An Actor's Life for Me, Part 3
Posted by Trevor on April 27, 2009
Tags: Disneyland, Merlin, Pluto, Three Little Pigs
Now that I was an ex-Pluto, I had to scramble to "pick up" shifts. Having no seniority or status, I was at the mercy of the idiosyncratic set schedulers up in the Entertainment office. I was back to calling in my availability each morning, with a tone of desperation creeping into my voice. I was just a name and a height to them. How often I worked and what character I played was determined by the number of empty costumes in my height range.
Technically I was still a minor, until my 18th birthday in the middle of September, and therefore not supposed to work over a certain number of hours. But since I had graduated from high school and left home, I wanted to work as much as possible that summer. So when I filled out my availability form, I put "fully available" circled and underlined, just to make the point really. Apparently it had worked. Without missing many days, I was back in the park as a cat. Yes, a cat. But more about that later.
The guy who had claimed my Pluto shift's name was Shane. When he'd introduced himself to me, calling me "rookie-boy" I just thought, "Say it ain't so!" After all that time as Pluto, I had really begun to think of that shift as mine, but they did things differently here. Shifts changed hands so quickly it was hard to keep up. I had just been at the right place at the right time--and the right height--when Jerry needed a dog. I began to realize that I really did just "fit the suit" as Harry had said.
In my Great America days where the park was only open seasonally, I had been there working full time for three summers in a row and had finally attained the highest seniority. I had been assigned to one costume five days a week and nobody else used it. The weekend person even wore a different suit. The older model, which was heavier and much less comfortable. But I kept reminding myself that now I was in the big pond and I was a very small fish.
Shane, the shift stealer, was down at the other end of the locker room complaining about being back in a fur suit after tasting the good life of being a face character for a few weeks. "Man, I haven't had to do Pluto all summer. I was doing Friar Tuck, until I went face." He said 'face' as a World War I fighter pilot might have casually mentioned he had become an "Ace!" with a sense of pride and accomplishment and the recognition that at least five others had perished along the way in order to allow him to achieve this coveted accolade.
Like so many of us fur-covered, sun-deprived character junkies, Shane suffered from acne, and he was very self conscious of his pepperoni pizza-like predicament. I was battling my own blemishes with a rather astringent soap that bleached and discolored all my towels in the hopes that I might one day get out from under the fuzzy head and not have to play any more animals. I studied his face for a second. It was cratered and pock-marked like a French film star. He had made "face" but only through a technicality. He fit the robe and he could do a passable "old voice." He had just been substituting for the regular Merlin the Magician, performing the Sword in the Stone ceremony sets until the real Merlin had come back from an approved medical leave.
They weren't always approved. You had to get checked out by the onsite staff doctor. If you weren't cleared by the "staff quack" for whatever the minor complaint was: torn ligament, fractured foot, vocal nodes, you wouldn't be excused. You would get negative points for every day you missed. So, if you got the flu, you had to go to the doc and make sure that you had a piece of paper saying that's what you had. Unexcused sick days were the leading cause of "ex-characters." Then, when you got better, always assuming you would, of course, the procedure was the same, only in reverse. Come back, get poked and prodded by the company doctor and bring the slip of paper stating that you were fit for duty with you back to the lead office. The regular Merlin had shown up, and the weekend guy was back from vacation too, pushing Shane back off the pinnacle of the character world.
"He's still got mono, you know?" Shane sulked. "Who gets over mono in a month? He'll still be contagious!" He looked at me for reassurance, got none and realized that he had bumped me from the rotation. "Nothin' personal, rookie-boy. There wasn't anything else available, and I need the hours."
Facing away from him and rummaging through my locker for my clean socks, I grimaced and asked over my shoulder, "What's it like to play Merlin?" I'd never really been able to talk to one of the other face characters in the Head Room. They kept to themselves.
Shane whistled, "It's sweet! The chicks dig him!" He began to get excited, but then remembered his own current lowly position and added, "Other than the beard, the spirit gum fumes and carrying around that heavy bag, it was a good gig," he moaned. I regarded him as sympathetically as I could. "Those Fantasyland Brass Band geeks kept messing with me, cracking jokes, trying to get me to break up. But I didn't laugh once," he boasted.
The guys from the Three Little Pigs unit were getting dressed on the other side of the bank of lockers were obviously sick of listening to him complain and cut in. "We caught one of your 'comedy' sets by the castle, McShaney...nobody else was laughing either!" one gruff voice bellowed over the lockers. It was followed by accompanying chortles from the other two pigs, in stereo.
"You've got a face that was made for fur. Good thing that beard covered most of it, otherwise you would have scared all the kids away," jeered another voice, causing more uncharitable laughter to erupt from behind the lockers.
"I dunno, he looked kinda cute in that purple dress and pointy hat." Snickers. Shane just went about his business, folding his towel and trying to ignore them. I was thankfully anonymous.
"Well, you're back to being Mickey's bitch now, baby!" said the first speaker in an obscene if accurate imitation of Minnie Mouse's voice.
"Who's a good boy? Who's a good doggie?"
"You are, aren't you...Goofy?"
"Hey, ol' yeller. Didn't they shoot you when you got rabies?"
"Yellow Dog, Yellow Dog!" One began chanting and the other two took up the call. They were merciless.
Shane glanced at me and just muttered, "I hate those pigs" under his breath, turned red and stormed out. I heard his footsteps going up the stairs that led back up to street level and toward the Head Room. I felt a pang of sympathy for him, but not much. Perhaps it was because I was trying to get into my new character's feline persona and wasn't inclined to side with all things canine. I still couldn't believe I was going to play a cat.
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