Origin Story
Description
How it Could Have Been Better
Specs
The Three Overwhelmingly Cool Aspects of the Party
FM Radio Broadcast as Guests Approached
Videos of the Night of the Event
Image Gallery 1 of the Night of the Event
Image Gallery 2 of the Night of the Event
Origin Story:
One of Lily and my first trips to Knott’s Berry Farm, we had a wild west photo of us taken. This was a lot of fun and something I wouldn’t have done in the past. On another trip to Knott’s, Lily picked out a black hat from the 30s that she liked, and looked amazing on her. Since then, we’ve purchased full 40s clothing and I’ve purchased actual antique cuff-links and other items for authenticity. Occasionally we dress up and go out like this for fun. Once I took her to the Queen Mary ship for a few nights before going to Catalina Island and we dressed in these 30s outfits. Guests of the ship thought that we worked there and stopped us to take pics with us. We didn’t tell them we didn’t, and went along. Lots of fun. This was almost 10 years ago. We thought of having a 30s party, but it didn’t feel right. We thought of doing a Roaring 20’s party, but that also didn’t really fit. Many people throw that kind of party and we’ve already done a “fancy” VIP Oscars Event, so we wanted to do something else. We thought of Prohibition (especially because we’ve gone dressed in our 30s outfits to Prohibition Burgers here in L.A. that is no longer there. We knew of gangsters in Chicago and thought of how every side one could think of was against Prohibition except for the Temperance Movement, except that gangsters and cops alike could profit from getting booze to people anyway. Rather than do a fancy Roaring 20s party we wanted to do a party that would reflect the common man a bit more, when women would join men in speakeasies (bars) for the first time, and many elites sat next to the common worker to get their next drink. So we settled on 1928 for our party, a bit before prohibition ended, in mob-bloodied Chicago.
Description:
For this party, we didn’t want it to be as crowded as the Gold Rush Party, so we changed the party being two nights, Friday and Saturday. I also wanted it to be more immersive – fully facaded in all directions and enclosed too. Then Covid hit. We delayed the party ultimately 4 years, with some few set pieces sitting in my back yard as is that entire time. We wondered, how can we have a party that no-one wants to come to due to the circumstances? Then, how can we have it enclosed? The real reason the main room (garage) was not enclosed was to make it as “outside” as possible. By August 2023 when we had the party, everyone was vaccinated so we felt we could have enclosed it, but we had already designed it to have an open ceiling. We did enclose the Speakeasy within a speakeasy and the connecting hallways. We also knew we weren’t going to build a dark ride again like the Gold Rush Party, so I wondered if I could build a simulator ride. I’d never built anything like that before, only little model ones. So we did! We also added the acted skit in the garage. We haven’t had fully acted scenes before and the chance to make a machine gun shoot hundreds of “bullets” and have special effects happen for each bullet was too fun to pass up. Because the entire set was a Speakeasy, we needed a “secret door” so we made the front scene an acted “Escape Room” style entrance where guests had to figure out how to get in, and then we pulled a fast one – we made a hidden speakeasy within a speakeasy, with upgraded food and drink and lounge seating and didn’t tell any guests. Then we had our crew go around and find someone to secretly go show the room and then that person told another person, and by the end of the night, most guests knew about the hidden speakeasy, and by being shown the room one-by-one, they got to experience going through the secret door to the room for the first time.
The Pharmacy entrance was similar to pharmacies that were coming into vogue at the time, with soda fountains and milkshake machines. If you wonder why to this day Thrifty Ice Cream can be found at Thrifty Pharmacies, we have Prohibition to thank. Guests would be allowed in, a group of six or less at a time from our front driveway into the Pharmacy. The Soda Jerk actor Warren would stand there behind the counter cleaning glasses and not say a dang thing for a while. The room was just sitting there, with two people sitting at a table eating food minding their own business (Debbie and Bobby). If the guests couldn’t figure out how to get through, or couldn’t figure out what to do at all, the Soda Jerk would suggest getting a menu. Keep in mind the guests had possibly heard the radio broadcast while driving to my house, which somewhat clearly said what to order at the Pharmacy. The menu would suggest to try the Daily Special, which was Campbell’s Soup. If the guests didn’t see the Daily Special in the menu in bold letters, the Soda Jerk might ask if they’ve tried the Campbell’s Soup. There was a set of Campbell’s Soup cans on the shelf to the right. They were all glued and screwed down to the shelf. One of the cans was closer to the edge of the shelf, and was sort of like a big handle. If you went to grab it and pull it out, the entire bookshelf would go with it, revealing that it’s actually a secret door with an opening behind it. If guests didn’t pull on the can, after a while, Big Jim would somewhat forcefully and angrily come through the back curtain behind the counter where the Soda Jerk was, which the couple eating would stand up and act frightened, and start asking guests blatantly what they were there for, and he would tell them to pull on the soup can and get in here and get on with it. This was all done to give the guests a short shot with each clue, but lights hidden on the wall would give the Soda Jerk the exact timing to prompt each step, as well as the Host out front to know when to let in the next group of guests. Big Jim had a pager on him that would vibrate, so he was able to roam the back alley and garage an act his shtick, and when he got a buzz on the pager, come deal with the set of guests that didn’t get any of the clues to get them through so we could have new guests try. This entire thing was set at a full three minutes worst case for each set of guests. After guests went through the door, the Soda Jerk would reset the door and reset the sequence with a button under the counter, so the Host would know to send in more guests. Due to this timing, we calculated how many guests could get in per hour, and I staggered the invitations to either be at 5 pm or 5:30 pm so that guests wouldn’t have to stand around the driveway long but not quite as precise as with the Gold Rush Party.
Guests walked from the back of the Pharmacy through the side of the house “alley” where we had props and crates (including the Mardi Gras doors as part of a facade building) and sounds of alley cats and people talking in the distance and such, and then you got to the door of the Garage. It was a door with a sliding opening at eye level so the guard could see who was coming through, but unlike the Pharmacy, everyone was let through right away.
One surprise thing I added was that I wanted to add an additional fun level in the garage while people were standing around. Why is there a band? for example. I realized that by the party taking place in 1928 (which we did not pick lightly), we were transporting guests from that actual date back to 1928. Ok, everybody gets that, but I didn’t tell guests (I love not telling guests things and having them find out when they get there) that it’s not just any day in 1928, but it’s December 31st, New Years Eve. It’s not just any time, it’s Chicago, so that’s two hours ahead (Central Time). I put a big analogue clock on the wall that showed the time was two hours ahead of people’s watches. That would make midnight in Chicago ten o’clock at night in Los Angeles. So in this way I was able to have a New Years Eve countdown and hurrah at midnight, but it was really 10 at night, both so that guests didn’t have to stay up late to enjoy the party, and also so that our party ended about 10:15, with audio stopping at about 10:05, meaning that our noise level would comply with our city’s ordinances regarding quiet time hours. This worked great!
The acting skit happened at a certain time at night that all the crew and the bartender knew. It was long enough after guests had entered, so the Pharmacy actors Jim and Warren could change costume if needed and be a part of the skit. In the skit, the Irish gang that owned the property and ran the speakeasy was Lil and her gang. Lil being the exact same Lil from the Gold Rush Party that blew up the mine tunnel her husband and her floozy were in after she killed them, and ran off with their gold. In my backstory for this party, she took the gold and went on a train and headed back East to Chicago, where she had money..and continued being a criminal running guns and then liquor when Prohibition started. Lil in 1928 would be 97 years old. At the Gold Rush Party, Lily was supposed to be Lil, the owner of the Saloon. So I had our actress Tori dressed up and with makeup to be 97 years old. She sat the entire party up to the skit in a rocking chair at the back of the garage, with a blanket over her lap to keep her warm. She didn’t say much, but her son James kept checking on her. This was her place after all. When the skit happens, the northern Italian gang “Bruno” barges into the garage with several goons, guns a blazing. Lucky Louis, the gang’s leader (played by Ron, a very accomplished actor), comes in with his goons, actors Eric (believe it or not, Eric acted in the movie Apocalypse Now as an extra in the Philippines when he was a child), Danny, and Giovanni, and fires a strafe of his tommy gun across the bar, hitting the walls, bar, items on the bar, items on shelves in the back of the bar and a barrel of beer on the other side of the bar. I had appropriate sound effects of bullet hits for every effect “hit” besides the sound of the tommy gun. This was all choreographed tightly. I had large amounts of expensive breakaway glass bottles and glasses on the back shelves of the bar break and fall to the floor and smash. Luckily I had unbelievably gotten these free, by one of the guys that works at EcoSet, who I know well and has seen me acquire tons of set pieces was in the know about what I was building, and after hearing that we were doing this effect sequence tell me to hang on a minute and he went in some back room and gave me two seriously dusty boxes of faux bottles and glasses and told me “he was waiting for just the right project to give these to someone” and he gave them to me! I was so thrilled!!! Each of those glasses is between $20 and $30. I had already purchased a few for each night, but now I had two shelves worth each night to destroy in a hail of imaginary bullets! After Louis fires his warning shots, he gives a “We’re taking over” spiel, and out of nowhere, Lil stands up from her rocking chair, and she has a sawed off shotgun hidden underneath her blanket, which she points straight up and fires a warning shot which hits the lamp above her, causing the lamp to fall and light to go out. She immediately points the shotgun at Bruno. They exchange words and Johnny (Giovanni) mouths off, and LIl shoots him dead. Bruno gives up on trying to take over Lil’s Place, and the Bruno gang drags Giovanni’s body out the front door, and the guests go back to partying.
The Speakeasy within a Speakeasy was a fake wall at the end of a hallway that normally guests would turn right and go inside our house (which wasn’t decorated) to go to the bathroom if they needed to. If you push on that wall, it’s actually a spring-loaded door, and if you go through it, you follow a dark hallway around the garage to where it opens up to a 10 ft. by 10 ft. room with a young lady running it (played by Linda) who got them upgraded food and drink. You could also play poker at the table, and on the coffee table I left an actual New York Times newspaper from December 31, 1928. I was hoping to buy one from Chicago, but I couldn’t locate one. Like the gold nugget for the Gold Rush Party, I thought it would be fun to have a real artifact from the time.
The simulator ride was quite the challenge. I fundamentally understand how motion bases work, whether 2DOF, 3DOF, or 6DOF. There’s a lot of math involved. However, it’s another thing entirely to build one, and on top of that, build one for two people at a time cheaply, and on top of that completely design the view to be what you want that matches what the car does. Most simulators you just sit in the vehicle and watch the movie and the motion is preprogrammed to do whatever the programmer wanted. I wanted it to be a reactive simulator, that allowed guests to drive the “car” and the simulator moved based on what they were doing. I tried many ways to make an appropriate gimbal underneath the platform but ultimately came up with buying two cardon joint halves from a certain Toyota truck, I forget which, which normally in the truck has one side mounted to a flange and the other side going down the drive shaft, but instead I married two flange pieces together, put a universal joint inside using a hammer believe it or not, and I had my 2DOF Cardon Joint. I took four of the electrical wheelchair motors I used to motivate ride vehicles in the Gold Rush Party, and took the tires off the hubs and instead welded a piece of bar stock sticking out one side to act as a lever, mounted them to the simulator base and I attached Husqvarna rideable lawn mower steering wheel steering columns to the bar stock with a nut and cotter pin, and to the other side of the steering columns to the car, which was floating on the Cardan joint. I started designing a map and learning how to procedurally code in Unreal Engine 5.1. I asked my friend Trevor in London some questions since I knew he’s better at UE5 than I am, and he offered to design the entire graphical world. WHAT? This would save hundreds of hours on my part and be much better anyway. So I had Trevor build a world using a real map of a section of Chicago circa 1928, and then had him add buildings and NPC characters (cops and robbers and muggles, including a lady walking a stroller – 2000 points!) UE5 sends and receives USB serial data. I would send Trevor position information from the steering wheel and gas pedal, and Trevor would output X, Y, Z coordinates in the world as well as X1, Y1, and Z1 “camera” or “viewport” in the old days we’d call it. I took the USB serial data and made a little module that would convert serial data to ethernet UDP messages, and I sent that to my main controller which would receive the commands, and translate the X,Y, Z,and X1, Y1, and Z1 coordinates to control the four wheelchair motors via two 60A Sabertooth motor controllers. In the last few weeks of working on the party, Chris took over working on the main motor controller code for me to relieve me of having to do it, and Chris is really good at complex math functions, I’ve been working with him on Disney projects since 1999. The shooting gun I essentially turned the gun into a mouse from a light pen mostly. This was a big pain and did not work as well as I would have liked. In the future I think I would make my own gyroscope and accelerometer based device, but at any rate, you could point the gun at an NPC (or glass windows) or anything you wanted in the world and you could fire and hit the person or glass. Then the fun part was running over the person, which would make the simulator go up and down like it would if you hit a curb or went into the rolling hills of a park or otherwise ran over things you destroyed in the world. We let you destroy so much. The “game” didn’t keep points and everything you shot up would stay that way even if you drove back to that area of the map later…but you only had three minutes, then the “game” would take on other guests and reset. We made the ride vehicle be a bench seat, with real upholstered leather which Luis made in his shop, and we put fake headlights and a fake engine and cover and so on on the car. I even bought a real antique 1924 Illinois Model T license plate that I put on the back of the car. Oh if they only knew what their license plate would do so many years later. I tried to use an existing PC to play back the graphics, but we wanted the experience to scream, so I ended up buying a new PC which I custom made for this, and crammed a very expensive NVidia graphics card in it made for extreme gaming. This made such a difference in the performance. It looked so real driving down the road and running over curbs and people and the like. Guests loved this attraction, it was a big hit.
The band was fantastic. We were so lucky to have them. We told Janet to pick songs that were appropriate to the occasion, but I let her pick. However, I asked them to do one surprise thing in the middle of their set. I told her I didn’t care how they did it, but I wanted them in the middle of their set to play the Star Wars cantina song. They knew what that was thankfully and said “sure”. You may be asking yourselves why in the heck would I ask them to play that song. Well it’s because originally we seriously discussed having a Star Wars party initially, and I had and have some insane plans to build one, but we were a bit concerned with what Disney would think, especially if ugh, actually used props and SFX from Lucasfilm, ILM, and Skywalker Sound that weren’t generally available to the public. However, the kicker was when crew member Sean said something like “You know, you’re never going to make the guests happy. You’re going to put all this time and money into making be as cool of a Star Wars set as anyone has ever seen, and yet someone will look at the R2D2 you built and say “You know, that blue color isn’t quite right – your R2D2 stinks! This Star Wars recreation stinks! He was right and I abandoned the idea. If I do a Space Event in the future, it will be of my own design,and not a pre-existing one. So I had them play this song as a homage to the idea of building a Star Wars themed party, and nobody would get it but the crew, but I didn’t tell the crew, so I thought it would be fun for them. The best part about the band playing this song was how they did it, which surprised me as well! They started playing a song I didn’t recognize, totally a 20s song as an instrumental. It was a slow song. Then, as the song progressed, they would increase the tempo of the song, and before you knew it, blowing me away, it was clearly the Cantina Song we were hearing! It had the same effect on me as other guests because I had no idea they were going to do that, and it was SO COOL!
At midnight we had a countdown and Darylyn had found some handpopped streamers that went far into the air (when we originally were going to have a ceiling, some four years earlier in the design, I was going to drop a ton of balloons on guests), that were realistic for the time period. They weren’t cheap as far as party poppers go, but they were so perfect! We only needed to shoot off maybe 5 at midnight to fill the air with glittery streamers. It made for such a perfect end to the party, and it was only 10 pm.
How it could have been better:
One of the simplest gags didn’t work both nights, but the audience never knew so it didn’t really hurt anything. We had a picture hanging on a wall of the “garage” with a car part advertisement poster in it. During the machine gun strafe of the Tommy Gun the main antagonist mobster did, this picture was supposed to be hit by an imaginary bullet and fall first, but it didn’t. It worked ok in tests. The pneumatic cylinder should have pulled the”pin” through the wall, giving the frame wire nothing to hold onto, making the picture fall. Debbie and I tried to fix it for the next night, by stabilizing the cylinder more, oiling the rod a bit, but it didn’t work the next night either. All the hard effects worked, including the ones operated by pneumatic cylinders. It may be because the picture frame weighed a good 15 lbs. sideways on the rod, that the rod was pulled down in the cylinder and made the rubber seal go out-of-round. The rod was supported by a physical metal pulley, so I wouldn’t have thought so, but maybe that’s what happened.
A much worse problem happened with the shotgun fired by Lil. Both the machine gun and the shotgun had wireless transmitters attached to the triggers of the guns. Both transmitters were brand new with new batteries before each show. Both had receivers that were on the roof not too far away, and not too far from each other. The machine gun worked both nights just fine. The first night, the shotgun did not go off when fired, and at that moment everyone was focused on the character Lil when it was supposed to happen. She fires twice in the show, first straight up, which not only had the audio sound effect, but a small solenoid holding one of the lamps to the grid of lamps above our heads drops, and the light goes out. Then later she points the gun at the other mob’s guy who is mouthing off and shoots him and he falls over dead. The first night, the gun worked neither time, but fortunately we had really good actors. After not working when she fired straight up twice, our actress Tori stopped trying, and went on. The guests don’t know that gag and so it was skipped. The second time she fired, at our actor Giovanni, it didn’t work and she tried twice. The third time she made a big gesture with the gun towards him, and he faked like he was hit anyway and fell over and died with no sound effect. I was so relieved they knew to do that. I inspected everything and tested it, and moved the wireless receiver on the roof much closer to the facade wall so the wireless distance was less by 10 feet. The second night the first shot went off after two tries and the sound effect went off and the light fell as it was supposed to, but firing at the actor didn’t for the first time, but did on the second. I have since thrown out both that transmitter and receiver, as I now feel I can’t trust them. I had a spare, and maybe should have considered replacing it after the first night’s failure, but the original worked ok in my testing before the second night. I hate things like this.
One of the FX that happens when the machine gun does it’s strafe, I think it’s the third effect, is for a bottle of air to a pipe loaded with a handful of cork pieces (standard lightweight movie set shrapnel) to fire and make it look like the wooden bar was hit with a bullet and wood chips blasted out. The bottle was used because it’s essentially a compressed air accumulator as it’s called (a reservoir), because when the valve opens, it is a big valve and opens wide, and there needs to be a big rush of air behind it to blow out the cork pieces. The bottle was also hidden inside the bar and I didn’t want to run pneumatic hoses to it the guests might be able to see. This works great I’ve done it before. However, while it worked great in testing, and while it worked during the shows, it only worked about half the blast during both night’s show. I had used soapy water to make sure there were no leaks between the pipe and bottle, but I think maybe air was getting past the valve and over a few hours of sitting there with the bottle full, some air slowly leaked out. I didn’t have time to check it afterwards, but the pipe is still attached to the bottle in my inventory, and I’ll check it someday. As a note, if you ever do this yourself you can fill the bottle with compressed carbon dioxide rather than air, and it will compress more than air, giving you a bigger blast or allowing you to use a smaller bottle. You can also use a pre-purchased HPA (High Pressure Air) tank, but you’ll need to adapt your trigger to how the valve works on the bottle, which I don’t know.
In all of these cases, additional testing would have found these problems. It’s unfortunate that you’re always always behind when the first show happens.
Lastly, I had spent maybe a week designing a wireless gunshot blood spurt system using a really small 16 gram c02 canister with a Schrader valve with small tubes that go up his shirt that our actor could wear when being shot. This worked great in testing, but the costume department didn’t have time to make a custom shirt that fit the actor with the system sewn to it properly, and the effect was never used despite being built and programmed into the show. It’s too bad, but given the problem with the shotgun trigger it would not have worked at all the first night so I guess it was only half a loss by circumstance. BTW, I don’t think anyone has every made a system like this before. The FX shops I went to or called here in L.A. said that it was really cool and they’d never heard of it but think it would be a good idea, because usually it’s done with long tubes going down the pants of the actor to somewhere behind the actor, and the camera doesn’t show that low during filming.
One of the two nights, only once as far I know, a guest was able to drive the Model-T simulator so crazy as to crash it and have it turn upside down. I have no idea how that happened, Trevor and I worked to keep the physics such that that shouldn’t happen, but somehow it happened. You could still see out the window, but your view was 5 inches off the asphalt looking into the distance. There was no way to upright the car, so we had to exit the game and restart it. LOL!!!
Our photographer Enrique, who did such a great job taking photos of our guests with the 1920s cars out front both nights, passed away a week after the party. Enrique had also loaned me a bunch of camera flashes for our VIP Oscars Night opening red carpet scene. Rest in peace buddy.
Specs:
Date: August 23, 2023 and August 24, 2023
Level Party: “A”
Food: Italian and Irish Food
Canned Music: When the band wasn’t playing we played music on the Victrolia. Seriously!
Live Entertainment: Janet Klein and her Parlor Boys
Staff: Lily, Kevin, Brenna, John, Brian, Darylyn, Ron, Debbie, Eric, Trevor, Chris, Jason, Mark, Neal, Renee, Lynda, Enrique, Lisa, Luis, April
Staff hired: Bartender
Actors: Ron, Tori, Eric, Brian, Warren, Giovanni, Danny, Debbie, Bobby, Lynda
The “Three Overwhelmingly Cool” aspects of the party that we relied upon to make the party successful were:
– The 1920s Model-T simulator ride with the driver driving in a real 1920s map of Chicago and the passenger firing a gun at the screen to kill the bad guys
– The Acting skit with all the special effects that happened including the faux glass bottles breaking and the beer barrel getting hit with bullets and the beer pouring out.
– The hidden speakeasy within a speakeasy that guests didn’t know about until someone showed them
– The Pharmacy Escape Room first scene before you went into the main garage
– The band “Janet Klein and her Parlor Boys”
Yes that’s five things because well, they all were amazing and really made the party great. If someone didn’t like two of these things for some reason, or say, never got to see the speakeasy within a speakeasy, then there were still the other things.
FM Radio Broadcast as Guests Approached:
Cast: Kevin, Lily, Chris, Jeff, Conor. Guests received instruction that they could listen to the FM Radio Broadcast in the way into the party close by my house. This broadcast looped for the first hour and a half as guests arrived. In it, they could hear a clue to help them in the Pharmacy Escape Room if they realized that’s what it was. Scott Pharmacy is the closest pharmacy to us – it’s just down the street. Our pharmacy in our yard was named the same. In the radio broadcast, we reference the Scott Pharmacy that existed back in the day in Chicago and list its real street address. Lily plays Mrs. Wachowski, a fun reference to Lilly Wachowski, who along with her sister Lana Wachowski, are from Chicago and created The Matrix films which used Chicago street names in the films.
