Universal Presents –“The Burning”

No doubt, by now, you’ve seen the news about part of Universal Studios backlot going up in flames. A few people who half-heard it thought it was the Universal theme park in Florida- nope, it’s the old original studios and “park” in L.A.

It’s been a very long time since I was last there (how long? Well, back then, they had no rides whatsoever-the end part of the tour just consisted of shows-and, during the tram tour, your tram was hijacked by Cylons from the ORIGINAL “Battlestar Galactica!”)

Anyway, the studio lost the “New England” area and the “New York” area (you’ve seen some of that in  “Spider-Man II”)-plus one part where a huge animatronic King Kong threatened tram riders. Some news sources wrongly said that they lost the area where the original King Kong film was made- uh, wrong.

Actually, Universal itself has a tendency to present some of

things there as original when they are not, but- I digress. They lost the courthouse square area most recognizable from “Back to the Future”-especially the building with the clock tower where Doc Brown had to hook up wires for the lightning strike that would power his time traveling DeLorean. At the time of the fire, I’d read that the clock tower itself had been taken down so the building façade would look different for a current project- but, since it was still in the area, it burned as well.

All this stuff will be rebuilt, according to sources.

Also burned in the conflagration- tapes and films in a storage warehouse. The good news- everything that was burned still exists, in some form, elsewhere- so, realistically, nothing was lost. I’m just hoping that the duplicates they have aren’t as bad as a few of the tapes of their movies that they shipped us while we were preparing to show the Universal classics. They had sent us somewhere the audio was really bad- including one that had “crosstalk” noise (like that of a radio signal that leaked in) and/or static that shouldn’t have been there. When I complained about it in one film, some jerk from the duplication house they used insisted that the noise was “sound effects”- that, at one point, it was from a fireplace in the scene, and made excuse about what it was in other scenes. Believe me, I’ve been around long enough to be able to tell bad sound duplication from “sound effects”…and, since they’ve digitally remastered so many of the films- why wouldn’t they send us the best copy possible?

I’m sure Universal will quickly rebuild, and everything will be back to normal. The only disturbing note- this same area supposedly burned back in the 90s.Is there a Vincent Price type wandering around the backlot, taking fiery revenge on the studio for some supposed injustice? #    #   #