roddy. I mean, I was in
Speaker 4: love of that guy's work back you know, when I
Speaker 4: was a teen he did hang on Sloopy. I mean,
Speaker 4: so he was behind that band. I mean, it's just
Speaker 4: this is like a time machine looking at this because
Speaker 4: it h I mean, just because the Hit Factory is
Speaker 4: such a cool place and and sort of the home
Speaker 4: of of some phenomenal rock. I mean, it's it's just
Speaker 4: it's a little bit of musical history and and uh
Speaker 4: and a lot of w w F history. But the
Speaker 4: way that the way that album cover came together was
Speaker 4: was just a mountain of work, absolute mountain of work.
Speaker 4: But it was a fun project, you know, I don't
Speaker 4: I wouldn't call it one of the greatest pieces of
Speaker 4: music I ever put together, you know. Yeah, And I'm
Speaker 4: think they were aiming for that either. It was just
Speaker 4: a fun thing.
Speaker 5: They were just trying. They were just trying to catch
Speaker 5: the wave of licensing opportunities that came their way. We've
Speaker 5: talked about this endlessly over the years on the show.
Speaker 5: It's like action figure, shore board game, shore lunch boxes.
Speaker 5: We'll do it all. We don't care like someone's going
Speaker 5: to pay us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. And I think it was it was it
Speaker 4: was you know, there was a little bit of Okay,
Speaker 4: we're wrestling stars. There's rock stars. Why can't we be
Speaker 4: wrestling and rock stars.
Speaker 5: Yeah, with the rock and wrestling connection, it makes a
Speaker 5: ton of sense. All of a sudden, You've got people
Speaker 5: backstage at the shows in the garden who know how
Speaker 5: to put a record out yeah, exactly, wonderful. So mentioning WrestleMania.
Speaker 5: We've talked a lot about the preparation you did in
Speaker 5: designing the logo and the photo shoot with Hulk and
Speaker 5: Mister T and all of that, but you were on
Speaker 5: site as well, i'd imagine for the show, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll tell you that was just a blur. There
Speaker 4: was a two page spread in Life magazine of a photo,
Speaker 4: a two page spread photo of the event of you know,
Speaker 4: the action in the ring during the I mean, in
Speaker 4: the two page spread, the the rings like two inches across.
Speaker 4: It's just it's just this massive people, the thousands of
Speaker 4: people that filled the gardens, and it's mostly in darkness
Speaker 4: because the spotlights are all on the stage, but you
Speaker 4: just see the sea of people out there and it's crazy.
Speaker 4: And I was looking around in it and it is
Speaker 4: I was trying to establish where I was. I remember
Speaker 4: where I was standing, you know, in respect to going
Speaker 4: back to the dressing rooms and so forth. And it's
Speaker 4: just a weird feeling to see that photo capture that
Speaker 4: whole moment and know that you were you were there. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's hard, it's hard to explain, but I mean it
Speaker 4: was I mean it was so exhausting. I think every everybody,
Speaker 4: including Vince Helen it probably slept for twenty four hours
Speaker 4: solid or longer after everyone was just fried to a crisp.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: It was an incredibly exhausting undertaking. Well, but I'll tell
Speaker 4: you the most one of one of the most fascinating
Speaker 4: things I think about that whole thing, and it's sort
Speaker 4: of technical but not really, but every everything was the
Speaker 4: show going out to the public. I mean, obviously you
Speaker 4: had a full house of the garden that out alone
Speaker 4: was a big deal. But this this went to a
Speaker 4: million people around the country minimally, I think more and
Speaker 4: and and then and ultimately with video cassettes and stuff.
Speaker 4: It was it was seen over and over again by
Speaker 4: millions more. But the show almost didn't go on, as
Speaker 4: they say, due to a technical glitch.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, really tell me more?
Speaker 4: And well what in the build up to this thing,
Speaker 4: Vince was consulting people at ESPN and anyone who lives
Speaker 4: in Connecticut, you know when you drive by their headquarters
Speaker 4: they have this massive compound. You will see these gigantic
Speaker 4: satellite dishes of the slang term for them as birds,
Speaker 4: and you know you see them twelve fifteen feet across
Speaker 4: and sixty feet across, like something that's an antenna farm
Speaker 4: aimed at their researching outer space. I mean, they just
Speaker 4: they have gazillions of these birds end up at the
Speaker 4: sky their various satellites to take signals up and beat
Speaker 4: them down to cable networks all over the world. And
Speaker 4: ESPN was in its relative infancy then, but they were
Speaker 4: really aces at satellite technology. And it was suggested that
Speaker 4: Vince not get one bird or two birds, but three birds,
Speaker 4: so he had redundancy so that if the first two
Speaker 4: went down for any reason, and sometimes their meteorological conditions
Speaker 4: or weather conditions can mess with satellite signals, and so
Speaker 4: he decided to get six birds. And even Nelson, who's
Speaker 4: like Nelson Schwiegeler, was the un staffed TV hauncho who
Speaker 4: had been in the business and knew his way around,
Speaker 4: and he just ad vinced, it's overkilled. You don't need
Speaker 4: six birds. And these things weren't cheap either to rent.
Speaker 4: And these are big boys. These are big, big, like
Speaker 4: twenty five thirty foot dishes of mounted on the backs
Speaker 4: of trucks and they're all lined up outside of Madison
Speaker 4: Square Garden and lo and behold. Bird number one went down,
Speaker 4: Bird number two went down, and bird number three went down.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, foorth bird carried the show and ad
Speaker 4: Vince listened to you know, all the prodigal sons and
Speaker 4: the and the stock advice and you know the conservative
Speaker 4: Oh you don't need that, you need this. It wouldn't
Speaker 4: have happened. It wouldn't have gone. It would have been
Speaker 4: a disaster, and people who'd prepaid for this, they'd want
Speaker 4: their money back. It could just could have been a
Speaker 4: financial whole bigger than Vesuvius. And you know, I think he,
Speaker 4: I think, for all his uh propensity for you know,
Speaker 4: doing things on a fly and crazy notions and doing
Speaker 4: things anesthetical to how there's quote unquote supposed to be done,
Speaker 4: he was sure enough to know that he couldn't risk
Speaker 4: not pulling the trigger on this all the way for
Speaker 4: one second and getting those six getting sick birth was
Speaker 4: was a big expensive undertaking. But it's safe day, and
Speaker 4: it's a it's a really interesting deal. You know, you
Speaker 4: don't think about stuff like that. The public would never
Speaker 4: know about it in a million years, But I think
Speaker 4: back on it, I think that that you know, it
Speaker 4: would have people would have just made jokes about the
Speaker 4: whole thing and say, yeah they did. They talked a
Speaker 4: big blue streak, and they didn't pull it off. It
Speaker 4: probably never would have happened again. And here it's happening
Speaker 4: over forty years later. It's an annual event, and it's
Speaker 4: worldwide now, and you just think of everything riding on that.
Speaker 4: I don't think Vincent his wildest imagination, thought it would
Speaker 4: get as big and as broad globally.
Speaker 2: As it has.
Speaker 4: But it all hinged, you know, the success in the
Speaker 4: momentum that took it where it is today, hinged on
Speaker 4: having it get out the door, up to the birds,
Speaker 4: down to doors without without any any kind of interruption,
Speaker 4: And it could have been quite the opposite, you know,
Speaker 4: but his foresight found a way around it, which I
Speaker 4: thought was fascinating. I give him credit for, you know,
Speaker 4: really really honestly to my way thinking. He is the
Speaker 4: father of on demand as we know it. People don't
Speaker 4: think of that. They don't equate pay per view with
Speaker 4: on demand. Is they're just two different names for virtually
Speaker 4: the same thing. And he pioneered it. They're actually people
Speaker 4: who explored it before him for boxing. But no, we
Speaker 4: are near on that scale. And I kind of take
Speaker 4: my hat off to the fact that as much as
Speaker 4: we bitch and moan about our cable bills, we wouldn't
Speaker 4: even have cabbills if he hadn't you know, pushed this
Speaker 4: when he did, And I mean, what it really did
Speaker 4: was spur the industry to realize the possibilities and start
Speaker 4: investing in it. Because to have what everyone has across
Speaker 4: the country in the way of channels and choices, no
Speaker 4: matter how much they complain about it at times, that
Speaker 4: took that probably more than a trillion dollars of investmental
Speaker 4: hold easily to get it where it's where it is today,
Speaker 4: in fiber optics, in satellite technology, you name it. And
Speaker 4: I'm not saying that WrestleMania is responsible for that, But
Speaker 4: what I'm saying is taking the chance to pioneer something
Speaker 4: that had never been done before, never mind on that scale,
Speaker 4: is what spurred people to think about the possibilities and
Speaker 4: go out there and actually do it and convince banks,
Speaker 4: big banks, huge banks to bankroll that kind of research
Speaker 4: and development and get it out and make it actually viable.
Speaker 4: Huge You know, you don't think of somebody like Vince
Speaker 4: McMahon having influenced and created the interest in a growth
Speaker 4: industry that was back then just people were like, what
Speaker 4: what are you talking about? Paper? What? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 4: this was so new and now and now we all
Speaker 4: come home from work, whatever we're doing, you know, we're
Speaker 4: at the gym, whatever, we throw on a sports game, whatever,
Speaker 4: it's second nature. We don't even think about it. We
Speaker 4: just make the choice and it's there. But it's all there.
Speaker 4: And the money was invested to make cable and streaming possible,
Speaker 4: spurred on by that event. It's think thing that you know,
Speaker 4: consider in that in that bigger framework.
Speaker 6: And you know, I want to say too and pay
Speaker 6: you a compliment of this, because you know, I think,
Speaker 6: in my opinion, the WrestleMania logo is no small part
Speaker 6: to the success of of of WrestleMania as well, given
Speaker 6: the fact that and I'm looking at it right here,
Speaker 6: outside of two WrestleMania's and well kind of three ish
Speaker 6: variation of your logo has been used ever since.
Speaker 4: Right the basic framework of it is still in use.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the main the main difference is the S. The
Speaker 8: S isn't The S is not uh uh does an
Speaker 8: attach to the R is? The main is like the
Speaker 8: main main difference. Other than that, it's like it's got
Speaker 8: the same basic design.
Speaker 4: Well, it comes and goes. Actually sometimes they put it back.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's it's a weird deal. But yeah, I've
Speaker 4: been sort of fascinated by the fact that it you know,
Speaker 4: I haven't been in control of the production of it
Speaker 4: since the first three years. Sure, but it is they
Speaker 4: you know. And what's kind of funny too, is they
Speaker 4: they brought me back. This this young gal that that
Speaker 4: graduated from Bridgeport University. Her name is w Sir Gallis,
Speaker 4: and she I hired her and she was green right
Speaker 4: out of quick study night, really nice young gal, and
Speaker 4: she became not not a creative director, but the head
Speaker 4: of the art department, sort of ad hoc because when
Speaker 4: I left there was she was really the next person.
Speaker 4: She was still in the process of learning on the job,
Speaker 4: but she took the mains and a few years later
Speaker 4: she called me back in the early nineties and she
Speaker 4: wanted me to kick around Well, I actually no, it's
Speaker 4: even later than that. It was, Yeah, it was she
Speaker 4: wanted to kick around ideas for WrestleMania two thousand. This
Speaker 4: is about a year in advance, and so they hired
Speaker 4: me to just you know, they didn't use one of
Speaker 4: my designs, but they hired me to just submit some
Speaker 4: concepts and I got far and away from my own original.
Speaker 4: It was kind of funny. I went off on some
Speaker 4: crazy tangents with it. Was like a Salvador DOLLI and
Speaker 4: I went whack up. I had some fun with it,
Speaker 4: and they didn't do it. I mean they I think
Speaker 4: they enjoyed them, but they just decided, let's just keep
Speaker 4: mutating the same basic character forms. And I think that
Speaker 4: was actually ultimately smart. I mean they, you know, they
Speaker 4: paid me for my concepts, and that that's fine. I wasn't.
Speaker 4: You can't have an ego about this stuff. Just the gig,
Speaker 4: you know, and so you if you're a baseball player,
Speaker 4: you win games, you lose games, you keep playing. So
Speaker 4: I didn't. I didn't take offense to it or anything.
Speaker 4: I just you know, but it was it was interesting.
Speaker 4: I had. I did have an opportunity to kind of
Speaker 4: you know, direct it a few years later, but but
Speaker 4: I'm really kind of glad they didn't go with one
Speaker 4: of those, because they just sort of kept the main
Speaker 4: theme and just kept tweaking it. So it's kind of cool.
Speaker 5: Brian We started off the conversation talking about your impressions
Speaker 5: of Dick Ebersol pulling up in the Porsche, and n
Speaker 5: Vince himself would drive some hot rods in his day,
Speaker 5: or at least cars that uh that zoom quite a bit.
Speaker 5: And I understand that you had a moment where Vince,
Speaker 5: I guess, was in a crunch and you got behind
Speaker 5: the wheel of Vince's automobile. Can you tell us that
Speaker 5: story quick?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well that wasn't That wasn't one of his really
Speaker 4: crazier cars. He had some custom made roadsters that were
Speaker 4: just outrageous. But this is this was before he got
Speaker 4: to that point. But yeah, this was as I recall,
Speaker 4: this would have been fall of eighty four or spring
Speaker 4: of eighty five. I can't recall honestly, but basically, there
Speaker 4: was a a pre show taping, just the promos, the
Speaker 4: build up where you know, the guys are shouting each
Speaker 4: other off the planet, that kind of thing, and Hulk
Speaker 4: had been at the office. Vince decided to ride down
Speaker 4: to the gardens with Hulk and his limo so they
Speaker 4: could chat up out some stuff. And he came off
Speaker 4: and he said, would you mind driving my car in town?
Speaker 4: You just leave it at the guards and I'll have
Speaker 4: a limo driver bring it, bring it back. And I
Speaker 4: said sure, and I got no big deal. And I
Speaker 4: had to drop something off in an ad agency that
Speaker 4: we were working with in Midtown and he had this Lincoln.
Speaker 4: He had this. I've never seen anything like it. It
Speaker 4: wasn't it wasn't a lime green. It wasn't dark British
Speaker 4: racing green. It was like this loud, like Irish spring,
Speaker 4: bright in your face, green, metallic and I I always
Speaker 4: draw at the time. I you know, a smaller car
Speaker 4: like my BMW, but you know, and I wasn't used
Speaker 4: to driving a car like this. This is a big, big, wide,
Speaker 4: long Lincoln. And uh it's okay. It was it was
Speaker 4: I thought would be fun. So I uh, I'm driving
Speaker 4: on the West Side Highway. If anybody knows, you know
Speaker 4: you're you're getting in and out of New York. There's
Speaker 4: there's basically two ways. You know, You're either on the
Speaker 4: east side or on the west side. I'm coming on
Speaker 4: the West Side Highway and he's got his headlights programmed
Speaker 4: to high beams keep people to get out of the way.
Speaker 4: I mean, the minute it sends, it's a car at
Speaker 4: a certain distance, it's beaming them and I'm feeling like,
Speaker 4: oh man, I must be one of those drivers that
Speaker 4: people hate, you know. And I'm trying to turn it
Speaker 4: off and I can't figure out how to turn it off,
Speaker 4: and people are all moving over in the middle way
Speaker 4: and I'm in the left lane and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 4: everyone thinks I'm obnoxious. I'm trying to not be obnoxious.
Speaker 4: And anyway, so it's it was just a weird, weird
Speaker 4: ordeal and totally different feel. I mean, it's plush. It's
Speaker 4: like driving a caddy or something that was weird. And
Speaker 4: so I had to go into Midtown and you know,
Speaker 4: the traffic in midtown Manhattan, I mean, forget it. You
Speaker 4: got the nerves of steel. And my wife jokes that,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm I'm a camel driver. She calls me, like,
Speaker 4: you know, typical uh, you know, yellow cab driver in
Speaker 4: the city's honking and running everyone off there. I said,
Speaker 4: that's how you drive. You're a camel driver. And I said, no,
Speaker 4: I'm not. But anyway, I mean I was driving in
Speaker 4: midtown that was not a problem and driving his car
Speaker 4: once I got used to it, and for some reason
Speaker 4: when I'm off the highway, it's not doing the high
Speaker 4: being things. Thank god for that, because I didn't want
Speaker 4: some guy to get out of his car and come
Speaker 4: back and you know, hit the glenshield with a wrench
Speaker 4: or something. So I do what I have to do.
Speaker 4: I dropped this thing out at this agency. I had
Speaker 4: to go in a car park, get out of the
Speaker 4: car park. And I'm in midtown Manhattan, and this is
Speaker 4: the era. And some people who have not lived in
Speaker 4: a city or may not even know what the term means,
Speaker 4: but this was the era of the squeegeye man.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you know.
Speaker 4: It's kind of a sad commentary on society. But you know,
Speaker 4: we have a huge homeless population and it's only gotten
Speaker 4: worse tragically. But the more enterprising of some homeless people,
Speaker 4: if you could call it that, I call it piracy.
Speaker 4: But they would stand on a busy corner, get in
Speaker 4: people's faces, get in their way, in front of the car,
Speaker 4: even when there's a green light, and make a big
Speaker 4: deal of wanting to clean their windshield, or they just
Speaker 4: start cleaning their windshield without permission and demand payment, you know,
Speaker 4: a buck, five bucks, whatever. Some people really made it
Speaker 4: worse because they fed the situation and they were pussies
Speaker 4: about it, and they just succumbed, roll down the window
Speaker 4: and give the guy of five or ten or whatever
Speaker 4: then the wallet just to make him go away and
Speaker 4: don't don't even touch my winshell, just here's the money.
Speaker 4: Go away. And that made it worse. That made him
Speaker 4: come out of the woodwork like broaches. So you've got
Speaker 4: these squeegee guys all over the city, and some of
Speaker 4: them got really militant, like the guy that accosted me.
Speaker 4: So I'm pulling up to the Avenue of America's, which
Speaker 4: I think is also six stave. It's either six or
Speaker 4: seventh I can remember, but duel, Yeah, six Staves slash
Speaker 4: Avenue of America, same street, so's it's basically going northbound,
Speaker 4: only it's one way, and I'm stopped at a light
Speaker 4: in the fifties and the cross streets, and I'm going
Speaker 4: towards the west side to go downtown a little bit
Speaker 4: to drop the car off at the gardens for Vince.
Speaker 4: And this squeegeye man probably the most enterprising of the
Speaker 4: wall to put it that way. A light's out of
Speaker 4: nowhere and he's leaning over the front windshield and he
Speaker 4: has his spray cam with the cleaner and the squeegee
Speaker 4: gripped in one hand, and then the other hand he
Speaker 4: has a can of orange spray paint. You could see
Speaker 4: it all globbed up on the kno and he yells
Speaker 4: to me, what will it be? And I'm thinking to myself,
Speaker 4: I am so screwed. I'm gonna wind up driving into
Speaker 4: the gardens and all the personnel there are just gonna
Speaker 4: be laughing. Oh look here's Vince scar. That poor sucker's
Speaker 4: got a lot of explaining to do because there's a big, like,
Speaker 4: you know, spray painted orange blobble over the front or
Speaker 4: the hood or the wing shield or the door whatever.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking, I am so screwed. What am I gonna do?
Speaker 4: And this guy's just like like hovering there, Well will
Speaker 4: it be? And so I showed him what it is
Speaker 4: gonna be. I did something I've never done in my
Speaker 4: life and I'll never do again. I can't believe I
Speaker 4: did it. Then I just very gently opened the door
Speaker 4: and I could see the light it was. It went yellow,
Speaker 4: and then I said, okay, this is my chance. And
Speaker 4: the traffic down Avenue of Americas was light. I opened
Speaker 4: the door and I just bumped the guy and he
Speaker 4: fell backwards and the light.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, wow, in Vince's car opted and.
Speaker 4: See me, I'm praying somebody wouldn't come, you know, trying
Speaker 4: to make the light from the other direction and broadside me.
Speaker 4: I'm just like, none of that matters. I'm not going
Speaker 4: to explain this to Vince and why his beloved Lincoln his.
Speaker 2: Orange of course, yeah, of course.
Speaker 4: And oh my god, that was the worst day in
Speaker 4: Manhattan I think I've ever had. And I've had some doozies,
Speaker 4: but that was scary.
Speaker 5: Wow. That's uh, that's being an enlisted soldier for more
Speaker 5: than you signed up for. But that's that's kind of
Speaker 5: the world you joined, and especially back then when you
Speaker 5: went to work for Vince. I mean, he's you know,
Speaker 5: it's whatever gets to be done at this moment. And
Speaker 5: it kind of brings us to where we need to
Speaker 5: end up here, Brian, because you've made a couple of
Speaker 5: references to the end of your tenure. You know, it's
Speaker 5: basically eighty four to eighty seven, and let's conclude with
Speaker 5: why you decided to leave the WWF.
Speaker 4: Why and when, Well, it's kind of multifaceted. But you know,
Speaker 4: it's funny. I had a lot going on and that
Speaker 4: job was all consuming, but even so I kept my
Speaker 4: other accounts on the side that i'd had. I was
Speaker 4: still working with Infinity and Howard Stern and I somehow,
Speaker 4: I mean, I was a workaholic, so I never really
Speaker 4: drew the line between the two. But as long as
Speaker 4: the WWF deadlines were done, I was back on my
Speaker 4: own accounts, which was mostly broadcasting related, and I just thought,
Speaker 4: you know, there there were a couple of things going
Speaker 4: on that I just I don't know, not to be
Speaker 4: overly moral about it, but you know, you remember the
Speaker 4: foam hand, the big the Indix finger up experimented for
Speaker 4: a while with that with a foam hand that's flipping
Speaker 4: it off. And I saw a show, you know, these
Speaker 4: little kids, seven eight year old kids. Daddy gave me
Speaker 4: a foam hand. I mean, bad taste as a parent.
Speaker 4: You buy one of those flip off hands and your
Speaker 4: kids wearing it, and it just it really galled me
Speaker 4: because that was stopping being family entertainment. I just was
Speaker 4: a departure from the norm. They didn't need. It just
Speaker 4: kind of bugged me and I don't know that that
Speaker 4: had Vince's stamp of approval on it at all. That's
Speaker 4: not what I'm saying. But there was a loose about it,
Speaker 4: and there was some other things. I don't really want
Speaker 4: to go in a great detail really at all, but
Speaker 4: I mean there there was. They're not not across the
Speaker 4: boards by any stretch of the imagination, but there were
Speaker 4: instances of some substance abuse.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well eighty seven is when they instituted the cocaine testing
Speaker 5: because Iron Cheek and Joe Duggan got caught in that
Speaker 5: traffic stop. So this is kind of the beginning of them,
Speaker 5: you know, realizing that we actually have to monitor this
Speaker 5: aspect of of what we do here.
Speaker 4: But you know, I just I I had essentially always
Speaker 4: worked for myself. I was We'd worked out a deal
Speaker 4: where I was a contract worker. I was not considered
Speaker 4: an employee. I didn't I didn't have taxes withdrawn. I
Speaker 4: was still self employed. I was. I was just base
Speaker 4: a consultant, and even though I was really working full time,
Speaker 4: so I was free to do what I wanted. I
Speaker 4: didn't have an employment contract that I would be violating.
Speaker 4: I just missed being my own man. I mean, even
Speaker 4: though technically I was, but I was married at that place.
Speaker 4: It was all consuming and I enjoyed it, don't get
Speaker 4: me wrong, but I just yeah, I just had a
Speaker 4: kind of wanderlust that I knew. Infinity was going a
Speaker 4: mile a minute and eventually became part of it was
Speaker 4: actually the bigger part of CBS Radio when CBS acquired them,
Speaker 4: and then they were swallowed by Viacoms. It was CBS
Speaker 4: slash Infinity slash Viacom, and thankfully I was invited along
Speaker 4: for the ride. I kept working for those companies and
Speaker 4: that was huge, and that was and along the way
Speaker 4: after that, I designed the style guide for Sonic, the
Speaker 4: Hedgehog and the Buckles and that that that. So I've
Speaker 4: had a big hand in the gaming world with that stuff.
Speaker 4: And that never would have happened if I hadn't freedom
Speaker 4: my time, and I just decided, you know, it's time
Speaker 4: to move on. And I had some differences with Vince.
Speaker 4: You know, he's a funny guy. He would sometimes he
Speaker 4: would just put you on the spot and say something
Speaker 4: that was a little derogatory or you know, he had
Speaker 4: sort of juvenile humor side to it. Sometimes he was
Speaker 4: usually okay, but sometimes he would just make a dig
Speaker 4: or totally uncalled for a comment, to just see how
Speaker 4: you react, and really pushed my button one time. I
Speaker 4: just wanted to just say shove it and walk out
Speaker 4: the door. But when you have a four hundred pound
Speaker 4: custom made drawing board you walk out the door and
Speaker 4: a ton of computer equipment. So I said, yeah, I
Speaker 4: just I bit my lip. But then I decided a
Speaker 4: couple of weeks later, I said, you know, it's always risky.
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna I'm not going to have the cushy
Speaker 4: guarantee that I that I have what they're paying me here,
Speaker 4: but I'm going to take a flyer and go back
Speaker 4: on my own. And I did, all right. I worked
Speaker 4: my tail off, and that's been my nature all along.
Speaker 4: But I went back out on my own, and all
Speaker 4: kinds of things happened. This stuff I just mentioned, and
Speaker 4: some other opportunities I wouldn't have got if I if
Speaker 4: I had been breathing that, you know, twenty four to seven,
Speaker 4: living and breathing it the way I had been for
Speaker 4: four years. And I enjoyed it. And Vince was very upset.
Speaker 4: He was just, oh boy, you know, he he hires
Speaker 4: you for life. That's that's uh. You know, he really
Speaker 4: wants to feel that, you know, you've joined a family,
Speaker 4: and I did feel that bond and I respected it.
Speaker 4: But I'm just I just had the drive to want
Speaker 4: to go back and be you know, you know, responsible
Speaker 4: for my own everything. And Linda was very, very gracious,
Speaker 4: very She's a great lady, very professional, and no hard
Speaker 4: feelings there. And she actually soon thereafter I got married,
Speaker 4: she invited my wife and I down for a party
Speaker 4: they gave. They built this phenomenally. I mean, it was
Speaker 4: just you can't even call it in the state. It
Speaker 4: was like a country club that was turned into a house.
Speaker 4: It was just amazing, and they invited us down to
Speaker 4: this party and it was like a black tie thing.
Speaker 4: It was a big deal. And Vince just he kind
Speaker 4: of glanced my way. You know, we never spoke. I
Speaker 4: just think he just never let me off the hook.
Speaker 4: He couldn't forgive the fact that I wanted to do
Speaker 4: my own thing again. And it's unfortunate, but you know,
Speaker 4: I stayed friends with everyone there. I made some wonderful
Speaker 4: friends there, and life goes on. You know, you can't
Speaker 4: win them all, but.
Speaker 5: So well, I think what's fascinating about your vantage point, Brian,
Speaker 5: is that you came to work for them when they
Speaker 5: were or at least you became acquainted with them when
Speaker 5: they were fledgling in the Cape, right and just trying
Speaker 5: to see if they could make something of themselves. And
Speaker 5: then on the other side, you leave no less than
Speaker 5: you know, ten years after you first met them. And
Speaker 5: this Vince is just he's in a position to command
Speaker 5: lifelong loyalty, or at least in his mind he is,
Speaker 5: from his employees. So you must have left a slightly
Speaker 5: different Vince than you met having those cocktails in the seventies.
Speaker 4: You know. Interestingly, Vince had had a tough relationship with
Speaker 4: his dad. They were I think close in a blood way,
Speaker 4: but they didn't see eye to eye about business. And
Speaker 4: Vince really thought his dad was weed to the old
Speaker 4: world as far as wrestling goes, and he stayed away
Speaker 4: from it for a while. He went into construction. He
Speaker 4: had a construction company and it failed, not once, not twice,
Speaker 4: but he had to, you know, file a third time
Speaker 4: because the business just didn't work out.
Speaker 5: That came up during Linda's Senate campaign that she had
Speaker 5: bankruptcies in the past.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Linda put her foot down and she said, look,
Speaker 4: I know you want to be creative. Construction isn't your thing.
Speaker 4: Go to your dad, work with your dad, work it out,
Speaker 4: take a hand. And she didn't say take it over.
Speaker 4: But that's what he wound up doing very effectively, of course,
Speaker 4: and he worked things out and he, you know, his
Speaker 4: vision for things like WrestleMania was sort of the manifest
Speaker 4: destiny that he's offered the whole thing from the very outset,
Speaker 4: and his dad wasn't easily giving up reins. His father
Speaker 4: was all about the small venues down south, the beer halls,
Speaker 4: the classic old you know in the shadows, wrestling, the guys,
Speaker 4: gigging themselves, the whole bit. And Vince just said, it's
Speaker 4: a bigger world than that and we can take advantage
Speaker 4: of it. And his dad just didn't quite see it
Speaker 4: the way Vince did. And Linda, very brilliantly, I think
Speaker 4: is the reason that Vince succeeded so well, because she
Speaker 4: just said, don't ever sign another check. That's where we
Speaker 4: got in trouble. Leave the books to me. I will
Speaker 4: take care of the books. She hired Bob McMullen, and
Speaker 4: everything changed, Everything changed, and She really really strategized the
Speaker 4: the you know, the greedy details of the business details.
Speaker 4: Not Vince. He had the creative hand, he had the
Speaker 4: eye for what would work creatively, and I give them
Speaker 4: credit for that, but what really put things to the
Speaker 4: test and made them work financially was Linda's oversight. So
Speaker 4: in that sense, they're a great pairing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's great color. And we can sort of
Speaker 5: see the evolution of Vince through while a brief tenure
Speaker 5: in terms of working for them, relatively speaking, I'm sure
Speaker 5: it felt like a lifetime. But before that, even knowing
Speaker 5: them before, they had become these impresarios, Vince in particular,
Speaker 5: it's just such a great and rare perspective to find.
Speaker 5: So it sounds like you've been busy, Brian, Just tell
Speaker 5: our listeners before we part here, what else you've been
Speaker 5: up to lately?
Speaker 4: Well, haven't I been up to? Later?
Speaker 5: Yeah, narrowed down as much as you sy fit.
Speaker 4: You know, way back in the seventies when I started
Speaker 4: in graphic design, I had my eye back then on music,
Speaker 4: and music was was really what I care about and
Speaker 4: love intensely, and I've never really had meaningful successful that
Speaker 4: I used to sing voiceovers for McDonald's The Back of
Speaker 4: my I met a few major artists along the way.
Speaker 4: You have been very helpful to me. I left that
Speaker 4: alone for a long time, and you know, so workwise
Speaker 4: these days, I'm still doing logos. I do a lot
Speaker 4: of web development, but I'm back recording songs of my
Speaker 4: own composition, music and lyrics. And for anyone who's a
Speaker 4: music fan wants to check them out, just go to
Speaker 4: my name Brianpenry dot com and that's my music. So
Speaker 4: I work with a company based in London that specializes
Speaker 4: in sync licensing, which is music for TV and film,
Speaker 4: and they're representing me to companies like Netflix and HBO
Speaker 4: to create soundtracks and theme music for for shows and
Speaker 4: that that's what I'm I'm trying to do and nothing's
Speaker 4: really resulted of any mentioned. Yeah, that's that's meaningful in
Speaker 4: terms of the kind of stuff I worked on graphically,
Speaker 4: but I'm but I'm trying excellent. So yeah, that's what
Speaker 4: life's all about now. And I raised two wonderful kids
Speaker 4: who are I can't call them kids anymore. There the
Speaker 4: early thirties and I just it's like, wow, I still
Speaker 4: think of them when they were old tadpoles and I
Speaker 4: just left it YEF so life's good, life is good.
Speaker 5: Trying to make an imprint and some other verticals, but
Speaker 5: he definitely left his imprint on wrestling by virtue of
Speaker 5: the time he came along with the WWF. So it's
Speaker 5: been a pleasure to welcome Brian penry On, the designer
Speaker 5: of the WWF logo that we all cherish, the WrestleMania logo,
Speaker 5: and as we talked about, so many more touch points.
Speaker 5: You do want to be reminded that Brian will be
Speaker 5: in attendance at the Connecticut gamer Con coming up at
Speaker 5: the Mohegan Sun Casino on Saturday and Sunday, March fifteenth
Speaker 5: and sixteenth. Find his own booth in the artist's alley.
Speaker 5: He'll have signed and numbered limited edition prints of the
Speaker 5: original WrestleMania logo. Very cool.
Speaker 4: I'd like to thank you gentlemen for having me on.
Speaker 4: I'd like to thank all your listeners for being patient
Speaker 4: through this long, never ending diet tribe.
Speaker 5: I've been sure, well, it's it's the full dump. That's
Speaker 5: that's where that's where we come in.
Speaker 4: It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 5: Thank you, well, thank you so much. Brian, what is
Speaker 5: a production of the LAP Entertainment Group.
Speaker 2: Its content is intended for reven use only really
Speaker 5: Want