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Speaker 5: Last time we were with listeners, we of course were
Speaker 5: looking at the first Saturday Night's main event from nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty five, and we were really interested to see that
Speaker 5: in the credit role at the end that they identified
Speaker 5: the designer of the Saturday Night's Main Event logo, which
Speaker 5: as we know, is fairly iconic.
Speaker 2: Totally, I mean, it's it's one of the most.
Speaker 6: I mean they still basically used to this day a
Speaker 6: variation of the of the same logo today.
Speaker 5: Right, and it's back on the table, of course, is
Speaker 5: the WWET Saturday Night's Main Event going again. But you know,
Speaker 5: the thought process was, man, what what what would it
Speaker 5: be like to have, you know, worked for WWF in
Speaker 5: a graphic design capacity at this point because so much
Speaker 5: of the logos and things that were generated around this
Speaker 5: early boom period for the company still like the Saturday
Speaker 5: Night's Main Event logo and WrestleMania and other things that
Speaker 5: they they're still around today and pretty much substantially the
Speaker 5: same form, and so you know, it's like, what what
Speaker 5: what can we know? What can we find out about
Speaker 5: what it was like to design it the point we
Speaker 5: saw that his name was Brian Penry, and yeah, we
Speaker 5: got him like we do, like we do. We have
Speaker 5: found Brian Penry, the designer, as we'll get into, of
Speaker 5: so many iconic WWF logos that we all associate with
Speaker 5: the glory days of the company and the product and
Speaker 5: we're really pleased to welcome Brian Now onto the show
Speaker 5: for a special two part conversation about his life and
Speaker 5: times in the mid to late eighties with the World
Speaker 5: Wrestling Federation. Brian, it's really great to have you. Thanks
Speaker 5: for joining us.
Speaker 4: Thanks guys, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 5: Let's start right there with Saturday Night's main event. We'll
Speaker 5: get into a whole heck of a lot of the
Speaker 5: things that you've done for the WWF in the course
Speaker 5: of this two part conversation, but would like to start
Speaker 5: with that one, the Saturday Night's made event logo. It's back,
Speaker 5: you know, and in fact the show has a whole
Speaker 5: throwback theme to it the way they're structuring it these days.
Speaker 5: What about that piece of work to get us started
Speaker 5: here that you recall.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I was there from.
Speaker 7: The mid.
Speaker 4: Nineteen eighty four to mid nineteen eighty seven. It was
Speaker 4: a fear stretch and I had worked with Vincent Linda
Speaker 4: prior to that. But I got to tell you, in
Speaker 4: all honesty that that whole period was a hyper drive blury.
Speaker 4: And I don't just say this like, oh, I was working.
Speaker 2: Like a dog.
Speaker 4: Everybody everybody worked like a dog, and many of us
Speaker 4: were in there quite often seven days a week in
Speaker 4: the office at that point, various offices in Greenwich and Stanford, Connecticut.
Speaker 4: And it was I can come back to this later,
Speaker 4: but you know, they outgrew three offices. They were building
Speaker 4: office buildings because the staff grew so fast, and by
Speaker 4: the time each one was built, the staff had outgrown it.
Speaker 4: It was. And the fourth time out, Vince just threw
Speaker 4: up his hands and rented office space on Summer Street
Speaker 4: in Stamford. And finally they wound up with the building
Speaker 4: off of exit nine off of Route ninety five, the
Speaker 4: big black, kind of big structure with now the you know,
Speaker 4: the WWE so called pirate flag. And but I mean,
Speaker 4: just through this whole period, to be perfectly honest, that
Speaker 4: logo and I'm I'm honored that it's become.
Speaker 2: As I.
Speaker 4: But I gotta tell you, it was just kind of
Speaker 4: like this was typical, okay with Dick et Brisol and NBC.
Speaker 4: We're doing this, we're doing that. We need the logo
Speaker 4: four days ago, right, I mean that are for the course.
Speaker 4: And so I if I sit here, I tell you, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, I went through these commotions and shenanigans and yeah,
Speaker 4: I was a process and I spoke to none of that.
Speaker 4: I just banged it out. I just banged it out,
Speaker 4: and it'd be perfectly honest with you. I wasn't crazy.
Speaker 4: I thought it's okay, but I mean, I wasn't proud
Speaker 4: of it, and it was just one of fifty things
Speaker 4: on came across my desk or my drawing board more
Speaker 4: accurately daily, And I'm I'm you. You actually educated me
Speaker 4: to the fact that it's back right right, don't you know.
Speaker 4: I've worked on so many things since my tenure with
Speaker 4: the WWF that this was news to me. It's great,
Speaker 4: it's kind of cool, but it's one of the last
Speaker 4: things I ever worked on. I would have thought I
Speaker 4: had a radioactive half life and would show up, you know,
Speaker 4: decades later.
Speaker 5: So who knows radioactive half let it's good way to
Speaker 5: put it by you mentioned Dick Ebersoll and bosses. As
Speaker 5: the listeners know, we've spent a lot of time wondering
Speaker 5: what it was like, Yeah, to be around Dick Ebersol
Speaker 5: at a time when he had such massive influence over
Speaker 5: the direction Vince would take the WWF, and really is
Speaker 5: such a I think underdiscovered part of WWF history is
Speaker 5: Dick Eversoll's role in things. Brian, I know you're in
Speaker 5: the room occasionally with Dick. Can you kind of give
Speaker 5: us a sense of what it was like to work
Speaker 5: in and around him as in nineteen eighty five as
Speaker 5: he takes a keen interest in pro wrestling in the WWF.
Speaker 6: I just want to interject one thing too, especially because
Speaker 6: you were there before as well, Like, there's such a
Speaker 6: shift in I imagine a shift in dynamic between you know,
Speaker 6: working in eighty four and then all of a sudden
Speaker 6: in eighty five Dick Eversol comes in that too.
Speaker 2: Was just I was curious about that.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean honestly and truly, my relationship with
Speaker 4: with Vince Solenda goes back to the late seventies and
Speaker 4: there's a story right there. But just and I'd like
Speaker 4: to come back to that and flesh out how we
Speaker 4: of course we met and so on and so forth
Speaker 4: and everything evolved into that creative director role with them.
Speaker 4: But yeah, Dick, Dick, you know it was it was
Speaker 4: really kind of a funny deal we all, uh I
Speaker 4: say we meaning the WWF staff. It's very interesting. Vince
Speaker 4: was insightful from the standpoint of recognizing that he's out
Speaker 4: now courting network brass at major companies TV networks, and
Speaker 4: this was this was the infancy of cable, never mind
Speaker 4: streaming that we have now, and he's speaking to very
Speaker 4: powerful executive types that are suit and tie dudes from
Speaker 4: the ground up, and he just I don't know if
Speaker 4: there was something that that a particular incident that inspired
Speaker 4: this or something, but he put out an ed act
Speaker 4: pretty quickly around the office that he wanted everyone in
Speaker 4: suit and tie. Wow, it was wasn't I mean just
Speaker 4: a sports jacket or something at very least a tie.
Speaker 4: And he wanted the women that worked for the company
Speaker 4: to be, you know, nicely dressed, no jeans, you know, pants,
Speaker 4: suits whatever. He just he just wanted to exude professionalism
Speaker 4: and he wanted to you know, they were they were
Speaker 4: dealing with big banks on their finances. He wanted a
Speaker 4: banker to walk in and I think you know it
Speaker 4: was a hippie enclave or something, or you know, guys
Speaker 4: dealing with wrestling. You know, you didn't want somebody to
Speaker 4: have a beer belly and walk by with a beer
Speaker 4: can in their hand or something. That's an overstatement, but
Speaker 4: he wanted to project a very very professional image and
Speaker 4: in a very predictable way, you know, not nothing, just
Speaker 4: just he didn't want to look like a bunch of slabs,
Speaker 4: you know, and one could hardly call Dick ever saw
Speaker 4: a slab. But I mean he's he was this sort
Speaker 4: of cool guy. You know, he's he's a successful television exec.
Speaker 4: He really made his mark in sports with NBC. As
Speaker 4: you probably know, he was responsible for at least three
Speaker 4: Olympics games. I mean, he put NBC on the map
Speaker 4: where sports are concerned, and that was that was really
Speaker 4: his home base, having built that part of the NBC
Speaker 4: television network. And I mean to that to this day
Speaker 4: that that is a huge part of his Uh how
Speaker 4: do how do I put it? You know, he he
Speaker 4: he made his mark, he could do what he wants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that kind of guy.
Speaker 4: And so he shows up. I happened to be coming
Speaker 4: back in the office from an appointment somewhere, and this
Speaker 4: guy pulls in in this cherry red Porsche Targa that
Speaker 4: you know just you know, tricked out to the max
Speaker 4: and Dick gets a very tall guy and uh, you know,
Speaker 4: I think I think that first time, you know, he
Speaker 4: had some kind of funky loafers on it would be
Speaker 4: that or cowboy boots and and he always had a
Speaker 4: designer sweater, a bore, you know, hinos. He looked like
Speaker 4: like uh cash dude and successful TV executive and I
Speaker 4: mean there was there was nothing to complain about. The
Speaker 4: guy was, you know, clean and slick, and that was that.
Speaker 4: So we've had this first production meeting where where Dick
Speaker 4: explaining what his vision is for putting shows together, and
Speaker 4: Vince is sort of meeting him at every other comment
Speaker 4: with with with his vision of how he sees the
Speaker 4: wrestlers being portrayed, et cetera, et cetera. And the meeting,
Speaker 4: it's a very small meeting. I think Nelson Schregler was there,
Speaker 4: as I recall, who was head of TV programming for
Speaker 4: Vince and Vince. Nelson was old school, he was I
Speaker 4: think he had one sport jacket, this red bear navy
Speaker 4: blazer and you always wore this one blazer and gray
Speaker 4: trousers and we all joked he probably had a closet
Speaker 4: full of sixteen blue blazers and sixteen bears a gray
Speaker 4: slacks at all. And Nelson was a great guy, very
Speaker 4: mild battered, you know, quiet, sort of sense of humor,
Speaker 4: easygoing guy. And I was there, and Steve Taylor, the
Speaker 4: WWF photographer who was quite often on the road. He
Speaker 4: spent his life on the road. Basically, he was on
Speaker 4: the in the office maybe a day a week, or
Speaker 4: sometimes a day or two every two weeks when he
Speaker 4: was going overseas and so forth with the boys. And
Speaker 4: it was a really small grouping, and it was a
Speaker 4: great meeting. And then just out of the blue, then
Speaker 4: says to Dick, Dick, you may have noticed that my
Speaker 4: staff is all in suit. Do this is because I
Speaker 4: want to exude a very professional image. I'm sure you understand,
Speaker 4: and I don't want to have any of my people
Speaker 4: feel as though this is a constraint that I impose
Speaker 4: on them only. And he said, listen, I'm just going
Speaker 4: to ask you, would you mind if if you just
Speaker 4: the next time we meet, and whenever you come to
Speaker 4: our offices, you mind just at very least wearing a
Speaker 4: tie jacket. And Steve and I looked at each other
Speaker 4: and it was all we could do not to just
Speaker 4: burst out laughing, like, Okay, Vince is just busting this
Speaker 4: guy's balls. This cannot be real. Here's this accomplished TV
Speaker 4: executive on top of the world. He's probably one of
Speaker 4: a handful of the most valuable people that NBC has
Speaker 4: in their ranks. And Vince is asking him to dress
Speaker 4: up when he comes to the office, and we're like,
Speaker 4: he could have kiddened me, and it did. Just he
Speaker 4: did one of those things where his mouth was sort
Speaker 4: of moving in slow motion but nothing was coming out,
Speaker 4: you know, like he's processing this, and then it sort
Speaker 4: of sputtered a little bit. Well, Vince, so well, I
Speaker 4: know what should mean, and you could tell he was
Speaker 4: just frothing around and something like are you kidding me? So,
Speaker 4: But the long and the short of it is he
Speaker 4: didn't really answered the question. He just said, well, we
Speaker 4: have a lot on our players, so let's get you know,
Speaker 4: we'll be in touch by people with her people and
Speaker 4: all those things, and so Nelson was just Nelson didn't
Speaker 4: say a word. Nelson's walking down the hall, he's.
Speaker 7: He's got that silly grin on his face and he's
Speaker 7: just shaking his head like I can't believe it's did that,
Speaker 7: and we're all hoping it didn't blow the deal, because
Speaker 7: why would you need to even bring something up like that?
Speaker 4: You know, and but Steve and I we went down
Speaker 4: to the coffee room when we're just howling like, Wow,
Speaker 4: I can't I just I can't wait to see what
Speaker 4: Dick comes back. Right, So the next time he comes,
Speaker 4: he's in a full suit, wow, and no designer sweater.
Speaker 4: He's wearing it high and then he kind of softened it.
Speaker 4: And then from there it was like a sport code.
Speaker 4: And then I think way down the road six eight
Speaker 4: months later, if he came for meeting and at that
Speaker 4: point people were going into New York more, that was
Speaker 4: sort of the that was that was the opening salvo
Speaker 4: when he came to see Vince. That was sort of like,
Speaker 4: you know, the mountain going to Mohammed. So it was interesting.
Speaker 4: But but he played the game. And you know, what
Speaker 4: we took away from the whole thing was wrestling and
Speaker 4: what Vince had to offer was so important and so
Speaker 4: critical to their programming. He was willing to be, you know, politely,
Speaker 4: pushed around a little and told what to wear. That
Speaker 4: just blew our minds. That absolutely blew our minds. And
Speaker 4: that Vince had you know, the gall the Scandinos asks
Speaker 4: who's already accomplished to do something kind of weird like that,
Speaker 4: you know, but that was Vince and he called the
Speaker 4: shots and the guy did it. He dressed like he
Speaker 4: asked him to do, so, you know, his his own
Speaker 4: people wouldn't feel like they were being asked to dress
Speaker 4: up for no good reason. It was a real interesting
Speaker 4: sort of character study on you know, pushing the boundaries
Speaker 4: with somebody to see what you can get away with.
Speaker 4: It was just crazy and Vince, I don't know people
Speaker 4: know this or not. I meant to say Dick. His
Speaker 4: wife is Susan Saint James, Uh, the actress, and she
Speaker 4: already had you know, she was a big deal in Hollywood.
Speaker 4: She was the star of the villain and wife with
Speaker 4: Rock Hudson. Uh. She was a star in her own right.
Speaker 4: And you know, pretty almost immediately Vince and Linda and
Speaker 4: Susan and Dick were pals and you know, going out
Speaker 4: to dinner together and Vince it just sort of paved
Speaker 4: his way into essentially, you know, the television world, Hollywood society.
Speaker 4: Was just kind of fascinating to watch this happen in
Speaker 4: real time with people that you know and work with.
Speaker 4: It was it was just it was all very interesting.
Speaker 5: So anyway, very good Well, that's a that's a great
Speaker 5: snapshot of the time period, and you have exactly as
Speaker 5: you're saying, you have a a dialogue going on about
Speaker 5: how to newly present these wrestlers with you know, Dick
Speaker 5: Eversol's experience in television being kind of layered on top
Speaker 5: of Vince's instincts, and Vince isn't afraid to uh to
Speaker 5: draw distinctions around his level of power in the deal
Speaker 5: and that continued to be a relationship that flourished for years. Well,
Speaker 5: let's talk about how you first got in the door
Speaker 5: over there, Brian. How did you become the WWFS creative director.
Speaker 4: Well, I started and it all started in probably the
Speaker 4: most unlikely place on earth. Kip cod.
Speaker 5: Sure, that's where he was. That's where he started so
Speaker 5: many of his enterprises.
Speaker 4: Well, it was really interesting. I'm I'm basically a graphic designer, illustrator,
Speaker 4: a copywriter guy. And I started in ad agencies in
Speaker 4: Boston when I was in my early twenties in the
Speaker 4: early seventies, and you know, I had built up a
Speaker 4: pretty decent clientele and worked my tail off and I
Speaker 4: had a I found one thing and another there was
Speaker 4: a printer I was doing a lot of work with
Speaker 4: based in Hyennas, and I found an apartment I liked
Speaker 4: in Yarmouth Port, this great little town on the on
Speaker 4: the Bay side of the Cape. And for your listeners
Speaker 4: who grew up in I've lived around Boston. WBCN was
Speaker 4: probably one of the leading all rocks stations. Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: classic rock in the sixties, late sixties, early seventies right
Speaker 4: right through for some time after that. But I designed
Speaker 4: that WWF logo. I mean, it's not what am I saying,
Speaker 4: the WBCN logo. It's like a chrome kind of little treatment.
Speaker 4: And that was on bumper stickers for ten years or more.
Speaker 4: But that was one of my designs. And Christmas Tree
Speaker 4: Shops logo, Boston Lobsters and Worldness was around, so I
Speaker 4: had a good footprint. I couldn't establish my designer. And
Speaker 4: I was this crazy, you know, twenty something guy running
Speaker 4: around having fun and working my tailoff, but having plenty
Speaker 4: of fun. And so one day I get this call.
Speaker 4: I'm in my studio in the Armouth Port and a
Speaker 4: woman named Linda McMahon calls and introduces herself. It's very
Speaker 4: professional and she and her husband, Vince had just bought
Speaker 4: the Cape Cod Coliseum out of receivership. The place had
Speaker 4: struggled for years. It was about an eight thousand seat
Speaker 4: venue and it had had rough times and they bought
Speaker 4: it out cash, and she just told me a matter
Speaker 4: of factly what the deal was. And they needed a logo,
Speaker 4: and they'd found me in the Yellow Pages. You remember
Speaker 4: those things that kids sat on when they couldn't fit
Speaker 4: in their high chairs. Nobody used them for anything else
Speaker 4: but that dad worked that I had in there. And
Speaker 4: so they made an appointment to come by and chat
Speaker 4: and see some of my works, all my portfolio, et cetera,
Speaker 4: et cetera. So the day they came the door to
Speaker 4: my it's sort of like Whener would come in the
Speaker 4: door on Seinfeld. The door to my studio is buying,
Speaker 4: and there's and and I'm just I just my jaw
Speaker 4: sort of drop because it's a big guy. But he's
Speaker 4: wearing a three piece pink plaid. Yes, I'm thinking, okay,
Speaker 4: but this isn't like pinky lead. This isn't some slapstick.
Speaker 4: It's obviously, you know, an Italian cut, nicely made suit.
Speaker 4: It's a little bit loud, but you know, that's that's
Speaker 4: what Vin's like to wear. So it was just kind
Speaker 4: of crazy. And and you know on his heels is Linda,
Speaker 4: and she's dressed to the nines, you know, very very gracious,
Speaker 4: very elegant. And I mean you have to remember, you
Speaker 4: can't get on the Cape if you're not wearing boat shoes.
Speaker 4: And you know, you know, it's very casual polo shirt,
Speaker 4: you know, shorts, and I think I was in jeans
Speaker 4: and a T shirt or something. That's just a way
Speaker 4: of life, you know. It's sort of like being somewhere
Speaker 4: on a beach in Florida or something, and they just
Speaker 4: they look like a million bucks, but they look like
Speaker 4: they belonged at some gala in Boston or New York.
Speaker 4: So it was it was just sort of out of context.
Speaker 4: It was funny, and they looked at my work, they
Speaker 4: liked my work. They hired me to do the logo,
Speaker 4: and it was kind of nothing beyond that. And I
Speaker 4: remember this is back in the mid I'd say, this
Speaker 4: is like, I can't honestly recall I'm going to say
Speaker 4: seventy six, seventy seven, somewhere in there is when bos
Speaker 4: Gags was hot and his album Silk Degrees won a Grammy.
Speaker 4: I mean, this guy was hot. He was a big deal.
Speaker 4: So what has Vin? He gets Boz gags at this
Speaker 4: at the cape Cod Coliseum, which has been you know,
Speaker 4: the Loserville Railroad forever, and he turns this place around
Speaker 4: instantly and gets the hottest guy you know in music
Speaker 4: playing there. You know, you must have had a tour
Speaker 4: date fall apart or something happened that was already booked
Speaker 4: and they got him at the last minute. But all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, he's got you know, a less bands
Speaker 4: and performers in the cape Cod Coliseum all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: it's a legit place. So he had the golden touch.
Speaker 4: And I learned later that he actually had an interest
Speaker 4: in the Worcester Centrum, So I mean he knew his
Speaker 4: way around the event venue facility world, and I really
Speaker 4: didn't know much about the wrestling. And we became friends.
Speaker 4: We would go out for a drink and a cocktail,
Speaker 4: which is another you know institution on Cape Cod. He
Speaker 4: expected him morning, noon and night. No I'm kidding, but
Speaker 4: not really. But I the fun thing Vince Vince used
Speaker 4: to he just made going out for cocktails. Really. He
Speaker 4: would call up and say it's time for a tall one. Yes,
Speaker 4: he's really tall. Tumblers full of you know, typically vodka,
Speaker 4: and we would just have a blast and he was
Speaker 4: he was a funny guy. Linda was great. We just
Speaker 4: had a great time and that was that. And you know, uh,
Speaker 4: Actually a few years went by and I heard brumblings
Speaker 4: about the wrestling and I didn't I really wasn't intimately
Speaker 4: familiar with what all they were doing. And then I
Speaker 4: started getting calls from both Linda and Vince and they said, look,
Speaker 4: we're you know. The explained that Vince's dad had been
Speaker 4: in the business for years, and it made me recall
Speaker 4: when I was a kid. I actually was raised in California,
Speaker 4: and I remember watching shows that originated at the Cow
Speaker 4: Palace in San Francisco, and you know, the original Chic
Speaker 4: and Haystack Calhoun. I mean, real old timers like that
Speaker 4: who I was watching when I was seven or eight,
Speaker 4: and it occurred to me, holy crap, Vince's dad put
Speaker 4: those shows together. So it was like this weird string
Speaker 4: of occurrences that had been going on forever that I
Speaker 4: just knew of in a certain perspective as a kid,
Speaker 4: and now I was realizing, wow, that this is becoming
Speaker 4: a bigger deal, and so he was. He had this
Speaker 4: vision for doing nationally broadcast shows where wrestling used to be.
Speaker 4: Remember remember the old VHF in UHF TVF a schlumpy
Speaker 4: little world that TV existed in. It had nothing to
Speaker 4: do with what it's grown to or streaming or anything.
Speaker 4: And not that Vincent defined all that it could be.
Speaker 4: But he had this vision that it could be a
Speaker 4: lot more than it was, and it was really fascinating.
Speaker 4: And my biggest client was Infinity Broadcasting, which is a
Speaker 4: radio company. It was the home of Howard Stern and
Speaker 4: I did Stearn's promotion. That was my big ticket. And
Speaker 4: I was doing that from the Cape, which was a
Speaker 4: bit of a feat but I loved it and I
Speaker 4: didn't feel I had to go anywhere. I had it made.
Speaker 4: As far as I was concerned, I had a great gig.
Speaker 4: I was my own boss. I'm on the Cape. I
Speaker 4: had a good client, several clients, but that was the
Speaker 4: big one. And they made these overtairs, We're going to
Speaker 4: start doing shows out of Madison Square Garden. I'm like God,
Speaker 4: and he said, listen, we wanted to be our creative director.
Speaker 4: We wanted to you know, bring your vision for you know,
Speaker 4: the look and the feel of the whole thing. And
Speaker 4: it sounded fascinating. And at the same time, I'm thinking, yeah,
Speaker 4: and I'm gonna I'm gonna be down somewhere around New York.
Speaker 4: It's going to be more expensive, it's a little more formal.
Speaker 4: It's I'm processing all this stuff in my head. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's not like I ever left the Cape. I used
Speaker 4: to go to New York City every two weeks on
Speaker 4: puddle jumper out of Hyenas Airport down to you know,
Speaker 4: La Guardia or one of the big three airports, depending
Speaker 4: on what was available. And I would I would take
Speaker 4: a taxi in town and had my meetings and come
Speaker 4: back to the Cape. I was perfectly satisfied. And so
Speaker 4: they're saying, yeah, well, this is a big deal, and
Speaker 4: we're gonna we can't we can't work you know, at
Speaker 4: arm's lengths. You're gonna have to be on premises. You're
Speaker 4: gonna have to marry this thing. And like, I don't know,
Speaker 4: and I mean this this wasn't a matter of conversations
Speaker 4: in a matter of days or weeks. This one on
Speaker 4: for two years. Because they were planning and they were.
Speaker 4: They were starting to do shows out of out of
Speaker 4: Madison Square Gardens and so MSG had become their their base,
Speaker 4: but they hadn't built up a staff. They were they
Speaker 4: were lining people up. They were just trying to strategize
Speaker 4: how to do this thing and what to call it.
Speaker 4: Titan Sports became the corporate name. And I mean before
Speaker 4: I even left the Cape, I had worked on a
Speaker 4: logo for Titan Sports, and I had done the original
Speaker 4: ww F logo, which looked nothing like it did with
Speaker 4: the you know, the the stacked w's with the F
Speaker 4: growing out the right. That evolved to that, and it
Speaker 4: was just a real but for literally two years, they
Speaker 4: would call me maybe every month or two. Have you
Speaker 4: thought about it? Have you thought about? Like? Ho? Come on?
Speaker 4: And they kept upping the offer, and they thought, all right,
Speaker 4: it's going to get to a certain point where I
Speaker 4: got to be crazy not to do it. Because I
Speaker 4: knew this thing was going to amount to something. I
Speaker 4: just didn't know how big it was going to get
Speaker 4: around fast. And they finally hit a number and I thought,
Speaker 4: oh man, what am I doing? So I put my
Speaker 4: house on the market, and you know, it was my
Speaker 4: first house. I made a little bit of money. Okay,
Speaker 4: I moved. I moved down to uh Greenwich. I mean
Speaker 4: that this is like culture shock. This is like living
Speaker 4: in a hut in Botswana and being transmitted to London.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: But what and the craziest thing. I got down to
Speaker 4: Greenwich and it took I'm in a hotel. It took
Speaker 4: me two months to find an affordable apartment. It's a
Speaker 4: very expensive place. And you know, all all your corporate honchos,
Speaker 4: all your all your heads of the biggest stock exchanges
Speaker 4: and houses living places like Greenwich and neighboring suburbs in
Speaker 4: New York just over the state line. It's you really
Speaker 4: have to have some cake to play the game down there.
Speaker 4: And I remember the first time I picked up some
Speaker 4: dry cleaning. I mean it was like a shirt and
Speaker 4: a pair of pants. It would have been like six
Speaker 4: bucks on the cape. And I went to the dry cleaner,
Speaker 4: I picked my stuff up. I said, I was just
Speaker 4: sort of shooting the breeze with the guy for a
Speaker 4: minute and I said, so what do I owe you?
Speaker 4: And he said thirty dollars and I just burst that.
Speaker 4: I really was laughing as that, you know, really what
Speaker 4: a way owe you? And He just looked at me
Speaker 4: like I was some rube that had been under a
Speaker 4: rock for the last century, and he said thirty bucks,
Speaker 4: like a idiot. I'm like okay, and I paid him.
Speaker 4: And I remember like walking out with my clothes in
Speaker 4: one of those you know, Dray cleaner bags. I'm like,
Speaker 4: what did I just do? Oh my goodness, I think.
Speaker 4: I mean this was real culture shock and nothing to
Speaker 4: do with the wrestler. I mean, that's a whole other layer.
Speaker 4: You know, you're in this very hoity toity place where
Speaker 4: people tend to be more dressed up. You know, people
Speaker 4: wear designer clothes. People are driving, you know, every other
Speaker 4: car is a land Rover Mercedes for you know, Ferrari
Speaker 4: the Lotus Way. You know.
Speaker 1: He's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack and Carno
Speaker 1: and JP Sorrow. It's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling Podcast.
Speaker 5: Well, you touched on design of the original w W
Speaker 5: Flogobrian and I don't want to leave that unddressed because
Speaker 5: that's obviously a point of fascination for pro fans. The
Speaker 5: WWF logo that came into you know, general view during
Speaker 5: your time. It's just the north Star when it comes
Speaker 5: to like a look that everyone fell in love with.
Speaker 5: As regards the WWF, you had said, it didn't quite
Speaker 5: look that way in the beginning. So can you take
Speaker 5: us through what it looked like at the very start
Speaker 5: and how it came to be this chrome, shiny thing
Speaker 5: that we all remember so well with the f off
Speaker 5: to the right, as you mentioned, well, and you've.
Speaker 4: Got to realize this thing was such a process. I
Speaker 4: had no inkling how how big and bold and successful
Speaker 4: this thing was going to get so quickly, And it
Speaker 4: really wasn't designed And from the little input that I
Speaker 4: had got from Vince, this wasn't a logo that I
Speaker 4: envisioned was necessarily going to be on screen on television,
Speaker 4: something for consider to be looking at it. It was
Speaker 4: a corporate logo, just some sort of signature to identify
Speaker 4: the fact that, you know, when they were doing business,
Speaker 4: correspondence back and forth to promoters, to you know, rent
Speaker 4: venues and so forth, that kind of thing. And so
Speaker 4: it was very simply a W, just just a right
Speaker 4: reading W. You're looking at the W and above it,
Speaker 4: let's say you're looking at a Let's say you're looking
Speaker 4: at a compass. So the S the south is at
Speaker 4: the bottom, and there's a west east and an end
Speaker 4: for the north at the top. It was a W
Speaker 4: going in four directions.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at it right now.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 2: It's a fascinating logo. I've never seen this one before.
Speaker 4: Where did you find it?
Speaker 6: I just googled it. I did a quick google of it,
Speaker 6: and I did WWF logo. I just did nineteen seventies
Speaker 6: and then this one came up. It's like fluorescent green.
Speaker 4: You've got to be kidding me, how come? Wow? Okay,
Speaker 4: so but now think about this. Think of MetLife, the
Speaker 4: insurance company, and they have an M that very similarly
Speaker 4: those or directions like that, and the bottoms it's like
Speaker 4: a in that instance, it's the the M is at
Speaker 4: the top where the where the end for north would be.
Speaker 4: So this, anyway, I never even thought about that when
Speaker 4: I designed the logo. I just thought it was sort
Speaker 4: of a fun graphic and it looked expansive, like it's
Speaker 4: it's going in all directions at once. That was the idea.
Speaker 4: It had this energy to do a three sixty whatever
Speaker 4: that was. So Vince loves it. Okay, that's the logo.
Speaker 4: The prince that puts it on letterheads that business cards.
Speaker 4: That's about the of it. So he gets this letter
Speaker 4: from an attorney for MetLife.
Speaker 2: Yes he does, and.
Speaker 4: The attorney accuses him of ripping off their logo blah
Speaker 4: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and
Speaker 4: Vince is just amused by the whole thing, and I'm
Speaker 4: in my naivete I'm in terror because I'm thinking, oh
Speaker 4: my god, they're going to sue me too, because I
Speaker 4: designed the frickate thing, and you know, I had no
Speaker 4: idea how these things worked at that point in my career,
Speaker 4: I've gotten a lot more sophisticated business wise, but at
Speaker 4: that point I was just struck terror in my heart.
Speaker 4: And so I started doing some research on my own
Speaker 4: and looking for precedents legal presidents that I happened to
Speaker 4: have a friend who was a district attorney in Hyhennas
Speaker 4: and legal beagle in them. He said, don't sweat at me,
Speaker 4: and he gave me some legal finding. He found a
Speaker 4: bunch of precedents where when a company, first of all,
Speaker 4: you have to be in the same product area. So
Speaker 4: so the WWF would have to be selling insurance for
Speaker 4: met Life to have any kind of case at all,
Speaker 4: which of course they weren't close to doing, and that
Speaker 4: life close to making big, sweaty guys jump around and
Speaker 4: beat each other up. So you know, there was no case.
Speaker 4: But the CEO this is this is the craziest thing.
Speaker 4: It turns out the CEO of MetLife, I can't even
Speaker 4: remember the guy's name, turned out to be a closet
Speaker 4: wrestling freak pro wrestling, so and that almost sort of
Speaker 4: legitimized pro wrestling. And then Vince had a big smile
Speaker 4: because yeah, everybody loves this stuff, they just don't admit it.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was pretty cool. And what Vince did?
Speaker 2: Were you, Brian, were you a fan when growing up?
Speaker 2: Did you watch wrestle?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well that's what I was talking about. When I
Speaker 4: lived with the California as a kid, I watched wrestley
Speaker 4: shows coming out of the Cow Palace and which people
Speaker 4: may not if you're not familiar with the it's a
Speaker 4: huge venue. The Cow Palace is like, h it's it's
Speaker 4: a big deal and anyway, no, but what what what
Speaker 4: really struck me was Vince didn't even want to spend
Speaker 4: a dime on one of his attorneys. And believe me,
Speaker 4: he had some powerhouse attorneys. But he didn't want to
Speaker 4: waste the money, you know, indulging this guy. He wrote
Speaker 4: a letter back to the chairman of MetLife on his
Speaker 4: letter head and it was just it was a it
Speaker 4: was a business lesson this this There should be a
Speaker 4: Harvard Business School course enshrined on how to belittle somebody
Speaker 4: in three paragraphs and bring them to their knees. And
Speaker 4: it started off and dear so, and so it was
Speaker 4: something to the effective as a fellow member of the
Speaker 4: world business community.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 4: So we're already on the same place. And he was
Speaker 4: basically saying, shut up and calm down and listen to me.
Speaker 4: And he said, I you don't actually have grounds for this.
Speaker 4: If you feel that our brand is somehow damaging yours
Speaker 4: and we happen not to be in product areas that
Speaker 4: have anything to do with each other, it's incumbent upon
Speaker 4: you to pay me to change my logo. I'm perfectly
Speaker 4: happy to do it. But the cost, because it now
Speaker 4: is embedded in dozens of TV shows and hundreds of
Speaker 4: hours of programming, the cost to design the new logo
Speaker 4: and repro will be approximately one hundred thousand dollars so
Speaker 4: guess what, he gets a check from that lot for
Speaker 4: one hundred grand And did I get I got fifteen
Speaker 4: hundred bucks.
Speaker 2: Counting that.
Speaker 4: Back then, that was a lot of money.
Speaker 2: To me, that was a lot of money.
Speaker 4: That's not an enormous amount for logo design in the
Speaker 4: realm of things that I work at today, but you know,
Speaker 4: that was a big deal back then. So I was
Speaker 4: just happy as a clam. And you know, I and
Speaker 4: I just got thinking, like, what are we going to
Speaker 4: do differently here? And I started experimenting the w's and
Speaker 4: I realized how they could stack. Yes, And you know,
Speaker 4: you don't need to work too hard to put an
Speaker 4: F next to it. You could just grow a couple
Speaker 4: of lines out and you've got the semblance of an F.
Speaker 4: And I and I started playing with it, and interestingly too,
Speaker 4: this this, you know, for that logo and for WrestleMania.
Speaker 4: This era that we live in now, you know, kids
Speaker 4: are learning how to do photoshop in school. It's a given.
Speaker 4: It's just another app. And you know, but back in
Speaker 4: that era, photoshop in its infancy wasn't around until the
Speaker 4: mid nineties. Everything was done traditional airbrush. I'm not an illustrator,
Speaker 4: but I would. I would pencil my designs very very tightly.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 4: I was absolutely a stickler about details, and I had
Speaker 4: some great airbrush artists that I would then sub contract
Speaker 4: to to do that end of it. And then I
Speaker 4: would do what it's called dry brush technique, which is
Speaker 4: detailing on top of the airbrush layer for highlights and
Speaker 4: so forth. And that's how these logos came to be.
Speaker 4: And you know, the basic ww IF logo just for
Speaker 4: lighterhead and stuff was just a black image. But then
Speaker 4: when I when I realized the mag that you to,
Speaker 4: what this thing was becoming, and that it was going
Speaker 4: to be on screen, and that it had to be
Speaker 4: you know, hot and sexy and compete with everything else
Speaker 4: on TV, I'd thrown out the possibility to Benson Linda,
Speaker 4: that you know, hey, let's do this in full color,
Speaker 4: let's let's make it look rich, let's give it a
Speaker 4: metallic kind of really funky feel. And then you know,
Speaker 4: the answer was then and always was do it. And
Speaker 4: that's how it got where it got.
Speaker 5: Wow, that is such critical history to know because that
Speaker 5: logo just centers us. Like I said, and yeah, that
Speaker 5: original four points logo, I know, I've seen it on
Speaker 5: WWF television before I kind of associated with the time
Speaker 5: when they were like more of the seventies. But I
Speaker 5: suppose maybe it was just super imposed on footage from
Speaker 5: the seventies that they later released. But yeah, that's not
Speaker 5: a logo, Brian. That's completely unfamiliar to wrestling fans. It's
Speaker 5: harder to find, but it's out there, and wow, that's
Speaker 5: how we got to the WWF logo. We all need
Speaker 5: just one more question on that logo before we move on.
Speaker 5: Is it supposed to evote kind of like a horizon
Speaker 5: in the desert or something. I was that middle line
Speaker 5: beneath kind of has like a brownish, almost like sand
Speaker 5: color in the top is like a sky blue. I've
Speaker 5: always wondered if I'm just seeing things when I look
Speaker 5: at the logo, if that's what you intended.
Speaker 4: No, Actually, I'll tell you something funny. I I grew
Speaker 4: up loving hot rods. I mean, but when the kid
Speaker 4: done and I grew up, well, my folks flow up
Speaker 4: when I was barely a teenager and I came kicking
Speaker 4: and screaming back to these coast But the you know,
Speaker 4: I remember watching these insanely hot This is the era
Speaker 4: of big Daddy at Roth and you know, car magazines
Speaker 4: raised rein supreme with the you know, just just crazy
Speaker 4: chroned mountains of it engines. And when you when you
Speaker 4: look at any kind of chrome typography, you know, like
Speaker 4: the or the logo for the Dodge Ram or a
Speaker 4: hubcap on a low rider, you quite often see earth
Speaker 4: tones or grays which are reflection of the asphalt of
Speaker 4: the road, and then you see a soft blue that's
Speaker 4: the sky. It's just that simple. You're reflecting whatever is
Speaker 4: around the chrome in the peripheral vision from from maybe
Speaker 4: you see a little hint of green. You're picking up
Speaker 4: the bushes and the trees at the street level. It's
Speaker 4: just it's just a stylized reflection of whatever colors are
Speaker 4: picked up in reflection in the chrome, whether it's a
Speaker 4: bumper or a hubcap, whatever, and that's it. It was
Speaker 4: just simply a matter of making contrast to make it
Speaker 4: look interesting and too so when the high lights appear,
Speaker 4: they look even brighter, shinier. You know, there's not a
Speaker 4: lot of science to it. It was just really just
Speaker 4: a stylization of you know, somebody went to a metal
Speaker 4: working shop and had that logo built in three d
Speaker 4: mounted on the side of a building and cars are
Speaker 4: going by, and you know there's a flower bed somewhere by.
Speaker 4: You're gonna see hints of brown from the dirt and
Speaker 4: the flower bed. Way. It's that simple that it's just
Speaker 4: how how chrome sort of abstractly reflects light and color
Speaker 4: around it.
Speaker 5: So right, it's not a it's not necessarily depiction of
Speaker 5: a landscape. It's a reflection of something bouncing off the logo,
Speaker 5: like it in a chrome tailpipe or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, really cool. Going back to the WBCN logo
Speaker 4: that I originally did in the mid seventies, that that
Speaker 4: in part was my inspiration for the finish on the
Speaker 4: on the on the w w F logo and and
Speaker 4: and you know, the the the WrestleMania logo had some
Speaker 4: aspects of that. It was a little cleaner, a little brighter,
Speaker 4: and and the concept for that was that was going
Speaker 4: to be the big show. And so that it became
Speaker 4: even more almost you know, gold and diamond like, if
Speaker 4: you will. It wanted to just be really you know, bright, showy.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: Well, let's pick up that thread there. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: what are some of your more memorable moments with the
Speaker 5: w w F. I'd imagine the build up to WrestleMania
Speaker 5: was no small part of it.
Speaker 4: Wow, well, I'll tell you are are you interested at all?
Speaker 4: And knowing how the the name WrestleMania came about?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that's the perject of extensive lore And we
Speaker 5: all know how it. Ankle gets the credit in the
Speaker 5: the official WWF cannon as far as like the corporate history,
Speaker 5: but we also know that there's others that you can
Speaker 5: assign that credit to.
Speaker 4: So please, well, I haven't heard anyone else's signed with it,
Speaker 4: and I knew how, and I really liked how he was.
Speaker 4: He was just one of those really authentic people. You know.
Speaker 4: He went out of his way, absolutely out of his
Speaker 4: way to be as nice as he could be to people.
Speaker 4: And there there were a few, say, in any office anywhere,
Speaker 4: there are a few people that you know, let their
Speaker 4: bad morning, grumpy day hang with them through the day.
Speaker 4: And they weren't, you know, they didn't know how to
Speaker 4: keep a chin up around others. And how he was
Speaker 4: that kind of guy wherever he was, even if he
Speaker 4: weren't a great mood, he can go with, hey, how
Speaker 4: you doing, and you just light up a room when
Speaker 4: he came in. He was that kind of guy, and
Speaker 4: I don't honestly think and he claimed credit for it.
Speaker 2: I think he was.
Speaker 4: It was attributed to him. But what really happened, you know,
Speaker 4: based basically in the late fall of eighty four, Vince
Speaker 4: just put the feelers out the department as I was,
Speaker 4: I was head of you know, loosely creative and production,
Speaker 4: if you want to call it that, And there was
Speaker 4: a there was a very closely associated guy named Tom Emmanuel,
Speaker 4: a British guy who ran the publishing. Although I designed
Speaker 4: the w W magazine and oversaw the art end of it,
Speaker 4: Tom was the publisher of it. So we all worked
Speaker 4: together in different capacities on some of the same things.
Speaker 4: And Vince maybe these rumbleys. He wanted to have a huge,
Speaker 4: huge event that would be pay per view, and even
Speaker 4: the ter everyone was like what and you know, this
Speaker 4: was like the infancy of what we now call on demand.
Speaker 4: But Vince had been talking to people at ESPN and
Speaker 4: this is actually, you know, at least a year or so,
Speaker 4: I think a year and a half or more before
Speaker 4: Dick Eversol came into the fold, and Vince had been
Speaker 4: doing his homework on a technology that was loosely being
Speaker 4: called pay per view, and people were still trying to
Speaker 4: work out how the heck it was going to work,
Speaker 4: et cetera, et cetera. But he decided that he wanted
Speaker 4: to just do this massive event, a big live event
Speaker 4: at MSG, but it would be broadcast via satellite and
Speaker 4: people who have the ability to get into their homes,
Speaker 4: which was next to nobody could watch it. But most
Speaker 4: people were going to sports bars or what have you
Speaker 4: to watch it on a big screen with a bunch
Speaker 4: of other people. And so he just wanted to start
Speaker 4: kicking around names. So he called a couple of staff
Speaker 4: meetings with department heads so that that would be That
Speaker 4: would be Tom myself, promoters like Basil DeVito and Cohen
Speaker 4: Nelson Schwegler, who was head of TV. Steve I can't
Speaker 4: honestly remember Steve was in all the meeting. He was
Speaker 4: one of them because he was usually on the road,
Speaker 4: Steve Taylor, the photographer, and but but what we we'd
Speaker 4: have these meetings and it was like a typical meeting,
Speaker 4: and everybody's got an idea, it's bouncing all over the place.
Speaker 4: And how many of us have been in a meeting
Speaker 4: or something actually got done right, you know, you mean, well,
Speaker 4: and everybody throws in their two cents, but you usually
Speaker 4: wind up needing to schedule another meeting or meetings upon meetings,
Speaker 4: and yeah, that's why people hate meetings. So anyway, what
Speaker 4: was going going on was what was good about it
Speaker 4: was that it prompted everybody'd be walking around thinking, you know,
Speaker 4: was they're doing other things and they're sitting at their
Speaker 4: desks or you know, on the phone with somebody droning
Speaker 4: on about something. They're really thinking, Okay, what are we
Speaker 4: gonna call us thing? So it prompted everybody to have it,
Speaker 4: you know, in the forefront of their minds, to try
Speaker 4: to come up with something. And there was this guy
Speaker 4: and I have tried desperately since we talked about doing this,
Speaker 4: uh this podcast. You know, this guy came to mind
Speaker 4: and a life of me cannot remember his last name.
Speaker 4: He wasn't with the WWF all that long. He had
Speaker 4: come in in the fall of eighty four. He was
Speaker 4: only there about a year and a half. Really a
Speaker 4: short guy. He looked a little like Bobby Riggs, the
Speaker 4: tennis pro that the Billy Jean King in that era.
Speaker 4: He was he was kind of gruff. He was this
Speaker 4: chain spoken guy, and he seems the part of a character,
Speaker 4: kind of kind of crusty. I like the guy, and
Speaker 4: he was a funny little guy. And Steve and I
Speaker 4: were in the coffee room and Rex wandered in and
Speaker 4: he was musing to himself about something under his breath.
Speaker 4: He said, what do you guys, what do you think
Speaker 4: of WrestleMania? Wow? Wow? And I don't know if Steve
Speaker 4: recalls this or not, he may think I'm out of
Speaker 4: my mind, but I have a very distinct memory of this.
Speaker 4: And we just looked at each other like yeah, and
Speaker 4: he just said, well, you know, it's basically the Beatlemania
Speaker 4: with wrestling. Its kind of beatle I mean, and it
Speaker 4: was so obvious, it was so perfect because when you
Speaker 4: think about it, what's really interesting to me, I was,
Speaker 4: I don't know, thirteen twelve thirteen, when the Beatles first
Speaker 4: came on the scene. I mean, that was that was epic.
Speaker 4: That was no one had ever ever heard anything like that,
Speaker 4: in the same way that prior to Elvis, no one
Speaker 4: had ever heard anything like Elvis. You can't say that
Speaker 4: about even Belie, about Michael Jackson. There's there's been big
Speaker 4: icons that happened to be a songwriter, a musician that is,
Speaker 4: that is my passion and music, live and breathe music.
Speaker 4: I think about it all the time. And el Elvis
Speaker 4: was iconic in the in the sense that he did
Speaker 4: something no one had even imagined before. Now now, you know,
Speaker 4: obviously he emulated blues artists and and and you know
Speaker 4: bit players in the formation of R and B who
Speaker 4: will never get the credit they're due. But and like kind,
Speaker 4: you know, the Beatles were influenced by R and B players,
Speaker 4: and you know they but they came about it in
Speaker 4: an entirely different way. And when they appear, beatle Mania
Speaker 4: was really the only thing you could call it. People
Speaker 4: people were showing up by the thousands of airports to
Speaker 4: greet them when they were on tour. Now, what's the
Speaker 4: last time that happened. Well, I'll tell you the last time.
Speaker 4: I know what happened. And you may not be that surprised.
Speaker 4: When the WWF guys tour in Arabic nations, in Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Speaker 4: places like that, people show up at the airport. Wow.
Speaker 4: And in Japan and not so much now, but I
Speaker 4: mean in the in the big blow up in the eighties.
Speaker 4: That is how hot this thing was. And I just
Speaker 4: thought how fitting that that just sort of grabs that
Speaker 4: energy and that describes that that chill you get up
Speaker 4: your back like whoa. And I think what happened was,
Speaker 4: you know, Rex was very kind of like under himself
Speaker 4: kind of guy. He was involved in TV production. I
Speaker 4: think I think he had been at CNN prior to that.
Speaker 4: He was somewhere in the in the TV biz. And
Speaker 4: I've tried to google what his last name might have been,
Speaker 4: and I've various different Rexes, and there's Rex Jones, of course,
Speaker 4: and there's a couple of name name value wrestlers who
Speaker 4: for his name was Rex. This guy was not a wrestler,
Speaker 4: very diminutive guy, but very nice guy.
Speaker 5: But it sounds to me, if I can interrupt Brian
Speaker 5: with the glasses and the diminutive and the Atlanta connections,
Speaker 5: it sounds like you're describing Jim Barnett. Oh okay, you
Speaker 5: know Jimmy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Jim was a crazy man. Oh my god.
Speaker 5: Well, I hate to derail you, but we got to
Speaker 5: take a quick pit stop for jim Z. I mean
Speaker 5: the subject of endless fascination for wrestling fans. He came
Speaker 5: to work for Vincent eighty three and the ultimate mover
Speaker 5: and shaker. Can you quickly give us a memory on
Speaker 5: Jim Barnett That sounds like a yes.
Speaker 4: Oh, Jim Barnett was an Elton John of his own era.
Speaker 4: This guy, well, you know he was, he was. He
Speaker 4: was just an institution. I don't even know how to
Speaker 4: really character Brian, Yes a moment. Yes, I mean, he
Speaker 4: was just such a character. Oh my gosh. It's just
Speaker 4: like he strode off a plantation with a mint julip
Speaker 4: in his hands. He said, the only thing that guy
Speaker 4: drank was Don Peranelle. He had a refrigerator in his
Speaker 4: office and Linda would go down there every once in
Speaker 4: a while and you know, tip a glass with him
Speaker 4: and just shoot the breeze, and you know, there, she's
Speaker 4: a Southern bell. Jim was clearly from the South. Jim
Speaker 4: never left the South. He just brought the South with him.
Speaker 4: He had, Honest to god, what was he had? He
Speaker 4: had more silk ties than Liberaci and he was just
Speaker 4: a character. I don't know where, but somewhere in Manhattan
Speaker 4: he had an apartment, and I think he had a
Speaker 4: place he stayed out in Connecticut when he was at
Speaker 4: the office. But but he was. He was an old
Speaker 4: school wrestling promoter who was had worked with Vince's dad
Speaker 4: way back, and and he oh my gosh, what a character.
Speaker 4: He was just one of the funniest people I've ever met.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 5: Well, somebody else that was in the company at the
Speaker 5: time to pick up your threat on who this Rex
Speaker 5: could have been. Do you remember Bob McMullen, who worked
Speaker 5: as VP of finance.
Speaker 4: That's a boy. I was one of his favorite people.
Speaker 4: I used to bring bills you couldn't.
Speaker 5: Imagine, So I guess you remember him perhaps from pleasant
Speaker 5: and unpleasant interactions as regards the bottom line.
Speaker 4: Very pleasant, But I mean I was in charge of
Speaker 4: procuring all kinds of gear and and uh outfitting for
Speaker 4: for the wrestlers from time to time.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I found this equestrian shop that made saddles and
Speaker 4: stuff for you know, people who do dressage and you know,
Speaker 4: fancy horse racing. And I said, can you guys make
Speaker 4: wrestling belts? Can you can you make a gladiator outfit
Speaker 4: for one of our dresslers? And they were just having
Speaker 4: a stuff. So I would bring him bills from this
Speaker 4: equestrian shop, and what do we why do we feeding horses?
Speaker 4: I said, But but the craziest thing, the craziest thing.
Speaker 4: One time I had ted d Biassi, the million dollar
Speaker 4: man in Virgil, come into the offices and they had
Speaker 4: a limo to shuttle them around and then take them
Speaker 4: back to the airport because they were this is like
Speaker 4: one stop off the road between gigs at you know,
Speaker 4: different venues, and the limo driver left. He didn't he
Speaker 4: didn't understand the itinerary or something, and they were kind
Speaker 4: of stranded. But they needed to get fitted for costumes,
Speaker 4: and I wanted this equestrium shop to do some of
Speaker 4: the outfitting for for the million dollar man's you know,
Speaker 4: costuming for the ring and uh at the at the time,
Speaker 4: at the time, I had a little BMW convertible and
Speaker 4: it was a great car until that happened. And I
Speaker 4: got two guys that are just shy of eight hundred
Speaker 4: pounds between the two of them, and it's like I
Speaker 4: got a low rider. I mean, it's just crazy. I said,
Speaker 4: do you guys want to put the top and you
Speaker 4: want me to put the top up, so you know,
Speaker 4: you're not like having a wave in every jimoke that
Speaker 4: comes along, and they I'll leave it down. It's great.
Speaker 4: It was a beautiful day. So we had to drive
Speaker 4: up to Westport, which is, yeah, you know, with with
Speaker 4: no traffic, twenty minutes but typically forty minutes from Greenwich.
Speaker 4: And so we drive up to Westport and I did
Speaker 4: part of a ninety five and the back of my
Speaker 4: cars dragging, I mean, is just like you got to
Speaker 4: be kidding me, you know, we're just all laughing, but
Speaker 4: I'm thinking they're not going to believe this in the
Speaker 4: office when I hand him a bill, because my shocks
Speaker 4: are blown to shreds. So we did what we had
Speaker 4: to do at the equestrian shop, and we came back
Speaker 4: and they scheduled another limo, went to the airport and
Speaker 4: they're gone. But my car was just I was just groaning.
Speaker 4: I could hear it out in the park. Who help me.
Speaker 4: I went down to McMullen's office and I said, oh,
Speaker 4: this is this is one for the books. I need
Speaker 4: new shocks. He said why you well, and you know
Speaker 4: paying for your repairing your car? He said, yeah, because
Speaker 4: a million dollar man in Virgil flattened it. Oh, and
Speaker 4: he just laughed and he said, just go get him fixed,
Speaker 4: get me a bill. I mean it was I always,
Speaker 4: I wasn't the only one. There were just so many
Speaker 4: crazy things. And in this era before long before photoshop,
Speaker 4: the only way to electronically alter photographs and so forth.
Speaker 4: It's very expensive. It was a system called a cy
Speaker 4: Tex system, and it was like a roomful of mainframe computers,
Speaker 4: and it was cheap. It was one hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: bucks an hour. But Vincent insisted. At one point we
Speaker 4: had this great shot of Hulk, but his hair was stinning,
Speaker 4: and and you know, some of the guys very vain.
Speaker 4: They do hair plugs whatever, but you know, painful operations.
Speaker 4: I think there's better solutions now, but that was the
Speaker 4: state of the art medically back then. The Vincent we
Speaker 4: don't have time. Just give him more hair. Oh my god,
Speaker 4: you're not gonna want to see the billy, so just
Speaker 4: do it. Wow, what Hulk's got all the hair in
Speaker 4: the world.
Speaker 5: Because we always talk about O'Brian, you know, there seems
Speaker 5: to be like a message to shoot Hulk as far
Speaker 5: as camera angles and stuff, to always shoot him kind
Speaker 5: of down looking up, so you don't ever see really
Speaker 5: the top of his head. I mean, you don't see
Speaker 5: the top of wrestler's heads too much anyway, but it's
Speaker 5: very noticeable. I think when you when you come to
Speaker 5: learn that there was that sensitivity about him getting bald.
Speaker 4: Well. I remember, I remember there was one time that
Speaker 4: Linda came in my office with a stack of bills
Speaker 4: in her hand. She said, what's side text. I said,
Speaker 4: it's a whole other money in, you know. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's that's the only way we could get certain things done.
Speaker 4: And it was crazy.
Speaker 5: So I mentioned Bob McMullen just because there was a
Speaker 5: book that came out by friend of the show, Brad Blucian,
Speaker 5: called The six Pack last year, and he kind of,
Speaker 5: you know, finds all kinds of people from this era
Speaker 5: and interviews them about what the real formation of the
Speaker 5: boom period WWF was like. And he interviews Bob McMullen,
Speaker 5: and sure enough, Bob McMullen contends that it was in
Speaker 5: fact Rex Jones. He says, Jones, who was brought in
Speaker 5: a television guy. Linda brought us in Vince's office. We're
Speaker 5: trying to think about how to do it. We're talking
Speaker 5: about mania. So Rex sits there and says it's got
Speaker 5: to be WrestleMania rhymes with Hulk of Mania. So is
Speaker 5: it Rex Jones. You seem to be not sure if
Speaker 5: it's Rex Jones, but Bob seems to think it is.
Speaker 4: Well, I thought of Rex Jones that has something to
Speaker 4: do with wrestling online, and it didn't look remotely like
Speaker 4: the guy I remember whose first name was Rex.
Speaker 2: Got it?
Speaker 5: Okay, Yeah, I did a similar surgeon. I'm not sure
Speaker 5: that all the pictures that come up as actually the
Speaker 5: person that worked for WWF. I think there might be
Speaker 5: some confusion there too.
Speaker 4: I don't doubt. I don't doubt that are Rex Jones.
Speaker 4: It just wasn't in the in the area of things
Speaker 4: that I worked on, and I don't recall it. But
Speaker 4: what I'm saying is the guy that I remember, I
Speaker 4: remember physically distinctly, and I found Rex Jones online because
Speaker 4: I remember you had mentioned that when we spoke before,
Speaker 4: and that was a totally different guy. They had dark hair,
Speaker 4: just different look whatsoever. But you didn't have the horn
Speaker 4: room glasses, and just Rex was was very distinctive right
Speaker 4: the way. Just for the life of me, can't remember
Speaker 4: the guys last name.
Speaker 5: That's that's fair. I just wanted to see if that
Speaker 5: that sharpened the memory at all. So you were you
Speaker 5: were on the track of saying that what you think
Speaker 5: happened is that The reason it's the square I ascribed
Speaker 5: to Howard is because perhaps Rex told Howard and then
Speaker 5: everyone heard it first from Howard after that.
Speaker 4: That that was my feeling. Well, I mean, you know, basically,
Speaker 4: Howard was just sort of bouncing around the halls WrestleMania, WrestleMania, WrestleMania,
Speaker 4: and I felt like he had just gone in and
Speaker 4: said to them too, and he goes yeah, Vince goes, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's it. That's probably what happened, and everyone just said
Speaker 4: how must have thought that up, and and not to
Speaker 4: take away from how he won IOTA or anything. I
Speaker 4: just I honestly think the first utterance of it was
Speaker 4: what Steve and I heard. However, that got communicated to
Speaker 4: to Howie or with an airshot of Howie, and how
Speaker 4: he lit up on it and wanted to share it
Speaker 4: with Vince, which is very typical of Howard. So it
Speaker 4: doesn't matter who came up with it. It was just
Speaker 4: a great name. But I just thought it was very interesting. However,
Speaker 4: it came about that was my reckoning of it, that's all.
Speaker 5: And we do want to let everybody in the lapsed
Speaker 5: fan solar system know that Brian will be at gamer
Speaker 5: Con Connecticut coming up soon at the Mohican Sun Casino
Speaker 5: March fifteenth and sixteenth. He'll have his own booth an
Speaker 5: artist's alley at the show. He'll have signed and numbered
Speaker 5: prints of the WrestleMania logo, among other things he worked
Speaker 5: on available, So you really want to stop by if
Speaker 5: you're in the area and say hi to Brian because
Speaker 5: he's a friend of the show now too. So just
Speaker 5: go online to ctgamercon dot com ct for Connecticut for
Speaker 5: more information on the venue and the event, and we
Speaker 5: look forward to seeing listeners of the podcast at the event. Well,
Speaker 5: the table has been set wonderfully by former WWF creative
Speaker 5: director Brian Penry here in the first part of our
Speaker 5: conversation getting us acquainted with how he became acquainted with
Speaker 5: the McMahons and then later climbed the organization as it
Speaker 5: grew so fast, designing the WWF logo, the WrestleMania logo.
Speaker 5: There's more I imagine to digging in new there and
Speaker 5: part two of our conversations so keep your eyes peeled
Speaker 5: and your earspeeled to our feed here as we present
Speaker 5: part two of our conversation with Brian Penry in his
Speaker 5: time in the World Wrestling Federation. We'll see you then.
Speaker 5: ISIL what is a production of the Lab Entertainment Group.
Speaker 2: Its content is intended for private use only.