Misguided at Universal

WHEN I WAS working as a sitcom writer on the Universal lot, I couldn’t stop myself from waving excitedly every time the Universal Studios tour tram would drive by. My workplace was so exciting that people paid money to see it! It was not until my 20th straight night of eating dinner in the office that it struck me there’s a reason workers don’t wave at the Hershey’s factory.

So when I found out that, this week, Universal Studios is revamping the tour for the first time since 1996, I knew it was my responsibility to be a guide for a day and give a group of tourists the real version of Hollywood. I was going to ruin some vacations.

To prepare, I decided to read the 246-page script that all the guides have to memorize, except that it was 246 pages long. Instead, I sat in on a tour run by Jaimie Clark, a 28-year-old actress who has more energy than Saudi Arabia. Though she makes only slightly more than minimum wage after working there two years, Clark adores Universal. She lives with a guy whom she met at the park and who plays one of the Blues Brothers there. She met her agent through a seminar with producers that the company offers to tour guides. She told me that many of the movies shot there were important to her. “ ‘Newsies’ changed my life,” she said.

Once the tour started, I found out that the Jaimie I had met earlier was actually the Zen Monk Jaimie. Tour Jaimie was a blur of super-crazy fun-fun-fun. She blasted “Let’s Get It Started” and yelled into her headset microphone, “Let’s get it started in HERE!” Which she immediately did. Jaimie let out a barrage of well-rehearsed jokes, screams, patter and an electrical engineer-level explanation of special effects at the new, high-tech “The Fast and The Furious” attraction. I would never be half the tour guide that Jaimie was. Not without methamphetamines and a nap.

After putting on my official theme-park uniform and nametag, which I looked surprisingly good in, I got onboard my tram, faced my guests and warned them that I hadn’t made it past Page 11 of the manual. Most of what I told them, I explained, would be incorrect. No one got up to leave. It was then that I realized that at 5 p.m. at a theme park, you just want to sit down.

When we drove to the Old West town, I told them that sitcom writers sneak in at night to have sex, some of which was outside the bonds of marriage. “Neither Universal, nor any of its subsidiaries, approve of infidelity,” I added. “I’m just saying it happens in the Old West town. Big time.” After people were sprayed by water by dinosaurs at the “Jurassic Park” attraction, I asked my guests a question I had long wondered. “Do any of you like being unexpectedly sprayed by cold water?” They did. Universal has a much better grasp of what the public wants than I do.

When we drove by the fountain in the square where “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” were shot, I played a collection of classic Universal monster-movie clips on the tram’s monitor. This seemed to upset a small girl in the third row. I told her to toughen up, and I played the clip again. “Immersion therapy,” I explained to everyone. She handled Boris Karloff much better the second time.

After an hour of this, the drive ended and my guests exited the tram as fast as they could. Not one of them tipped me. James Dobson, who has taken his son on the tour more than 20 times during the last month while his wife studies for the bar, told me I was his favorite guide ever. The folks at Universal Studios disagreed. They understand that people want the show-business curtain opened only a little bit -- that my brand of truth is a bit too strong a brew. And they’re nice enough to let me believe that. As long as I gave back my nametag right away.