It’s ba-ack!
Yes, the giant windows that get smashed out, the Poseidon statue, the Christmas tree, the chairs, THE EXTRAS…
All that make up the crucial dining room decor of the 1972 disaster classic “The Poseidon Adventure.”
And it’s going on in my kitchen.
Again.
For the uninformed, I am The Biggest Poseidon Adventure Fan in the Northern Hemisphere, though I don’t claim to know all there is- I still have no idea how much it grossed or what the cost was to make it and I never met Shelley Winters – but it is an understatement to say I have been obsessed since I saw it at age eight or nine, and it became Part of My Life.
My original Once-Owned-by-a-Real-Theater-in-1972 Poster (complete with crease!)
It’s an interesting phenomenon, actually, as many dyed-in-the-wool fans can attest, if you love it, YOU REALLY love it, and it’s not a passing fancy.
Too, the demographic is intriguing – it seems the fan base is 83% gay men – hmm.
Yes, we all love Stella Stevens’ bitchy “Just panties, what else do I need?” remark, and snickering at poor old Shelley as stout Jewish grandmother Belle Rosen, but it goes beyond that for me…
A “typical” grouping of Poseidon Fans recently recreating a pose struck by the original 1972 cast, on the bow of the Queen Mary. I am of course the most ridiculously dressed one at far left, wearing a blue ladies’ peignoir not unlike the one Stella Stevens wears in the film. OF COURSE I just HAPPENED to have it with me! Another fan is dressed as Gene Hackman’s character, in the distinctive turtleneck & navy blazer.
While another post could be attributed to the Hows & Whys of Poseidon Mania, and my case in particular, I am keeping this post to the NOW – as in TODAY. With only a mimimum of expository back-tracking preamble…
Quite simply, I am re-creating MY favorite aspect of the movie, the opulent grand dining salon of the S.S. Poseidon, here in my kitchen. It is by no means human scale, of course, but Doll Scale. That’s right, “eleven-and-a-half-inch Fashion-Doll” scale. Barbie and Ken would have a blast rolling around in here come New Year’s when the tidal wave turns-turtle the majestic old ship (based on the original Queen Mary) – except Barbie and Ken won’t be setting foot in my salon – it’s all about my current muse, Lee Harvey Oswald -and myself in tow – literally falling into the movie, and dealing with the consequences.
From another project – but similar in look – here, Mrs. Rosen (Shelley Winters) and Mike Rogo (Ernest Borgnine) find a grumpy Lee Harvey Oswald (Lee Harvey Oswald) lolling post-disaster in a giant champagne glass.
This is all for a video project which I will no doubt slap on Youtube once done, but once it’s all set up, I am sure I will be taking many still photos of the whole mess.
I don’t know exactly how it will go yet. Just that it will.
Maybe Lee and I will end up like this -
Another project involving Me, Lee, Chaos, and Carnage. And KISS as well. We have a lot of fun together.
So anyway, that familiar old S.S. Poseidon dining room set.
If I speak of this with a seemingly jaded edge, it is only because -
-I have done this SO many times before.
Not doll-scale remakes of the film, but CREATING THAT SET.
Most notably for a near feature-length satire I did in the 90′s, on good old VHS, all on my own, using what I had as far as set pieces, costumes, and props. My budget was limited, and NO one was available on a consistent basis to play the parts Ernest Borgnine, Stella, Shelley, and Gene Hackman made so memorable, so, *I* played them all. And then some, reprising the roles of many key extras as well.
No CGI was involved, no special effects to get “myselves” in the same frame, just a lot of head shots, and occasionally a willing pal to play The Back of a Head (think Patty Duke talking to her “twin” in “The Patty Duke Show”).
Plus it took 5 or 6 years to do. Maybe 7 (and another two after that to clean up…)
I had “real” jobs and domestic daily acts intrude on my fun, and the act of changing from one character to another for a day’s (or week’s) worth of lines from, say, Carol Lynley as the singer (remember “The Morning After?”), to Red Button’s meek haberdasher character, was a huge time investment in itself. And remembering my OWN LINES was really hard, which is just – stupid, since it’s ALL my deal. And the sets, oh, the sets – I had nothing but a partially enclosed carport at my disposal, my poor partner had to park out in the SUN forever after. Being that I paint murals and setpieces as a profession, I brought that to my film and created several detailed canvas backdrops to create the illusion of a grand perspective, whether it was my pet dining salon, or the engine room, or the inverted galley, or…
But that set, that gorgeous dining room set, before, during, and after the chaos - I loved it as a kid, as a teen, as a college kid, and as an adult kid. And still do, or I would not be creating it YET AGAIN for a silly 10-minute YouTube spoof…
I reiterate “again” only because, as a child, I, like many others, had a “Poseidon Box.”
This magical toy was always home-made, using a cardboard box, all of our Fisher-Price Little People, and whatever artistic ability we could muster to re-create the salon’s decor. ALL based on memory, because this was before TV broadcasts of the film, let alone VHS tapes.
Doll furniture and a small Christmas tree and sometimes tiny plates and “debris” could be employed, depending on the level of detail desired, and, once assembled, you -
turned it upside down.
And reveled in watching your tiny people fall this way and that over and under chairs and tables, much like in the movie.
Once close friend of mine actually flooded his with hose-water.
Then -
Well. That was pretty much it. You set it all up the way it was (or in my friend’s case, MADE A NEW ONE) and did it again. And again…
Naturally I did this, and even fashioned a break-away skylight a Little Person (many used Weebles, too) could fall through.
This began a pattern, as all through my schooling and years thereafter I did drawings and paintings and obsessive recreations in all media of that room, and the chaos that ensued there. Of course I acted it out, too, whether I was jumping off my bunk bed along with a handful of Muppet “extras” or shimmying down the playground slide with a heap of paper plates and toilet-paper “streamers.” In high school, friends and I held Poseidon theme parties on New Year’s Eve, and I delighted in creating everything from the Poseidon statue mounted over the Captain’s Table to the skylights, fashioned out of craft paper and tempera paint. In college, while taking a cool video-production class (which also changed my life), I managed to coerce the class into doing a mini-spoof of the film, again requiring dressing a large room in the college Memorial Union building into that dining room. And wrecking it. And LOVING it. The one-man video I created years later (all on Youtube, by now, in 8 installments) was the Grand Culmination of these years, and the end-all as far as the extent to which I single-handedly and lovingly created that set AGAIN.
Dang, I bought CHAIRS in thrift-stores that most closely approximated the shape of those seen in the film, and if they weren’t the right color, I PAINTED ‘em that color (yellow-gold). I got pale yellow table clothes and painted the floor of the carport with green concrete paint and texture-painted it to look like carpet (you don’t even see it). I painted THE most realistic and detailed murals of the dining room I had ever done, NOW using a fabulous collection of still photos from the film I had accrued once I learned such things existed. I could of course watch the movie, too, for the ultimate in finishing touches – like the Greek motif in the glass panels seen in the railings and the exact nature of the Christmas tree garland (I went through 7 second-hand store trees doing that project). And then of course all that silly Egyptian nonsense slathered on the walls of what was supposed to be a Greek ocean liner (in reality, the designers at 20th Century Fox used left-over murals from “Cleopatra,” and I guess hoped we wouldn’t notice).
My efforts paid off with a few screenings, and some local press, and then a renewed interest when the (shhh) “remake” came out in 2000-something. But I never sold copies of it (hello, copy rights! Ripped-off music a go-go), I gave them away, if people wanted them, it was really just a cathartic labor-of-love for ME, to finally sort of BE the movie.
Yet I was STILL painting that set, related to activities with a Poseidon Adventure Fan Club (yes, there was one, just like Trekkies, we are). Such fetes were almost always benefit screenings of the film aboard the actual Queen Mary, which had me doing (on a voluntary basis, of course!) backdrops to decorate the convention area and/or hang behind the assemblage of panelists and guests. These were often stars of the film and, once or twice, the esteemed director himself, Mr. Ronald Neame.
Years of joy I have derived from this movie, to the point that the mere phrase “Happy New Year” and ANY reference to “Auld Lang Syne” is synonymous with the film, and nothing else.
Sometimes I pop the DVD into the computer, just to look at the New Year’s scenes and the capsize, then leave. : )
BUT I GOT TO KNOW THAT SET INSIDE OUT.
Not that I didn’t already, but…I know that fictional, long-since-deconstructed set better than my own home!
AND NOW I AM -sigh- DOING IT AGAIN.
I reeeeeally just wanted to BUY a ready-made Mattel Barbie n’ Ken Poseidon Playset, but, as one does not exist yet, I am resorting to painting it yet one more time for this latest Lilliputian venture.
I am cheating whenever and wherever I can, like instead of painting the familiar gold-and-turquoise Happy New Year sign, I merely printed out a still shot of it from the film and scaled it correctly; but there is still stuff I just – HAVE to do from scratch, like this:
Pretty sad, yeah, but, it’s a start. As usual, budget dictates I use whatever is around the house, and those tri-fold cardboard presentation thingies have been used and re-used countless times to the point where only the layers of paint are holding them together. Lee and I stand in what will hopefully soon be the Grand Salon. The perpective is skewed, as these “walls” will be set way back away from the action, which will probably take place mostly at the Captain’s table (I have no script for this, I’m just making it up as I go along!).
So okay: I really, REALLY hate those abstract Egyptian characters flanking the big window, but – they are evil necessities – you can sorta see them here, in a still of the actual film set:
And when I say “sorta see them,” I mean it! They are VAGUE! VAGUE and heinously elusive, and I HATE trying to “fill in the blanks” as far as what they actually are supposed to look like.
Fortunately, LOTS of stills show those damn things, but in PIECES. That is, you see a little bit of one in the background here, another sliver of one upside-down and in the shadows there, and so on. So the trick is to amalgamate all of these and somehow create one sensible whole, and they STILL look stupid. Gad, the head of the figure on the right resembles Barbra Striesand on Steroids, if you could see the nose on that thing…
In truth they really ARE stupid, as they are abstracted sort of hieroglyph-ical BEINGS, for lack of a better word, and their heads and faces are just – well, I can’t use that word, it is no longer Politically Correct…
To complicate this, they are rendered in some sort of gold and copper metallic mystery material, which causes a different “look” from any angle you look at them.
I hate them.
I’d love to say I could draw ‘em with my eyes closed, as often as I have had to render them, but JUST enough time passes from rendition to rendition that I forget, and have to re-invent the wheel each time.
The walls, the wood paneling, the marble columns, all of that, are a breeze. Time consuming, doing all that woodgrain and veining, but I know it by heart.
Another VITAL aspect would be
THE CHAIRS.
Those “Poseidon Chairs” (I know there is a name for that style, I suppose, like “Hepplewhite” or “Duncan Phyfe,” only not). (Or maybe something like “Empire,” only not).
They are SO instantly recognizable to all of us fans, not only as a stylistically familiar aspect of the salon, but because they are NOTICEABLE, particularly when the ship is upside down, and two-thirds of the chairs are still attached to the ceiling. This has confounded generations of TPA fans (reason: older ocean liners had chairs tethered to the floor, so they would not fall over; just as tables were bolted down, so too, in a way, were the chairs), but that’s just how it is, and so they stand out.
And I am just in love with those chairs:
I guess cost-conscious producer Irwin Allen did too, as he re-upholstered them in blue and used them in his next epic, “The Towering Inferno…”
And here are my minis, only a third done. The distinctive backs are yellow construction paper, sandwiched over the back of a spray-painted formerly-hot-pink Barbie chair (I had to buy like six dining room sets to get EIGHT damn chairs):
I know, they look cheap and sad, but all things have their humble beginnings. With the addition of some sponged-on darker gold to add texture and shading, and when they are assembled, of course, they will fairly Sparkle (at least for a quickie video…)
Yes, and POSEIDON lies nearby, awaiting a means to attach his head.
He is quite visible in the salon as well, as seen in this cool rehearsal shot of the capsizing:
(By the way, see that lady in the blue dress? Guess what? That’s my favorite extra. AND the name of my Blog. Hm. Coincidence?)
He was a KEN, one of the lean, jointed versions that usually cost more, which I have a heap of from various doll-projects. He was spray-painted metallic copper, with a light dusting of turquoise “patina” after that; and the head was a staring, unsmiling thing off of a knock-off dollar-store “Ken.” I dappled some hot glue on it to create the beard and head-band thingie, and spray painted it the same way. I just have to attach it now, most likely using the little plastic cylindrical nozzle off of (ironically) a New Year’s party horn to go down into the neck-hole.
Likely I will keep the cheap plastic fork.
I just like it.
My Poseidons of the past are usually greatly endowed and possess VERY obvious Male Secondary Sex Characteristics, such as abundant underarm and chest hair, but I am keeping my set a little closer to the film (save for the FORK) (gosh maybe I should opt for a “spork” from Taco Bell?), since I want Lee and I to stand out conspicuously against a backdrop most like that of the movie.
Oh, and – yes, the Key Players will be present as well, I imagine, as I made a set of Poseidon dolls for myself ages ago, as seen here in a “publicity shot” from another video project of earlier this year:
The premise of this one, made in time to post on New Year’s day, was the cast of the film waking up in an ordinary house, after a wild party the night before. Sort of “Land of the Giants meets The Poseidon Adventure.” Oh how Shelley fancied those cocktail weenies…
So that’s where I’m at, as of this writing. Basic set and prop construction.
Tiny metal plates from a dollhouse miniatures store are outside baking in the sun, after being spray painted glossy off-white. I am ill from the fumes, yet hungering for lunch at the same time, which is kinda gross.
The other halves of the chairs and a decorative urn similar to those seen in the film are out there drying too. I hope we don’t have a dust storm this afternoon…
More as it happens.