An Interview With Steven Davison - Part 2
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LP: What kind of response has the parade had so far?
SD: Huge huge success from top down to guests. First we showed it to Michael Eisner, Paul Presler and Cynthia [Harriss], they were just ecstatic. They just loved it. I usually just walk out and watch audiences. Even like with "Believe" I just walk out and I watch the audience and how they react, and people clap along, they get into it, they get caught up in its energy. Just to hear what they say like "whoa what’s that?" or "that was cool." To really get at some ages that other parades don’t hit well, like teenagers. Teenagers get caught up in certain pieces. They love the extreme sports thing.
There’s really something for everybody. It’s really great to watch. Kids love it too because they’re just like wowed by it because of the color. It’s actually pretty sophisticated if you look at it. Like if you look in the Fiesta. It actually has the whole swallow tale in it. The whole thing about the swallows returning to the missions and there’s a whole piece actually painted into the parade. If you look at LA there’s all those destroyed murals in LA and pieces of them repainted inside of it. It’s kind of another homage to things. It’s like lost and found. Things that aren’t there any more. I think it’s tragic when art gets destroyed because people don’t care.
The Hollywood Bowl
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LP: And the Hollywood Bowl puppet...
SD: Hollywood Bowl was fun because the whole thing is about creativity and how people create things like when Samuel Ramie did the Watts Towers. He just took stuff...There’s a story about Watts Towers, that he used to pay kids if they would find broken pieces of tile. So kids would come and bring him little jars of tile and he’d give them pennies. They were going home and breaking good dishes at their parents house and bringing them to Sam. The parents had to make him stop because they were running out of dishes.
Hollywood Bowl or the whole art scene in LA is all created - it’s that creative industry - how things get brought to life. The Bowl thing was fun. We kind of drew it up and sent it to Michael [Curry] and said what do you think and then Michael actually added a puppet onto the front as a conductor. We worked back and forth in Oregon and it’s just fun to see how people react to it. It’s a very simple thing, a puppet - some guy just leaning down to an audience and controlling it. It’s one of the most popular things. Some of the smallest things can be the most popular things.
"Believe...In Holiday Magic"
LP: You’ve had a huge huge success with "Believe ... In Holiday Magic". Do you feel a lot of pressure now to keep topping yourself?
SD: Holiday was scary I’ll be honest about it because you had a huge hit with the first show [Believe...There's Magic in the Stars] and you don’t know. I never did fireworks in my life and they actually say we want you to do fireworks so we get to play, we get to paint, and you just try something. I’m an artist by trade so you use color and use light and you look at it completely different and you get to play with a medium that a lot of people in the business look at very specifically.
With "it's a small world holiday", the first one, it was just great to have that kind of audience response. I do feel I’m really connected with the Disney audience. Even before we opened we were scrutinized for even touching that attraction and at the end of it, it was really great to see people respond and really bring back a memory for a lot of people because they hadn’t been on the ride in years. "Oh that thing with the dolls. I rode that one when I was a kid." Then they go on it again and just by adding things inside of it you make people relive those experiences and then they have their kids and their kids are seeing it for a whole new first time.
It's a Small World Holiday
So again, you build on those traditions and memories. That’s what Disneyland is about is that you always go there and there’s always that wishing well and there’s always those great experiences and things that you’ll remember forever. When "Believe...There's Magic in the Stars" opened, all I would have to do is go stand out there and watch it with the crowd. They told you what they thought. Even moving Tinker Bell to the end of the show which a lot of people were "my God you’re moving Tinker Bell to the end of the show." I go "yeah, because that way she’s your star." Suddenly, out of this huge pyro, you have one single object and one single memory and you’re not putting anything else with her other than her and they applaud her. I said that’s what it’s about. It’s about everyone going "oh my God, it’s Tinker Bell. Oh my God it’s her." Oh I remember that when I was four.