A Cranky Journal of Themed Design and Development

By Porter Davis Alewife

-- Chinese Proverb

Herbert W. Zoozman
Location and date taken unknownThe New Year is upon us and lest we in the forget our humble origins, let's hear now, in his own words, the man who almost single-handedly invented the idea of the "location-based attraction." He conjured the entertainment paradigms we use as templates out of whole cloth, at a time when Walt Disney was still scrawling "Laugh-O-Grams" in a Kansas City garage.

His name is Herbert W. Zoozman, AKA "Mr. Showmanship." I had the honor of interviewing this 93-year-old patriarch as he held court at his corner table in the Studio City "DuPars." He is currently attempting to find distribution for his VOD / Internet Download Adult Interactive Experience, Roller-Blading Vice Babes of the Internet. What we now call "location-based entertainment," he knew as the "roadshow attraction."

And now, the man himself, in his own words.

Zoozman:

I was 22 years old in 1930. The movie industry had just instituted the "Motion Picture Code," spelling out what was now forbidden -- Sex, Vice, Prostitution, Drunkenness, Gambling, Nakedness, Racketeering, Murder, and Narcotics. I took very careful notes, and spent 6,000 dollars of my own money to make a movie called Vice Racket Vixen that included each of these transgressions. I toured the movie myself, spending a week in each town. Here's how I did it.

The Importance of the Big Idea (AKA High Concept)

Zoozman:

If the pitch doesn't hit 'em in the dingbats, you won't get butts in the seat. That's why I wrote the ad copy myself. Take a look at this . . .

The Importance of Promotion
Zoozman:

I'd always hold a special screening for the local clergy, "good government groups," and jack-offs like that. See, that way I'd get headlines like . . .

Zoozman:

...Then I'd recruit the town's most ambitious juvenile delinquents to pass out 5,000 pre-printed copies of a "herald" that looked like a court summons for jury duty. The summons was a free pass to a special screening, where the townspeople could vote on whether I should show the movie. This way, I'd get another headline, the next day . . .

Zoozman:

. . . You can't pay for advertising like that.

The Importance of the "Preshow"

Zoozman:

Now it's time to set up the lobby display. For Vice Racket Vixens, I had this crude "Quack Baby Doctor's Operating Table," with sheets soaked in ketchup and a table holding a ball-peen hammer, needle-nose pliers, and a spanner wrench. I also had an exotic-looking glass case filled with hypodermic needles, bent spoons swiped from the local beanery, mock "reefers" and jars, vials and bottles filled with flour and milk sugar, labeled "heroin," "cocaine" and "opium." Finally, I had a fake "Electric Chair" that the rubes, er, guests could sit in.

The Importance of the Show "Delivering the Goods"

Zoozman:

So now it's Friday - Show time! The movie's all about this innocent high school girl who becomes a nymphomaniac reefer addict after one puff. She's lured into prostitution to pay for her "reefer habit," and soon becomes pregnant by the town "cad."

So, now it's time for Pay Off Number One! At this point, I cut in some color footage of a live childbirth. Okay, okay, so I got it from a veterinarian, and it's a goat being born, but it's so grainy who can tell?

Pay Off Number Two! The nympho/reefer addict/prostitute pulls out a gun and perforates the "cad." Now we see her on Death Row, walking the Last Mile. She gets strapped into the Electric Chair. The Warden's about to pull the switch, when I stop the film. The screen goes up, and . . . there's an electric chair onstage! I invite anyone to pay me one dollar to sit in this chair and take my "Million Dollar Challenge." I've got the thing hooked up to a Model T spark coil. The first person to try it is on my payroll. He sits down. I pull the switch. He shrieks bloody murder, and runs screaming from the theater. In 31 years of working this gag, I never paid out a cent.

Exit Through Retail

Zoozman:

As people would leave the theater, I'd have women in nurse's uniforms selling "educational" booklets for a dollar, entitled, Actual Photographs of Forbidden, Shocking, Deviant Sex Practices From Around the World, And How to Avoid Them.

The Importance of "Repeatability"

Zoozman:

I could tour the entire South in six months. After that I'd slap a new title on the film - JailBait Baby, Sex Racketeers, The Sorrowful Strumpet, or Confessions of A Whoopee Wench, and start the whole thing all over again.

I'd like to leave you with Mr. Zoozman's personal philosophy, something he's stood by for more than 70 years:

"You can fool some of the people all the time, and that's generally good enough if you get out of town fast enough."

For more information on Mr. Zoozman's checkered career in show biz, please check out the semi-official Herbert W. Zoozman Web site.

Porter Davis Alewife is a film and amusement park historian and critic with the Recovered Entertainment Archives. Any and all kick-back money he has derived from this shameless pimping of Mr. Zoozman and the Zoozman Web Site are between himself and his Maker (and the IRS). Mr. Alewife can be seen this spring as the "barker" for a vegetarian "geek" act with "Humdingerpalooza," the traveling alternative Bluegrass festival.

Photo of Herbert W. Zoozman ^© 1999 FeeveCo For more on a related subject, see:

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