WanderingProfessor
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When you Wish Upon a Frog (Book II of the Jim Henson at Disney saga)
- Thread starter Geekhis Khan
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WanderingProfessor
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When a contributor like nick_crenshaw82 or me invites you to a PM conversation.
Now YOU can Whoop Ass!
Whoopass Girls (Cont’d)
Excerpt from Tech Grrls: The Rise of the Female Technologists 1990-2015 by Dr. Marina Sparks, PE
In the mid-1990s Craig McCracken’s Whoopass Stew and its Whoopass Girls were a local underground sensation. Around the same time Jeri’s Arcade, which occupied a corner of the warehouse and housed a handful of consoles and pinball machines, was becoming a small local social hot spot in Van Nuys. To keep things interesting, Jeri and her Hackers would crack and reprogram the games on occasion, much as the General Computer Corporation had done a decade earlier. “It wasn’t much of a big deal to start,” said Jeri Ellsworth. “We’d update the difficulty or add new levels so the game nerds wouldn’t get too bored. But after a while we began to change the look of things too. We’d make Donkey Kong into Godzilla or a giant naked chick or a swinging naked dude or an actual donkey or something. So, it was natural that we’d eventually make a Whoopass Stew game.”
It started with a modification to the Street Fighter 2 game. “We changed out the characters,” said Jeri. “Instead of, like Ken and Ryu and Guile or whatever, you could play Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup, Professor U., Fuzzy, Mojo, The Devil, whatever. Instead of a hadouken, the same set of moves shoots Blossom’s Ice Breath, or whatever.”
“The game was a big hit,” remembered Heather. “I helped with the sound and colors for old time’s sake, recording my voice for Bubbles and the like, so I was glad to see everyone lining up to play it, laughing when Bubble’s squeaky voice cried out with each punch. It was doing so well that we…well, the statute of limitations is past, so I’ll just say it: we sold a few cracked Capcom cabinets under the table as Whoopass Stew games. They were a big hit around LA in the early-to-mid ‘90s and making a good deal of money for us in those critical early years.”
“The great thing about game design in the 1980s and ‘90s,” said game design legend Shelley Day, “is that a relatively small and motivated team could still come up with an exciting and competitive game, so a small startup could carve out a good market share even in the face of the Big Boys.”
The Whoopass Studios team, an informal collective, wasn’t going to rewrite the book on games, but it could hold its own. “When the underground cabinets sold well, we decided to develop our own game for cabinets, consoles and Home Computers,” said Jeri. “By this point MTV had picked up Whoopass Stew, so we made a Whoopass fight game with ports for Nintendo, Atari, Sega, Commodore, PC, and Mac. We even made a cabinet deal with Capcom as a way to preemptively avoid any lawsuits should they ever find out about the [Street Fighter 2] crack.”
Jeri continued: “The games sold well, and pretty soon we were ready to make a new game. We were kicking around some ideas when Heather fired out the idea for Mischievous Miles.”
“So, The Varied Adventures of Mischievous Miles[1] was this old idea my dad and Maurice Sendak had back in the early 1980s for an ‘interactive movie’,” said Heather. “The idea was totally impractical at the time – you’d need, like, multiple projectors and a complex voting system for the audience – though [my sister] Lisa still pushed for it at Amblin. Dad tried to launch it at Disney and had John Stone write a screenplay, but, well, there was no good way to make it work in 1982. 1995, on the other hand, was a totally different era!”
“It was simplicity itself, really,” said Jeri. “It’s just a Choose Your Own Adventure style interactive game. Just had to record the footage and tie it to simple Boolean choice algorithms with some simple pointers. ‘Do you travel to the island, or stay home?’ We could have done it on the Atari 2600, just with simple graphics rather than video.”
As the game/film played, the viewer/player would be asked to choose the direction of the story, which involved Miles, a small boy with a fear of fish who, according to Lisa Henson, “doesn't mean to get into trouble, but when there is an opportunity to be mischievous, he almost always takes it.” The adventure would take Miles between the real world and an island of monsters. It had original songs composed by Danny Elfman. The story had five major divergence points and a handful of minor ones with seventy-two different variations of the film possible.
“Heather went to her father with the idea,” said Leslie Iwerks, who assumed the role of Executive Producer while Heather produced the live action segments and Jeri led the game development. “Some say that she used her personal familial connections to get us the job. Well, yea, why not? It’s not like we weren’t imminently qualified. We signed a contract with Disney to develop the interactive VCD and console games and teamed with the I-Works to do the effects. We got access to the old John Stone screenplay and we hired Frank Oz to direct. In less than a year we were finished with production and testing the Beta.”
“It was the start of Whoopass or Kickin’ Games,” said Jeri. “The WAGs sold like crazy and Mischievous Miles sold well in game and interactive VCD format. We did later games for Dexter’s Lab, Drac & Mina, and Samurai Jack plus eventually an interactive puzzle game based on Heather’s Phantomia, which never quite reached Myst levels of success, but it kicked Riven’s ass. We also took some more contract jobs with Disney and Hanna-Barbera, though we were a small and ever-changing team, so we couldn’t do everything they wanted and had to turn down some jobs. By the mid-2000s games were getting so complicated and beyond what a small team could manage without serious outsourcing that we sold out to EA for a shit-ton of money. Some of the Hackers went to EA with the IP and some went on to launch their own companies. Those who remained worked on the VR stuff we launched.”
Whoopass/Kickin’ Games, like Kickin’ Computers and Animatriarch and CG for commercials, became an excellent early source of revenue that turned into a fiscal boon once sold. The sale to EA netted in the low eight figures and solidified Whoopass Studios as a long-term player in the bantamweight production and technology game. “The sale of Whoopass Games effectively eliminated any worries for solvency,” said Les. “We had enough in the bank to last for a decade at current expenditure levels, so the combined Members agreed to put away a lot of it into some secured and diversified long-term investments with the dividends and capital gains paying off taxes and overhead and any excess kicking back into the Production Pool and yearly bonuses for all active members in good standing. We also had the on-hand capital to invest in the bigger productions like the VR stuff and the documentaries, which in most cases paid for themselves.”
“Do we plan to become the next Warner Brothers? Hell no!” laughed Craig McCracken. “We’re big enough to do what we want and small enough to keep things open and equitable. We can manage a handful of TV series or partner for a movie, but we never need to bet the farm on a single production. Les calls it a ‘sustainable growth and strategic divestment strategy for long-term solvency.’ I guess those MBA classes really paid off!”
And while the six original Whoopass Studios Partners remained coequal, Leslie Iwerks was increasingly becoming the effective company head by default, assuming all of the Executive and Operations functions because, as she put it, “Somebody had to do it.”
“They started calling me ‘Boss’ because they knew it annoyed me, the beautiful bastards,” laughed Les.
“I put a sign on Les’ door that read ‘Leslie Iwerks, Chair and CEO’,” said Genndy Tartakovsky. “She was half-amused and half-irate! It says a lot about Whoopass [Studios] that even jokingly calling someone the CEO would be crossing the line!”
“Hell, is it any wonder why we love it here?” said Jeri.
[1] Hat tip to @Plateosaurus for reminding me about Mischievous Miles. Read about the attempted production in our timeline here.
Excerpt from Tech Grrls: The Rise of the Female Technologists 1990-2015 by Dr. Marina Sparks, PE
In the mid-1990s Craig McCracken’s Whoopass Stew and its Whoopass Girls were a local underground sensation. Around the same time Jeri’s Arcade, which occupied a corner of the warehouse and housed a handful of consoles and pinball machines, was becoming a small local social hot spot in Van Nuys. To keep things interesting, Jeri and her Hackers would crack and reprogram the games on occasion, much as the General Computer Corporation had done a decade earlier. “It wasn’t much of a big deal to start,” said Jeri Ellsworth. “We’d update the difficulty or add new levels so the game nerds wouldn’t get too bored. But after a while we began to change the look of things too. We’d make Donkey Kong into Godzilla or a giant naked chick or a swinging naked dude or an actual donkey or something. So, it was natural that we’d eventually make a Whoopass Stew game.”
It started with a modification to the Street Fighter 2 game. “We changed out the characters,” said Jeri. “Instead of, like Ken and Ryu and Guile or whatever, you could play Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup, Professor U., Fuzzy, Mojo, The Devil, whatever. Instead of a hadouken, the same set of moves shoots Blossom’s Ice Breath, or whatever.”
“The game was a big hit,” remembered Heather. “I helped with the sound and colors for old time’s sake, recording my voice for Bubbles and the like, so I was glad to see everyone lining up to play it, laughing when Bubble’s squeaky voice cried out with each punch. It was doing so well that we…well, the statute of limitations is past, so I’ll just say it: we sold a few cracked Capcom cabinets under the table as Whoopass Stew games. They were a big hit around LA in the early-to-mid ‘90s and making a good deal of money for us in those critical early years.”
“The great thing about game design in the 1980s and ‘90s,” said game design legend Shelley Day, “is that a relatively small and motivated team could still come up with an exciting and competitive game, so a small startup could carve out a good market share even in the face of the Big Boys.”
The Whoopass Studios team, an informal collective, wasn’t going to rewrite the book on games, but it could hold its own. “When the underground cabinets sold well, we decided to develop our own game for cabinets, consoles and Home Computers,” said Jeri. “By this point MTV had picked up Whoopass Stew, so we made a Whoopass fight game with ports for Nintendo, Atari, Sega, Commodore, PC, and Mac. We even made a cabinet deal with Capcom as a way to preemptively avoid any lawsuits should they ever find out about the [Street Fighter 2] crack.”
Jeri continued: “The games sold well, and pretty soon we were ready to make a new game. We were kicking around some ideas when Heather fired out the idea for Mischievous Miles.”
“So, The Varied Adventures of Mischievous Miles[1] was this old idea my dad and Maurice Sendak had back in the early 1980s for an ‘interactive movie’,” said Heather. “The idea was totally impractical at the time – you’d need, like, multiple projectors and a complex voting system for the audience – though [my sister] Lisa still pushed for it at Amblin. Dad tried to launch it at Disney and had John Stone write a screenplay, but, well, there was no good way to make it work in 1982. 1995, on the other hand, was a totally different era!”
“It was simplicity itself, really,” said Jeri. “It’s just a Choose Your Own Adventure style interactive game. Just had to record the footage and tie it to simple Boolean choice algorithms with some simple pointers. ‘Do you travel to the island, or stay home?’ We could have done it on the Atari 2600, just with simple graphics rather than video.”
As the game/film played, the viewer/player would be asked to choose the direction of the story, which involved Miles, a small boy with a fear of fish who, according to Lisa Henson, “doesn't mean to get into trouble, but when there is an opportunity to be mischievous, he almost always takes it.” The adventure would take Miles between the real world and an island of monsters. It had original songs composed by Danny Elfman. The story had five major divergence points and a handful of minor ones with seventy-two different variations of the film possible.
“Heather went to her father with the idea,” said Leslie Iwerks, who assumed the role of Executive Producer while Heather produced the live action segments and Jeri led the game development. “Some say that she used her personal familial connections to get us the job. Well, yea, why not? It’s not like we weren’t imminently qualified. We signed a contract with Disney to develop the interactive VCD and console games and teamed with the I-Works to do the effects. We got access to the old John Stone screenplay and we hired Frank Oz to direct. In less than a year we were finished with production and testing the Beta.”
“It was the start of Whoopass or Kickin’ Games,” said Jeri. “The WAGs sold like crazy and Mischievous Miles sold well in game and interactive VCD format. We did later games for Dexter’s Lab, Drac & Mina, and Samurai Jack plus eventually an interactive puzzle game based on Heather’s Phantomia, which never quite reached Myst levels of success, but it kicked Riven’s ass. We also took some more contract jobs with Disney and Hanna-Barbera, though we were a small and ever-changing team, so we couldn’t do everything they wanted and had to turn down some jobs. By the mid-2000s games were getting so complicated and beyond what a small team could manage without serious outsourcing that we sold out to EA for a shit-ton of money. Some of the Hackers went to EA with the IP and some went on to launch their own companies. Those who remained worked on the VR stuff we launched.”
Whoopass/Kickin’ Games, like Kickin’ Computers and Animatriarch and CG for commercials, became an excellent early source of revenue that turned into a fiscal boon once sold. The sale to EA netted in the low eight figures and solidified Whoopass Studios as a long-term player in the bantamweight production and technology game. “The sale of Whoopass Games effectively eliminated any worries for solvency,” said Les. “We had enough in the bank to last for a decade at current expenditure levels, so the combined Members agreed to put away a lot of it into some secured and diversified long-term investments with the dividends and capital gains paying off taxes and overhead and any excess kicking back into the Production Pool and yearly bonuses for all active members in good standing. We also had the on-hand capital to invest in the bigger productions like the VR stuff and the documentaries, which in most cases paid for themselves.”
“Do we plan to become the next Warner Brothers? Hell no!” laughed Craig McCracken. “We’re big enough to do what we want and small enough to keep things open and equitable. We can manage a handful of TV series or partner for a movie, but we never need to bet the farm on a single production. Les calls it a ‘sustainable growth and strategic divestment strategy for long-term solvency.’ I guess those MBA classes really paid off!”
And while the six original Whoopass Studios Partners remained coequal, Leslie Iwerks was increasingly becoming the effective company head by default, assuming all of the Executive and Operations functions because, as she put it, “Somebody had to do it.”
“They started calling me ‘Boss’ because they knew it annoyed me, the beautiful bastards,” laughed Les.
“I put a sign on Les’ door that read ‘Leslie Iwerks, Chair and CEO’,” said Genndy Tartakovsky. “She was half-amused and half-irate! It says a lot about Whoopass [Studios] that even jokingly calling someone the CEO would be crossing the line!”
“Hell, is it any wonder why we love it here?” said Jeri.
[1] Hat tip to @Plateosaurus for reminding me about Mischievous Miles. Read about the attempted production in our timeline here.
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The Varied Adventures of Mischievous Miles sounds like a fun game. Was it the start of a series of titles or a one-off? @Geekhis Khan
Glad Whoopass/Kickin’ Games did well- 8 figure sale is a lot of cash for an studio.
Hopefully EA are not going to turn out the way they have OTL.
"...the six original Whoopass Studios Partners remained coequal..." well its good to know they still all get on even after so many years of working together.
Nice chapter.
Glad Whoopass/Kickin’ Games did well- 8 figure sale is a lot of cash for an studio.
Hopefully EA are not going to turn out the way they have OTL.
"...the six original Whoopass Studios Partners remained coequal..." well its good to know they still all get on even after so many years of working together.
Nice chapter.
Glad Miles got in per my suggestion, @Geekhis Khan .
Oooh, interesting.
Oh god, hopefully EA doesn't become the monster of OTL.
Electronic Arts is literally the House John Madden Football Built. Ten years back, they became (even more) infamous for the way they chronically broke their word involving royalties to the folks who originally wrote the original offensive and defensive AI code on the original Apple II version. I kid you not!
If Trip Hawkins still leaves the company, he takes its moral center with him.
Man imagine being a kid in LA and you get to play this Whoopass Girls game just to hear years later that it was apparently quite rare.
Like that's the basis for an Urban Legend/ Creepypasta right there!
They literally made a successful game franchise in their garage.
So how's that different from say a Dragon's Lair? Also I'm glad that 90s FVM games are still a thing.
EA? Oh no, these poor unfortunate Souls!
However that aside I'm interested in the possibility of VR being mentioned here. I recently saw a video about the ill fated Virtual Boy and one interesting footnote was that it was responsible for Nintendo cancelling another VR project called the Super Visor by the British company Argonauts (who also made the Super VX chip and Starfox). According to this interview it would've featured a full colour display and head tracking.
Which interest in VR much more prominent in TTL maybe this project could survive? Or maybe Whoopass would make something similar.
Not bad for a bunch of college kids who basically made this on a whim!
I hope we hear more about them and their projects soon or Technology in general because oh boy didn't we have a proper technology for ages.
No pressure tho @Geekhis Khan
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Did we write that tribute blurb yet?
To our friend Howard
Who gave life to Death
and made what's little big
We are forever grateful
To our friend Howard
Who gave life to Death
and made what's little big
We are forever grateful
Nice to see Whoopass venture into video games with Mischievous Miles, the Whoopass Girls game, among other projects. The Miles idea was not something that I knew about going into this post but I am glad that it was made as a video game (the premise just seems so fitting for the genre).
I'm really interested in how future projections will pan out for ITTL if current trends in technology have caused such a noticeable dent in climate change (despite political pushback and lobbying). With America (and potentially the rest of the world) on its way towards renewables earlier (and with substantial political support from the Gore Administration), predictions could end up being far more hopeful ITTL.
We'll great @Geekhis Khan , seeing Whoopas had entered into the gaming business. Hopefully, many OTL one-season wonders, like My So-Called Life could have lasted longer TTL.
Wasn't planning on getting into it, but if someone wanted to make a post on EA or whomever. Certainly the earlier reckoning on sexual harassment will have ripples in the industry.
Totally different experience. Dragon's Lair is essentially a traditional video game with an animated front. Any choices are hidden from the user. You need to press the sword button or move the joystick left within a certain time window to initiate the "survive" or "die" animated sequence, but from the user's perspective you're reacting in real time to slay the monster or grab the rope. It had the illusion of a fully interactive videogame that you played rather than just making a choice of action.
Mischievous Miles is like a Choose your Own Adventure book or some of those interactive things on Netflix like Black Mirror's "Bandersnatch". You are presented with a section of video and then given two to four choices that you select from. "click one to follow the monster deeper into the island; click two to stay on the beach."
Stay tuned. Will get into that more in the future.
Hadn't put any thought to Morrissey.
There were tributes mentioned in various posts, but not anything like you mention that I recall.
WanderingProfessor
Banned
As far as Whoopass Girls is concerned, it's way more adult oriented than OTL's Powerpuff Girls with plenty of comedy (but not the shock value kind), HIM as Satan and some blood as well as some mild swearing (given that ass is in the title). Let's hope that it will be successful beyond just MTV.
The Price of Anger
Chapter 11: Juice Feels the Squeeze
From Juiced! The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of O.J. Simpson, an Unauthorized Biography by Julius X. Tractor
In 1990 O.J. Simpson was on top of the world[1]. He was a world-renowned celebrity, making a name for himself as an actor, and the toast of the LA social scene. Beloved by all races, he was seen as a symbol of hope and the promise of a future, post-racial America.
But his whole world was about to come crashing down.
It was a relatively open secret in Hollywood that he physically abused his wife Nichole Brown Simpson. He’d already been arrested for it once in 1989, though a successful “catch and kill” campaign kept things out of the press. Later testimonies from friends and family would attest to the beatings, as did Nichole’s many “accidents” that saw her with blackened eyes and even a broken arm.
Two witnesses the the abuse were Ron Miller, CEO at the time of Disney, and his wife, Diane Disney Miller, daughter of Walt Disney. Ron had known O.J. for decades at this point. As fellow NFL veterans and Hollywood men, they frequented many of the same social circles. Miller had been producer on a Wonderful World of Disney 1978 special for Mickey Mouse’s 50th birthday, in which O.J. made an appearance[2]. They met again at the premier of The Song of Susan in 1989, a film which O.J., whose father Jimmy Lee Simpson had died of AIDS in 1986, had supported financially and publicly. And fate brought them together yet again in 1991 when O.J. cameoed in Tiny Titans Two, a pee wee football film Executive Produced by Miller. Miller, who had been working a deal to acquire a stake in his old football team the LA Rams for Disney, even approached O.J. about potentially taking a seat on the Rams’ board of directors.
Miller and his wife soon became regulars within the Simpsons’ social circles. Ron and O.J. met frequently for rounds of golf, occasionally dragging along Disney Chairman Jim Henson and COO Stan Kinsey, the former of whom endlessly amused all with his combination of terrible golf skills and unflappable sense of humor about it. Henson and Simpson reportedly discussed film ideas. Diane, meanwhile, became a part of the close-knit inner circle that Nichole maintained. Ron and Diane frequently met with O.J. and Nichole for cocktails or dinner.
It was at one such meeting that the Millers witnessed an “event”. After too many drinks, O.J. lost his temper and was seen by them shaking and slapping Nichole over some perceived disrespect.
“It was quite shocking,” Diane later told a friend. “I started talking to the rest of the clique, and it wasn’t the first or even twentieth time. I was generally taught not to pry into others’ business, but I just couldn’t get Jude out of my head.”
Diane was referring to Judith Barsi, a former child actor who had worked for Disney, who was subjected to physical abuse by her father. When Disney discovered the abuse, they intervened and sheltered Barsi and her mother in the Villa Romana Hotel at Disneyland. Her father, armed with a gun, tried to break in, allegedly to murder both of them. He was detained by security and ultimately jailed. Diane made it a point of relating the story to the “girls”, Nichole included.
By 1991, the physical abuse and intimidation had gotten bad, and Diane and “the girls” decided that it was time to intervene. The Simpsons separated and legally divorced in early 1992. Even then, the two had trouble letting go, in particular O.J. The possibility of reconciliation haunted both, particularly with two kids between them.
“They were a dramatic, fractious, mutually obsessed couple before they married, after they married, after they divorced in 1992, and after they reconciled,” recalled mutual friend Sheila Weller[3].
But true reconciliation remained unattainable, particularly with both unwilling to deal with the larger issue of the domestic abuse. O.J. began stalking Nichole, following her, spying on her in her home, and even threatening her life. He confided his anger with friends, mentioning at one point to Ron Miller that he “wouldn’t be able to control himself” if he saw her with another man. Nichole made calls to domestic abuse hotlines. She ultimately confided the events with her friends.
In 1993 the “Girls” intervened, and Nichole and her kids were driven to a Domestic Abuse shelter in the greater LA area. Ron Miller intervened with O.J., trying to “talk O.J. off the ledge.”
O.J. assured Ron that he would be OK, but one night, reportedly after consuming methamphetamine, he tried to break into the shelter, some say armed with a knife. He was arrested and jailed, awaiting trial.
O.J. eventually pleaded down to simple trespassing and agreed to get mental health support, which Miller offered to pay for. It might have settled down had things remained under wraps, but this time, the news of his arrest exploded into the media. Witnesses to the physical abuse, and many who knew about it second- or third-hand, spoke to the media. Geraldo ran an exposé. CNN ran it as a top story. Even ESPN talked about the arrest.
And comedians and comedy writers had a field day. Dave Letterman of The Tonight Show and Norm MacDonald of Saturday Night Live both ran with the story, which earned them the ire of their boss Don Ohlmeyer at NBC, a friend of Simpson’s.
The event even exacerbated already tense racial relations in the US. In fact, the whole thing might have been a passing event until the public gaze moved on to something else had it not come on the heels of the news making “fall” of two powerful Black men: Judge Clarence Thomas, who was rejected from the Supreme Court over his alleged sexual harassment of his employee Anita Hill, and Bill Cosby, who was in the midst of a headline-grabbing trial over multiple charges of sexual assault. Coming on the heels of the LA Riots and other racial violence in the US, it all fed into the division.
White people overwhelmingly condemned O.J. as a “wife beater” and “criminal”. Black people, in particular Black men, overwhelmingly saw him as a martyr, another victim of LAPD profiling, with conspiracy theories circulating of “planted weapons” and “he just wanted to see his kids” becoming a rallying cry. Black activists called it another “high tech lynching”.
Even conservative talk radio pundits put themselves into the fray, defending Simpson and claiming him as a “Black Republican”, though Simpson, who largely supported Reagan and tended to vote Republican, was politically nuanced and still willing to be photographed with President Gore and counted former Democratic Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton among his friends. Thomas, Cosby, and Simpson thus became the focus for an emerging narrative on “Conservative Black voices being silenced” in “feminazi hit jobs”, with Cosby's stances on Black culture used as an excuse for Conservatives to claim him. Black conservatives became motivated in politics, with increasing calls for retired General Colin Powell to enter the fray, though his social politics were much more moderate than many of the names calling for his candidacy.
For O.J. Simpson, the entire thing was traumatic. “I just want to be left alone!” he told a friend. Ron Miller offered him a job at Walt Disney World as an executive managing the Good Sports Resort.
“You can get away from the jackals until this all blows over, brother,” Ron reportedly told him. But Simpson refused to leave LA, still convinced that he could “patch things up with [Nichole]”. When Ron repeatedly insisted that he needed to let her go and get a “fresh start,” Simpson, who’d been drinking, lost his temper and assaulted Miller.
“He punched me in the jaw, and I grabbed him and tackled him,” Miller recalled to a friend. “He was way stronger and in better shape than me at the time, since he’d been working out for the movies, and I’d gone soft around the middle. If I’d tried to go toe-to-toe, he’d likely have kicked my ass! But I held him in a close bear hug and let my weight hold him down. And even top athletes have trouble when a 250-pound man is lying on top of them! I held him close and tried to quietly talk him down, telling him I was there for him even as he flailed at me. I got a few bruises, but eventually I wore him down.”
The dramatic moment broke through, and Simpson began to cry loudly. Miller soon set Simpson up as an executive at the Good Sports Resort in Disney World, where he used the generic “Jim Simpson” moniker and changed his hair style to avoid media scrutiny. Diane set Nichole and the kids up, unbeknownst to O.J., at the Millers’ wine chateau in Napa Valley. They occasionally flew his children Sydney and Justin out to see him using the Millers’ private jet. He’d eventually talk to Nichole on the phone, still not knowing where she was living.
And most critically, at Miller’s unbending insistence, O.J. got professional mental help, paid by Ron out of pocket.
“I’d love to say there was some big breakthrough moment,” O.J. later told Larry King, “But this is something I never really got over. I still find myself thinking about things, about Nichole, about the anger. My new wife helps. She’s a saint and knows it’s the illness. She also knows martial arts and isn’t going to let me lay an angry hand on her,” he added with a melancholy laugh. “Not that I try. They gave me tools for when things turn red. Tools and pills.”
“Anger is a monster,” celebrity psychiatrist David Viscott told me. “It takes you over, overrides your cognitive processing. Even the little angers can lead to bad habits and toxic behaviors that can complicate your life and the lives of those whom you love, even if they never lead to violence.”
Nichole and the children moved to Northern California where the children lived a relatively normal life. All three have kept a low profile. Nichole married again and both children have since gone to college and have reconciled with their father, though one confessed that the ghost of the abuse still lingers over everything.
“We can forgive,” they told me, “But never forget.”
O.J. remained in Orlando, eventually becoming a VP of Operations for the Good Sports Resort and a welcome face for the children and veterans who came to the sports medicine and VA complexes later built on the site. He became a major advocate for mental health and remains a major advocate of AIDS and LGBTQ rights, given the experiences of his father. He has quit drinking and remains “on the wagon”.
“I do seminars and interventions,” he told Larry King in the same 2003 interview. “The occasional TV spot. Anger management, domestic abuse, mental health. I’ll meet a man who is a lot like I used to be, and I just listen to his anger and tell him my story, encourage him to stay on the path. Anger is like an addiction, and you got to approach it like an addition. And that means step one is admitting that you have a problem and step two is accepting that it’s causing pain to you and to the ones you love.”
Even so, he keeps a low profile. “I used to live by the spotlight. Not anymore. I hate it. I hate what it made me. Or, I should say, I hate that it blinded me to my own patterns of abuse. I’ll do what I can to support causes I believe in and try to make amends to those who I hurt, but for the time being, my life is managing the Sports Resort and advocacy.”
Since then, public opinion has turned around somewhat, and ironically flipped in some cases as some of those who saw him as a victim began to see him as a weak sellout for admitting fault and those who saw him as an abuser celebrated his self-realization. For the most part, his “redemption tour”, though he refuses to call it that, has played well with the public, even as he shuns contact, and most polled would say that they believe that he is sincere in his apologies and attempts at self-help.
For O.J., however, the self-forgiveness has become the hardest part.
“I hope to make amends to Nichole and my daughter and son someday,” he told Larry King in closing. “But I likely never will. Not completely. My anger cost me everything. My anger and my vanity. It cost me the opportunity to be with my kids as they grew up. It cost me my career. I still face the voices that call me a monster, both within and without. I got help, and it helped. I try to help others. But I’ll carry this monster with me forever.”[4]
[1] Yep, time to touch another third rail.
[2] Per our timeline. The rest is due to butterflies. I have no idea how Miller and Simpson got along in our timeline, but it seems highly likely that they crossed paths numerous times given their mutual sports/Hollywood background. In our timeline, of course, Miller had been kicked out of Disney in 1984 and retired early to Napa for his second career in winemaking, so undoubtedly any contact with Simpson would have been lost.
[3] Quote from our timeline.
[4] I’m sure this post will generate some comments (please be civil!) since the guilt or innocence of Simpson is still a controversial topic. In our timeline, of course, Nichole and her friend Ron Goldman were brutally murdered and Simpson was arrested while heading to the airport. Eventually, following the “trial of the century”, he was acquitted of the murders since, in the US, conviction requires that guilt be established “beyond reasonable doubt”. The defense team established reasonable doubt. He was acquitted. Enough said about that. If you believe that he did it, then the butterflies have averted that. If you believe that he is innocent and that there was a third-party killer, then the butterflies have averted that person’s opportunity. Either way, the trial is a sensitive subject, as is the subject of mental health and how they relate to the standards of guilt. Is Simpson, assuming that he “did it”, also a victim in a certain respect, or not? That’s a question for Chat, not here, but something to ponder. Either way, so many times mental health issues not taken seriously have led to tragedy, whether that’s violence against others, or against the self. So, I urge all of you to learn the signs and take action if there’s a mental health emergency, whether yours or that of someone who you know. Ask professionals how to deal with the situation. A quick internet search will reveal hotlines or better yet, ask your medical professionals for a referral. Don’t go it alone. I love you.
From Juiced! The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of O.J. Simpson, an Unauthorized Biography by Julius X. Tractor
In 1990 O.J. Simpson was on top of the world[1]. He was a world-renowned celebrity, making a name for himself as an actor, and the toast of the LA social scene. Beloved by all races, he was seen as a symbol of hope and the promise of a future, post-racial America.
But his whole world was about to come crashing down.
It was a relatively open secret in Hollywood that he physically abused his wife Nichole Brown Simpson. He’d already been arrested for it once in 1989, though a successful “catch and kill” campaign kept things out of the press. Later testimonies from friends and family would attest to the beatings, as did Nichole’s many “accidents” that saw her with blackened eyes and even a broken arm.
Two witnesses the the abuse were Ron Miller, CEO at the time of Disney, and his wife, Diane Disney Miller, daughter of Walt Disney. Ron had known O.J. for decades at this point. As fellow NFL veterans and Hollywood men, they frequented many of the same social circles. Miller had been producer on a Wonderful World of Disney 1978 special for Mickey Mouse’s 50th birthday, in which O.J. made an appearance[2]. They met again at the premier of The Song of Susan in 1989, a film which O.J., whose father Jimmy Lee Simpson had died of AIDS in 1986, had supported financially and publicly. And fate brought them together yet again in 1991 when O.J. cameoed in Tiny Titans Two, a pee wee football film Executive Produced by Miller. Miller, who had been working a deal to acquire a stake in his old football team the LA Rams for Disney, even approached O.J. about potentially taking a seat on the Rams’ board of directors.
Miller and his wife soon became regulars within the Simpsons’ social circles. Ron and O.J. met frequently for rounds of golf, occasionally dragging along Disney Chairman Jim Henson and COO Stan Kinsey, the former of whom endlessly amused all with his combination of terrible golf skills and unflappable sense of humor about it. Henson and Simpson reportedly discussed film ideas. Diane, meanwhile, became a part of the close-knit inner circle that Nichole maintained. Ron and Diane frequently met with O.J. and Nichole for cocktails or dinner.
It was at one such meeting that the Millers witnessed an “event”. After too many drinks, O.J. lost his temper and was seen by them shaking and slapping Nichole over some perceived disrespect.
“It was quite shocking,” Diane later told a friend. “I started talking to the rest of the clique, and it wasn’t the first or even twentieth time. I was generally taught not to pry into others’ business, but I just couldn’t get Jude out of my head.”
Diane was referring to Judith Barsi, a former child actor who had worked for Disney, who was subjected to physical abuse by her father. When Disney discovered the abuse, they intervened and sheltered Barsi and her mother in the Villa Romana Hotel at Disneyland. Her father, armed with a gun, tried to break in, allegedly to murder both of them. He was detained by security and ultimately jailed. Diane made it a point of relating the story to the “girls”, Nichole included.
By 1991, the physical abuse and intimidation had gotten bad, and Diane and “the girls” decided that it was time to intervene. The Simpsons separated and legally divorced in early 1992. Even then, the two had trouble letting go, in particular O.J. The possibility of reconciliation haunted both, particularly with two kids between them.
“They were a dramatic, fractious, mutually obsessed couple before they married, after they married, after they divorced in 1992, and after they reconciled,” recalled mutual friend Sheila Weller[3].
But true reconciliation remained unattainable, particularly with both unwilling to deal with the larger issue of the domestic abuse. O.J. began stalking Nichole, following her, spying on her in her home, and even threatening her life. He confided his anger with friends, mentioning at one point to Ron Miller that he “wouldn’t be able to control himself” if he saw her with another man. Nichole made calls to domestic abuse hotlines. She ultimately confided the events with her friends.
In 1993 the “Girls” intervened, and Nichole and her kids were driven to a Domestic Abuse shelter in the greater LA area. Ron Miller intervened with O.J., trying to “talk O.J. off the ledge.”
O.J. assured Ron that he would be OK, but one night, reportedly after consuming methamphetamine, he tried to break into the shelter, some say armed with a knife. He was arrested and jailed, awaiting trial.
O.J. eventually pleaded down to simple trespassing and agreed to get mental health support, which Miller offered to pay for. It might have settled down had things remained under wraps, but this time, the news of his arrest exploded into the media. Witnesses to the physical abuse, and many who knew about it second- or third-hand, spoke to the media. Geraldo ran an exposé. CNN ran it as a top story. Even ESPN talked about the arrest.
And comedians and comedy writers had a field day. Dave Letterman of The Tonight Show and Norm MacDonald of Saturday Night Live both ran with the story, which earned them the ire of their boss Don Ohlmeyer at NBC, a friend of Simpson’s.
The event even exacerbated already tense racial relations in the US. In fact, the whole thing might have been a passing event until the public gaze moved on to something else had it not come on the heels of the news making “fall” of two powerful Black men: Judge Clarence Thomas, who was rejected from the Supreme Court over his alleged sexual harassment of his employee Anita Hill, and Bill Cosby, who was in the midst of a headline-grabbing trial over multiple charges of sexual assault. Coming on the heels of the LA Riots and other racial violence in the US, it all fed into the division.
White people overwhelmingly condemned O.J. as a “wife beater” and “criminal”. Black people, in particular Black men, overwhelmingly saw him as a martyr, another victim of LAPD profiling, with conspiracy theories circulating of “planted weapons” and “he just wanted to see his kids” becoming a rallying cry. Black activists called it another “high tech lynching”.
Even conservative talk radio pundits put themselves into the fray, defending Simpson and claiming him as a “Black Republican”, though Simpson, who largely supported Reagan and tended to vote Republican, was politically nuanced and still willing to be photographed with President Gore and counted former Democratic Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton among his friends. Thomas, Cosby, and Simpson thus became the focus for an emerging narrative on “Conservative Black voices being silenced” in “feminazi hit jobs”, with Cosby's stances on Black culture used as an excuse for Conservatives to claim him. Black conservatives became motivated in politics, with increasing calls for retired General Colin Powell to enter the fray, though his social politics were much more moderate than many of the names calling for his candidacy.
For O.J. Simpson, the entire thing was traumatic. “I just want to be left alone!” he told a friend. Ron Miller offered him a job at Walt Disney World as an executive managing the Good Sports Resort.
“You can get away from the jackals until this all blows over, brother,” Ron reportedly told him. But Simpson refused to leave LA, still convinced that he could “patch things up with [Nichole]”. When Ron repeatedly insisted that he needed to let her go and get a “fresh start,” Simpson, who’d been drinking, lost his temper and assaulted Miller.
“He punched me in the jaw, and I grabbed him and tackled him,” Miller recalled to a friend. “He was way stronger and in better shape than me at the time, since he’d been working out for the movies, and I’d gone soft around the middle. If I’d tried to go toe-to-toe, he’d likely have kicked my ass! But I held him in a close bear hug and let my weight hold him down. And even top athletes have trouble when a 250-pound man is lying on top of them! I held him close and tried to quietly talk him down, telling him I was there for him even as he flailed at me. I got a few bruises, but eventually I wore him down.”
The dramatic moment broke through, and Simpson began to cry loudly. Miller soon set Simpson up as an executive at the Good Sports Resort in Disney World, where he used the generic “Jim Simpson” moniker and changed his hair style to avoid media scrutiny. Diane set Nichole and the kids up, unbeknownst to O.J., at the Millers’ wine chateau in Napa Valley. They occasionally flew his children Sydney and Justin out to see him using the Millers’ private jet. He’d eventually talk to Nichole on the phone, still not knowing where she was living.
And most critically, at Miller’s unbending insistence, O.J. got professional mental help, paid by Ron out of pocket.
“I’d love to say there was some big breakthrough moment,” O.J. later told Larry King, “But this is something I never really got over. I still find myself thinking about things, about Nichole, about the anger. My new wife helps. She’s a saint and knows it’s the illness. She also knows martial arts and isn’t going to let me lay an angry hand on her,” he added with a melancholy laugh. “Not that I try. They gave me tools for when things turn red. Tools and pills.”
“Anger is a monster,” celebrity psychiatrist David Viscott told me. “It takes you over, overrides your cognitive processing. Even the little angers can lead to bad habits and toxic behaviors that can complicate your life and the lives of those whom you love, even if they never lead to violence.”
Nichole and the children moved to Northern California where the children lived a relatively normal life. All three have kept a low profile. Nichole married again and both children have since gone to college and have reconciled with their father, though one confessed that the ghost of the abuse still lingers over everything.
“We can forgive,” they told me, “But never forget.”
O.J. remained in Orlando, eventually becoming a VP of Operations for the Good Sports Resort and a welcome face for the children and veterans who came to the sports medicine and VA complexes later built on the site. He became a major advocate for mental health and remains a major advocate of AIDS and LGBTQ rights, given the experiences of his father. He has quit drinking and remains “on the wagon”.
“I do seminars and interventions,” he told Larry King in the same 2003 interview. “The occasional TV spot. Anger management, domestic abuse, mental health. I’ll meet a man who is a lot like I used to be, and I just listen to his anger and tell him my story, encourage him to stay on the path. Anger is like an addiction, and you got to approach it like an addition. And that means step one is admitting that you have a problem and step two is accepting that it’s causing pain to you and to the ones you love.”
Even so, he keeps a low profile. “I used to live by the spotlight. Not anymore. I hate it. I hate what it made me. Or, I should say, I hate that it blinded me to my own patterns of abuse. I’ll do what I can to support causes I believe in and try to make amends to those who I hurt, but for the time being, my life is managing the Sports Resort and advocacy.”
Since then, public opinion has turned around somewhat, and ironically flipped in some cases as some of those who saw him as a victim began to see him as a weak sellout for admitting fault and those who saw him as an abuser celebrated his self-realization. For the most part, his “redemption tour”, though he refuses to call it that, has played well with the public, even as he shuns contact, and most polled would say that they believe that he is sincere in his apologies and attempts at self-help.
For O.J., however, the self-forgiveness has become the hardest part.
“I hope to make amends to Nichole and my daughter and son someday,” he told Larry King in closing. “But I likely never will. Not completely. My anger cost me everything. My anger and my vanity. It cost me the opportunity to be with my kids as they grew up. It cost me my career. I still face the voices that call me a monster, both within and without. I got help, and it helped. I try to help others. But I’ll carry this monster with me forever.”[4]
[1] Yep, time to touch another third rail.
[2] Per our timeline. The rest is due to butterflies. I have no idea how Miller and Simpson got along in our timeline, but it seems highly likely that they crossed paths numerous times given their mutual sports/Hollywood background. In our timeline, of course, Miller had been kicked out of Disney in 1984 and retired early to Napa for his second career in winemaking, so undoubtedly any contact with Simpson would have been lost.
[3] Quote from our timeline.
[4] I’m sure this post will generate some comments (please be civil!) since the guilt or innocence of Simpson is still a controversial topic. In our timeline, of course, Nichole and her friend Ron Goldman were brutally murdered and Simpson was arrested while heading to the airport. Eventually, following the “trial of the century”, he was acquitted of the murders since, in the US, conviction requires that guilt be established “beyond reasonable doubt”. The defense team established reasonable doubt. He was acquitted. Enough said about that. If you believe that he did it, then the butterflies have averted that. If you believe that he is innocent and that there was a third-party killer, then the butterflies have averted that person’s opportunity. Either way, the trial is a sensitive subject, as is the subject of mental health and how they relate to the standards of guilt. Is Simpson, assuming that he “did it”, also a victim in a certain respect, or not? That’s a question for Chat, not here, but something to ponder. Either way, so many times mental health issues not taken seriously have led to tragedy, whether that’s violence against others, or against the self. So, I urge all of you to learn the signs and take action if there’s a mental health emergency, whether yours or that of someone who you know. Ask professionals how to deal with the situation. A quick internet search will reveal hotlines or better yet, ask your medical professionals for a referral. Don’t go it alone. I love you.
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