It's been almost 30 years since I left for Long Island after retreating from the small UHF studio in Ashland, KY and the life I once knew. Leaving only with a small suitcase and the clothes on my back, I ran and didn't look back from a childhood paradise that slowly evolved into a traumatizing nightmare.
It was then and there; I was a young adult, down on my luck and barely making enough to pay the monthly rent for the apartment a friend and I shared. I was barely making minimum wage at my first job, where I would flip burgers for nine hours a day in the heat. The small eatery was beside a long stretch of highway my superstitious boss used to call "Ghost Road," a place where the ghostly hitchhikers would hail rides from unknown passerby.
I switched my apron in for a flourescent vest, to start pulling shopping carts into the local grocery store and mopping floors for twelve hours a day, five days a week; again, barely making minimum wage. I quit after only four weeks of working to look for a better and higher-paying job after I received a notice that I was going to be evicted.
It was while reading the morning paper three days later that I found an answer. Perhaps this would be the answer to my problem. A small article in the want ads called for pairs of helping hands to build set pieces for kid shows at the small UHF studio about thirty minutes away.
I got excited and ran for my red sedan, hoping to get there before someone else could. Something told me this would be my day. After driving for what felt like forty minutes, I pulled into the nearly-abandoned parking lot and looked for an unlocked door or, at the very least, someone to unlock a door. At last, I found a door that would open and was hit by a blast of cool air; the air conditioners were on full blast, I think.
I was about to approach the front desk to ask about the job offering but was stopped by an older gentleman in khaki pants and a blue polo, with neatly combed black-brown hair and green eyes. He asked me if I was here for the job position and smiled from ear to ear when I said yes. He gripped my hand like a python and shook it. He seemed overly excited or like he forgot to take some medication that morning, or maybe he was on a caffeine high. I wasn't sure; it could have been both, actually, but I couldn't tell you.
"The name's Bob Fields," he said, still shaking my hand. "You can call me boss. I'm so happy that someone saw the article. Times have been really tough because of the recent tax cuts and stage hands walking out. Please, follow me."
When he finally let go, my hand was red and numb. I followed him through the halls to the set, trying to shake it off. Mr. Fields was a strange person, but could you blame him? He loved his work and seemed to love the people there like a second family. Arriving onto the set, there were about a dozen people in different parts of the large room. It made me think that they shot different shows in one room at the same time.
He showed me around the room and explained the different shows they were working on. It didn't take an expert to take one look at the set pieces and realize how cheap and awful they were; it made it clear how seriously low budget they were. I knew times were tough, but not this tough.
The first show he introduced me to was called "Jumbo's Circus". It was an educational show that showed kids how to count, tell time, and identify colors and shapes and all that. It was a very basic show for the Pre-K demographic. After meeting the director and cast, I declined. It was nothing against them; it was the extreme coulrophobia that haunted me since childhood.
Fields then showed me another show. This one tried to be educational in the sense of moral lessons. Unlike Jumbo's Circus, where it was mostly live-action, this one had a cast consisting of only puppets of different shapes, sizes, textures, and colors. The show was called "Sunshine City" and it followed a group of puppet kids that would deal with real world problems that most kids never heard of or experienced.
Common morals were used, such as "stealing is wrong," "treat others the way you want to be treated," and "respect authority". However, some of the episode themes were rather serious, especially for a kid's show. One of the episodes was about one character, Lucas, who was bulled by another puppet, Peter, because his felt skin was a different color than that of all the other puppets on the show.
One of the puppeteers, who I spoke to shorly before I moved, told me about the darkest episode of the series. It was shown only once, because of the content, and resulted in the immediate cancellation of the show. In it, the sad orange puppet, Ron, was more upset than usual. He did his usual "woe is me" speech and left, not returning until the last two minutes of the episode.
In that short time, Ron can be seen sitting on a rock by the train tracks, staring at the cardboard sunset horizon. Sounds of a train can be heard, getting louder and louder with each second. Ron eventually sighs and stands. As the train speeds forward, Ron jumps out in front of it and the scene cuts to black. The very last part is a fade-in, showing Ron's dismembered puppet arm lying beside the tracks. Cotton is coming out of the limb and the train is chugging onward into the sunset. The final scene and the credits roll in silence.
The nature of the show made me feel uneasy. I again declined the offer. Fields sighed and showed me the third show they were working on. It was another puppet show, this time about pirates. The title of the show on the script said "Pirate Place," but that was crossed out faintly in pencil. There was something written beside it, but I couldn't read it; it was mostly illegible.
Fields explained the plot of the show, which was about a girl named Janice who would go on adventures with a pirate named Percy, who wasn't a really good pirate because he was scared easily. The more he spoke about it, the more interested I became. He told me about a dream the director had about a boat that spoke with an Ed Wynn voice. He conjured up images of a smiling boat with big eyes that seemed to swallow the sea.
He explained two other characters - the villains. They were two strange puppets: Horace Horrible, who had tall teeth, a handlebar moustache, and a monocle, and the Skin taker. The Skin Taker was a skeleton on strings that had a glass eye, a cape, and a top hat.
The character of Janice reminded me of myself as a kid, dreaming about going on adventures and looking for hidden treasure on the seven seas. I signed up for the project and Fields smiled.
He introduced me to the director of my childhood dreams, Emerson Grimes. Grimes seemed like an okay guy. He was wearing hiking boots, blue jeans, a trucker hat, and a Hawaiian shirt. He took me to a rec room where the rest of the small crew was drinking Tab and playing darts.
At the time, they only had three voice actors: Todd Smith (Pirate Percy), Michael Colon (The Skin Taker), and Leonard Lloyd (The Laughingstock). They were still looking for someone who was the embodiment of Horace Horrible, as well as someone to play Janice.
A week later, they found someone to voice Horace Horrible. Grimes found comfort in Jeremy Kirby, who had recently finished working on another kids' show for the studio, "Fisherman Fred," and would have went on to do backstage work for another strange kids' show, "Peppermint Park".
Around the same time, they found someone to play Janice. She was a kindergarten student from a nearby school named Jodie Silver. She was quiet and adorable. She didn't complain much, unlike most kids who auditioned. All you needed to keep Jodie happy was a pouch of apple juice, a peanut butter and banana sandwich, and a coloring book; have that, and she was good to go.
To help get the ball rolling faster for us, I had gone to local craft stores and flea makets with crew members to get props to build the puppets and the sets. The most tedious part must have been building the Laughingstock, which took us two weeks. Production started around five weeks after I was signed on.
Production had been very rough and was becoming a challenge. Because of the intensity of the flood lights always beaming down on her, Jodie would often come down with fevers and become overheated. We became very concerned about her health and opted to find a body double so both could be switched out for each other. It was a common trick that many shows did and we were about to do the same. Unfortunately, Grimes refused and said that it would be fixed and Jodie would adjust to it.
In three weeks time, Walter Shay (one of the gaffers) was injured on the set in a freak accident, resulting in a broken leg; it left him on crutches for the show's entire run. Much of the crew and I considered abandoning the project because of Grimes' incompetence, but, like everyone else who had it tough, we just bit our tongues and hoped for the best.
In three weeks time, Walter Shay (one of the gaffers) was injured on the set in a freak accident, resulting in a broken leg; it left him on crutches for the show's entire run. Much of the crew and I considered abandoning the project because of Grimes' incompetence, but, like everyone else who had it tough, we just bit our tongues and hoped for the best.
After Shay was replaced, things seemed to go back to normal as we were soon on a normal schedule. Things seemed to be going up for us until episode seven was in production. One of the writers, Abbey Levi, revealed to me during a lunch break that Emerson had been destroying scripts and replacing entire stories. I didn't notice until she brought it up.
Evidence of the tampering was obvious, especially prior to episode seven. Jodie, who knew her script like the back of her hand, would often be confused by stage positions and what she was supposed to do. She would often ask Kirby (Horace Horrible) what she had to do before takes. Her parents would go over the script with her every morning and night, so the changes confused her.
Episode seven was where it became extremely clear what was going on. Originally, Percy takes a scroll from Horace Horrible that explains where to go for the next hidden treasure. It was initially replaced by something of the macabre. It started off just like any other episode, with Janice and Percy talking outside a cave, but somehow focused on the Skin Taker and the dark origins of his hat and cape.
Grimes told the cast to go along with it, despite the eyebrows they raised. Michael Colon (Skin Taker) was the most uncomfortable with the episode because of both the script and how Grimes wanted him to present the dialogue. It was chilling, but he went along with it anyway. They didn't show anything explicit or violent, for all they did was deliver some subtle lines, but they were still unsettling.
The scene that most rememebered was Janice asking why the Skin Taker's mouth moved the way it did. He didn't say it to her; he turned to the camera and said, "To grind your skin". It was this episode where I and the others started to question Grimes' sanity. I wanted to believe he was just this way because of the long hours he worked, but the others were trying to show me that wasn't the case. He was a madman and something had to be done.
That infamous episode resulted in lots of mail from viewers, most of it asking what we were doing and what was going on. It also resulted in the first warning from the studio; if we got two more, then the show would be cancelled like "Sunshine City" was later in the year.
