Memoirs From The Road To Everywhere Vol III Beyond The Far Horizon

By Sebastian Jaymes

Book III of the "Memoirs From The Road To Everywhere" trilogy. A poignant account, the last of three volumes, from the authors youth to adulthood as he fulfill's a childhood dream to see the world on someone else's dime. Not a tell all or an expose of life in the entertainment industry. No sordid details here. Just a young mans adventures as he sets out to literally see the world and finds a way to do it while working at the top levels of the entertainment industry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sebastian Jaymes
• Release date: May 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463417201

Sebastian Jaymes

Sebastian Jaymes - Biography Sebastian Jaymes grew up on the “North Coast" of America near Lake Erie. As a live show producer he has put together shows on exotic islands, Castles, Archaeological ruins, and exotic some-times dangerous locales in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Japan, Russia, the Caribbean, and around the world. Over the years he has worked with countless celebrity entertainers in Hollywood and worldwide. At a very early age, Jaymes decided he wanted to see the world. At the age of nineteen he began to realize that goal first as a roadie, then tour manager for two hit rock n roll bands. (One from Cleveland.) In the latter 1960's, Jaymes worked with an up and coming North Coast horn band that took him on a wild ride through the 60's counter culture. Settling in California in the early 1970's, he found himself in the mainstream of the Los Angeles entertainment industry, at first as a roadie, or a PA on network TV variety shows. He moved on to tour management of various celebrity artists, touring the world over and realizing his childhood dream to see the world on someone else's dime. For the next fifteen years, he hired out as a Freelance producer of large corporate events in many exotic locales around the world. ("I wanted to continue traveling internationally, so in between producing assignments I took on freelance projects as a live show technical director for corporate, TV, and live shows all over the world.") As freelance opportunities all but dried up in the economic slowdown of 2008, he furthered his previously established involvement with USO on celebrity entertainment events at military bases and in combat zones around the world. He has a passion for Archaeology and American Civil War history and has visited Civil War battlefields, ancient ruins, and museums around the world on his own dime. Jaymes currently lives in Southern California, writes books and screenplays, and has often been part of a USO team that puts together entertainment events for military families around the world. His first Book: Memoirs From The Road To Everywhere Vol. I The Road To Rock n Roll is part of a trilogy. Part II of his memoirs should be released in spring of 2018. Part III to follow later in the year.

Book preview

Part I

Refugee

"The desire of gold is not for gold

It is for the means of freedom…"

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1

Rebound

In 1994 I was a refugee on the rebound from a former lifestyle and a position as tour manager for celebrity entertainers. After 27 years of touring with big name artists I was mentally and physically exhausted. I had been challenged on all levels. I’d kept the last group, their tours and personal appearances in order and running smoothly for the previous six years, until it burned me out. I consistently functioned at a high energy level until I’d finally had enough and resigned to become a producer of special events in the real world.

By then I had literally traveled around the world many times over and made a good living at it. But it cost me much of the independence and personal freedom I have always required since I was a young boy on the North Coast of America.  That boy dreamed of adventure, yearning to see the world on someone else’s dime. The job was always the price of admission to follow that dream.

When it was over, I planned to take a first class round trip to Egypt, for a week long voyage down the Nile. I needed an adventure, and I wanted to do it alone to purge myself of the past.

There is a spiritual art form that is practiced by many ancient cultures across the globe, cultures as diverse as Tibetans, Native Americans, Japanese, Georgians, Senegalese, and others. It is the art of pouring colored grains of sand onto a surface to create intricately detailed images.

In Tibet, Lamas, or Tibetan priests begin with an opening ceremony that invokes the forces of goodness. In the southwestern US, Native American medicine men paint on the floor of a hogan by letting colored sands flow between their fingertips. They represent not static paintings, but spiritual living entities, a divine geometry to be looked upon with great respect. They are often for healing purposes. When the ceremony is complete and its prayer offered, the painting is destroyed, and life is renewed.

I saw my prior life as a long journey, a series of learning experiences. It had been an ongoing sand painting. Each experience added grains of colored sand to  the personal mosaic I always knew would someday end. Like a sand painter I brushed away the old patterns, watching the colors blend and swirl together as I gently swept them off the table.

I’d been back in LA for a few weeks when offers began to come in for projects I solicited when I was still touring. I had put together and circulated a nice presentation folder to corporate clients I worked with on celebrity appearances at high dollar events around the country.  I offered services under my company name as an event producer, talent buyer, and technical director for special events of all kinds, hoping to trade on the mainstream industry experience I had acquired at the highest levels in live show, TV, and road show production.

I got responses almost immediately. My first was from the personal assistant to the head of a large corporation.  My last celebrity group had done a show for them at their yearly convention, at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. The young woman had been way over her head as far as accommodating a celebrity road show and the endless details it takes to accommodate them both technically and logistically. I patiently walked her through every step. My assistance had put her in a good light with her boss, and when she suggested that she could no longer do double duty, she persuaded him to hire me to produce the current years entertainment event. She was wise to do so. Not all tour managers she might meet in the future thought like I did. Most were high strung and volatile, with little patience for amateurs.

I worked closely with her to produce a memorable event that would keep her in a favorable light with her boss, and I was happy to see to it that she got full credit for it. I was just interested in doing a good job and getting the word out to grow my clientele as a means of financing a yearly adventure or two of my own, to some far corner of the world. But the first trip down the Nile I had already planned, would have to be postponed for a few months as I followed up on other offers.

I put together a budget for her based on a $50K act that detailed typical technical and logistical support, as well as my fee. Along with that I sent her a list of the top acts in that price range. After a little back and forth the company settled on Ray Charles. I was in luck. I had worked with Ray Charles several times on other events and once on a TV show. I also knew his manager was a bit tricky to deal with if you didn’t know how to handle him. Like the Hollywood shark he was, he would have smelled fresh meat and taken full advantage of her.

On show day, things went well. I brought in an assistant to meet Mr Charles and his entourage at the airport, and to get them settled in the hotel. The client sent a fruit basket to Mr Charles suite, and I sent a plate of cookies (his favorite) to the managers hotel room.

After a standing ovation to thunderous applause, Ray Charles, manager, and band, left presumably pleased. They had been treated well and had everything they needed to set the mood for a good show, which it was.

The client was ecstatic. His event had been a huge success. There was mention of having me back the following year. (It ended up being the next eight years.)

And just like that, I was in business.

2

Batman Forever

I was only a few months into a new career and already things were popping for me. I basked in the light of my own entrepreneurship. During the months when I was in the process of putting together the Ray Charles event, another project came through that was more about technical production than the celebrities that would be involved.

I was still burnt toast and I needed a break. But I had to strike while the iron was hot. I had a lot to learn about applying my skillset to the corporate world, and only real time experience would get me where I needed to be to satisfy my sense of detail and satisfaction with the work.

As a direct response to the presentation folder I sent out while I was still touring, I heard from a production company in Santa Monica that was looking for someone to put together a project for them in New York. It was a small outfit with big clients. Their bread and butter account was Warner Bros Consumer Products division. I learned the division extended the studio’s vast portfolio of entertainment brands and franchises into the lives of fans around the world by  globally licensing an award-winning range of toys, fashions, home décor and publishing. Products were inspired by Warners franchises and properties such as DC comics, J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World, Looney Tunes, and Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters.

Every time a super hero, teenage, or kids movie was released the company made another fortune by licensing consumer products relating to the film.  Products included the books, action figures, lunch boxes, costumes, and toys, that were a small part of an infinite list of products that were sold in their retail and theme park outlets as well. They also did traveling exhibits and a concert series around the world.

Each year WBCP did several lavish events for their licensees to launch their products. Sets from the films were alluded to or recreated on a smaller scale.  Actual costumes, and props like the Batmobile were displayed and theatrically lit.  Licensees were wined and dined and treated to displays of scenic elements and character costumes as well as props available for licensing, and the occasional appearance by the film’s featured celebrity artists.

I met the owner/executive producer of the production company, Myles Gronin, at his office in Santa Monica. It was more of a creative loft space than a traditional office. Myles went through my resume as we spoke. The gist of the interview was that he was looking for a staging producer for a WBCP event off-site near the annual toy fair convention in New York. Since WBCP was the big dog at the convention it would have to be spectacular.  We hit it off, and I was hired on the spot.

The New York location, a Civil War era armory on 26th and Lexington in Manhattan, was chosen because it was old, dim, and cavernous. It easily lent itself to the dark theme of the film Batman Forever.

We brainstormed ideas on how to stage the event to make it a spectacular and memorable event that would stand out from the other companies and excite the licensees enough to exit with a buzz about the film’s consumer marketing potential.

My first thought was that the civil war era 80ft arched truss ceiling could come nicely into play. The audience would enter the dimly lit room to decor suggesting the Bat Cave. I proposed a 70ft high scenic curtain in the shape of the Batman cowl, rigged as an Austrian curtain that could be flown out dramatically to the soundtrack of the movies main theme, and revealing the films stars in place onstage.

Myles had never heard of an Austrian curtain. I explained how it created a dramatic effect as it raised up on multiple vertical lines hidden across the width of the fabric, causing each section between the lines to bunch into the next section as it raised and furled into itself. It would end up in the dark high above the stage out of the audience’s line of sight.  Myles loved the idea.

For the next few months I kept regular hours at the Gronin Group’s office. To avoid LA traffic on the 405 Freeway I arrived before 7:30am each morning and left at about 7:00pm each evening. Then as the project progressed, I inadvertently acquired a valuable new computer skill that I was already proficient at, in its traditional manual  form.

Myles had money in the budget for a draftsman to plot out the space with our stage-set and other ancillary display areas drawn-in to scale. We met with the draftsperson and went over the entire layout in detail.  We made it clear that we required a ground plan, a birds eye view of the layout.  What we got back were what we call, Build drawings of side elevations and minute details that were useless for our purposes.

CAD, or computer aided in-scale drawing was in its infancy at the consumer level. I had been playing around with a new drafting program for my early MAC but had as yet found a purpose for it. I was very clumsy with it at best.

With time getting short, there was no time to bring the draftsman along. She clearly wasn’t getting it. That night I took the building blueprints home with me. I worked all night learning the program as I reproduced the actual in-scale footprint of the building in virtual reality .

I showed up at the office with no sleep, but a workable in scale depiction of the space that I could add or detract from accordingly. Furthermore I could render front or side elevations and plot real distances to get an accurate depiction of the event in the space, as well as render actual measurements for lengths and sizes of the rental curtains we would need to mask off many areas.

Myles had it in his head that he wanted the bat signal to lead people from the convention site to the Armory.  There was a clear line of site down an adjacent street to a building near the convention. It was up to me to engineer it.

We had a permit to shine a light on the side of a specific building near the toy convention, but how could I get that much light that far away and have the image be clear when it hit the side of the building?  Then it hit me. I hired a searchlight company and figured out how we could build a giant custom gobo, that is in this case, a tin plate with a cutout in the middle in the shape of the bat signal. The light would shine through and show up as the bat shape when it hit the building several city blocks away.

On show day, theatrical riggers climbed to the rafters from inside the giant  civil war era arched trusses, the main structural elements supporting the roof.  They dropped lines to locations directly above the stage, specified in my in-scale drawings. Several lengths of trussing were hung from lines at various locations over the stage to support the cowl/curtain, stage lighting, and audio speakers.

Given the scale of the buildings interior and the height of the roof, it was a massive construction project that involved riggers, carpenters, audio and lighting technicians, as well as decor and catering people. Several independent vendors provided props, mannequins, and costumes from the film for various displays that were placed throughout the room. Lastly, the owner and builder of the actual Batmobile arrived with his crew to load the vehicle on a prominently placed elevated turntable where it would be theatrically lit for display.

Midway into the load-in, Myles Gronin appeared with his wife to check on our progress. We were on schedule and on budget and things were going smoothly. He asked what he could do and I replied, Take your wife shopping, and relax. I’ve got this. My comment was not meant to be flip. His job as director and cue-caller began at showtime. The pressure would be off me and the success of the event would be directly on him.

Our job had been to faithfully represent the overall look and feel of the film without duplicating it. When the show was loaded in and audio and lighting tests completed the films director, Joel Schumacher, came in to listen to the sound and offer comments on the look and what we had achieved.

Joel was very pleased, and that was saying a lot considering the reputation most Hollywood directors had for being perfectionists.

At showtime, it was all on Myles Gronin, so I slipped outside to check on the Bat Signal. An event in itself, the beam shone brightly above the avenue and terminated against the faraway building in a clean image of the Bat Signal, a key element of the Batman legacy of comics, books, and films. It was working like a charm, directing the several hundred people walking over en masse from the convention site to the armory turned Bat Cave.

There was literally an energetic buzz from the participants as they entered the armory turned cave. Cocktails were served at several bars in the room and hors d'oeuvres and champagne circulated.  Once they were settled and had a chance to schmooze a bit with one another, the already dim lighting was taken down a few notches. The mysterious and sinister tones of the main Batman theme filled the cavernous space. The Batman cowl-curtain rose slowly, gathered into itself and disappeared into the darkness above the stage, gradually revealing the actors from the film. Slowly, Val Kilmer, Jim Carrey, Chris O’Donnel, Nicole Kidman, and Alecia Silverstone, were recognized on the atmospherically lit stage.

For a brief awkward moment amid resounding applause from the audience, the actors, perhaps not used to interacting with live audiences, stood frozen in place  like marble statues. Then Jim Carrey, a veteran comedian and live performer, took the reins. He bantered with the audience and teased his fellow actors into responses that brought them alive. It gave the audience what they craved, a little bit of themselves beyond the characters they had portrayed on film.

It was Jim Carrey that brought the scene to life and took it from a display of living statues to a group of lively performers successfully interacting with an audience of business people,  greedy for their attentions and approval.

The event was a big hit, and for me another impressive milestone on a new road, in a new direction, by way of the corporate resume I was building.  A resume I hoped would provide me the means to finance my lifelong dream to see the rest of the world.

3

Gain and Loss

Gronin began to use me whenever a project came along that required my skillset. In fact he began to incorporate that skillset, the ability to stage large complex events with a lot of moving parts, in every pitch he made to clients. It allowed him to expand and increase his company’s revenue stream, and it gave me what I’d been hoping for, Interesting and challenging projects at top levels of the industry. In fact, that phrase became my mantra.

Not long after the Batman project another WBCP event came along.   Looney Tunes, another Warner Bros property is a mainstay in their consumer products portfolio.  Each year WBCP licensed the rights to manufacture thousands of items from toys to t-shirts, coffee mugs to key chains, lunch boxes, apparel, and endless other items for sale to consumers across the globe. It brought in millions per year from Looney Tunes alone.

Another of the services Gronin provided was the production of entertaining and informative videos for the many product licensing events and meetings it either hosted or attended throughout the year.  Hundreds of hours of Warner Bros film and video footage was placed at their disposal to use in compiling short videos pertaining to whichever product line was featured at any given time.

Though I was a freelancer, an independent contractor, I mostly worked out of the Gronin Group offices in Santa Monica. On the Looney tunes project the wall behind my desk was the outer wall of an editing bay where video footage was cut and videos assembled. The wall was pretty soundproof and very little of the audio leaked out, not enough to disturb my work. By then, my work as a staging producer included a lot of CAD drafting and technical drawing. My new skill had begun to pay off and I was reaping its benefits.

A few weeks into the project I arrived at my desk one morning to find the wall had been torn down to expand the editing bay. Myles assured me that the inconvenience was only temporary and the work would be completed in a few days.  The next few days were not too bad while the editor assembled footage with no audio. But there was one day during the wall construction, when he got to laying in audio tracks. That, got a little bit crazy.

I was levels deep in a drawing, trying to resolve a technical issue, and fully engrossed in my work, when all of a sudden an explosion of sound effects came blasting out of the editing bay from the open space that had once been a wall. Boi-oy-oing. You silly wabbit…! Thwack, pop, donk, ding! Dynamite exploded, anvils and pianos dropped from on high. Then came the Roadrunners beep-beep, along with every other wacky Looney Tunes cartoon sound, including the iconic Tha-tha-thats all folks, Porky Pigs, signature sign off in every cartoon. It wasn’t just distracting, it was absolutely maddening.  Fortunately, the next day I arrived to find the wall had been completed and desks rearranged to accommodate space reclaimed by the new editing bay.

I printed my drawings at every stage in a large scale blueprint size. Because large scale printers were available only at a high industrial level then, I printed them out in sections on individual 8.5 x 11 sheets and cut and taped them together. Then I took them to a blueprint shop and had them copied as actual blueprint pages. Surprising to me at first, the scale was still pretty accurate. Not long after that, large scale printers began showing up in many of the Kinkos franchises around LA.

I attended all the meetings at WBCP pertaining to the projects I worked on. Because the clients were marketing people they were not versed in theatrical techniques.  Warner Studios across the street made the movies, WBCP just licensed products based on the films the studio produced. The marketeers we dealt with sometimes needed visuals to enhance their understanding.

Whenever the Gronin group pitched a project or a concept, I attended the meeting loaded down with blueprinted drawings of different views that we hung on the giant white board in the meeting room. It was a bit theatrical I admit, but the marketeers loved it. It made them feel more like event or film producers than mere marketeers. Consequently, after Gronin pitched an idea or a concept to them they were able to visualize it a little more clearly, and enjoyed being a part of the creative process. This I’m sure, went a long way in raising the value of the Gronin Group’s stock with WBCP. Then not long after I began freelancing for them the office manager was promoted to a position that carried the title of something like, Client Liaison. Her job boiled down to roaming the halls (all 4 floors) at WBCP, sniffing out upcoming projects, and setting up pitch meetings.

In mid 1995 Gronin called me in as the staging producer on another Looney Tunes project at a resort in Tarpon Springs Florida.

This one presented interesting challenges. On the technical side, product would be displayed in areas that would have to appear and reappear at various times during presentations by WBCP executives. One of Gronin’s objectives was to not only hide and reveal them at various times, but to be able to project  images in the same space while the product was hidden. To accomplish this, I researched materials that could be used as a curtain or screen that would mask the product areas, yet still provide a good background to project on.  I came up with  a material that was perforated with hundreds of little holes. When the product behind it was illuminated the screen disappeared and the product showed through clearly. When the backlight was killed, bright video projectors could project a good quality image on the surface and the holes would disappear, much like the individual pixels on a TV screen or video monitor.

Another element was the live band Myles wanted to underscore certain segments of the presentation. For that, I reached out to a keyboard player friend of mine that had toured with major artists and was currently not on tour. He was a music school graduate that read and wrote music fluently.  For the lighting portion I brought in a friend from Cape Cod that I had toured with.

We arrived in Florida and the event came together easily. But I learned some things about Myles Gronin that would affect every project and every transaction we engaged in from then on. Myles was a bully. Not so much to me because I came from the mainstream of entertainment and met him on equal ground. And I always delivered for him, no matter how far out the request. But he showed little respect to some vendors and those of lessor station or opportunity in life.

Up until then we had always used equipment vendors and labor that I brought in. In Tarpon Springs, the gear was relatively simple and we were able to use the in house vendor at a negotiated discount that I set up. Because the budget was tight, I updated it daily and took advantage of the rapport that I built with the in house technical manager. But Myles always seemed to find fault with everything he did.

Myles openly berated the young man until I pulled him aside and explained to him that I had gotten great deals on equipment. They were well below normal discounts offered to preferred clients of the hotel.  Possibly because we were the only clients in house at the time and the hotel most likely wanted to be associated with WBCP, and whatever other clients Gronin Group might bring them in the future. Myles didn’t see it that way. He saw the guy as a local Yokel and some kind of a rube.

If I’d learned one thing in my years of touring with big name artists at major concert venues, Las Vegas Showrooms, theaters, rodeos, and fairs, it was to work with all kinds of people. I had had my own issues with bullies and it irked me to see anyone bully another, especially someone that had given us his all, above and beyond the call of duty. I took on the role of buffer and in the interest of the project and in accord with my own sensibilities, kept myself between the two of them.

On the next to last day of the event, I went out to a patio area to grab some quiet time with a spreadsheet to update my budget based on the invoices I just received from the house tech. He and I had sat down together and brought  the account up to date. I apologized to him for Gronin’s behavior and thanked him again for working with us on pricing and taking good care of us. The two of us were completely in sync and had actually enjoyed