Never again will there be a home video format so universally embraced as VHS. At its peak, the medium was cheap, efficient, and inescapable. Anyone with a VCR, civilian or corporation, doubled as a distribution company. Horror-themed workout tapes. Children’s books turned into narrated slideshows. Beginners guides to self-levitation. Virtual fishtanks. Thrift stores are stocked with these two-reel outcasts to this day, doomed by their pursuit of niches that may or may not exist.
One niche that not only existed but flourished was the educational market. What better way to expose students to the wonders of the world than a field trip that costs $19.95 and a study hall? There’s a reason why entire generations feel warm and fuzzy at the sight of a TV cart. Not all educational tapes were made equal, and an actual movie beat any of them in a walk, but the best examples at least aimed for fun.
The VideoTours series could almost be mistaken for souvenirs. They were grouped by collection – History, Science and Nature, Adventures in Entertainment, etc. – but dedicated to distinct locations. The History Collection took viewers to entire towns – Old Salem – and specific institutions – Mystic Seaport Museum. The Science and Nature Collection stuck closer to zoos and wildlife parks. The Adventures in Entertainment Collection, for lack of a better name, showed off amusement parks.
Beyond Behind the Scenes: Universal Studios Hollywood is as close to education as an amusement park video gets. That’s because, as the title hints, it’s more about the tram tour than Universal Studios Hollywood, though it was still easy to mistake the two in 1987.
“If this place seems familiar, it is,” says the narrator over sunny b-roll of Courthouse Square. It’s one of the most recognizable street set in Hollywood history. It starred in its own trilogy, which is likely playing right now on the AMC network. Then the narrator says what everybody’s thinking – that’s right, there’s no mistaking the courthouse from To Kill a Mockingbird.
Beyond Behind the Scenes finds Universal in a contentious lull.
Back to the Future beat a box office slump to become the highest-grossing film of 1985, but none of the studio’s other releases had left as much of a cultural mark. Out of Africa might’ve swept the Oscars, but it didn’t sell t-shirts and certainly didn’t double as an advertisement for the backlot tour. For further contrast, a montage of unforgettable Universal hits page-wipes its way from Miami Vice to Bedtime for Bonzo.
Today, Back to the Future is the classic reference nobody could mistake, with recent productions sprinkled in for synergy. In 1987, Back to the Future was the synergy.
Director of transportation Jessie Sperry uses the Delorean to demonstrate picture cars. Executive art director Raymond Brandt (The Incredible Shrinking Woman) walks down the quaint, fake streets and reveals how they turned one block into two Hill Valleys. The answer is details, so, so many details. “If you end up leaving a piece here and a piece here out of it, it’s like the actor leaving a couple of ‘ands’ and ‘ors’ and ‘buts’ out,” he says, selling his overlooked magic, “Pretty soon, it doesn’t start making sense.”
Two-thirds of the tape is about making that sense.
The 420-acre plot of Universal Studios – city not yet necessary – was, first and foremost, a fantasy factory. As much as the actual tour might show, Beyond Behind the Scenes shows more. It shows the process of production, soup to nuts, though not in the traditional order. The angle here is the pulse, the daily rhythm of backlot work. A single movie or TV show will spend months if not years in these facilities, cycling through the traditional phases, but on any given day, every part of the process is happening somewhere, all at the exact same time. How is that possible? To borrow a borrowed quote from Winston Churchill: “Give us the tools and we’ll finish the job.”
Beyond Behind the Scenes is worth its weight in nuts and bolts. The camera lovingly zooms its way through buildings park guests could only dream of wandering. The scenic department looks like a Home Depot without the orange aprons. Special attention is given to the sign processor, an infernal drafting machine operated by deceptively simple keyboard. If it hangs and has text on it, at least before the digital age, this is where it came from. The prop department, by contrast, is just an antique mall with a Dewey Decimal system. Workers glide along the aisles with glorified shopping carts, comparing shelves of porcelain horses. All of it is indistinguishable, even the ornate portraits of every era and style. You wouldn’t recognize it if you were staring at it, but you’d certainly notice if it was gone.
“If you believe that we killed somebody,” says knife-wielding prop manager, Burt Cohen, “then we’re doing our job.” He makes his case with a copper blood tube up the back of the blade.
Horror, the genre that more or less made the studio, earns a turn in the spotlight. Through the magic of post-production, the legendary Court of Miracles set is desaturated and terrorized into a facsimile of its most famous appearances. 56 years later and still no contest – Frankenstein looks better. A few of the other monsters make stock photo cameos, but the real star of the spookshow is Alfred Hitchcock, who haunts the backlot in a more literal way. First, as a shaky impression by the tram driver, then as the most famous hell house in film history.
The Psycho house sits on the perch it occupied during production of Psychos II and III. The Bates Motel set, which should be nestled in the dusty foothill below, may be absent. The sign is there, but peeks toward the road show only dirt. This is the only hint as to the fluid geography of the backlot – exact location of the house itself is only publicly documented by its appearances in TV shows and other movies. At the time, both facades were still stars. The Bates was fully built out after the first sequel got away with a few rooms and a matte painting. The overhaul, however, would be mostly for the tourists – production of Psycho IV: The Beginning was delayed until 1990 to make full cross-promotional use of the brand-new Universal Studios Florida.
Regulars of that park should recognize Hollywood’s New York Street. Some of the endlessly adaptable storefronts and apartment buildings were borrowed more or less wholesale. A clip from The Sting cranes down past the Priscilla Hotel. It may not look identical to its tropical counterpart, but the slogan over the door remains – For Single Young Ladies. Henry Bumstead, acclaimed set designer for that film and many, many more, strolls a blank boulevard and reminisces about its best performances. “I always try to do sets the way people imagine things to be, not maybe the way they actually are.” Sound advice from a man who won an Oscar for faking Chicago on a block of Manhattan in Southern California.
Anyone still unconvinced by the flexibility of this particular zip code will appreciate the behind-the-scenes footage from Walter Hill’s criminally underseen Streets of Fire. It’s a rock and roll fantasy set in “another time, another place,” under the constant glow of neon and constant cover of night. There are only so many ways to fake that, so they didn’t – a massive, black tarp was stretched from one rooftop to another, all the way down the street. It’s awe-inspiring to see, as simple in its execution as it is unthinkable today.
But most of the tape is, one way or another, unthinkable today. New York Street has since burned down. The theme park material is relegated to the last third and never quite separated as such. The Western Stunt Show is presented more as a lunch hour demonstration than an attraction in its own right. “Maybe I’ll become the next John Wayne,” jokes stuntman Steve Gilliam. If not him, perhaps one of the hand-standing chimps from the Animal Actors School Stage. These shows, then the park’s oldest, are merely extensions of the magic trick. Sets, props, special effects. Performers were just another fundamental of the filmmaking process.
Universal Studios Hollywood wasn’t quite a destination yet – its first dark ride, E.T. Adventure, and the entire Lower Lot were still four years away – but MCA Recreation, the forerunner to Universal Creative, had plans.
If you squint, you can see some of them on the wall as Universal luminaries – Robert Ward, Peter Alexander, Barry Upson – talk shop about the Miami Vice Stunt Spectacular. In the late ‘80s, that’s as hot as TV gets. It’s a brand none of them take lightly.
50 stunts in 18 minutes. 15 contractors on the effects work alone. Speedboats. Mine carts. A helicopter that smokes on cue. It’s the next advance in a style now long out of fashion, save the exceptional veterans like WaterWorld. The footage is no less impressive now than it was 34 years ago. More impressive still is the b-roll of actors practicing before the stage was even built. Drifting around in golf carts instead of go-fast boats. Ziplining from the top of an otherwise bare phone pole. Shaking fingers instead of roaring Uzis. Although the effect is simulated – traditional stunt performers don’t have to hit the same marks a dozen times daily – the craft is indistinguishable from the real thing.
What Beyond Behind the Scenes illustrates best is the seamless evolution of Universal Studios Hollywood from a backlot tour to centerpiece of a theme park empire.
When Carl Laemmle opened his studio to guests in 1915, it cost them a quarter for a box lunch and front row seat. Then the pesky advent of sound came along and ruined it. When the trams arrived in 1964, relaunching the tour as a dedicated attraction, it was an unexpected blueprint.
In a 1971 commercial, Hitchcock sits before a sizzle reel and narrates in his bulldog monotone. As one of the candy-apple-red trams passes by, he spots himself sitting among the passengers and remarks, “You do meet the strangest people on the tour.” That sales pitch survives to this day. By the time this tape was produced, Hitchcock was only one of the strange stars. King Kong, Jaws, and a variety of natural disasters had joined him, wowing guests in a way no standing set ever could. Just watch visitors enter the rotating tunnel, the camera stabilized with the spin, and try not to feel something/nauseous.
The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular was the benchmark at the time, “the ultimate combination of ingredients.” It takes the best in cinematic effects and marries them into a 20-minute tour de force. There aren’t as many stunts to it as the Miami Vice show across the park, but they’re in the same class. Just different departments on the same lot.
Just like Disneyland before it, Universal Studios Hollywood was borne out of the best and brightest in film and TV putting their magic wand to regular, repeatable use. The only difference is Universal doesn’t get as much credit for the progress.
Beyond Behind the Scenes catches it all in the transition, a quiet set between productions, waiting for the craftsmen and creatives to dress it properly and make it real.
The opening narration deems Universal Studios “the biggest fantasy factory on Earth” and everything after feels like accidental foreshadowing.
The biggest fantasy factory on Earth?
Almost.
Not yet.
