|
The Future
(Predicted by Swami Laszlo)
Prof. Lee Kolozsy
I predict that show business will
be around for a far longer period of time in the future than it
has existed for in the past…
Therefore I must conclude that it will
probably outlive me. Generations yet to come will struggle and
suffer, even risk their lives, for the amusement of others, much
as it was and continues to be for me. A lifelong love affair with
a cruel and uncooperative mistress... Show-Biz… Not a job, not a
career, not a profession, not a way of life, not a band of Gypsies
distracting the Gaji’
with
amusing and captivating antics while the bump and lift mob
cleans their pockets
, but a combination of this and more…
The essential ingredient is that
indefinable charismatic quality that I call talent… Talent
and the guts to believe in your ability to amuse and impress your
audience. This is my definition of “ Show-Biz”…If you ask me,
“It’s a disease” … Truly, in every sense of the word. A disease
for which there is no cure. A disease with the power and force of
an addiction. A disease which rules it’s victims lives. A disease
that’s been around long enough for us to be fairly certain that it
will continue to be around a while longer…
This leads me to ask the following
question… What in the world will a show of the future be like?
So let’s examine this question in an
orderly manner…
In order to accurately predict the
future, we must consider fully, and assess carefully, everything
we know about the past. Now most of what I know about the racket
is stuff from the past. The only thing I know for sure about
what’s ahead is that at some point in the future, I will come to
the end of my career. This is dogma that is certain. The remainder
of the future is shrouded in uncertainty. Therefore, to even begin
to imagine the probable future with some semblance of realism, we
must employ some deductive reasoning. Kind of like some Sherlock
Holmes of potential future history.
Lets review what we know about the
past…
Archeologists
 tell
us that we are all descended from hunter-gatherer tribal
societies. One can imagine that the hunt was a very important
social function where tribal leaders ( the Jaycees) organized an
effort to bring down big game. This was no small undertaking as
there is quite an element of danger involved in going after wild
beasts with sharp sticks. Many casualties must have been sustained
in this activity. When the hunting party returned intact and
laden with game, It is for certain that a feast was in order,
probably a big party with all the usual decadent revelry. It is at
some point in these proceedings that theatre was born. The first
actor must have taken the stage, and with animal heads and hides
for wardrobe, acted out the first play in human history. The
dramatic story of how Glug Glug, ( who was laying in his cave in a
puddle of his own blood, moaning softly, with no appetite at all
), was gored in the keister by the enraged wilderbeest. After
partying all night with all the adoring fans, our prehistoric
actor read the reviews and decided to immediately contact his
agent and announce, “I want to direct”…
It is a perfectly reasonable deduction
from the facts as we know them to conclude that all of show-biz is
descended from storytelling. Now how did all this evolve into the
circus, the carnival, and the sideshow…
An article I wrote several years ago
poses the question… How did this whole thing begin?…
"HOW IT ALL BEGAN..." ( SHOWMANSHIP )
I suspect that it probably began with
an elephant. I don't have any real proof, no anecdotal evidence,
no historical documents, nothing really, but this story,
apocryphal, I’m certain, told to me by a long gone showman, in a
Gibtown fish camp, nearly forty years ago.
“It all began with a couple of guys
who came into a little money. How they got this money is
irrelevant, the important part is about the elephant, which is
still relevant, even though these guys were in business before
 Barnum.
So these two guys with the money
decide that what they want to do is make more money, but they
don't quite know how. Apparently what's needed here is market
research so they decide to sail around the globe in search of
money-making schemes. Soon enough they find themselves in a remote
jungle outpost of the British Empire deep in India surrounded by
the strangest of activities. The natives here are logging timber,
but in a very strange manner indeed. Trees are falling all about
them with the noisiest of splintering crashes as they are knocked
to the ground by enormous elephants each guided by a comparatively
tiny native mahout while other elephants in harness are dragging
massive logs for miles through the jungle to the sea where they
are loaded on ships destined for England. These guys decide on the
spot that they can make a killing in New York with one of these
elephants, so off they go to make a deal with the local Rajah. Now
the Rajah is not just in the logging business, which is a
sideline, but quite diversified and primarily in the money-making
business so before long a deal is negotiated and these guys find
themselves the proud owners of an elephant complete with the
indentured servitude of a qualified mahout ( "Only a few extra
rupees Sahib and you will never have to shovel dung…" )
Now it doesn't take long after
arriving in New York for things to take an unexpected turn. These
guys figure out in short order that they can make more money by
putting the elephant in a building and charging a nickel to see it
than they could ever hope to make by working the beast.
Now whenever the money is rolling in a
crowd usually forms and out of the crowd steps another guy to take
a shot and one day this peanut farmer from down south sez to these
guys, " Gentlemen, if you'll let me sell peanuts here for people
to feed to the elephant I'll gladly pay for the privilege
and we can all make a buck." Well before you know it another
player makes the savvy observation that the marks are not only
feeding the peanuts to the elephant, but are eating the majority
of the goobers themselves, so he books a lemonade joint, arranges
to salt the peanuts heavily, and immediately goes to cutting up
jackpots and crying about the high privilege
while trying to figure out how to make that floater
go another season. Well pretty soon you look around and you've got
the World's Fair with thousands of joints
and miles of food and hundreds
 of
rides ( one of which arrives on sixty five semis, takes a crew of
eighty men eleven days to set up, has seven hundred and fifty
thousand light bulbs, needs five generators, seats two hundred
riders, and one guy pushes a single button and this thing stands
still while the whole midway spins round and round! )
Now of course it's 2004 and those guys
are gone and it's bigger and better than ever and these new guys
want to make it even bigger and better... but they want to
begin by getting rid of the elephant !”
So does this story tell us how the
show of the future will be performed? Well it doesn’t, really, it
merely makes a good case for the belief that show people in the
past were pretty much like the show people of today. It also helps
us by pointing out that human nature is probably pretty much a
constant throughout history and that means the people putting on
the shows of the future will probably be more like us than
different. So by logical extension, we can safely conclude that
tomorrows shows will be comparable to ours, much like the shows of
today can be compared to yesterdays… Only better… I hope…
For any human enterprise, the key to
improvement is learning. Much of this is research. Not
nearly enough of it is trial and
error. I personally have perfected many of my best acts by
creating material that was influenced by bits I stumbled across
researching show history, and then battered audiences with
variations of it until I hit sure-fire showstoppers. Don’t ever
worry about bombing, you have to die a million times to become
immortal…
Never forget that all of human
achievement is derivative. Originality is largely a myth. Our
human culture is based on the continuation of knowledge passed
along to our offspring. Even new discoveries are invariably
reliant on the work of others who came before. NASCAR can be
traced to the chariot races of the Romans, Broadway shows to the
Greeks, The Mayans played a ball game to the death, contact sports
such as boxing and football are played by modern age gladiators
of the circus, Organized entertainment programs can be traced back
several thousand odd years. Before even the Roman’s Circus of
Death. ..A great big thumbs down to the Ghost of Julius C. for
ordering the death of his cast. The dream of every producer in the
history of Show-Biz at one time or another. Execute this bunch and
bring on the next audition…
Go back even further and you may find
that the first juggler may have been trying to carry fire to his
cave, much to the amusement of his fellow Neanderthals…
Today, the entertainment of popular
culture seems to be the motion picture. It is America’s number one
export, recently passing plastic. We seem to be a nation that is
capable of shaping goop to resemble anything. As fake as it is,
movies and plastic are a fact of life, and you can’t argue with
success. I foresee less and less live entertainment, and more and
more simulated thrills. Probably mass produced crap consumed with
plastic utensils. Like a drive through meal…
The art of Film relies on two
principles in order to reach an audience. One of these is a
physical characteristic of human vision which simulates motion in
the brain. It is known as “persistence of vision”. The other is a
psychological phenomenon known as “suspension of disbelief”. The
first fools you into thinking that the pictures are moving, and
the second allows you to believe it’s for real. Combined with
sound, it can be a powerful storytelling tool. What would happen
if you threw in a few more hi-tech tricks?
So I’m guessing that the show of the
future will be a lot like a movie of today, only more real, more
of a personal adventure… You’re hooked into this thing, see? It’s
the size of a wristwatch and couples directly to your government
required brain wave monitor implant, which reports violent, or
unapproved tendencies, see? It could be worn in your living room,
or in a car, or on a plane, or aboard a starship headed for
another world. And it delivers the story and the action and the
drama and the conflict exactly as if you were living it, see? I
mean complete with emotions, sensation, choices, and interactive,
so you could do it with groups of your friends, see? A form of
effortless recreational rest, see? And that could actually be
what’s going on right now, see? Without our even realizing it we
may actually be in the middle of a show biz adventure story as
we’re speeding into the future……to be continued
All stories are the property of
Sideshow World & their respective authors. Any republication in
part or in whole is strictly prohibited. For more information
please
contact us here.
Back to Show Talk With Lee Kolozsy Back
to Main
|
