In the early 1950s, between pounding nails during the week as a carpenter for $2.25 an hour, I would drive the 350 miles on Friday night to Mammoth and work on my next movie. One Saturday I was busy filming on what was then known as the rope tow hill. I was skiing behind Dave McCoy and I was getting some film of him making turns in packed powder snow. Later, while we were waiting to ride back up on one of his two rope tows, a man in line asked me if he could buy me lunch and talk to me. I never passed up a free lunch even if it was a brown bag, peanut butter sandwich.
This guy was the producer of a TV show and we discussed an idea he had come up with while watching me film Dave while I was skiing.
He asked me, “Could I run my camera from the front seat of a roller coaster and get smooth point of view footage from the front seat?” If so, he would build a copy of the front seat and put some people in it and then mount it so it could be tilted rapidly in all four directions. The people riding in the mock up of the car would feel as though they were really on a roller coaster ride!
Why not?
If I could ski down a hill and run my camera at the same time, I could certainly sit in the front seat of a roller coaster and do the same thing.
Two weeks later I was riding the Cyclone roller coaster in Long Beach, Calif. I had my trusty Bell and Howell, wind up, 16mm camera and was supplied with six 100-foot rolls of Kodachrome 16mm film. This was probably my first day of earning money using my movie camera and I didn’t want to blow it.
It took me four or five rides to get used to the various curves, rapid changes in inertia and stuff that the cars do as they rattle around the tracks. Once I got used to riding without hanging on and using my knees and legs for stability I mounted the tripod in the front seat and after one ride I realized that to get smooth shots I would have to hold the camera.
Getting used to the added weight of the camera and the effect that inertia had on it in the steep transitions of the roller coaster ride took me another six rides.
By now the TV producer was starting to get upset because I was running up the production budget at the rate of 25 cents a ride. I had already spent $3 of his budget and did not have a single frame of film yet. He was keeping track when on my 14th ride I asked him to get me a root beer and hot dog while I was putting film in my camera. This was all taking place on a weekday while all of the kids were in school so we did not have to worry about other customers.
I scarfed down the hot dog and root beer while I was loading the camera and I was ready to go. I used about half a roll or a minute of film on each trip. At the rate I was shooting it would take about 12 filming trips to finish the job.
That day I set some sort of a record by taking 37 rides on the Long Beach Cyclone roller coaster. Fortunately my cost per ride was paid for by the TV producer and I earned $35, with which I bought three more rolls of Kodachrome film. I had become a Kodachrome junkie.
My body was bruised and sore for almost a week from hanging on with my knees. The TV producer won some prizes for his very real simulation of a roller coaster ride in the studio. The fake ride turned out to be so real visually that one of the passengers in the fake roller coaster got sick and threw up all over one of the other passengers. I didn’t have a TV set in those days so I never did see the show. I left for Mammoth once again the following weekend because I had three more rolls of Kodachrome to expose.