When you’ve been putting on industrial meetings, making speeches, editing slide shows, and other assorted activities for 50 years, some embarrassing moments will unfold before your eyes. That they involve you personally is a distraught pleasure.
The Dancers
At one of my first industrial theater productions (a stage play with audio-visual segments), we had hired a dozen or so dancers to lead up to the reveal of the new product.
Because I knew everything there was to know at the age of 22, I knew I wanted there to be a mist of smoke on the stage. I went to the stage manager and demanded, “I want dry ice.” The stage manager gave me a condescending look and said, “But Brien…” I screamed, “Dry Ice, Dry Ice!”
I got my dry ice. And the dancers fell all over the floor. Dry ice is wet.
The Instant AV
In olden times, we would shoot slides at a meeting and compile them for an “instant audio-visual” to be shown at the closing banquet. So, if the meeting was 3 days, we’d shoot slides on the first two days, and prepare the trays with those slides, waiting only for the final batch to arrive so we could show events right up to the final banquet.
Since I was a one-man show at this meeting, I knew the slides I had shot an hour or two ago would be coming via courier from the lab. To get as much prep done as possible, I used write-on slides as placeholders for the real deal. (Write-on slides were slides with translucent material on them so you could write on them and project them if necessary.
On one of these slides I had written “Presidents Big-Ass Wife”. I forgot to take this slide out of the tray and it was projected for all to see. Luckily, no one could read my writing.
The Speech
I was making a speech to Women in Communication in Milwaukee, and I was talking about directing announcers during voice-over recording sessions. I was talking about how a good session involved many different takes, that is, attempts by the announcer and director to get things just right.
Then I said (with a note of disparagement) “unless, of course, you’re one-take Earl Johnson”, an announcer known for his ability to tell you after one take, “That’s Golden, Pal!”, meaning that was all he was going to read that line. He had such a good voice, most people put up with it, but I preferred to use actors, not announcers. So, disparagement.
After the speech was over, a woman came up to me and said, “I’m Mrs. Earl Johnson.” Uh-oh.
“I just want to thank you for the nice things you said about my husband,’ she added.
“Uh, my pleasure,” I said.
Golden, Pal.