Chris Mitchell

by Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir

After we hung up, I sat there for a while and tried to imagine what she might be feeling. She was exhausted—probably drained from the chemo—and a little delirious as well. When I left LA, I had bolted with the jet fire ferocity of a motorcycle launch, putting as much distance between myself and the specter of death as possible, arcing high and long over the country to land in the Sunshine State. Three thousand miles away and what had I really achieved? Was I safer now? More insulated?

  I was heartbroken by her breathless words and the image of her face, which by now was surely growing more gaunt and pallid from the treatments. But if I felt guilty, I buried it beneath layers of ugly indignation. I felt eviscerated by her secrecy, like her silence was meant deliberately to malign me, and worse, I was learning to justify my own stubborn reticence with a coward’s rationale: if she wanted to exclude me from her world, I would create my own. The more I retracted into the Disney reality, the more my life became a reality TV show, where I was my own panel of judges rewarding my most puerile tantrums with fireworks shows and holiday parades. My emotional outbursts, I rationalized, were justified. It was rebellion as growth, an insurgence against a spiteful conspiracy that discriminated only against me. I suppose that on some level I was aware of the retarded psychology behind my behavior, but fuck me if I was going to admit it.

  The smell of bacon lured me out of bed. I pulled on a pair of sweats and walked down the hallway, lined with boy band photos. “I hope you made enough for two,” I announced.

  “You mean three.” Johnny was sitting at the table, fingering an unlit cigarette while a boy who couldn’t have been older than nineteen cleared the table. “I’d like you to meet Ricky.”

  It was the first time I had ever met one of Johnny’s overnight visitors. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Charmed,” he said. He was prince height with long eyelashes and bleached teeth. His fair cheeks were dotted with red pimples. When he walked, he loped as if he had just gone through a terrific growth spurt and wasn’t quite sure what to do with his extra frame. “Johnny tells me you’re a skater. That is so killer. When I was younger, I totally wanted to be a pro-skater. I have, like, the hugest crush on Tony Hawk.”

  “Is that a fact,” I managed.

  Ricky flashed Johnny a smile. “BRB,” he said.

  Johnny laughed as his guest disappeared into his bedroom. “Try the lavender soap!” he announced. “It’s like being in Lyon!” He sipped his coffee thoughtfully, then looked over at me. “What?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “He’s not as young as he looks, you know.”

  “He seems very mature for his age.”

  “He is. And he’s smart too.” Johnny tapped one end of the unlit cigarette on the table. “Look, Lord knows ah have mah fair share of issues. But ah’m not gonna apologize for what ah like, and right now, this just feels right.”

  Ricky emerged from Johnny’s bedroom, wearing a Jeff Gordon racing cap. “This hat is the sickest!” he said. “I have to have it!”

  “You know ah can’t resist those lashes.” Johnny stood up from the table. “Want to take the Firebird for a spin?”

  His young ingenue gasped. “Serious? I can drive it?”

  Johnny jingled the keys seductively. “Show daddy your license.”

  Ricky opened a Quiksilver wallet. “I’ve never even had a parking ticket.” He handed his ID to Johnny, who passed it to me without looking at it.

  “What do you think?” said Johnny. “Is he okay?”

  It was a Washington state license with an accurate photo. The birthday made him twenty years old, not old enough to drink, but certainly mature enough to make his own decisions.

  “He checks out, boss,” I said, handing the card back.

  Ricky squealed and snatched the keys, and the two disappeared out the front door. I sat down to gorge on bacon and consider my situation. Apparently, my roommate was a chicken hawk, a September dude who lured May boys back to the roost with muscle cars and candy. I had no ethical problem with either the age difference or the promiscuity. At least Johnny was putting it all on the table.

  It was one of the more endearing qualities of Disney World, the way people lived out loud without a patina of shame or self-censorship. If Pocahontas didn’t like you, she told you so. If Winnie the Pooh had skeletons in his closet, he threw the door wide open and displayed them for your approval or scorn. Nobody danced around cancer or dated your friends. Disney life was honest and true. Happily ever after.

  I resolved to integrate myself into the Orlando experience. LA had nothing left for me, but Disney was offering the full lifestyle experience, a community of 53,000 residents, arranged over forty-three square miles, with events to keep me entertained from sunrise until 2 A.M. For Cast Members, there were housing projects like my own apartment complex and Celebration, Walt’s original utopian view of the community of tomorrow with its pristine elementary school, fire station, and homeowner’s association. There were bars and restaurants hosting dedicated nights for every special interest group you could imagine. For anybody with a Disney ID, there was always an industry appreciation night somewhere. Anyone who believed in fairies could work, live, eat, drink, and date entirely within the Disney matrix without ever leaving Disney property. And from what I could tell, it wasn’t uncommon.

  They were called lifers, the ones who came to Orlando to escape the drudgery of their daily lives and never left. They didn’t make a lot of money (even among the top level of management, Disney doesn’t pay that well), and they didn’t have fancy houses, but damn it, they were happy. They lived in a nice place. And I was starting to see the attraction.

  Yo Ho! Yo Ho! A Pirate’s Life for Me

  About two thirds of the way through The Lion King, there’s a scene where Simba, Pumbaa, and Timon are lying on their backs, looking up at the stars. Simba gets up, walks to the edge of a cliff, and flops down. A dust cloud flies up and dissipates in the air, and, for a moment, the letters S-EX appear in the swirl.

  The original incarnation of the 1998 film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, featured Jessica Rabbit flashing her crotch; Baby Herman giving the middle finger before disappearing under a woman’s skirt and reappearing with drool on his upper lip; and in a scene where Bob Hoskins goes into a Toontown men’s room, rumor has it Michael Eisner’s home phone number appeared under the graffitied phrase, “For a good time, call Allyson Wonderland.”

  In 1999, Disney recalled 3.4 million copies of the home video version of their 1977 animated feature, The Rescuers, because it contained the photographic image of a topless woman. It happened approximately thirty-eight minutes into the film while Bianca and Bernard were flying through the city in a sardine box strapped to the back of the albatross, Orville. She only appeared in two frames, but anybody with a remote control could stop the action and clearly see the picture.

  The 1989 film, The Little Mermaid, gained a certain notoriety when it was discovered that there was an enormous phallus adorning the cover of the original home video. According to rumor, a disgruntled artist drew one of the spires of King Triton’s castle to resemble a penis. After a slew of complaints, Disney reissued a new cover without the offending spire; however, they did not remove the erection of the minister who presides over the first wedding scene between Prince Eric and Ursula. This controversy led to a short-lived lawsuit by an Arkansas woman named Janet Gilmer who tried to sue Disney over the offending images (Gilmer v. Disney also included a complaint about the S-EX message in The Lion King). The lawsuit was dropped within two months.

  Freudian theory would explain these associations as an unconscious expression of repressed sexuality—the anarchic Pinocchio id in conflict with a Jiminy Cricket superego. In all things scandalous, Disney’s standard explanation is a plea of insanity—not on their part, but on the part of the viewer…. The audience is simply imagining things.

  The more I learned about my fellow Cast Members, the more I started to understand what Nick had been talking about when I interviewed h
im in my previous incarnation. Disney people were deviant. It seemed like every Cast Member in Orlando was leading a double life: Disney by day, alter ego by night. An acrophobic Tarzan in the stage show had to take valium every night to calm his nerves before his soaring web routine. The cutest stilt walker in the Jammin’ Jungle Parade was filming adult videos on her days off. It seemed to me all the Cast Members had been high onstage at least once in their career, and they all had had sex on property.

  I thought about what Brady had said that night in the car, about what I had to do to gain their trust. Listening to the awe in Cast Members’ voices as they narrated these Disney legends, I finally understood that the only behavior to earn any lasting respect around Disney World was getting away with “it.” It didn’t even matter what it was. If a Cast Member could pull it off without getting caught, she or he gained entrance into a club with an exclusive guest list and no paper trail.

  For me, it started with a piece of gum. It was a blustery afternoon, and I was riding a blue Schwinn to Camp Minnie-Mickey for a photo assignment in the character kiosks. Lunch had been an Italian affair—pasta with spicy sausage and garlic sauce—and I nearly knocked Orville over when I clocked back in. “This is a photo lab, not a morgue,” he said, holding his nose. “You’d better do something about that breath.” So I did. I popped a piece of Trident into my mouth and went onstage.

  It was the first time I had deliberately broken a Rule. If I had been caught, I could have been reprimanded anywhere up to two points for eating onstage, but I didn’t care. Breaking the Rules was invigorating. I flaunted my petty crime to Mickey when the kiosk was empty, and he gave me a silent thumbs-up. When the gum lost its flavor, I ate another piece and showed off to Minnie by asking if she wanted one too. I hoped that nobody wielding any type of consequence would catch me, and to my surprise, nobody did.

  The next day, I snuck a bag of M&Ms onstage in my pocket and ate them between guests; the day after that, beef jerky. It was shocking to me how quickly I had assimilated to the totalitarian regime of the Magic Kingdom. My whole life, I had been a grade-A hooligan, following my shadow into questionable situations, but one month at Disney had restructured me into an upstanding citizen who actually felt guilt at the idea of eating in front of strangers.

  The situation escalated on its own. Once the Cast Members knew that I was the kind of photographer who snuck snacks, character performers began approaching me about a new kind of illicit activity: “out of character” photos.

  Disney is very protective about the image of its characters. Nobody should ever see Winnie the Pooh doing something he shouldn’t do, wearing something he doesn’t wear, or, God forbid, spending time with another Winnie the Pooh. Not even backstage.* Of course, that didn’t stop the performers from horsing around in wardrobe and taking snapshots for their own personal photo albums.

  “Hey girl.” Rusty was lounging on the patio, enjoying a cigarette between sets. “You got any shots left in that thing?”

  “One or two,” I told him.

  “Do me a favor,” he said, inhaling an enormous drag off his cigarette. “Get a shot of this.”

  He put on the Goofy head and struck a standard pose, then he exhaled a mouthful of smoke through Goofy’s mouth, just as I fired the shot.

  “Oops,” I said.

  “Didja get that?” He pulled off the head, grinning wider than the character itself. “With the smoke and everything?”

  The Smoking Goofy photo became notorious around the Animal Kingdom break room. Soon, I was getting requests to shoot Smoking Minnie, Smoking Chip, and Smoking Baloo. It was fun, shooting those illegal pictures, and it allowed me a level of creativity that I hadn’t enjoyed since the old days of skate photography. In no time at all, I was shooting performers in all kinds of nontraditional poses.

  Using the break room as my photography studio, I created such favorites as “Mickey Picking Minnie’s Nose,” “Dale’s Head on Pooh’s Body,” “Terk and Rafiki,” “Monkey Style,” and, my masterpiece, “Three Tiggers,” an action shot involving a series of strobe flashes and a trampoline. It became the highlight of my day, that last roll of film when I would be able to fill in the last shots with character tomfoolery.

  Since Disney’s character continuity policy was so strict, I had to be very careful about the photographic process. I would wait until my last roll of film and then shoot no more than three or four illegal pictures. To keep from being caught, I had to time the development to finish when Orville was out of the lab, on lunch or working at the sales desk. It wasn’t that big a deal; most of the time I had my run of the office anyway, but still, I didn’t want to push it.

  As the “out of character” photographer, I began to enjoy my new status as the coolest guy in the break room. No longer was I treated like an outsider. Performers stopped me on the way to the bathroom to fill me in on the daily gossip. They stood up to let me sit down on the most comfortable sofas. They invited me to play desert island fantasy and Disney porno. I was in the club.

  Even Nikki softened. At first, she just glared at me less. Then, she started sitting at my table in the cafeteria. Next thing I knew, we were having conversations.

  “I knew you’d come around,” she said to me one day over lasagna.

  Up close, her teeth were impossibly white. “Me?” I protested. “I’m the same jaded cynic you met two months ago.”

  “You think you are.” She blotted her lips on a napkin before sipping her Diet Coke. “But I can see you’ve changed. There’s a light inside you now. You’re beginning to get it. Don’t roll your eyes! It’s true.”

  “You don’t have to get all Burning Man. I already promised to do your headshots.”

  She smiled, brushing her fingertips against her cheeks. “You can get rid of these laugh lines, right?”

  Outside the break room, Alan would hand me a cup of Powerade, and show me the features on his new phone or MP3 player or game console. He was a tech weenie. He wanted to learn about cameras, but he couldn’t afford to take up a new hobby until he made the jump to management.

  “I just picked up a shift at Universal,” he told me one morning. We were standing on the patio by the cooler. He was wearing basics, drying his hair with a crisp, white towel. “Wardrobe work right now, but I’m thinking of trying out in Beetle Bailey.”

  I crumpled my cup and tossed it in the trash. “Won’t Disney find out?”

  Alan’s eyes drifted across the cracked parking lot to where Rusty was standing with an athletic FOLK tumbler, warming up for his show. “They don’t care. Universal pays better, and I’m trying to make enough money to buy tickets for the Madonna show next month. I want to surprise Rusty.” Across the dusty lot, the FOLK tumbler put his arm around Rusty, and Rusty pushed him away, laughing. “Maybe a limo too,” Alan said.

  “Sounds like fun,” I said.

  Alan turned his back on the parking lot. “Yeah, well, Madonna hasn’t been relevant since Confessions, so who knows. Maybe, just like, fuck it, you know? Hey, there’s a Tarzan party tonight. Are you coming?”

  “I dunno. I’ve been out every night this week.”

  “Yeah?” Alan’s eyes drifted back to the parking lot. Rusty was now holding the tumbler’s muscular leg, helping him stretch. “I heard that Toy Story party was fun. I wanted to go. I had this incredible Slinky costume, but Rusty couldn’t get his GI Joe makeup together, so we just stayed home and fell asleep on the couch.” Alan pulled his T-shirt up to dry his pudgy belly, then yanked it down. “Well, I should go get ready for my next set. See you onstage.”

  Bolstered by my new popularity, my taste for transgression grew beyond the scope of voyeurism. I wanted to do something more, something that would seal my reputation as a bad boy and maybe even earn me a position among the ranks of the Disney legends. I had an idea, but I needed help.

  Brady’s friend, Jessie, was becoming more and more flirtatious with every incident of misbehavior. After “Chip Groping Dale,” she said hi. “After Brer Rab
bit Goes to Rehab,” she gave me her number. By the time I got to “Naughty, Naughty Eeyore,” she was like Silly Putty on my comic strip. Jessie was well acquainted with stories of Cast Members having sex on property, and she was eager to tell me all about it. “There’s even an informal club for Cast Members who pull it off,” she said. “Like the Mile High Club.”

  “Are you a member?” I asked.

  She lowered her eyes, blushing. “Not yet,” she said. The liar.

  Jessie was princess height with red hair and pretty blue eyes, which she used for high-performance flirting. We started making out in break rooms in the tunnels beneath Fantasyland and another time in the attic of the UK pavilion at Epcot. The bathrooms of Camp Minnie-Mickey were usually crammed with other Cast Members going at it, so we engaged in light petting in the animal pens behind the Pocahontas stage. One night, as the Magic Kingdom was closing, she went down on me in Ariel’s Grotto, our bodies pressed against the bright orange and green starfish so that the security cameras wouldn’t spot us. I was gearing up for the inevitable climax, but in the end, Jessie was the one who set up the encounter.

  Epcot Center is composed of a dozen international pavilions arranged around a lagoon: Canada, Morocco, France, Japan—each pavilion is like a little country, showcasing regional food, drink, and entertainment.* The sun was low as I walked through the turnstile into Epcot, but still the park was packed. I had thirty minutes until I was supposed to meet up with the pretty Pooh, so I wandered from arcade to souvenir shop to sweltering kiosk until, eventually, I got distracted by a group of characters out in the park gallivanting around a fountain. Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Chip, and Dale were dancing, signing autographs, and posing for photos with a rambunctious tour group of kids who were all screaming to be noticed. I walked to the edge of the fountain and sat down, watching the performers as they expertly worked their way through the children. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be inside one of those costumes: hot, sticky, uncomfortable. The upside must have been pretty good to counter all the negatives.