Class Action Park: America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park
Action Park in Vernon, New Jersey was straight out of a Gen X teenager's dream. The R-rated version of a John Hughes film, or as Jason Bailey at the New York Times puts it, "a rule-free stew of dangerous rides, teen guests, teen employees, raging hormones, 80s-style machismo, and booze".
But for all the nostalgia, the place comes with bad memories for those whose loved ones were seriously injured, and in some cases killed by the reckless actions of Gene Mulvihill, the fallen Wall Street mogul who owned and ran the park.
Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott, the co-directors of Class Action Park streamed on HBO Max, brilliantly capture both the time and place – Northern New Jersey in the 1980s and 1990s – that will never be repeated. And many would say thank God for that.
“The laughter of Action Park isn’t a designed joke; it’s not a comedy routine. It’s the laughter of a brain having no other way to process what it’s hearing. Laughter is something that happens when you can’t cry, you can’t scream, you can’t do anything else, all you can do is laugh. ” - Seth Porges
Time Stamps:
02:20 - What Action Park was, and the dangers there.
05:03 - What the film explores, and why it’s been so successful.
07:34 - The first clip of the film showing ‘The Cannonball Loop’.
09:38 - Who designed these crazy rides and how they tested them.
11:33 - A short clip showing the dangers involved with testing the new roller coasters.
14:01 - What the movie is really about and how different children’s upbringings used to be.
15:28 - The mix of nostalgia and darkness that is present in these old memories.
17:17 - What drives people to create such insane roller coasters.
18:18 - The way Action Park used radio ads to gain popularity.
20:15 - The terrifying nature of Action Park and how unique it was.
24:14 - A clip showing the dark side of the Park.
26:33 - How the dangerous nature of the park actually increased its popularity.
31:04 - How many people died or were seriously injured at the park.
33:00 - How the owner managed to win most of the class action suits brought against him.
35:27 - What inspired Seth to make a documentary about Action Park.
36:40 - How Chris became involved with the film.
38:00 - The biggest challenges they came up against when making the film.
41:16 - Talking to the parents of George Larson, who died at the park.
47:03 - Who the owner Gene Mulvihill was and what he was really like.
49:44 - The juxtaposition of freedom and safety that is shown in the film.
53:23 - What Seth and Chris want to achieve with this film.
Resources:
Class Action Park
Alamo Pictures
Connect with Seth Porges:
Connect with Chris Charles Scott:
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Transcript for Factual America Episode 30 - Class Action Park: America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park
Seth Porges 0:00
My name is Seth Porges. I'm co-director and producer of Class Action Park on HBO Max.
Chris Charles Scott 0:04
I'm Chris Charles Scott, I'm co-director of Class Action Park on HBO Max, from a small town but doing big things.
Speaker 1 0:15
There's nothing in the world like Action Park. (music)
Unknown Speaker 0:24
The story of Action Park is a true crime story.
Unknown Speaker 0:30
As you entered the park, you saw this thing and you're like, this F%&$ is real.
Speaker 4 0:35
The engineering behind this, if there was any engineering, was just nuts.
Speaker 5 0:41
Build it higher, make it faster, people controlled the action.
Speaker 6 0:45
Combine that with liquor and anything goes.
Speaker 7 0:46
There were no rules. For a lot of kids, that was heaven.
Speaker 8 0:50
And if you couldn't swim well, yikes.
Speaker 9 0:53
I don't think you can understand a place like Action Park if you don't understand the kind of minds that built it.
Speaker 10 1:00
A lot of people wish they could ignore rules, Gene actually did that.
speaker 11 1:04
Nobody would give him insurance. So he created his own insurance company and then insured himself.
Speaker 12 1:09
It did bring sometimes a criminal element.
Speaker 13 1:12
I don't know how many people died in Action Park but it wasn't just one person.
Speaker 14 1:16
Electrocuted,
Speaker 15 1:17
Decapitated,
Speaker 16 1:17
Fractured vertebrae,
Speaker 17 1:18
Impaled on the bone,
Speaker 18 1:19
Had a heart attack.
Speaker 17 1:20
Nobody should ever be the second person to die in a wave pool. Close the F&%'ing wave pool.
Matthew 1:35
That is the trailer for the HBO Max documentary Class Action Park. And this is Factual America.
Intro 1:44
Factual America is produced by Alamo pictures, a production company specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for an international audience. I'm your host Matthew Sherwood and every week we look at America through the lens of documentary filmmaking by interviewing filmmakers and experts on the American experience. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at Alamo pictures to be the first to hear about new productions, to find out where you can see our films and to connect with our team.
Matthew 2:20
Action Park in Vernon New Jersey was straight out of a Gen X teenager's dream. The R rated version of a John Hughes film or as Jason Bailey at the New York Times puts up: "a rule free stew of dangerous rides, teen guests, teen employees, raging hormones, ad style machismo and booze". But for all the nostalgia, the place comes with bad memories for those whose loved ones were seriously injured and in some cases killed by the reckless actions of Gene Mulvihill, the fallen Wall Street mogul who owned and ran the park. Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott, the co-directors of Class Action Park brilliantly captured both the time and place, Northern New Jersey in the 1980s and 90s that will never be repeated. And many would say thank God for that. We caught up recently with Seth and Chris from their homes in upstate New York and Las Vegas, Nevada. Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott, welcome to Factual America. Seth, how are things?
Seth Porges 3:25
Things are great. It's great to be here.
Matthew 3:28
It's great to have you. You're coming to us from upstate New York, is that right?
Seth Porges 3:32
Absolutely. Right across the pond. Just across the pond.
Matthew 3:35
Just across, just across. Chris, you're a little further away. How are you?
Chris Charles Scott 3:39
Hi, I am out west in lovely, fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada.
Matthew 3:45
Yeah, it's a major league franchise heaven right now, isn't it? You've got the Raiders. You've got all kinds of things.
Chris Charles Scott 3:51
We've had our first home game on Monday. Broke records for Monday Night Football viewership. Vegas is now a major league town.
Matthew 4:02
That's amazing. So again, welcome to Factual America. The film is Class Action Park, which Jason Bailey, New York Times, describing the amusement park that this films about is, described as "a no rules bacchanal of waterslides and broken bones". Thanks for again, coming on to the podcast and helping me relive my misspent youth, I think. I'm still not sure after having seen this, but HBO Max, you premiered at number one. I think you're still there at just abouts.
Seth Porges 4:34
Who knows, we're up there.
Matthew 4:37
Rave reviews. 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. Do we have international distribution yet?
Seth Porges 4:44
HBO Max has partnerships with various streaming services around the world. So we're not sure of the exact details but it's popping up all over now.
Okay. All right. So, Seth, I'm gonna cut right to the chase. Besides you and Chris being maybe the best directors since Scorsese, why do you think this film is doing so well?
It's all about striking a nerve at this time. You know, this is a movie that is about this endless battle within us between the need for immediate satisfaction and fun, and a feeling of invulnerability and immunity and invincibility that a lot of people have, versus the forces of common sense and safety. And staying alive. And it's not hard to understand how that might apply to things that we're all sort of dealing with right now. And I think that's why it really struck a nerve.
Matthew 5:35
That's interesting. It's a very interesting take on that. I mean, Chris, so for those who haven't had a chance to see it, and I highly, highly recommend you watch this film. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Can you maybe give us a little synopsis of what what Class Action Park is about?
Chris Charles Scott 5:54
Seth, take that one.
Seth Porges 5:55
Okay, Chris.
Class Action Park is a documentary about Action Park. Action Park was an amusement park in northern New Jersey, from 1978 to 1996, that earned and, and it really did earn a reputation as being the most insane, most chaotic, most anarchic, most run by teenagers, most drunken, most craziest amusement park that ever existed, and indeed, oftentimes the most dangerous amusement park that ever existed. But despite, or actually as it happens, because of this reputation, people did not stay away. Rather, they flocked there to experience a danger for themselves.
Matthew 6:33
Okay, so it was these crazy death not defying rides that were the main attraction, isn't that right?
Seth Porges 6:41
That's right.
Matthew 6:41
Yeah. So, you know, when we bring these films on, we try not, spoiler alerts, we try not to. We don't go through the whole film. We don't give things away. But you know, it gives people a little tasters. I think one of the, I guess the ride that people would have seen when they first got to the park was something called the Cannonball Loop. Every time I see a picture of this thing, I don't know, I, maybe it's nervous reaction...
Seth Porges 7:09
It scrambles your brain.
Matthew 7:10
It scrambles your brain, I burst out laughing my head off. And then I just think this is absolutely mad, but ...
Seth Porges 7:16
Your brain can't process it. It's like looking at a math equation that doesn't make sense. Like your brain just can't process this.
Matthew 7:21
So we have a little clip here that talks about the cannonball loop. So would you maybe want to set that up for us?
Seth Porges 7:29
Chris? That's all you.
Matthew 7:30
Okay, Chris.
Chris Charles Scott 7:34
Cannonball Loop - it's the first thing you see when you actually enter the park. It was the myth that this thing was actually in existence. But when you go to the park, and you enter the gates, you see this contraption that looks like it's from a bonnie, bonnie cartoon, it's Wile E. Coyote type of thing. And the thing actually was in use. There's footage of people actually going down this slide.
Seth Porges 8:05
And Chris, you got to say what it is, of course, it's an enclosed tube waterslide that somehow goes into a full vertical 360 degree loop, like a roller coaster would. And you'd see people go in and you'd see them sometimes come out, they wouldn't always make it out. But they've come out to be facing a totally different direction. They'd be bloody beaten, battered. It was, it strains the imagination to contemplate the idea that this should be an amusement park ride.
Matthew 8:34
With that set up, let's listen and for some of our listeners, who were actually viewers as well on YouTube, let's go to that clip.
Speaker 1 8:43
One of the first things you saw when you walked into Action Park was the infamous Cannonball Loop, which for years, it was, it was like a myth that the thing had ever been open.
Speaker 2 8:54
Cannonball loop was an enclosed tube waterslide and you would climb to the top of a series of stairs and you'd ride down the enclosed tube and at the very end tube would go into a huge loop.
Speaker 3 9:08
I mean, you looked at the thing, and it looked like it was something out of like a Bugs Bunny or a Roadrunner cartoon where they just made a loop and said yeah, there's our ride.
Speaker 4 9:16
Some lunatic clearly just was like - build me a slide that's like that. And then they didn't consult anybody who had a background in engineering.
Matthew 9:24
Okay, so how does, how does something like that even... I mean, I can imagine how they get designed. It sounds like some someone on drugs or drunk did something, but how did these things get designed and built?
Seth Porges 9:37
Yeah, so rides at Action Park, and this was clearly the most visually insane ride, but it wasn't the most dangerous, and it wasn't in many ways, the craziest ride at the park. Almost every ride at Action Park kind of makes you scratch your head a little like what were they thinking? And the important thing to understand is the context of the time. This park opened in 1978. It was either the third or fourth modern water park the country had ever seen. You had Wet 'n Wild, you had Schlitterbahn, you had Disneys over country, and then you had Action Park. So nobody knew what a waterpark was. They were inventing these rides, basically in real time. Most of them built by non engineers, many of them designed by young staff members, many of them actually designed by the owner himself. The Cannonball Loop in particular, the idea came about when the owner of the park literally just drew a circle on a cocktail napkin, hired some local welders to put it together and then their method of testing it wasn't - we're going to use computer models, we're going to hire a physicist, none of that. Their method of testing was - we're gonna throw some test dummies down and see what happens to them. It came out dismembered, missing heads, so they start tweaking, angle, water pressure, until those dummies were coming out more or less intact. So next stage, of course, is the sense of humans out there. Are they going to go hire some test pilot? No, no, no, they're going to literally wave $100 bills in there. And if any of the teenagers, I'm talking 14,15,16,17 year olds, gutsy enough who wanted 100 bucks in their pocket would volunteer to go down this thing and just kind of see what happens. As it happens, though, only the older kids got paid hundred dollars. I was told the younger kids got 50.
Matthew 11:10
Oh, okay. Well, yeah. He could pay for the experience. I think, we actually have a short clip that shows that crash testing that was going on. It's animated. Probably fortunately, we don't have actual footage, to be honest. But here, let's watch or listen to that clip about testing the Cannonball Loop.
Speaker 1 11:34
The first couple people that came in and came out and their mouths were all bloody. And that was before they had put sufficient padding in the top, there was a little bit. So they sent a couple other people down. And when those people came down, they came down with lacerations. They couldn't figure out why these people had lacerations from a giant loop. Then they took the loop apart and they found teeth stuck in the padding from the first couple people that went down the slide. They had gotten their teeth knocked out. And these like people were just going up and ripping into it.
Matthew 12:00
I mean, I don't know if, I don't even think I can say anything to follow that up. I mean, I think it really stands on its own. Chris, did you ever have anything like Action Park when you were growing up?
Chris Charles Scott 12:13
Absolutely not. I grew up in a small town on the border of Texas and Louisiana, population just 533. We did not have a janky waterpark, like Action Park, but we did have those sort of thrills that Action Park was trying to mimic. There were cliffs that we jumped off of into this, this pool of sulfur and water and it ripped and our bodies ripped. I'm surprised we're not all terminally ill because of that. We went and we rode our bikes and had summer days filled with adventure and shenanigans. And our parents did not know where we were, or what we were up to. We just had one rule is - you don't play in your school clothes, that was it. You came home alive. That was all that mattered. And so, you asked earlier why is this movie strucking a chord. It's strucking a chord because the people who grew up in the 80s, like Seth and I, and experienced this adventure, these 1980s type "Stand by me", The Goonies, that actually lived those types of lifestyles. We are harkening back to this era where everything seems awesome and carefree and responsibility free. And in a time when we're having to quarantine and self distance. And it just strikes this beautiful feeling of nostalgia. But then again, there's this, there's this toxic nostalgia, that's involved.
Seth Porges 13:54
Yeah, there's a darkness underneath all of that. And I think, and I think that's a lot of, without spoiling too much, what our movie is really about. Is kind of contextualizing that nostalgia within the reality of it and saying that, you know, a lot of people who look back at these experiences, they might laugh about them, they might joke about them, they might be very fond of their own childhoods. To some degree, they know a lot of things they did were totally messed up. And it's an absolute miracle, they are still alive. You know, these movies, these 1980s movies that really embody the spirit or even modern takes on them, like, you know, Stranger Things, shows like that. There's always this underlying darkness and this underlying sense that the kids are on their own. That there's no way they can turn to for help. The parents aren't there. The authority figures aren't there. And I think younger kids today don't realize that that comes from a reality. That comes from a truth, that comes from a real sense of being on your own, that a lot of these kids had.
Matthew 14:47
Yeah, I mean, this is kind of getting to issues that I think we're definitely gonna be heading towards, but we might as well talk about them now. I mean, this is, I'm older than you guys, but I think we might all be Gen X-ers here. Some of you might be on the border. I don't know. But we are the last generations to have this sort of upbringing. So are we, is it all sort of rose colored glasses that we're looking back on this as something that was, that really wasn't as maybe, we shouldn't be as nostalgic as maybe we are. Or are new generations missing out on something at the same time?
Seth Porges 15:28
I think the people who experienced it and are nostalgic for it, are very aware of the underlying darkness of it all. I think where it gets lost is when those people take their nostalgia and they turn it into a movie or TV show or a memoir or just telling a story with their buddies at a party. They tend to gloss over the darkness while deep inside, they know it to be true. And there's almost a code in the way people, Gen X-ers in particular, speak of these experiences where laughter and a sense of a shrug almost shields what they all know is a really terrifying upbringing. And I think what we wanted to do is sort of translate that code and make it evident to people who weren't aware, who can't believe this was real, what was really going on there.
Matthew 16:14
I think that's a good point. I mean, the thought that came to me when I was driving over here is - I kind of want to show this to my teenage kids just so they can, in some ways, it wasn't my upbringing, because I wasn't a teenage guy running a dodgy amusement park and drunk off my ass. But I mean, there was, I don't think it's all that far off from a lot of things that were happening. I mean, I've been to Schlitterbahn, I remember what we were all trying to get up to when we were going there. So I think you captured extremely well, this whole sort of ethos millieu that was Gen X youth, you know.
Chris Charles Scott 16:57
You know, at Schlitterbahn, they have their own set of problems.
Matthew 16:59
Oh, and they've had some recent ones. I mean, which make that ride that's almost straight with the Cannonball Loop, isn't it? That one they tried to build in Kansas City, I think.
Seth Porges 17:10
Yeah, well, they killed, the kid got decapitated. And what drove that, it's really interesting, because it's not that dissimilar to a drove a lot of the erratic ride designs in Action Park with tragic effect, in both cases. The Schlitterbahn accident happened because the management of the park was desperate to hold some sort of a world record, for tallest, steepest, fastest or something like that. But also to be featured on a TV show about extreme water rides, extreme water parks. And they sort of, pushed to the side the common sense and the design and the safety that was required to do that effectively. And Action Park was sort of the same way, where the priority was in creating these memorable, insane, extremely fun experiences. And everything else was just sort of viewed as red tape.
Matthew 17:57
Yeah. Chris, getting back to this point about, you know, Action Park - it wasn't just the rides, though. It's other things, isn't it? It's booze, it's hormones. It's no adults. I mean, that's what lured all of the New York City metro area to northern New Jersey, isn't it?
Chris Charles Scott 18:18
It was. And the ads, they constantly pop radio ads into the New York City and the New York area. You have to think these are kids that are hearing these ads and on the radio station that these ads have been played in your Queens, in your Bronx, Brooklyn before it was gentrified. Places are people of color, working class people. They don't have a house in Delaware. They don't have a house on the Jersey Shore. They have Action Park. And so a lot of these inexperienced swimmers come in to Action Park, maybe get a little boozed-up past this macho God mentality. And just like Seth said in our movie, it's like the purge, this people come out and their wildest instincts are being triggered at this part. And there's no one there to tell them no.
Seth Porges 19:20
I'm sorry, Chris. But what Chris is doing, and I think there's this innate fantasy that kids have of the amusement park without rules. This isn't Pinocchio with Pleasure Island. This is what Westworld is about. This is what Jurassic Park is about. Like this is a trove, a staple of fiction, this idea that you can go to an amusement park and do whatever you want. And that's what Action Park was. And it was this release valve of tension and pressure and everything. It was. In a place where the atmosphere, from the moment you were on the ground, you knew that the rules of society, the rules of God and man, the rules of the law just did not apply here. And what does that do when you're a 14 or 15 year old kid who already feels a little invulnerable, who already feels a little invincible and is suddenly being handed beers on top of it. Like it just is this mix that really just added up.
Matthew 20:12
Are there any places like this anymore?
Seth Porges 20:16
Not amusement parks. It is the thing. Here's the thing - Action Park wasn't unique in the sense that you could do these dangerous experiences. The reason, one reason why we strike a chord is because kids are already doing this. If you didn't grow up in the Jersey area and go to Action Park, you might have been making stupid BMX ramps. Or skateboard ramps that we're gonna kill somebody. Or jumping into quarries or clubs, whatever it's gonna be. What Chris was talking about before. Action Park was a gated amusement park and had the veneer of safety of like a Disney World as a result of it, when it was anything but. So these experiences they exist to this day, if you are an enterprising latchkey kid. And of course, there are many fewer enterprising latchkey kids today than there were in the 1980s, as of smartphones, because of parenting tactics changing, because the world has changed in so many ways.
Matthew 21:03
But it wasn't just the kids. You mentioned in the film, we had Waterworld. Amazing, you've got an amusement park that's on either side of like a major highway. Highway runs right through it, not with like safety fencing or whatever. And there was also Motorworld, which was basically legalized drunk driving, wasn't it?
Seth Porges 21:23
It was drunk driving the ride is what it was. Yeah, and one of my favorite lines in the movie is when a former employee says the design was flawed because the racing cars were right next to the beer tent. And that's exactly what it was. And these weren't go karts like you'd find at like a typical amusement park. These were full on Formula One style racing cars, Lola brand racing cars that could go upwards of 60 miles per hour, and people would just ignore the track. They drive them off the track. They chase employees like a bullfighter. They would, literally, employees would at night take these things on to route 94 onto the highway after getting liquored up. That was their after hours entertainment. This place was wild.
Chris Charles Scott 22:07
And Gene, the founder of the park, wanted to give trophies out to people who had bested their, the best on these go cars. That's how fast these things were, like you could beat your own record on these.
Seth Porges 22:24
Yeah, they would display up a timer and he wanted to, like you beat a certain time, bikini girls with champagne bottles will just come out of nowhere, that was his vision.
Matthew 22:35
I mean, there's always this, because somebody may have, you know, listeners may not have heard or seen the film, but there's part of it just every time I laugh about this, I almost want to just catch myself because...
Seth Porges 22:47
Not a laughter... It's a different type of laughter. The laughter of Action Park isn't a designed joke. It's not a comedy routine. It's the laughter of a brain having no other way to process waht they're experiencing or what they're hearing. Laughter is something that happens when you can't cry, you can't scream, you can't do anything else. All you can do is laugh. And when you hear people, especially people who literally survived going to Action Park, laugh about it, I think it's really important to understand what kind of laughter it is. It's the laughter of narrowly escaping a saber tooth tiger. It's not the laughter of a stand up comedy routine.
Matthew 23:20
I think that's a very good point. And actually, I think it's a bit early, but we're gonna give listeners a bit of a break. And while we're in the break, we've got our last clip, which basically, I think is a good overview of everything that Action Park was. And I think points just a little bit into the direction of this dark side that you were talking about, both Chris and Seth. So let's go to break, listen to this clip, and we'll be back in about a minute and a half.
Factual America midroll 23:54
You're listening to Factual America. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter at Alamo pictures to keep up to date with new releases or upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the program, our guests and the team behind the production. Now back to Factual America.
Speaker 1 24:14
It's not really fair to ask the question what was Action Park. Basically, you can tell it was a waterslide park. But, in truth, it was so much more than a waterslide park.
Speaker 2 24:24
Action Park was the chaos summer park with very little oversight, too much alcohol, whistle blowing, people screaming, motors running. It was an energy. You know, you knew you were jumping into the fire pit
Speaker 3 24:41
The most dangerous theme park of all time. There was a water slide that held one person that went in, like in a flip. It looked like a bunch of kids built it because that's what it was.
Speaker 4 24:53
We'll be back with more Headbangers coming from Action Park in Vernon, New Jersey, the biggest waterpark in the world.
Speaker 5 24:59
I think the very reason people were attracted to Action Park was because they could get hurt. That was the allure of it. I mean, who wants to sit on a ferris wheel.
Speaker 6 25:09
It was the place where death was tolerated. Where death was put right into the number situation.
Speaker 7 25:16
Every member of my family was injured in that park at some time or another. They called it traction park, Class Action Park - the lawyers called it.
Speaker 8 25:26
It starts out with people having fun, and by the end crimes have been committed, cover ups have happened. The story hasn't been told truthfully. To me, that's probably the worst thing of all.
Matthew 25:39
Welcome back to Factual America. I'm here with the co-directors of Class Action Park, Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott. Again, Class Action Park is the hit HBO Max doc. We've quoted him before, Jason Bailey, New York Times, when describing Action Park as a "rule free stew of dangerous rides, teen guests, teen employees, raging hormones, ad style machismo and booze", which there's a time when I wish that had been my youth. I can't actually claim that that's what my youth was like. But still, there you go. Seth, as you've already talked about, and that clip even shows this, I mean, we've got even Jimmy Kimmel talking about his family going to Action Park. This all came with the downside, didn't it?
Seth Porges 26:31
Yeah, Action Park was a dangerous place. And everybody knew it was dangerous. The move is called Class Action Park, which is one of several contemporaneous nicknames the park had by its regulars, by its employees. It was called accident Park, it was called traction Park, it was called class action Park, it was called fracture Park. Sometimes it was called Death Park. And these names came about because people knew what this place was. They knew this is a place you could actually get hurt. But what the owner Gene realized was that every time there was a newspaper headline about an injury, about how dangerous place was, it didn't deter people, it drove them in. People just came, they flooded in. And it became, you know, before social media, kids in school had what we'll call like, the whisper network of the school yard. You guys are, there's gossip, kids are talking about what's cool. Video games, comic books, TV shows, whatever it is they like. Action park in the tri-state area became a staple of the school yard whisper network of kids saying, holy cow, you have to see this place. They come back to school on Monday, and they'd be showing off scars. They'd be showing off their injuries, it would be rite of passage. And kids knew I have to go there myself and suffer my lumps. I have to go there myself and get injured or I'm a wimp. I'm a coward. I'm a something and in New Jersey in 1980s there's nothing worse you could be.
Matthew 27:49
That came out very loud and clear. And extremely well. I mean, you get to this point, I was wondering about this and what was the source of it? I just remember growing up with a lot of urban myths. The kid, the Mikey guy from the, who died of swallowing Pop Rocks while drinking Coke. So never drink Coke and eat Pop Rocks at the same time. You had all these urban myths, you even allude to them in the film. A lot of people thought this, even the rides, some of the rides were myths that didn't actually exist. And then they would come there and they're actually there and open. It is kind of an interesting thing that I guess, like you said, social media, phones, smartphones, things like that - we don't really have the same sort of whisper network that you're talking about.
Seth Porges 28:37
It's even more than that. I'm really glad you mentioned the urban legend of Mikey from Life cereal, eating Pop Rocks and drinking coke because I've actually mentioned that before in trying to explain Action Park to people. Because kids in the 80s grew up without the ability to fact check things by just simply googling them. All we had were these legends. And all of these legends made you feel like you were about one inch away from death at any given moment. Like if you touch the wrong pressure point you could keel over and die. If you eat the wrong candy and drink a coke your head will explode. And you're just overwhelmed with this. And it becomes so hard to differentiate real danger from perceived, whispered about, mythological danger. And Action Park existed in this space where it was really difficult for people to truly understand and internalize what it meant to be dangerous.
Matthew 29:29
Yeah, and I think for those, for our listeners, not that you need to know anything about my youth but, I remember getting to university college or university and you just, for those of us who went to state high schools, we used to trade these stories, you know. And I don't even know if the ones that I knew from my school were true. But, you know, the story of the kid putting the paperclip in the electrical outlet and shooting flame across the line.
Seth Porges 29:54
That kid's dad, we know about that kid.
Matthew 29:56
Exactly. That kind of stuff. You know, this was the stuff that was like every day sort of occurrences, you know.
Chris Charles Scott 30:03
What were urban myths to you and your friends at university and high school, these were true stories to people who went to Action Park. And people took their stories when they were relaying these stories to their friends, families, the people like okay, that's an urban myth. We've got so many people in our direct messages, in our Facebook inboxes in our email inboxes saying, Thank you, because no one believes me.
Seth Porges 30:31
They think, Action Park sounds like the boast of your drunk Jersey friend in a bar making stuff up. And when you're a kid in the 1980s, all of these myths seem somewhat detached and you would give anything to just see them for your own eyes be real. And Action Park was a place where you could see and experience things as outrageous as a kid's head blown up from eating Pop Rocks, you know, this stuff would be right in front of you. And you come back with that story. And you come back to school on Monday with a story you're excited. And if you got the scars to prove it, that's firsthand man, that's firsthand.
Matthew 31:02
Amazing. I mean, how many people died?
Seth Porges 31:05
Depending on how you count it, five or six directly from the rides. There are numerous other deaths that have sort of happened as a result of, you know, millions of people flooding into an area and sort of the accidents that occur. But I don't think the death count really captures the danger.
Matthew 31:18
Was gonna ask you how many were seriously injured, yeah?
Seth Porges 31:20
That's the thing, it's literally impossible to tell because they just did not report injuries unless somebody was leaving in an ambulance. They did almost everything they could to minimize and cover up those numbers. But what we do know is that the Alpine Slide alone, this is just one ride, on any given busy weekend day would injure hundreds of people per day, every single day. So it isn't like every once in a while somebody is getting injured or killed. Every single day, hundreds and hundreds of people are getting injured to the point where there's a really high percentage that if you go to Action Park, you're gonna walk away with a caught, a bruise, a scrape an injury scar.
Matthew 31:58
Yeah. And Chris, I mean, for some of our listeners, most of our listeners actually are in the US, but maybe explain what sort of the pun or what we're alluding to when we say class action.
Chris Charles Scott 32:11
So many people were injured at the park. And there was so many, in retrospect, other amusement parks - the deaths there seemed a lot. The tongue in cheek was that this was a place that invited lawsuits. And so class action is a type of legal remedy in the United States that you can sue, a group of people can sue, an entity and so class action is a play on the, on that legal part ...
Seth Porges 32:52
Lawsuit Park, you can think it that way. Yeah.
Matthew 32:53
It's a bit ironic, since I gather that so few men were actually successful winning.
Seth Porges 33:00
Yeah, the owner was really good at making these problems disappear. He had more lawyers and, you know, bigger, better, fancier lawyers than you and he would basically refuse to settle. If you got injured, he would force you to go to trial. That's very expensive. And lawyers knew this guy won't settle and many lawyers refused to take the case. Now if you manage to take him to trial and win, after this long dried out thing where he would depose a 100 different people just to make the thing be as long and expensive as he could. If you manage the win, he would just simply refuse to pay, unless you literally sent the US Marshals to his door to collect the money. And that happened on more than one occasion, we spoke to a former park manager whose job it was often to basically walk the Marshals, U.S. Marshals to the ticket booth, collect a bunch of cash and hand it over to them. Actually, a lawyer reached out to us after the movie came out who had a client who had to use the US Marshals to collect his payout. And he told me this funny story about how the marshals basically went from ticket booth to ticket booth filling up a US Marshals duffel bag full of cash. But when it was time to hand it over, the marshals couldn't handed it over because the duffel bag was US Marshals property, and they weren't allowed to hand it over. So this lawyer had to basically run around till he found a duffel bag at another store, stuff all this cash to it and then drive it himself to the bank hoping he made it before it closed.
Matthew 34:16
Oh, my goodness. It's almost unbelievable. But yet like you say, you documented it...
Seth Porges 34:24
And the owner. I mean, I don't think we've mentioned yet, the owner didn't really believe in the concept of actually having insurance. And he created his own fake insurance company based in the Cayman Islands in order to skirt insurance regulations, which is very telling. And also one reason he didn't really, he wanted to make it exhausting and difficult for people to collect payouts, because if you didn't have valid insurance, it's gonna be hard to actually pay off any significant settlements.
Matthew 34:49
Again, highly recommend listeners watching this film. I could go, I would personally be happy to go on and on and talk about every ride and everything. It's an absolutely amazing story. But maybe we can talk a little bit about the project. Seth, I see from your bio at Forbes, I know it's one of the magazines that you write for, it says you're interested in the intersection between technology, human experience, design and culture.
Seth Porges 35:19
I'll take that.
Matthew 35:20
You'll take that. Yeah? So you hit the sweet spot with this one, didn't you? I mean, was this subject, is this your idea? This project?
Seth Porges 35:27
Yeah, between us, I was the one who'd been swimming in the Action Park pool for more than a decade, researching the topic. And Chris is the outsider who was able to bring kind of a fresh perspective to it. I went to Action Park as a kid. I had these experiences and these memories. And I had a really hard time squaring with my adult version of what reality was. And as I got older, I was very interested in fact checking my memories and realized that there was really little out there in terms of journalism, it was really little out there. In terms of actual research reporting. There was just these myths. There were just these thinly sourced urban legends. And we found, of course, they were pretty much all true. And then that was just the tip of the iceberg. Because when it comes to Action Park, there's no reason to make anything up. Because you just spend one day there, you'll walk away with stories for a lifetime.
Yeah. There's that one ride, you show, because it brought memories back for me that I had completely forgotten about, when I go to Schlitterbahn. There's nothing like Action Park but where all the inner tubes were all like hitting on each other. And that could have you, you'd get in a section where, I remember going under the water and having someone else is inner tube.
Chaos.
Matthew 36:35
It was chaos. Chris, how did you become involved?
Chris Charles Scott 36:40
Oh, Seth and I, we've been friends for quite a while. And Seth was in Las Vegas, April of last year. And we just got together for a drink at one of my favorite places, STK Steakhouse. And we're just sitting at the bar talking. And he was telling me about this story. And I was like, someone has to have done a documentary about this, like, this is so intriguing that I will be surprised if someone's already done or in the process of doing it. And sure enough, there wasn't. And the time was hot, we were like, let's do it.
Seth Porges 37:18
We had cameras running a month later.
Chris Charles Scott 37:20
And he was just as gun hosed I was. And in a few short weeks, we were on the ground in New Jersey, filming our documentary.
Matthew 37:31
Amazing. And Chris what was this time period when you were filming? And did you just just beat COVID? In terms of getting everything in the can?
Chris Charles Scott 37:41
We absolutely beat COVID. We've began filming after Memorial Day of 2019. And so yes, we absolutely beat COVID.
Matthew 37:51
Okay, so you're, in that sense, very lucky. What other challenges did you have on this film?
Seth Porges 38:00
Well, it's, I'll jump in here, Chris. I think, you know, we knew the outlines of the story. But a lot of it, when you're making a documentary, you're interviewing real people. You never know how that's gonna shake out. You never know what people are gonna say, what surprises, what revelations you'll have, because, you know, they have things that you can learn from. And I think we had numerous moments that totally caught us off guard, and sort of changed what the movie was about to us in in many different ways. The key one being, I think, of course, when we - two key ones. One is when we spoke to the family members of the kid who was killed at the park tragically and found out what happened, what the follow up was. What actually happens when you suffer these tragedies at Action Park and how are they made it go away. And the other was speaking to a former newspaper editor at the park, who's in our movie, who had squirreled away in her attic since the 90s, some secret audio recordings she had made with the owner of the park, where he talks very openly about things like controlling the town's politicians.
Matthew 39:01
I mean, had a little bit of a Sopranos feel, a little bit there.
Chris Charles Scott 39:05
Just a little bit.
Matthew 39:07
Just a little bit. I'm not trying to, gave it up a little bit, but yeah. And you have some great, you've alluded to this, before we get to the Larsson family, you have some great talking heads on this. I know, you've got Alison Becker as an actress and Chris Gethard as a writer / producer, but how did you manage to, were these friends of yours? Or did you, how'd you locate these people who had been on the film?
Seth Porges 39:34
Yeah, I've been, sorry, Chris, you go on.
Chris Charles Scott 39:37
The segues to me, you asked what was one of the challenges in actually producing this documentary. This to me was one of the toughest challenges because we had a list of people that was a mile long who could tell these stories of Action Park and having to trim these people down. I mean, we went in thinking that we were going to interview like, 30 somewhat people. But the cast that we settled on, they were unbelievable. Their stories were factual, and their tone and their mood and their presence was perfect. And so, Seth actually found the majority of the candidates, it was perfect casting.
Seth Porges 40:32
I spent a lot of time kind of swimming in the Action Park pool and meeting people and developing sources. And so I had just a really wide range of people to kind of hook up with. And the thing is, you take the most boring person in the world, if they went to Action Park as a kid, you ask them to talk about Action Park, suddenly they're alive. Suddenly, they're animated. Suddenly, they're having the time of their lives.
Matthew 40:53
I think, on a personal note, Alison Becker, she reminds me so much of someone that I know who's also from New Jersey and about the same age and was just so spot on in many ways. I mean, Chris, then what about the Larssons? This must have been quite difficult to get them to tell their story.
Chris Charles Scott 41:16
What was important about the Larssons, and before we even reached out to them. In the canon of articles that had been written about Action Park, they mostly focus on the slapstick nature of the park. They ignition the deaths and they mentioned the names of the people who have died in the park. There was never any deeper investigation into those people, who they were, who their parents were, their personal stories. I found none, in the whole archive of the Action Park reporting. And so we felt that it was important if we were going to tell the full story of Action Park that we had to include the parents, and had to get deeper and profile someone who'd actually died in the park. And so, George Larsson, the first kid killed in the park. We took a shot at it. Let's try to find his family. And so I googled George Larsson, and an obituary popped up. And it was George Larsson senior, the father. And in his obituary, it said he owned a construction and roofing company. I googled that company, and their company's page came up. And I went to the contact us. And I wrote, hey, I'm Chris Charles Scott, I'm doing a documentary on Action Park. We'd like to include your story, like to talk with you about it. And in about 10 minutes, I get a phone call from an Orlando number. And it's Brian Larsson, the brother of George Larsson, and he's bawling his eyes out. And he says, we've been waiting for this email, for this phone call for the last 40 years.
Seth Porges 43:06
And nobody had ever, ever reached out to them.
Chris Charles Scott 43:10
No one, no one. And I said, Brian, we would love to include you in telling your story. He goes absolutely, absolutely. About 30 minutes after getting off the phone with Brian, I get another call from an Orlando number. And it's Esther Larsson, the mom, she goes there's no way that I'm going to be excluded from this. I have not told my story, she goes, this is an opportunity for me to tell my story. And in her advanced age, she got on a plane, like an early morning flight from Orlando to New Jersey, I mean the journey was not easy. And she got off the plane and just absolutely nailed her interview. And after the last scene, the shot that we shot in the cemetery, we're walking Esther back to her car. And she turns to us and goes - I no longer feel like a victim.
Matthew 44:06
Amazing. I'm just flabbergasted because, you know, in America, it seems like everything gets investigated. It's just so amazing that, as you say, five, maybe six deaths directly, high profile coverage in major newspapers, but never once to reach out to the victims and their families, is absolutely amazing.
Seth Porges 44:35
A lot of reporting is people repeating other people's reporting. And the reporting that had been initially out there was was not accurate. And a lot of it was a story that have been put out by the park in attempt to minimize their culpability in the case. So they put out the story that George had been an employee at the park. And the real, the message of that is that he should have known better, he was breaking rules. He was doing something he shouldn't have been done. And the fact was he wasn't a park employee. He worked as a ski lift operator at the neighboring ski resort the previous season. The park latched on to that, said he was a park employee and used that not just to make it seem like it was his fault, but to never report his death to the state claiming they didn't need to because he wasn't a member of the general public. And that to me was just astonishing. And if you look at really recent articles about Action Park, they still refer to him as a park employee. That has just entered the candidates, entered the mythology. And it really makes you wonder, like, what else out there we just sort of taken for granted?
Matthew 45:33
You're a journalist, I guess it's just lazy journalism, isn't it? I mean, but then I guess, you should be, mentally, you should be fact checking everything that you come across, just to verify it. But what about other families? Did you try, I mean, I think the Larssons, I hate to put it this way, but to deliver the goods?
Seth Porges 45:57
Yeah, we wanted to focus. I mean, this is a movie, it's not about the details of these deaths. It's about the emotional experience. It's about the coexistence in the 1980s of immense joy and fun and freedom with tragedy and heartache and death. And, you know, we thought it was much more prudent and meaningful to really focus on one family's story rather than make a jump around a lot. We wanted to get to know them as much as we could. And within the confines of a 90 minute film, we felt like it was better to just focus on one story in this regard.
Matthew 46:29
Okay. And then there's one person we haven't really talked about. Really not the elephant in the room, he's centerstage, is Gene Mulvihill.
Seth Porges 46:39
Uncle Gene.
Matthew 46:40
Yeah, Uncle Gene, the Brits over here would call the baddie, I think. But then comes across much more complicated than that. Seth or Chris, who wants to talk about Gene Mulvihill?
Seth Porges 46:52
Give us a shot. Or you go Chris, you go, Chris.
Chris Charles Scott 46:56
I'm gonna tee this up for Seth.
This is Seth. This is why I love working with Seth. And why our partnership really worked. There were aspects of me as an outsider. And I thought that this is what makes the story interesting. And I wasn't really interested in Gene Mulvihill as a person. I was just interested in the park. And Seth was adamant about like, no, Gene is this, the center of this story. And I defer to Seth and he was exactly right. And the layer of Gene as a person, as a business person, as a family man, he's so layered and so interesting. And Seth is, he was spot on with his assessment of Gene.
Seth Porges 47:51
Gene to me is the human embodiment of Action Park and Action Park is the amusement park embodiment of Gene. I mean, they are the same entity. Gene was somebody who is this American archetype, you know, he's Charles Foster Kane, he's P.T. Barnum. He's Donald Trump, and they were friends. He's this American archetype of this guy who breaks whatever rule he wants, and just gets away with it, because why not? And he was somebody that most Americans have never heard of, despite kind of rubbing shoulders with a lot of these more high profile white collar criminals and people of his ilk. And I thought he was such an interesting character, because he's everything we as Americans, and probably other people who aren't Americans, when they look at America, both love and loathe about our country. This unbridled ambition, this vision, this ability to make something out of nothing, but at the same time, kind of not really caring too much about the consequences of their action and who they leave in their wake. And you know, one of the jokes I like to make is that, if this movie was released in another country, oftentimes movies the names are changed for international release to something that might resonate with another country. I always joke that if this movie was released another country it would probably be called America Park. Because I think that tells you everything there is about Action Park. And I think Gene Mulvihill was America, he was Wall Street in 1970s and 80s, like nobody I had ever encountered.
Matthew 49:18
I think that's a very interesting point. I mean, in terms of this, it's a question I usually ask guests. You've kind of, you've already in many ways answered it. But Seth, I'll start with you. I mean, all great docs are usually about something more than their subject. So this is much more than just about an amusement park in northern New Jersey. But what do you see this film really being all about?
Seth Porges 49:44
I see it about the eternal, constant struggle with us as individuals, us as a society, between immediate gratification and yell and fun and doing what you want, and this sense of, air quotes, freedom, which is meaningless, sure, it can be whatever you want to be, versus common sense and safety and communal ideals. And Action Park was this tension in this "Lord of the Flies" deregulation era kind of writ large. It's also a story about just what it was like to grow up in the 1980s. We wanted to be real and honest about the good and the bad, and the light and the dark of growing up in that era, in a way that we don't think has really been captured. The generation X often kind of views itself, I think rightfully so, as sort of a forgotten generation. They're not, you know, their existence is sort of in the margins. And we wanted to kind of give them something that they can look back at and point to and say, this is who we are.
Matthew 50:40
Well, as a Gen Xer, I want to thank you. I think you've done it well, and I don't feel victim of like, I don't want to go victim on everyone, but yeah sometimes I do feel marginalized. I do feel like it's gone from the boomers straight to the millennials and now Generation Z or will be eventually. Chris, I think another thing that comes out of this film, and I'm gonna basically ask you the same question, but from a slightly different angle, is that I get a real sense of place in this film. And I know from your background, that you've got experience telling stories about places. Places people maybe normally don't think of, like Shreveport, Louisiana and Waco, Texas. So, is this really an ode to New Jersey in a way?
Chris Charles Scott 51:25
It's not just an ode to New Jersey, it's an ode to northern New Jersey.
Matthew 51:30
Okay, good point.
Chris Charles Scott 51:31
Which is so different than the Jersey shore or the New York area. It is a place that you don't even think that is New Jersey. When you're standing on that superspeed slide and you're looking out from that platform, and you just see these rolling hills and mountains. It does not feel like New Jersey. But what governed the town during the Gene Mulvihill years, was very much so New Jersey. The political corruption, the undertable deals, the nepotism. Northern New Jersey, while miles away from the urban scene of the lower New Jersey, was still very vulnerable to the politics and the way of political life in New Jersey, and it was not immune to that. So this is very much so. Vernon, New Jersey, Sussex County, Northern New Jersey, it is very much so a character in this place.
Matthew 52:35
I agree. Well, I've been to Morristown, I don't know how far away that is from...
Seth Porges 52:41
Not that far. 40 minutes or so.
Matthew 52:43
Okay, so it's still not quite...
Seth Porges 52:45
They woudl medivac...
Chris Charles Scott 52:46
Yeah, a lot of the major, what Seth was about to say, is a lot of the majorly injured people at Action Park was medivaced to the Morristown.
Seth Porges 52:55
Because there were no hospitals in Vernon. So you go to Morristown or you go across the state to Warwick, New York.
Matthew 53:00
Okay. And you've got the world's most dangerous amusement park in a place that doesn't have hospitals or emergency rooms. Yes, exactly, why wouldn't you? So, besides all the accolades, hopefully, some monetary remuneration? What do you ultimately hope to achieve with this film, both of you, who wants to kick that one off?
Seth Porges 53:22
I'll go first here. I want this to be seen by people. And I'm happy with that.
Matthew 53:28
Yeah. And Chris?
Chris Charles Scott 53:29
It is what is actually happening is what I wanted to happen. Like Seth said, people watching this. But also people, I mean, in this very weird and uncertain time that we're living in, to make people laugh and to look back at a time that they thought was very fun times. I like to think that we added, you know, just a moment of laughter and good reminiscing back on a time that people really enjoyed. And so, in these crazy times, I think that was very valuable.
Matthew 53:42
I think you've, personally, I think you've succeeded. I want to then ask finally what's, you're still basking in the glow of your success, but what's next for you, for the both of you?
Seth Porges 54:23
Nothing I could talk about yet, you know how that goes. But we got ideas. I got ideas. Chris?
Matthew 54:28
I'm talking to people.
Seth Porges 54:30
We got, we got meetings.
Matthew 54:32
You suddenly sound like Gene, uncle Gene, oh yeah, whatever.
Chris Charles Scott 54:35
Well, within Action Park, Seth and I realized that we have a magic in moviemaking together. The things that he brings to the table, the things that I bring to the table just work. And so yes, we are interested in continuing to collaborate together.
Seth Porges 54:54
Yeah, I found my work wife here. You know.
Matthew 54:56
I'm still searching. The thing is, it's coming from me, but one thing I will say, I watch a lot of films, a lot of documentaries for this podcast. And one thing, a pet peeve of mine is often, I've seen some excellent ones, you know, but usually go a little too long, maybe needed a little more editing. I never sensed that with this one. You know, I never looked at my watch go, oh, it's, you know...
Seth Porges 55:28
It's a tight 90.
Matthew 55:29
Yeah, it is a tight 90, I think.
Seth Porges 55:32
Not everything needs to be a 8 part series, I'll just say.
Matthew 55:35
Yeah. Or there's some hour long ones that would be perfect as hours, you know, they don't need, even going over 20 is just maybe pushing it. But you know, I think you've done a great job. So thank you for that. Hate to say, but I think we've come to the end of our time together. It's been a joy having you on the Factual America podcast, really appreciate it. I wish you all the success with this film, may it stay number one for as long as possible. And I wish you best with all your future endeavors. So to wrap up, I want to thank Seth Porges, co-director and Chris Charles Scott, co-directors of Class Action Park, HBO Max and for those not in the US or where HBO Max is unavailable, look for it with HBO Max partners in your countries. I also want to give a shout out to This Is Distorted studios in Leeds, England. And please remember to like us and share us with your friends and family wherever you happen to listen or watch podcasts. This is Factual America, signing off.
Factual America Outro 56:46
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