TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/050889/05088900.025

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 7.7 KB | 148 lines

                                                                                TRAVEL, Page 102

You're Under Arrest!


Hollywood goes Florida at the Disney-MGM park

By Richard Corliss


    What movie extravaganza has a cast of 2,000, including
Warren Beatty, Bill Cosby, Bette Midler, Robin Williams, Walter
Cronkite, Chevy Chase, Martin Short, David Letterman, Mel
Gibson, Pee-wee Herman and George Lucas? Features an earthquake,
a shipwreck, a giant bee, several gunfights and a zillion other
acts of harmless mayhem? Cost about $500 million to produce --
as much as ten whole Ishtars? And, with gobs of charm, sly wit
and relentless good cheer, brings off the film magician's trick
of making make-believe believable?

    Answer: the Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park, a 135-acre
spectacular in the 44-sq.-mi. Walt Disney World near Orlando.
With a lavishness the Sultan of Brunei might envy, Disney threw
itself a premiere party last weekend and invited a few friends:
Audrey Hepburn, George Burns, Willie Nelson, Kevin Costner, the
Pointer Sisters, "Buffalo" Bob Smith and 6,000 journalists. The
do, trumpeted in by an NBC special, was Disney's way of telling
Hollywood, "Hey, guys, the magic is back. And we brought it. To
Florida."

    Disney-MGM is the costume jewel, the golden Mousketeer cap
on the head of chairman Michael Eisner. Five years ago, Disney
was an ailing movie midget coasting on revenue from its theme
parks in Florida, Japan and Anaheim, Calif. Now it reigns as
box-office champ. It also produces hit series like Golden Girls,
boasts 9,000 rooms in its Florida hotels and plans to open Euro
Disneyland outside Paris in 1992. And still Eisner eyes more
robust expansion. Typhoon Lagoon, a 50-acre water theme park,
premieres next month, followed shortly by a PG-rated night-life
district called Pleasure Island and three more hotels with an
additional 4,500 rooms. Disney-MGM Studios (the company
purchased rights to use MGM films in its attractions) is also
a functioning movie studio, where both Disney's and rivals'
films are made.

    There is one rival that doesn't shoot there, though it
might want to shoot at it. For a quarter-century, Universal
Studios has considered erecting a studio park in Florida to
complement its Southern California facility. But for now,
Universal's Florida movieland is just a script. Disney's is a
tangible fantasy -- real tinsel draped artfully over Hollywood's
phony tinsel, an art industry glammed up as an elegant Deco
dream. There is a sanitizing genius to the Disney parks, with
their canny nostalgia for an America that may have existed only
in the lace-valentine heart of a young Walt Disney. And the
tactic works best when applying a cartoonist's paintbrush to a
world that is fiction, on- and offscreen. Disney-MGM Studios
marries movies to theme parks with the astuteness of Hollywood's
hottest studio and the spell of a professional dream weaver.
Here the men are strong and the women beautiful; the moral
choices are in glorious black and white; and the ending is
always happy.

    The fantasy begins as you enter the gate and step onto
Hollywood Boulevard. No teen hookers or creepy vibes here.
That's just reality. On Disney-MGM's main street, the billboard
proclaims HOLLYWOODLAND, BEDROOM COMMUNITY OF THE INNOCENT PAST.
The corner gas station dispenses "service with a smile," and
Mickey's of Hollywood peddles nothing racier than T shirts with
a mouse emblem. Even the local sanitation man (one of many
character types crowding the street like Preston Sturges comedy
characters) has refined tastes. "I collect only the garbage of
the stars," he proclaims with delicious snoot. Hollywaste.
Tinsel trash.

    Genuine celebs will mingle with the fans of Hollywood
Boulevard each day (Cyd Charisse this week). But the basic idea
of Disney-MGM is that the visitor is the star. Bobby-soxed
employees clamor for your autograph, demand to be photographed
with your family of four (who have paid about $110 for a day at
the park). In the SuperStar Television show, you guest-star in
ingeniously integrated scenes from I Love Lucy, Today, The Ed
Sullivan Show or General Hospital. On the 90-min. Studio Tour
you don a yellow slicker and become skipper of the good ship
Miss Fortune, buffeted by wind and water. As a "Foley artist"
in the Monster Sound Show, you desperately improvise sound
effects to accompany a comedy thriller, then dub your voice to
match the moving lips of Clark Gable or Jean Harlow -- and
listen in giddy horror to the results. Sit in a formica booth
at the Prime Time Cafe, a gorgeous riot of '50s kitsch, and
waitresses dressed like early TV moms dote on you as if you
were Wally and the Beaver.

    Disney wants you to discover the intricate craft of
moviemaking without losing the moviegoer's fond suspension of
disbelief. In its most elaborate attraction, The Great Movie
Ride, spectators enter a reproduction of Hollywood's secular
cathedral, the Chinese theater, where the Casablanca piano and
Dorothy's ruby slippers repose under glass. Computerized
mannequins portray such stars as James Cagney, Clint Eastwood
and Harrison Ford. An Alien monster lurches and drools. For all
its bustle, the ride refuses to enthrall. Even a beguiling stop
in Munchkinland reminds the passengers that, however the
technology of Disney rides has improved, the scope has not
changed since the '60s. It's a Small World after all.

    As the Backstage Studio Tour tram passes one movie set, a
propman waves jerkily, keying the tour's theme: high tech meets
low comedy. A guide points to a sound stage where new
Mouseketeers are taping a show: "They do their own stunts, and
they do them without Annette." On monitors, TV's Huxtable clan
explains how a sitcom is shot, while patriarch Cosby dresses up
in various sports uniforms and shouts, "I'm goin' to Disney
World!" Beatty explains set design, Lucas and two mechanical
friends discuss post-production, Gibson and Herman demonstrate
sound editing, Midler stars in a short comedy with lots of sets
and stunts. At the end, Eisner and Mickey Mouse invite the
audience to watch previews of Disney summer films. Eisner wears
a Mickey Mouse watch. Mickey wears a Michael Eisner watch.
Everything moves like clockwork.

    "Complete control is what makes the back lot so perfect,"
says a guide on the studio tour. She might be speaking of
Disney-MGM and Walt Disney World too, where the disturbances are
likely to be no more surprising than a tantrum at a
six-year-old's birthday party. In one sense, Disney World is a
dictatorship with heart: it gives the illusion of perfect
freedom in a land of artful order. But illusion, after all, is
the name of the movie game, and no one plays it as well or on
so grand a scale as Disney.

    Sometimes, when artists and artisans collide, the illusion
plays like magic. Disney began as a cartoon studio, and it is
in the Animation pavilion that the park hits its peak. Walter
Cronkite narrates a how-to movie, a new gloss on Peter Pan
starring Robin Williams, never more brilliantly madcap than here
as a misplaced pixie squaring off against Captain Hook. Disney
animators, their sweet faces glowing with untapped star quality,
describe the joys of creating cartoon characters. A six-minute
suite of Disney animation caps the experience: emotional
transport without a tram. And if you want a cartoon dream to
come true, Williams is the star to wish upon.

    As one family last week strolled down Hollywood Boulevard
toward the exit, a Disney policeman stopped them and wrote out
a summons because they pleaded guilty to "having too much fun."
Hey, everybody at Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park -- you're under
arrest!