Elephant Parts #2

We didn't even see this before the preview

7/21/22

I apologize that it has been a few days since my last entry but, as we all know, life can get a little hectic at times. While my version of what qualifies as "hectic" these days would (most likely) be far less than what you would probably experience during a "normal" day, it still has been a bit much for me to try to deal with.

In any case, I am back at the keyboard now, and none of you readers will be spared! As with the last post I titled "Elephant Parts", this post will consist of a few memories from my past that really aren't large enough to be their own entry, but I couldn't get any of them out of my head, so I thought that I would blurt them out here in an attempt to get rid of them.

"Gremlins" Preview

During my much-beloved time working at / hanging out at The Video Adventure, and because our location was surrounded by a plethora of movie theaters, we would be asked from time-to-time whether we would like to attend a preview showing of an upcoming pre-release movie. Sometimes we'd get tickets to some truly horrible dreck, and other times...

This is the story of one of those "other times"...

As was my personal custom when attending these previews, I wore my grey top hat when attending. I met up with my friends at the pre-determined time, and we all made our way into the Century 22 "B" theater (the biggest of the three screens located in this dome). The theater manager made his way to the front of the theater where he explained that the upcoming movie we would be seeing this night was a "rough cut" and, as such, some of the edits might appear to be a little wonky in spots. He also told us to please stay seated after the film to fill out a Comment Card regarding the movie.

I did want my own Mogwai by the end of the film!

The lights dimmed, and much to our delight, "Gremlins" appeared on the screen in front of us. For the next two hours, our audience laughed, cried, screamed, and clapped (hopefully we did all of these at what would be considered "appropriate times"). There was thunderous applause after the movie ended and the lights came up. We were all handed our Comment Cards and pencils, and each of us got to writing our opinions about the movie we had just seen.

As you can tell from my horribly over-stuffed blog-writing style, I can have a tendency to get a little "long-winded" at times...writing my views on this Comment Card was one of those times. I wrote feverishly, and on every blank area on both sides of the card. After awhile, I realized I was, pretty much, the only one left in the theater writing on my card. There were some people in the very last row, but they were shrouded in darkness, and didn't appear to be writing. When I was finally "done", I got up from my seat, put on my top hat, and started walking for the exit. At the same time that I did this, the party that was in the last row also got up, and they followed me out of the theater.

Upon exiting the theater, I started trying to find my friends in the crowd. After a few seconds I found them. One of them pointed at me and said, "Hap! You are between Spielberg and Lucas!!!". I dismissed this as them just messing with me (as we were all apt to do from time-to-time). I waved them off...they reiterated, "HAP! YOU ARE BETWEEN SPIELBERG AND LUCAS!!!" I turned my head to the left, and Steven Spielberg was, indeed, standing next to me. He smiled at me, extended his hand, and asked me if I liked the movie...I shook his hand nervously and told him that I loved it. At that moment, a voice to my right said, "I would like to get to the limo now, Steven."...I turned my head to the right, and there was George Lucas!

Mr. Spielberg stopped shaking my hand, and headed with Mr. Lucas (plus the rest of their party) towards their limo. Their party included Amy Irving and "Gremlins" Director Joe Dante (plus a couple of others I didn't recognize).

Their unexpected appearance caused quite a stir - people started rushing towards them as they piled into the limo. After they were safely in the limo, these same people started running for their cars to try and follow the limo. As the limo started to, slowly, try and make its was through the throng of movie fans surrounding it, I positioned myself behind the limo and started walking very slowly. It wasn't long before there was a line of cars behind me that I was, very intentionally, blocking so that the limo could get away.

When the cars started to honk at me, as well as people rolling down their windows to tell me to get the @#$%&* out of the way, the faces of Amy Irving and Steven Spielberg appeared in the rear window of the limo to see what the commotion was. I tipped my hat to them, and Amy Irving waved at me as their limo reached the parking lot exit to get to the adjoining street. I bowed to her as their limo sped off into the night. The line of cars behind me were all honking at me as I was still in their way. I turned to them and bowed in their direction too. After another minute, I got out of the way of these cars to let them try and chase down the limo (it was long gone by then).

I have always been a movie fan, but I have also always felt that "celebrities are people too" - If they want to interact with you (as Mr. Spielberg did with me), you graciously accept and (try to) act as normal as possible. If they don't want to interact with you (as Mr. Lucas didn't), you allow them to get on with their lives.

EA's First Championship Season

Long before Electronic Arts would be known for sports games...long before "It's In The Game!" became a catchphrase...the early employees at Electronic Arts just played the game!

Yes, long before Michael Kosaka created this logo

(and put Bing Gordon behind an announcer desk)

During my first Spring / Summer at Electronic Arts, I was asked by my boss Sharon Haug if I played softball. I answered in the affirmative. EA had a co-ed softball team that, due to the company's size at the time, needed all of the players it could get (especially since the games were played on weekend afternoons). She sent me to Richard Hilleman (who was the team's Manager) to tell him I was interested, as well as get a schedule.

Even though my back was "better" than it had been in the year following my accident, I was still not anywhere near 100%. I was just so 'happy' to have been asked, and I loved EA so much, that I wanted to take part in any company function that I could (even the optional ones). I showed up to the first game and, after assessing my "talent", Richard placed me at 3rd base.

It was a BLAST! Our team won the vast majority of the games we played, with most of our losses being because we didn't have enough players (oh the troubles of being a small company). We made it through the playoffs and played in the Championship Game.

I'm so sorry to all those that played on that team that I don't have firm memories of everyone who was on it - I do know that Richard was our Catcher, his wife Madeline played 1st base, Sharon's partner was our stud Shortstop, I seem to recall that Chris Wilson and Jon Medek were two of the people patrolling the Outfield, and Trip Hawkins was our Pitcher.

The Championship Game was quite a series of challenges, with our first one being just having enough players so that we didn't forfeit (again!). We did get enough players, and so we could at least play!

It was a back-and-forth game with EA scoring the tying and go-ahead runs in the bottom of the 6th inning (of a 7 inning game). All we had to do is get three outs to win the Championship. Trip pitched well, and those of us in the field backed him up brilliantly, and we did end up winning that day.

So why did this memory pop into my head??? At that time, I was a "Newbie", and not a "Cagey Old Vet"...It was still during the "Honeymoon" portion of my time at EA (that went on for many years)...It was also the happiest that I ever recall seeing Trip!...

James Bailey may be EA Softball's Casey Stengel, and he did have his personalities to deal with on the later teams, but Richard Hilleman had the toughest managerial task ever - managing Trip! 😉

"The Lion King" Event - An Illustration Of Mania

I know this won't come as much of a shock to many of you reading this blog, but I have always been a huge Disney fan. The lengths I have gone to during my lifetime to "prove" this, have been quite extreme at times. When one is such a huge Disney admirer, and that person is also (undiagnosed at the time) Bipolar and manic, "odd" behavior can present itself.

Back in early 1994 I had a pretty set schedule for my Fridays - work at EA all day, drive to my favorite Disney Store (to hunt for more watches), and go home to watch movies / play games / eat mass quantities / work more.

Remember when these were a thing???

During this particular trip to The Disney Store, my favorite retired school teacher and Cast Member told me that I had to watch the video screen to see a preview of the next Disney animated feature - The Lion King! The video playing on the large screen was on a loop, so I had to wait a little while before the preview played.

The preview consisted of only the first three minutes of the movie - from the sunrise, thru "The Circle Of Life", and ending with The Lion King title card. No explanation about the story...no dialog...no casting reveals...nothing! Didn't matter - the entire preview had me sobbing by the end. I knew I was going to go see it, but this is where this particular bout with mania started, and it wouldn't stop until after the movie premiered months later.

The pre-release marketing was so simple (yet effective)!

As time passed, and my lack of control increased, it suddenly wasn't enough to go see The Lion King on opening night with a few friends - I just "had to" invite a large group to see it with me. After it became obvious that going to see The Lion King wasn't going to be a "full company EA movie event", I started to lay out plans to invite a lot of my fellow EA employees.

I had to first find out what the closest theater was that would be showing The Lion King (and that would allow me to buy a big block of tickets to see it on opening day...buying movie tickets was so different back then!). After I had this figured out, and had made arrangements to pre-purchase 75 tickets, I then had the arduous task of figuring out who exactly to invite!

If this movie had come out during my first couple of years at EA, I would probably have just made an announcement at the Friday Company Meeting, but we were on Gateway Drive now (and in two buildings)...I wanted to invite everybody but, even in my diseased state, I knew I couldn't afford to do that...(I also doubted that I would get permission to do that)...

So my invite list started out with:

1. Cagey Old Vet Disney-philes (there were more of these than you might have thought)

2. High Score Productions personnel (since that was my current production team)

3. Disney-philes

Just inviting this list of people probably would have eaten up most of the tickets but then, as I invited people, I had to add a few qualified "others":

• Husbands / Wives / Significant Others

• Children (of those already invited)

This put me over my limit, so I had to head back to the theater to ask for more tickets. I got them, and now we were going to be over 100 strong.

This Simba hand puppet was so cool that I bought two - one for me and one for the raffle

Then, during my weekly trips to The Disney Store, I started noticing that they had started receiving a ton of merchandise for The Lion King - plushies, sticker books, pens, coloring books, collector's cards, etc. Since I was already out way beyond the tips of my skis with absolutely no indication that I would be pulling things together anytime soon, I thought that it would be a "good idea" to have a raffle for all of the people I had already invited to the movie itself. I started buying up a ton of this stuff for the raffle.

With about a week to go, I had stopped sleeping altogether.

At this point a monkey wrench got thrown into my plans. Since I had absolutely no permission whatsoever to hold this "non official event", and I needed to somehow pull this off in as stealth a manner as possible (yeah, Hap, no one is going to notice 100 people missing in the middle of the day), another "group" presented themselves as "must have" invitees:

• Anyone who had heard from another invitee that this was going on but was not already invited

So I went back to the theater and bought another block of tickets. Our unofficial EA group was now over 150.

On the day of the premiere, Larry thought it would be a good idea to hold an impromptu mid-day Company Meeting. I was now worried that all this planning would go down the tubes for one of two reasons:

1. The meeting would go on too long and we'd miss the movie

2. The entire plan to go to the movie would be "found out", and we would not be allowed to leave

The meeting didn't go on too long and those of us who were going to the movie headed to the theater.

Once there, I handed out tickets, held the raffle, and headed in with our group.

The movie didn't disappoint! Everyone had a great time (I think).

The depressive side of the scale didn't come in for a little while longer, but it would come in (as it always did)...

Other than the financial damage I did to myself during this episode, this was one of the very few times where there weren't other "victims" affected negatively by my behavior. I so wish that I had been diagnosed earlier in my life. I, probably, would not have damaged myself so horribly had I been...(I know I would have hurt far fewer other people than I did)...