Chris Mitchell (19 page)

“How wonderful!” Sandra exclaimed. “I just love Ansel Adams. All those beautiful black-and-white landscapes. And tell me, what do your parents do?”

“Well,” I said, “my father was an engineer, but he retired, and my mom is—” It felt as if a door was opening somewhere nearby and I was being drawn into it. I hadn’t spoken about my family with anyone in Orlando—not because of my promise to Michael—but because I wasn’t ready. Now, however, with Sandra’s question and my half-finished response hanging in the air, a hundred words rushed into my head:
wonderful, loving, dying
…“also retired,” I finished.

“A job that takes a lifetime to master.” Sandra beamed at her scowling husband. “Now, who’s ready for dessert?”

It was just a small part of the evening’s conversation, but it got me thinking. It had been a couple of weeks since I had phoned my parents, longer since I had e-mailed, and in all that time, I hadn’t heard from them. If I was being stubborn, then what were they doing? What could be happening that they wouldn’t even try to reach out to me? I shuddered to think what complications might have developed in that time.

On my way home, I dialed LA. “Hey, Dad. Is Mom there?”

“Mom?” He sounded terrible, like he hadn’t slept for a few nights. “She’s, uh, out right now. Running some errands.”

I looked at my watch and did a few calculations. “What kind of errands?”

He cleared his throat. “Pardon?”

“It’s almost eight. What kind of errands is she doing?”

“She went to the grocery store. The fabric store. Places like that.”

I could tell that, even after fifty-some-odd years of marriage, my dad had no idea what my mom meant when she said she was “running errands.” I could also tell that he was lying.

“How is everybody back home? Are you all, you know, healthy?” I was challenging the boundaries of my promise to Michael, but I wanted to give my dad a chance to talk about Mom. If I could just get him to open up a little, just give me some small, significant acknowledgment that he knew that I knew what was really happening, I would be happy with that.

“Healthy?” he asked. “Actually”—and for a moment, I thought it was going to happen, but then, his tone changed—“everyone’s doing great! Never better! How about you?”

“I’m fine.” I was rubbing my temples now. “Would you ask Mom to call me when she gets back? I want to ask her something.”

“Oh, um, she might be back kind of late. Maybe she should call you in the morning.”

My insides were twisting in knots. I wanted to say something more, but at that point, there was nothing to say.

“Sure,” I said. “Have her call me when she can.”

I didn’t hear from her the next day. When she finally called, the day after that, her words were so jumbled that I could barely understand her.

I wanted to be angry with her. I wanted to persevere and not care about her silent assassin and the brutal chemo treatments. Living in Orlando, it was easy to distract myself with entertainment every minute of the day. If I started to feel sad, there was always a parade somewhere that would cheer me up or a fireworks show or a musical revue. Who could be upset when there was so much
to do
?

But it was getting more and more difficult to keep myself distracted. Every time I thought of my family, I would remember why I came to Orlando in the first place, and the pixie dust would blow away. In the face of a dying parent, no Magical experience seemed so dreamlike anymore. They felt like an escape.

I needed to go deeper, to bury myself so completely in the Disney experience that even I wouldn’t be able to see where my identity ended and my onstage Disney persona began. As far as I could tell, there was only one way to do it.
I had to become a character.

B
eing a character bore a heavy responsibility. As I mentioned before, characters were the reason people came to the park in the first place, and they were the reason they returned year after year. The average family would tolerate a forty-five-minute wait at most to get on a ride, but they’d stand in the rain for up to an hour and a half to meet Mickey Mouse. Parents would do anything for their kids. If the little darlings wanted a photo with Mulan, then by God, load the camera because they were going to be in that line for half a lifetime. That was exactly the point. Disney was created for children and children wanted characters.

As a character, I would be indestructible, a superhero as real to those kids as Saturday morning cartoons, more real than homework or bedtime. In wardrobe, I would get hit, kicked, head butted, and barfed on. I’d have my face licked, my hair pulled, and my fingers bitten. Child after child would squeeze my nose, punch my legs, pull my tail. And why wouldn’t they? They’d seen characters take worse. Over and over, on the television screen, Goofy falls out of trees, jumps out of buildings, throws himself into impossibly grim situations, and still emerges without a scratch. How much damage could a five-year-old do?

As a character, I would be a celebrity, capable of doing anything. I could bounce from one end of the Magic Kingdom to the other in no time at all. I could work all day in the diamond mines and navigate a magic carpet. I would be capable of feats that even a stuntman couldn’t perform. On command, I would have to be a martial arts master, a contortionist, an artist—the ultimate Renaissance critter, no matter which skin I was in.

As a character, I would be a father confessor. Children told characters all kinds of secrets they wouldn’t dare tell anyone else, secrets they knew would be safe with a five-foot-tall mouse. They’d check over their shoulders to make sure nobody was listening, then bring their popsicle-stained hands up to their mouths and whisper, “I have a new mommy now” or “I don’t wet my bed anymore.” Then, they’d giggle and hug me and wave at the video camera in Daddy’s hands.

For adults, I would be therapy, more effective than a psychiatrist, more powerful than a prescription drug. I could always tell the ones who needed it the most because they resisted most vehemently. “Tigger’s for kids,” they’d say, “not mommies.” They’d try to hide behind a camera or an autograph book held at arm’s length. They pushed dark glasses up on stern noses and stood firm like Mr. Darling. Sometimes, a character only had to flirt a little. Sometimes, it took a little more convincing, but eventually, everybody gave in. That was part of the Magic. There was nothing like throwing tired arms around a life-sized cartoon character to revert a sensible grown-up into a cooing child. It was a flashback to a world of nap time and Nilla wafers.

Most parents played along with the game, but every once in a while, I’d see some dad who was just too clever to be fooled by kids in costumes. One day, I was shooting a little girl in Mickey and Minnie’s kiosk. She was just standing there wide-eyed with a Cinderella bow in her hair and her heart in her open mouth, following Mickey’s movements like a sunflower tracking the sun. Her dad gave Mickey a nudge and said, “Boy, I bet it gets hot in there.” Then he smiled and gave his daughter a know-it-all wink as if he just told the Easter Bunny a dirty joke.

Right before I took the photo, I told the little girl, “You know what Mickey told me before you got here? He said he wants to see you stomp on your daddy’s toes.”

The girl tilted her head to one side. “Really?”

I nodded, solemn as a priest. “The harder, the better.”

I kept that photo in my wallet for a week.

Anonymity was the luxury of doing fur. Face characters had to be present and witty from the moment they stepped onstage until the moment the break-room door closed, but inside a character head, the performers were totally anonymous. They became the soul of a cartoon, animation itself. Behind Geppetto’s bewildered smile or Tigger’s bounce, they could be sullen or hungover or horny or dehydrated, but their true emotions were concealed within layers of fur and Velcro. Almost anything they did in costume was forgivable because it wasn’t them doing it. If Aladdin flirted with somebody’s wife, it was because that was part of his character. If Tigger stepped on a kid’s foot, it was forgiven because Tiggers are bouncy. These characters were written to be unpredictable.
*

To be approved in a character role, I would first have to go through a not entirely objective audition process. How well I would do depended as much on the panel of judges as my ability to portray accurate character animation. Two friends of mine, Katia and Cameron, were identical twins. They were genetically indistinguishable, from their long, thick eyelashes to their Scandinavian noses to the little dimple on the left side of their pouty mouths. In fact, they were both left-handed. However, while both girls had been approved for Ariel, only Katia could do Cinderella and only Cameron could do Belle. They were approved for different roles at different auditions by a different set of executives. Of course, they became equally proficient in all three roles so that they could switch to cover each other’s shifts without the managers knowing. It was against the Rules, but the coordinators either didn’t realize or didn’t care. As long as there was a Cinderella on the float making eyes at Prince Charming and dancing with mice, everything was okay.

Once approved, I would have to go through a week of training before I could go onstage. In the training course, I would learn:

1. Movement:
   A performer had to move the way the illustrator originally intended for the character. Goofy loped from place to place. Tigger bounced. Any five-year-old girl knew that a proper princess stood with her shoulders back and her chin up and curtsied with her head tilted a little to the side. Baloo and Brer Bear and Liver Lips McGrowl, the Country Bear Jamboree bear, might all belong to the same species, but their movements made each one a unique persona.
   
2. Speech:
   Face characters had to speak with the accents and affectations of the original character. In the case of Belle and Princess Aurora, this meant being absurdly polite, and in Mulan’s case, less so. Mary Poppins and Burt had English accents and Gaston was French. The Mad Hatter stuttered and babbled like a patient in a psych ward, whereas Tarzan spoke with a stunted jungle vocabulary.
   
3. Writing:
   Autographs, like orchids, were unique and highly collectible. Each character had a specific signature that needed to look the same every time that character put pen to paper. For instance, Aladdin signed his name with “best wishes” or “make a wish” and a little magic lamp under the double
   D.
   Eeyore put a little bow on the tail of the
   Y,
   made his two lowercase
   E’s
   backward, and drew a rain cloud over the name. Even the most obscure character had an autograph. Pain and Panic (from Hercules) were jagged and bumpy like writing in the backseat of a car, whereas Belle’s signature was flowery and feminine.
   

I would have to know the habits, poses, and animation of each particular character before I could go onstage in that costume, and even with all the proper training, there were complications. For example, Chip and Dale looked similar, so their mannerisms had to articulate the distinction. Both chipmunks scurried and circulated, using quick movements to animate their personae, but whereas Chip was composed and philosophical, Dale was mischievous bordering on chaotic. Dale could steal a guest’s hat and wear it around the park for a while, but Chip was the one to give it back.

There were pros and cons to all the Disney characters, so I had to choose my audition wisely. Fat characters, like Pooh, carried extra bulk in the form of costume framing, which put asymmetrical pressure on the performer’s spine and led to chronic lumbar problems. However, if a costume didn’t have that extra framing, then the performer got very little ventilation, so thin characters, like Brer Fox and Tigger, had a tendency to overheat. In the summer months, Tiggers were always the first to go down with heatstroke and dehydration.

There were other characters whose costumes didn’t allow them to hold a pen so that all they had to do was pose. Hades had long urethane fingers, which extended well past the ends of the performer’s hands, and King Louie’s arms hung down to the ground, an effect achieved using bars inside the sleeves of the costume that the performer manipulated like a puppeteer. Buzz and Woody negotiated tricky glove issues by using a stamp and inkpad for autographs.

One person could be approved in many different roles, so it was important to remember which character I would be animating. It didn’t happen often, but occasionally I would see a character fall into a full-blown identity crisis, acting the wrong way, signing the wrong name during an autograph set. It wasn’t such a big deal if they signed Tweedledee as Tweedledum, but there were times when a performer started the day with a couple of Rafiki sets, then Smee, followed by a quick stint as Drizella. And when it was time to get into the Flik costume, the performer didn’t know if she or he should be signing “Ta-Ta for Now” or “Best Wishes” or “Merry Fucking Christmas.”

Being a character presented philosophical issues as well. Child abuse, for instance. God knows, Disney had more than its fair share of crying children accompanied by irate parents, so this scenario was in my face every day. As a Cast Member, Disney had a policy regarding child discipline. If I ever saw an adult disciplining a child in a way that seemed too severe, I was instructed to report it to a manager, who would then make the call. But because of the speech and behavioral restrictions, characters were a little more isolated, and that sometimes meant turning off the voice of conscience.

Those restrictions, in fact, were a big drawback to any role in the character department. Because the actions of the characters had to be consistent with their animated personalities, performers were never allowed to break character, no matter what the circumstances. A friend of mine was doing the Mad Hatter one day when a desperate parent asked how to get to the nearest bathroom. The Mad Hatter, normally a confused, babbling caricature, broke character long enough to give the guest concise directions, and for that crime was issued a reprimand.

For fur characters, speech was strictly forbidden. Even if a Cast Member won her high school talent contest by mimicking the Mickey voice, under no circumstances was she allowed to use it onstage. A fur performer couldn’t cough or whistle or form any words whatsoever. The only acceptable sound was a kiss, usually applied to a child’s cheek or the top of a guest’s head.

While this might, at first, seem like an easy rule to follow, it presented more than a few awkward situations. One day, I was shooting in the Pooh kiosk, when I noticed a couple pushing a child in a wheelchair at the head of the exit line.
*
Pooh dropped to one knee and gave the child a big hug, and while he did, the greeter explained that this little girl was five years old and she had come all the way from Anchorage to meet her hero. She was in the late stages of leukemia, and at that point, it was irreversible. Between the lines was the understanding that we would never see her again and that her last, most heartfelt wish was to spend a minute with Winnie the Pooh before she passed away.

The little girl was crying as she got up out of her chair, and her parents were crying because they hadn’t seen her this happy in months, and the greeter started crying because everybody else was. The little girl threw her arms around Pooh’s neck and told him how much she loved him and how she wasn’t scared anymore. And Pooh squeezed her tight and rocked her back and forth. He couldn’t make a sound, so he made little kissing noises in the air around her head, but I could see that from the way his shoulders shook behind those brave, unblinking bear eyes, he was sobbing uncontrollably.

In silence.

As much as I appreciated the comforts of the big, furry animal characters, however, I knew that I could never be one of those anonymous, sweaty creatures. I had worked hard to establish myself at the top of the Cast Member hierarchy. I was the out-of-character photographer. I dated an Ariel. If I took a position as a fur character, I would be backsliding down the food chain. No, there was only one choice for me: I had to become a heroic Disney face character, someone who, like me, came from a humble station on the streets; who, like me, worked his way up the ranks to take his rightful place alongside the princes of the Kingdom; and who, like me, was prince height with Mediterranean features—
Aladdin
.

It wasn’t such a long shot. Ever since I showed up at Disney, people had been telling me I looked like Aladdin. “Uncanny,” they’d say, or “Dead ringer.” Stuff like that. So when I saw the notice on the Cast Member message board announcing face auditions, I decided to go for it.

From the moment I walked into the casting office, I could feel the tension in the air. A couple hundred people filled the waiting room, each one fiddling with a bag, smiling nervously, and trying to calibrate mentally the princess potential of every other applicant. I could tell by the way they did their makeup which girls were hoping to be cast as Belle or Cinderella. Darker-skinned girls did their eyes in exotic kohl-streaked Jasmine strokes. Fairer ones wore their hair away from their collarbones to show off their snowy white throats. Even the boys were affecting their proudest posture, puffing out their chests to imitate royalty. I filled out my casting sheet, lined up to be measured—I was, as I knew I would be, the perfect Aladdin height—and then sat down to wait.

Every fifteen minutes or so, a production assistant (PA) would read a list of names from the sign-in sheet, and the ten people whose names were called would file down a hallway and disappear for about ten minutes before returning one by one to the waiting room. Some carried slips of paper with character names and callback dates. These were the happy ones, the ones who had been invited to participate in the callbacks. The others emerged empty-handed and tried to exit as gracefully as possible.