Oohs and Ahh-nimation : Sequoia Creative Will Make Fantasy Come to Life on Malaysian Mountain
About 5 miles northeast of the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur is a 348-acre plot in an untamed area inhabited mostly by tigers, monkeys and a clan of elephants so surly that one reportedly trampled two men to death this year.
Big plans await the tropical jungle. Soon the thick cluster of 100-foot-high, 1,000-year-old banyan trees will give way to a Western town, a stone castle seemingly out of 15th-Century Europe and one of the world’s most modern roller coasters. A Malaysian consortium is building Samaworld there, a $125-million theme park and resort that by 1990 is to be that Southeast Asian country’s answer to Disneyland.
Planning the park is the job of Sequoia Creative, a Sun Valley company founded by former Walt Disney executives Dave Schweninger, Thomas Reidenbach and Robert Gurr, for whom unusual assignments are routine. The trio made the spaceship that hovered over the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. They also are responsible for the spider-like creatures that singer Michael Jackson ordered for his 1984 concert tour and, for the Universal Studios tour, a seven-ton King Kong that has lifelike movements and banana-scented breath.
This week, an illuminated, spinning star built by Sequoia is being installed at a new Hard Rock Cafe in Dallas, where every night at midnight it will descend from the ceiling amid smoke and the sounds of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by the late guitarist Jimi Hendrix. Next month, a 6,000-square-foot miniature golf course with futuristic special effects built by Sequoia is scheduled to open near Brisbane, Australia, in a former movie theater.
Founded in 1984, Sequoia has grown into a $2-million-a-year company that specializes in translating offbeat ideas for entertainment and leisure attractions into reality.
Entertainment Engineering
For years, the three partners translated Disney’s ideas. Sequoia Vice President Reidenbach, 45, who left Disney in 1973 after eight years, helped plan Disney World in Florida. Sequoia’s president, Schweninger, 52, who left Disney in 1981 after 20 years, helped put together attractions such as the Pirates of the Caribbean and It’s a Small World at Disneyland. Gurr, 55, a Sequoia vice president, was one of Disney’s engineering whizzes, designing such projects as Disneyland’s monorail before leaving in 1981 after 27 years.
Probably the most elaborate creation of the Sequoia partners is the 30-foot King Kong, which was unveiled this spring at Universal Studios. As part of the tour, visitors riding in trams see a New York City street scene while a videotape shows television newsman Sander Vanocur warning of danger. A helicopter crashes, and a graffiti-covered subway train lies in ruin.
Kong awaits at the Brooklyn Bridge, appearing to writhe in anger as the tram approaches. His movements are powered by compressed-air cylinders. Four of the large pumps and 12 smaller ones, including seven for his plastic lips alone, make Kong’s face twist and wrinkle.
Banana Breath
“We told them it had to stand up to very close scrutiny, with the face six feet from the audience,” said Barry Upson, vice president for planning and development with MCA Recreation, which planned the project. “It had to have different moves like snarls, nose flares, raised eyebrows, scowls, flashing eyes and hot moist breath with a banana smell.”
Other projects also have been challenging for Sequoia and its 14 permanent employees. In Malaysia, the company is building the Samaworld park on a 5,500-foot mountain, where the Malaysian weather is most temperate, that slopes at 20- to 30-degree angles.
The jobs often produce big headaches. During the Los Angeles Olympics, the three partners were asked to build in five weeks the brilliantly lit, helicopter-powered “spaceship” that was producer David L. Wolper’s big surprise at the closing ceremonies.
During a demonstration flight eight days before the ceremonies, the craft crumpled into a heap of metal due to pressure from gusts whipped up by the helicopter as the launch began.
“It looked like a flying taco,” Wolper recalled. “It folded and just collapsed.”
Gurr repaired and bolstered the craft, removed its fabric covering and tested it again six days later over the Coliseum, but the generator powering its lights failed. The spaceship was successfully tested over the stadium at 3 a.m. on the day of the ceremonies. That night, it flew overhead to the music of Richard Strauss as the crowd of nearly 100,000 shined blue flashlights, and an estimated 2.5 billion viewers worldwide watched on television.
The spaceship project inspired the formation of Sequoia in 1984. The craft was to have been built by Applied Entertainment Systems, a now-defunct company in Sylmar that made animated characters for pizza parlors and had employed Schweninger, Gurr and Reidenbach as executives. Shortly before the Olympics, however, Applied Entertainment filed for bankruptcy, and the three executives left to form their own company, taking the project with them.
Schweninger, who was president of Applied Entertainment, and Gurr and Reidenbach, who were vice presidents, are among those named in a pending lawsuit seeking nearly $1 million in general damages filed by Bank of the West to recover loans to the company. Schweninger maintains that the three were not involved in Applied’s financial management, which he said was the responsibility of a holding company called Animated Playhouse, which also has gone out of business. The former owners of Animated Playhouse could not be reached for comment.
At Sequoia, Schweninger, Gurr and Reidenbach find that their projects sometimes take on a special meaning. On Gurr’s desk sits a purple piece of metal resembling a hinge that he says he keeps for inspiration.
The piece is from the hip of the lifelike Abraham Lincoln that he designed. It eventually wound up in Disneyland but originally was displayed in the Illinois pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Shortly after the exhibit opened, Gurr was observing the show when members of the Congress of Racial Equality, a civil rights group that was particularly active in the 1960s, entered. At the end of the show, Gurr recalled, one of the men wept.
“It was never quite the same thereafter,” Gurr said. “It meant that this thing that had come out of my pencil had taken a step beyond and become something unto itself. The machine had come alive in a way I still don’t know how to explain.”
