The next 10 years were to prove to be an interesting education for me. All throughout the next several adventures I am about to share with you, my primary end-in-mind was always the continuing comfort and well-being of my family, so we pretty well had to follow the money/job/opportunity, wherever that was going to take us.
Our wonderful twins, Michael and Mark were born in 1979 while I was working with the Osmonds and living in Provo, Utah.
In the next several years, we would find ourselves moving to Dallas, Texas; East Palos Verdes, California; Redondo Beach, California; Orem, Utah; Provo: Salt Lake City, Utah; Santa Clara, Utah; St. George, Utah; Orem, Utah; back to Salt Lake City; Boston, Massachusetts; and finally settling just outside of Atlanta, Georgia in the city of Alpharetta, which was changed to Johns Creek during our time there, and where Sherry and I have spent the largest amount of time during our so-far 43 1/2 years of a fabulous marriage – as I write this we have been here for the past 15 years.
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My time with Comworld came to an interesting end. Dick Callister (the President of the company) had found outside investors to put money into each of the other two films that I was producing in the
package of three. As I worked with Tom McLaughlin on his terrific little scary movie One Dark Night, the investor in this film came by the set one day. A pleasant enough fellow, whose name I cannot recall, but he kept injecting himself into the production and suggesting things to do that were just not feasible, given what the process of film-making was all about. And, I, as tactfully and professionally as possible, attempted to “school” him on the way films were made and why we had to do it the way we were doing it.
I learned the next day that he had called Dick and demanded that I removed from the film.
You know that “The Golden Rule” was being applied here, right? Not the one that Jesus taught us
regarding doing unto others in the exact manner in which you want them to do unto you in return. No,
this not-so-golden rule is stated that “whoever has the gold makes the rules.” And this guy had the gold and, as far as my boss was concerned, he was the one making the rules. So, I dutifully turned over the movie to my associate producer to finish up and headed off to New York to help complete that film. Of course, giving control to my assistant was also giving him the task of dealing with the meddling investor. The only reason the film turned out to be a success was that it was really the director's film - not anyone else. Tom did a sensational job.
I didn’t take that change of assignment personally, but that little lack of support from my boss
encouraged me to begin working on, at long last, leaving Comworld and eventually hanging out my own “open for business” sign. I still completed my principal assignment of finishing those three films and getting them up and running before I ever made a move to leave. But, I had my exit strategy all planned out for quite a while but I made certain that I executed it with the upmost of integrity and didn’t pull the trigger for several months.
I resigned as the Executive VP of Comworld on February 17, 1982 and walked into my own new world on that very same day.
Wuergler Productions was born.
And, on that very same day, I signed a contract for an option on Alan Foote’s story, "Downwind". Over the next several weeks and months, I began lining up many potential projects such as the wonderful script "Bridge Across the Sky", the fabulous story of the Berlin Airlift. After kicking off with those two, I then bought the film and distribution rights to a fabulous book, "The Ogden Enigma". Several ideas and concepts soon followed: a TV Special starring Clint Eastwood, a country music exercise video, "Disney’s Greatest Music" budget had been submitted for approval, "Even a Clown Must Die" was sent to A-Z Productions in London for consideration as a co-production, and I submitted "First Gentleman" and "Going Gold" to Paramount as concepts for TV series. And, all of this boatload of really great stuff was being generated from my basement office in our home on Foothill Drive.
I was getting ready to really rock…and boy, was I excited or what!
With all of this excitement swirling around, sometime in mid-April, I got a call from Dennis Despie at Disneyland. He was the successor to Bob Jani and was now the current Vice President of the Entertainment Division. He asked me to fly down to Anaheim as he had what he characterized as an interesting proposal for me. He wouldn’t tell me over the phone for some reason, so naturally, I was intrigued. I went to California.
He truly stunned me by offering me the job of being the Director of the Entertainment Division at the new Tokyo Disneyland which was scheduled to open in Japan the next April (1983). They would move my family there, give me a private driver and give Sherry a cook and a housemaid, put my children in the American School, and “require” that we take a two-week “vacation” in Hawaii (or wherever) twice a year just so we didn’t get culturally burned-out or too homesick.
Good grief! Wow! What an offer!
After talking to Sherry and both of us fasting and praying about it, I turned him down.
We had too much going on with our older children at the moment to uproot them from their current already “difficult teenager” routine. Plus, I had just hung out my “shingle” as a production company and had made multiple commitments to several people and to projects that I believed in. It was a hard choice to make, as I hope you can appreciate, as I would have truly loved to return to the Disney organization. But, deep down, I knew I was being guided in my choice to say no.
None of my projects were in pre-production yet, but things seemed to be humming right along toward that end, when I get yet another outa-the-blue call.
I had met Bruce West when I was running the international group at Osmonds and he now wanted to delve into the movie/TV business. He was an extremely successful real estate developer in Dallas and asked me if I would be willing to move my new company to Texas and become an arm of his operation. What was appealing about working with him was that he and his two partners would fund all of my preliminary efforts and would support anything I wanted to do…as long as it was profitable for them. That seemed like a better offer than uprooting and moving to Japan, especially since I could still be Wuergler Productions.
So…off to Dallas we went.
All of us except Todd. He didn’t want to move with us and since he was legally “of age” we said ok. He wound up staying with the Pope family, which was a blessing both to him and to us in so many wonderful ways. Lewis Pope was the Bishop at the time and was an absolutely wonderful man who, best of all, really loved Todd. It was a good deal all around.
We rented a pretty little duplex on Moondust Drive and Debbie started to school at Richardson High School. Leah, Mike and Mark were too young for full-time school so they stayed home with Sherry. I have always been grateful that I continued to earn enough so that Sherry could stay at home at be a full-time Mom. That was always a great blessing for us.
One of the happy accidents that happened in Dallas is that Leah, Mike and Mark were recruited to be runway models for children's clothing. They were on the "catwalk" at the Dallas Fashion Mart showing off kid's fashions and they were so very cute doing their thing. I don't know if they enjoyed it (ask them if they even remember it) or not but Sherry and I sure did. It was great fun for all of us. We even spent a little time and money to take some modeling headshots of them - which we didn't know would come in handy in about another year or so. (I wanted to get into the act too...)
The office for the LCM Group covered the entire 8th floor of the Republic Bank Building on the North Dallas Parkway, which was a fabulous address.
They gave me a great big office (not as big as theirs, of course) and a budget to buy some really gorgeous office furniture, which I did right away. I set up shop and started to focus on my roster of possible projects, attempting to get them funded and produced.
After a couple of months with a lot of activity but with nothing solid happening, I got yet another call for yet another opportunity that would send me on yet another short detour. My buddy Phill Catherall had also left the Comworld organization and had gone to work back in Los Angeles…surprise, surprise…for Disney.
Their international home video group, the sales side of which Phill was leading, needed a fun
subject with which to launch their world-wide efforts and they had landed on something they called
“Disney’s Greatest Villains” – that’s all they had…a title and an idea. Would I be interested in coming
back to the Studio and writing/producing/and directing this little project?
Would I? Yes, but I just got to Dallas and had just purchased an office full of terrific-looking furniture. Plus, I now had partners (Bruce, Kenny and Alan – LCM Group) to whom I was accountable and couldn’t just jump up and leave. But again…surprise, surprise…they said go ahead and do this for Disney as it might lead to some great business for Wuergler Productions.
So, off to Burbank we went.
It turned out to be kind of a family vacation as we got a Disney-owned condo to stay in and Todd flew into town to visit us for a few days. It was a terrific three weeks for the family.
But, it was a grueling three weeks for me. This little project, which was nothing more than an idea with a title, had to be written, produced, new narration recorded, art directed, edited, packaged and shipped out in 15 working days. Holy Moley. Phill didn’t tell me that when he extended his invitation. I first had to select the clips featuring which Disney Bad Guys I was going to use, and then piece all of that together into some kind of storyline that made sense and which was fun and entertaining to boot.
The idea that got me up and running was to use the two “baddest” guys from The Jungle Book, Shere Khan the tiger and Kaa the snake. I made them my narrators and the story simply took off from there.
It was terrific fun. Captain Hook from Peter Pan, the Wicked Queen from Snow White, Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty were just a few of my stars.
I wrote the new dialogue, hired some fabulous voice actors, recorded their lines, then I went to work and buried myself in the editing room for hours and hours – which, by the way, is absolutely the best creative fun a creator can have, especially when you create something new that didn’t exist before you starting cutting the film into an exciting storyline.
I had an absolute ball!!
And, best of all. I made the deadline!
It really turned out great. Phill was kind enough to send me this little review from one of the home video industry magazines.
Disney’s Great Villains; starring the greatest collection of villains and weirdos ever assembled:
Walt Disney Home Video; 75 minutes; family entertainment.
Hosted by Shere Khan the tiger and Kaa the snake from The Jungle Book, this movie is dedicated to all those unsung villains who have graced the silver screen over the years.
Who can ever forget Captain Hook and his eternal fight against the crocodile and Peter Pan,
Snow White and the Wicked Queen, and all the dragons and other weirdos that frightened the
pants off us in our tender years?
Shere Khan and Kaa don’t do a bad job either and are right up there among the villains. There is also a review of some real-life scoundrels, and no movie about monsters would ever be complete without a venture into the future and The Black Hole.
My one complaint about this movie was that it was over too soon, and we did not see enough of these lovable villains. LMG.
How wonderful to get such a terrific review! It was great fun to do and the family had a terrific time in California.
Now…back to Texas and back to the main job-to-be-done.
But, little did I know what awaited me back in Dallas…can you say "yet another detour"?
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