TLF Special Interview: Brian Penry Part 2

time we were with you. That's what put our scent on the trail of Brian because he's listed in the credits on the very first Saturday Night's Main Event as the logo designer. So we simply had to find out if he was available, and my god, did we luck out because Brian has fought Boss a font of wisdom and memories of.

If you do want to remind our listeners that Brian is going to be available, if you want to go meet him, you can check him out at gamer Con Connecticut. It's coming up with the Mohegan Sun Casino on Saturday and Sunday, March fifteenth and sixteenth. Brian will be in his own booth in the Artists Ali and he'll have signed to numbered prints of the WrestleMania logo available. So you really want to stop by and say hi to Brian, let him know you heard him on the podcast, and

check out his stuff. Just go online to ctgamercan dot com, Ctgamercon dot com for more information on the venue and the event, and Brian really looks forward to seeing everybody there. Brian, we're just getting started. It feels like after a wonderful array of stories and personalities, welcome back to the show.

involved in designing WWF's print publications. Now the magazine laid out, So give us an idea of what all a creative director does and what Vince tasked you with in these formative days.

a working proll. I was the guy doing paste uff. I wasn't even a designer when I started out, But you know, and paste up the term is run over now by everything being done on computer. So, but my role at the w w F was really all encompassing. There was that print design aspect of creative direction. And you know, there were actually billboards done at times for the w w F. It was interesting. They weren't they weren't public billboards that you would see out on the highway,

but they were. They were billboards inside of the ad agencies. It was really quite interesting. We just did all manner of kinds of things. But as you pointed out, yeah, I worked on the WF w w F magazine and on occasion I illustrated covers. You may recall it as a cover with sergeants Slaughter and a Christmas sleigh issue. That was one of my illustrations.

And then you know, sometimes I would go out and find the actual seamstress or in the instance of the of the guys at the Equestrian shop to create the details of a costume and so forth, and I art

directed photo shoots. That that was a big deal. I mean, the real prose would would would know how to pose on their own and have their own very distinctive style of of how they were posing, uh just for solo shots or in relation to other wrestlers, for promotional shots for you know, leading up to events and so forth. But it was it was really fun when when Cindy Wauper was managing Wendy Richter, things like that, I would our direct photoshoots with Cindy the guests for various WrestleManias,

including Muhammad Ali. You know, just it was fascinating that that was a really really fun period working on that. All aspects like that. But just the fact that I do illustration and I write copy. I didn't write. I wrote some of the copy for the original program, the first WrestleMania one program, but that wasn't something that I did generally that the public would see. But I would write copy for what what you would call trade brochures

that went out to other networks to potent sponsors. We did tremendous amounts of advertising in the trade so to speak, to attract advertisers, television advertisers to sponsor the shows. That kind of thing, that sort of copywriting of was in charge of.

and we can't leave that unaddressed in more detail. I mean, that's another one that endures to this day and JP that WrestleMania logo is where it's at.

is what I want the logos to look like. It's absolutely spectacular, and you've created designs that are kind of symbolic for a lot of people's childhood.

I'm behind the scenes. I knew what the product was. I understood the wrestling and the wrestling mentality, and you know, let me just talk about that for a minute, because I think, I mean, this has been said a million times before and depressed, but I don't think the core impetus that the emotion behind watching pro wrestling goes away, and some people just never really think about it. They just watch it, they love it, they get a kick

out of it. But when you think about it, it all starts with something like having a brother in law that you can't stand, like this right. The guy can't hold a job, he's a jerk, he's not very nice to your sister. Basically, you want to take him out in an alley when no one's looking to show him,

but the consequences. And then there's the boss that is just obnoxious, and no matter how hard you work, that boss will be critical and just set some sort of goal that's absurd that none of the employees can you know, rise to let alone you. So you, similarly, you want to take your boss out. You just want to haul off and slug the guy. Obviously there's consequences. You probably

wouldn't be working there much longer. And you know, so what you align with the babyface, and you confect that bad guy brother in law, boss schmuck that cut you off in traffic with a heel, and you project all your anger and your angst about these jerks in your life onto these jerks in the ring, and you just sit back and have a beer and revel in the fact that the babyface of your choice is just taking the varnish offs the guy that you can't stand. It's

so great. And here's the big mind blowing thing. This is the basis of Greek tragedies and plays. Four thousand years ago, guy in a toga figured this out. So imagine Vince in a toga.

it could just take you out with one whack. So I kept with a metallic finish that we had with the WWS logo, but I stylized it a little more. I thought, you know, it all starts with an M and a W. So the M and the W were gold, and they have these breath growing out of their tops and bottoms, so that horizontally frames the other characters in the words WrestleMania. So you know, the R through the E and the A through the A and Mania are silver,

and so there you've got the contrast. And again, you know, this photoshop was not even a glimmer in somebody's eye back at this point. And so I would pencil out very very tightly the exact dimensions and the with height, very precise proportions of the type characters, and the original this thing was maybe twenty five twenty eight inches across. It wasn't that huge, but I mean, this has to

work on a work on a drawing board. And I subcontracted an airbrush artist, phenomenally talented guy named James Kritz and Jim no longer is with us on the planet, unfortunately. But this this guy allent and his little finger than most people build up in their lifetime. I mean, he was just gifted beyond belief. And I'm just joking a little bit here. I mean, he was a great guy. But Jim would be the first to tell you that. And there was there was a joke art director, creative director.

You know, people that did what I did around Fairfield County, New York, we all would get together, so I used to blind us some associations of people that are in the same business. And the joke was, if you want to know how good Jim Kritz is, just ask Jim.

several projects building up to WrestleMania for me. But he was that kind of guy that I learned very quickly. I had given him a pretty tight deadline on something. Granted I can't remember what it was, a week, ten days or something, and this wasn't something you did, did overnight and brought back. I got what I needed two weeks later, and I had to reschedule the promotion that it was for. And you can't. You can't do that kind of thing. You can't run a business that way.

And I was I was very stern with him, to the point of just almost threatening, We're not going to do this again if you can't get this together. And I didn't go to the length of saying something like that, but I wanted to make clear that he understood. So I just sort of played a game I hate playing. I actually had a four week window to get the This wasn't the WrestleMania logo itself, but it was the cover of the WrestleMania program WrestleMania one, with Hulk and

Mister T on the cover. And there's a story right there about photographing those two. If you recall, on the inside back cover opposite page. On the left, there's a photo of Hulk and mister t with the old Twin Towers in the background. I have a story to tell about that. Just taking that photo was a feat. But the cover of that program was was all important, that that was a big deal it was. It was also used promotion prior to the show, so it wasn't just

the cover of the program. And I had I had exactly four weeks in actuality, but I told them I needed it in two, and I said, don't screw me around now. I mean, there's a lot of machine machinery and wheels turning towards this event. It's mind bogglingly complicated, and you cannot do what you did before and another gig. I need this art in hand because then I'm going to do some drybrush detailing on it, and it needs to be scanned, and it needs to be printed along

with this program. By the hundreds of thousands that we reprinted, way more programs than just for the event. They were they were sold as keepsakes and so on and so forth after the fact. So what happens at the third week. I'm biting my nails. I'm freaking out I'm like, what's going on. I'm working on it. I'm working at it, I kid you, not two days before my drop dead. And that's if nothing else goes wrong and the printing plant doesn't burn down while the thing's on press or whatever.

I just I think I started going prematurely gray when I was thirty nine. That would have been that that time, thereabouts thirty eight, something like that. I'm like this, this guy's killing me. And the trouble is he had he had done some crazy gigs. He painted murals inside the jets of Saudi Arabian chikhs. They would they would contract him to do these these Greckel Roman murals on the inside private jets and these salons, and he'd work on

these for like weeks on end months whatever. And if the guy had to go somewhere, he use another jet in the fan or whatever. You know, no problem. I'm sure you guys do the same thing like I do. You know, if someone's painting my jet, I'll use my brother. But that's the world he lived in, and he had these almost endless deadline things where he just took a sweet time, and so he wasn't very good about deadlines. But The illustration was just an utter and complete knockout.

You may recall it. I have all of one copy in my own personal files. They're hard to come by, but I'll tell you, he just he just took it right down to the bare bones. And I'd done a lot with him. I used him for one project after that where I didn't have a very tight deadline. But it just drove me crazy. He was so good, but and I appreciate all the time and effort he put into it, but it was it made the thing so damn stressful. It was. It was really really tough.

Are you describing the picture of Hulk and Mister t that's on the cover of the Coliseum video release of WRESTLINGIA one where they sort of look I don't know, how would you describe a JP kind of like bronzed.

we're talking about the same illustration. Yeah, that that was There were a few sleepless lights lights there where I was having bad dreams about running down the streets, you know, naked being chased by rabbit dot Vincent sicked on me because I blew the deadline. That was creepy and just quickly.

like kind of more of a class presentation. Like I was always taken with how Holt's hand is like present nting mister T. You know, he's not pointing at you, he's not menacing and growling and snarling. I thought that was such a cool, kind of counterintuitive way to present them for this, this this debut of WrestleMania.

Same thing with mister t He you know, this was in the A Team era, and he's he was, you know, a big deal in his own right. And he was actually a very nice guy. You know, every time you see him portrayed in character, he's he's this tough dude he was. I mean, yeah, he's a formidable character when you see him face to face. But he was just, you know, very polite and mild mattered when you you know, met him in person, and he's he's not in character. And I think it's like a quarter to four, four

point thirty something like that. In an afternoon, Vince calls down to my office says, I got Taylor. He's gonna shoot. I want you to our direct. We're going into the city. I got a hunk, I got no time. They just had to move heavy the nurse to get him in the same place at the same time. We're gonna meet down at the Empire State Building and shoot on top of the building. I said, does anybody at the Empire State Building know about this. No, just get your ass

in there. Yes, that's it. I'm like, what okay, So I just grab everything, jump in my car, drive down to the city. Thank god, we actually had the infancy of cell phones then barely so anyway, Actually, no, I think I got yeah, I think I think they got my first I had. I had an in car cel phone. I think that was that. I got that. Yeah. I don't think we did have a phone. It was just it was mayhem.

going up. Wow, guy's got a six inch grin. All of a sudden, everybody piles into the elevator, the camera crew. It's just it's just insane.

are and they'll look at each other. So we have to go up another flight and thee there and we're actually on top of the freaking building. And you know, you see microwave dishes and that kind of stuff all over the place, and they've been around for decades, but you can't really safely stand next to these things. They can fry your gonads.

things when they're alive. It was just the weirdest deal. And Nelson his guys, they shot very brief video footage and I came up with this. I can't remember what the exact wording was, but the headline on the photo was the oh yeah, it was the Twin Towers, I mean, referring to mister T and Hulk with the World Trade Center in the background. The spoof being that the World Trade Center was known as the Twin Towers, but in this case the twins were the boys, so that that

was the caption on the photo in the program. But just capturing that photo was a matter of paying off all this all this, you know, elevator operator and security personnel in the building, and Vince did what he had to do. But but it was between that and just the fact that these guys were so enamored that mister T and Hulk were actually there and they were they were making this possible. But the hundred dollars uh, you know payoff was just sort of like icing on the cake.

They were just enjoying being there and meeting these guys. So it was fascinating. But it's a real name fighter because I just said, man, if we don't get this shot, what are we gonna do. We're gonna have to go to the Syde text machine and guys and you know, with a stock photo or something. It's just this this was this this kind of last minute crazy, you know, do or die approach to doing things was just garby gur It was you know, a given. It was how

things are done. You know, you got with a program and became part of it and went along with it and made it happen, or you get off the train.

These are actual people, actual, really big people. And you know, I mean but that that was just so sensational. That but between Vince cajoling people with a couple of bucks here in there, and just the fact that he had these guys in tow and you could just you know, see them right there or they shake your hand, you know whatever. It was just mind blowing and people people would just pitch in and make it work no matter what. It was wild. And that reminds me the first time

meeting Hulk. You know, I'm I don't know, I'm about five five ten, five ten and a half something like that. I'm not a huge guy, but I'm not little guy. But you know, the first time I met Hulk and we shook hands, his grip grabs it's like halfway up my forearm.

of these guys came from nothing. They grew up in a trailer park. They you know, they barely scratched a living together doing some kind of bront work or everything from being a lumberjack to a truck driver to uh, you know whatever. Uh, I'm not knocking that one bit. You know, their they're you know, salt of the earth guys. Andre on the other hand, he was born to a very very wealthy family and you can find a lot online that they were farmers. Somebody threw in a lot

of crap to uh tone that down. His family raises the French equivalent of the finest race horses in this country that you're you're you're going to find at the Belmont.

an oddity of a sort. They're not normal like you and me. These are big people, and they're people that are still despite their girth and their height and their weight, they're still agile. They're able to do things that most people couldn't do if they worked out twenty four to seven. They're amazing people, they really are. And Andre suffered from gigantism. Everybody knows this. He had oversized organs and that's what ultimately took his life. It's very sad. He had a

very very serious medical condition. And he knew he was an oddity. That's the thing. He knew. He was a really strange guy to most people. And he was curious about the audience's curiosity is intellectual in a way, and he was sort of fascinated by the fact that he was fascinating the other pe and he got in the ring to just sort of see to peer out from the ring out at everyone else. I mean, think about that. It's kind of it's kind of wacky. It's interesting, you know.

And I'll tell you the boys are are not a bunch of choir boys. Let's put it that way, okay. I mean, it's not unusual to find some of the guys down on an Eleventh Avenue bar in Lower Manhattan banging the crap out of each other. Now, the same thing can be said about major Major League ballplayers. They're a rowdy crowd, A lot of them, not all of them,

but a lot of them. And Andre, on the other hand, Vince would would would throw these very elaborate parties for the employees of the w W. He and Lunda were very very good about showing their appreciation for their employees and I mean by the staff people that Bob McMullen's of the world, and you know, they on occasion, sometimes annually for a while there would throw a party at the Rainbow Room in New York, a very swanky place on the on the top of the city, many flights up,

and they'd have this big swanky dinner in a ballroom with an MC and a band, a live band in an orchestra, and just like crazy stuff. And it was it was sort of like high society out of the nineteen thirties or something. It was really something that everybody would be dressed up and sometimes it was black tie, and you know, you really couldn't expect the boys to be into this stuff, but he'd could joel a few of the heavy hitters to show up, you know now

and be part of the festivities. And Andre came to some of these, and but he had like this little private bar area at the Rainbow Room where they knew him, and they had a special goblet for him that was like ten or twelve inches across and fourteen inches high. I mean, this is like a wineglass on steroids. And he drank nothing but chitola feet the rothschild four hundred bucks or whatever a bottle. It took a bottle to fill the goblin, and he would have six or seven

or eight goblets in the course of a night. I mean, Ziz Louise. Most people they're hard for used to drink a bottle of wine and stand up at the same time. Yeah, this guy was a big dude, and he had a capacity for alcohol make a tanker truck look lame. He just it was utterly amazing. But he was just very gentlemanly, very composed, very you know, he wasn't rude and boisterous. It just wasn't his thing. He actually owned a three star I mean like Michelman Star restaurant in Montreal.

necessarily I just hang out. I would just wind up and go in and sit next to Andre and shoot the ship with that.

or two in between the have a photo shoot. Well, we don't even need that long, but you know, you have to set up a backdrop and lights and what have you. And Steve didn't have anybody being a roadie for him or anything, you know. I just helped him put his lights up. And basically we were in some rented space in Stamford that wasn't really formally a WWF office, but there wasn't. The place was just crammed whatever office

space they had, it was just clerical stuff. We found a storeroom on a parking level under this building that was relatively empty enough. We found a couple outlets we could set up Steve's lights and power pack and everything for his camera, and set up a backdrop and do a quick and dirty photo shoot with Andrea for a few shots. This is for the magazine or something I can't even recall, but so Andre just you know, sitting

on a stool. The stool's howling and pain. I'm joking, but you know, all of a sudden, Steve and I it's a sound like like a six foot wide water main, that's correct, and this gush of liquid like thousands of gallons pouring through it a hour or something, but there's nothing going on, and we're looking at for the sea. It's not coming from the ceil, and we're looking sideways,

it's not coming sideways, What the hell? And then there's this banging, like like you're in a steel mill and and some guy's banging on the side of a caldron with a sledgehammer, like that's what the hell, and another just like me and I were like what, And that's his gut. That's like some crap going up, you know, he's hosting a steel convention or something in his stomach, and it's just I've never heard anything like that before or since in my life come out I kind of

out of anything, never mind a human being. But this, this guy's gastric system was was like a cave full of steel smelting equipment or something. I mean, it was just bizarre, totally bizarre. And Steve and I were just like like speechless, like humans can't make sounds like that, right, And Andre is just like completely unfazed. He just had sort of like this sleepy look. I think he was like dog tired. He was just catnapping on cars and planes between gigs, and He's just like, oh, big deal,

you know. But we were we were just fascinated I mean, you know, I wanted to. I wanted to you know, alert the Scientific Press or something and right investigation, you know, like you have six stomachs and they're made of steel or so. I don't know. It was just weird.

by Vince unbelievable. So tell us about I mean, that is just like a oh my god, that's like a tapestry.

different wrestling events around the country. Whatever the ticket was, they weren't going to disturb the flow of events for wrestling fans. So whenever people were in New York for a show, or close by, say Poughkeepsie, New York, where a lot of taping used to be done, we'd send a driver and get him in town. So some of these people were actually shot in the studio room, and it was also done around the time that the studio was booked for different recordings, so it was a major

feat to put this thing together. It took and this was all done on this side text machine, so I can't even begin to tell you how many hours went

into creating this image. But a few of the wrestlers were actually shot in the room, but we had to map out where they were going to be and sort of roughly gauge where they would be, what their stance would be, what their proximity to the camera would be, so that when it was all put together electronically, which even now this day and age in photoshops, this would be a monster taking to try to do. But it was. It was utterly mind blowing the amount of time and resources that creating this image.

right behind him holding the mic. You know, the Killer Bees, Randy Savage, you could pick out your your favorite you know, wrestler manager whoever throughout some of the some of the funnier things to me are the uh the gal on the trumpet at the far left, that was a makeup artist and an old girl of mine, old girlfriend.

to sort up my flat files I I have. I have tons of samples of things that I worked on in these flat.

so he was behind that band. I mean, it's just this is like a time machine looking at this because it h I mean, just because the Hit Factory is such a cool place and and sort of the home of of some phenomenal rock. I mean, it's it's just it's a little bit of musical history and and uh and a lot of w w F history. But the way that the way that album cover came together was was just a mountain of work, absolute mountain of work.

But it was a fun project, you know, I don't I wouldn't call it one of the greatest pieces of music I ever put together, you know. Yeah, And I'm think they were aiming for that either. It was just a fun thing.

And I was looking around in it and it is I was trying to establish where I was. I remember where I was standing, you know, in respect to going back to the dressing rooms and so forth. And it's just a weird feeling to see that photo capture that whole moment and know that you were you were there. Yeah, it's hard, it's hard to explain, but I mean it

was I mean it was so exhausting. I think every everybody, including Vince Helen it probably slept for twenty four hours solid or longer after everyone was just fried to a crisp.

It was it was seen over and over again by millions more. But the show almost didn't go on, as they say, due to a technical glitch.

aimed at their researching outer space. I mean, they just they have gazillions of these birds end up at the sky their various satellites to take signals up and beat them down to cable networks all over the world. And ESPN was in its relative infancy then, but they were

really aces at satellite technology. And it was suggested that Vince not get one bird or two birds, but three birds, so he had redundancy so that if the first two went down for any reason, and sometimes their meteorological conditions or weather conditions can mess with satellite signals, and so he decided to get six birds. And even Nelson, who's like Nelson Schwiegeler, was the un staffed TV hauncho who had been in the business and knew his way around,

and he just ad vinced, it's overkilled. You don't need six birds. And these things weren't cheap either to rent. And these are big boys. These are big, big, like twenty five thirty foot dishes of mounted on the backs of trucks and they're all lined up outside of Madison Square Garden and lo and behold. Bird number one went down, Bird number two went down, and bird number three went down.

Oh my god, foorth bird carried the show and ad Vince listened to you know, all the prodigal sons and the and the stock advice and you know the conservative Oh you don't need that, you need this. It wouldn't have happened. It wouldn't have gone. It would have been a disaster, and people who'd prepaid for this, they'd want their money back. It could just could have been a

financial whole bigger than Vesuvius. And you know, I think he, I think, for all his uh propensity for you know, doing things on a fly and crazy notions and doing things anesthetical to how there's quote unquote supposed to be done, he was sure enough to know that he couldn't risk not pulling the trigger on this all the way for one second and getting those six getting sick birth was was a big expensive undertaking. But it's safe day, and it's a it's a really interesting deal. You know, you

don't think about stuff like that. The public would never know about it in a million years, But I think back on it, I think that that you know, it would have people would have just made jokes about the whole thing and say, yeah they did. They talked a big blue streak, and they didn't pull it off. It probably never would have happened again. And here it's happening over forty years later. It's an annual event, and it's worldwide now, and you just think of everything riding on that.

I don't think Vincent his wildest imagination, thought it would get as big and as broad globally.

think of that. They don't equate pay per view with on demand. Is they're just two different names for virtually the same thing. And he pioneered it. They're actually people who explored it before him for boxing. But no, we

are near on that scale. And I kind of take my hat off to the fact that as much as we bitch and moan about our cable bills, we wouldn't even have cabbills if he hadn't you know, pushed this when he did, And I mean, what it really did was spur the industry to realize the possibilities and start

investing in it. Because to have what everyone has across the country in the way of channels and choices, no matter how much they complain about it at times, that took that probably more than a trillion dollars of investmental hold easily to get it where it's where it is today,

in fiber optics, in satellite technology, you name it. And I'm not saying that WrestleMania is responsible for that, But what I'm saying is taking the chance to pioneer something that had never been done before, never mind on that scale, is what spurred people to think about the possibilities and go out there and actually do it and convince banks, big banks, huge banks to bankroll that kind of research and development and get it out and make it actually viable.

Huge You know, you don't think of somebody like Vince McMahon having influenced and created the interest in a growth industry that was back then just people were like, what what are you talking about? Paper? What? Yeah, I mean this was so new and now and now we all come home from work, whatever we're doing, you know, we're at the gym, whatever, we throw on a sports game, whatever, it's second nature. We don't even think about it. We just make the choice and it's there. But it's all there.

And the money was invested to make cable and streaming possible, spurred on by that event. It's think thing that you know, consider in that in that bigger framework.

graduated from Bridgeport University. Her name is w Sir Gallis, and she I hired her and she was green right out of quick study night, really nice young gal, and she became not not a creative director, but the head of the art department, sort of ad hoc because when I left there was she was really the next person.

She was still in the process of learning on the job, but she took the mains and a few years later she called me back in the early nineties and she wanted me to kick around Well, I actually no, it's even later than that. It was, Yeah, it was she

wanted to kick around ideas for WrestleMania two thousand. This is about a year in advance, and so they hired me to just you know, they didn't use one of my designs, but they hired me to just submit some concepts and I got far and away from my own original. It was kind of funny. I went off on some crazy tangents with it. Was like a Salvador DOLLI and I went whack up. I had some fun with it, and they didn't do it. I mean they I think they enjoyed them, but they just decided, let's just keep

mutating the same basic character forms. And I think that was actually ultimately smart. I mean they, you know, they paid me for my concepts, and that that's fine. I wasn't. You can't have an ego about this stuff. Just the gig, you know, and so you if you're a baseball player, you win games, you lose games, you keep playing. So I didn't. I didn't take offense to it or anything. I just you know, but it was it was interesting.

I had. I did have an opportunity to kind of you know, direct it a few years later, but but I'm really kind of glad they didn't go with one of those, because they just sort of kept the main theme and just kept tweaking it. So it's kind of cool.

had been at the office. Vince decided to ride down to the gardens with Hulk and his limo so they could chat up out some stuff. And he came off and he said, would you mind driving my car in town? You just leave it at the guards and I'll have a limo driver bring it, bring it back. And I said sure, and I got no big deal. And I had to drop something off in an ad agency that we were working with in Midtown and he had this Lincoln. He had this. I've never seen anything like it. It

wasn't it wasn't a lime green. It wasn't dark British racing green. It was like this loud, like Irish spring, bright in your face, green, metallic and I I always draw at the time. I you know, a smaller car like my BMW, but you know, and I wasn't used to driving a car like this. This is a big, big, wide, long Lincoln. And uh it's okay. It was it was I thought would be fun. So I uh, I'm driving on the West Side Highway. If anybody knows, you know

you're you're getting in and out of New York. There's there's basically two ways. You know, You're either on the east side or on the west side. I'm coming on the West Side Highway and he's got his headlights programmed to high beams keep people to get out of the way. I mean, the minute it sends, it's a car at a certain distance, it's beaming them and I'm feeling like, oh man, I must be one of those drivers that

people hate, you know. And I'm trying to turn it off and I can't figure out how to turn it off, and people are all moving over in the middle way and I'm in the left lane and I'm like, okay, everyone thinks I'm obnoxious. I'm trying to not be obnoxious. And anyway, so it's it was just a weird, weird ordeal and totally different feel. I mean, it's plush. It's like driving a caddy or something that was weird. And so I had to go into Midtown and you know,

the traffic in midtown Manhattan, I mean, forget it. You got the nerves of steel. And my wife jokes that, you know, I'm I'm a camel driver. She calls me, like, you know, typical uh, you know, yellow cab driver in the city's honking and running everyone off there. I said, that's how you drive. You're a camel driver. And I said, no,

I'm not. But anyway, I mean I was driving in midtown that was not a problem and driving his car once I got used to it, and for some reason when I'm off the highway, it's not doing the high being things. Thank god for that, because I didn't want some guy to get out of his car and come back and you know, hit the glenshield with a wrench or something. So I do what I have to do. I dropped this thing out at this agency. I had to go in a car park, get out of the

car park. And I'm in midtown Manhattan, and this is the era. And some people who have not lived in a city or may not even know what the term means, but this was the era of the squeegeye man.

But they would stand on a busy corner, get in people's faces, get in their way, in front of the car, even when there's a green light, and make a big deal of wanting to clean their windshield, or they just start cleaning their windshield without permission and demand payment, you know,

a buck, five bucks, whatever. Some people really made it worse because they fed the situation and they were pussies about it, and they just succumbed, roll down the window and give the guy of five or ten or whatever then the wallet just to make him go away and don't don't even touch my winshell, just here's the money. Go away. And that made it worse. That made him

come out of the woodwork like broaches. So you've got these squeegee guys all over the city, and some of them got really militant, like the guy that accosted me. So I'm pulling up to the Avenue of America's, which

I think is also six stave. It's either six or seventh I can remember, but duel, Yeah, six Staves slash Avenue of America, same street, so's it's basically going northbound, only it's one way, and I'm stopped at a light in the fifties and the cross streets, and I'm going towards the west side to go downtown a little bit to drop the car off at the gardens for Vince. And this squeegeye man probably the most enterprising of the

wall to put it that way. A light's out of nowhere and he's leaning over the front windshield and he has his spray cam with the cleaner and the squeegee gripped in one hand, and then the other hand he has a can of orange spray paint. You could see it all globbed up on the kno and he yells to me, what will it be? And I'm thinking to myself, I am so screwed. I'm gonna wind up driving into the gardens and all the personnel there are just gonna

be laughing. Oh look here's Vince scar. That poor sucker's got a lot of explaining to do because there's a big, like, you know, spray painted orange blobble over the front or the hood or the wing shield or the door whatever. I'm thinking, I am so screwed. What am I gonna do? And this guy's just like like hovering there, Well will it be? And so I showed him what it is gonna be. I did something I've never done in my life and I'll never do again. I can't believe I

did it. Then I just very gently opened the door and I could see the light it was. It went yellow, and then I said, okay, this is my chance. And the traffic down Avenue of Americas was light. I opened the door and I just bumped the guy and he fell backwards and the light.

references to the end of your tenure. You know, it's basically eighty four to eighty seven, and let's conclude with why you decided to leave the WWF.

drew the line between the two. But as long as the WWF deadlines were done, I was back on my own accounts, which was mostly broadcasting related, and I just thought, you know, there there were a couple of things going on that I just I don't know, not to be overly moral about it, but you know, you remember the foam hand, the big the Indix finger up experimented for a while with that with a foam hand that's flipping it off. And I saw a show, you know, these

little kids, seven eight year old kids. Daddy gave me a foam hand. I mean, bad taste as a parent. You buy one of those flip off hands and your kids wearing it, and it just it really galled me because that was stopping being family entertainment. I just was a departure from the norm. They didn't need. It just kind of bugged me and I don't know that that had Vince's stamp of approval on it at all. That's not what I'm saying. But there was a loose about it,

and there was some other things. I don't really want to go in a great detail really at all, but I mean there there was. They're not not across the boards by any stretch of the imagination, but there were instances of some substance abuse.

I just missed being my own man. I mean, even though technically I was, but I was married at that place. It was all consuming and I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong, but I just yeah, I just had a kind of wanderlust that I knew. Infinity was going a mile a minute and eventually became part of it was actually the bigger part of CBS Radio when CBS acquired them, and then they were swallowed by Viacoms. It was CBS slash Infinity slash Viacom, and thankfully I was invited along

for the ride. I kept working for those companies and that was huge, and that was and along the way after that, I designed the style guide for Sonic, the Hedgehog and the Buckles and that that that. So I've had a big hand in the gaming world with that stuff. And that never would have happened if I hadn't freedom my time, and I just decided, you know, it's time to move on. And I had some differences with Vince.

You know, he's a funny guy. He would sometimes he would just put you on the spot and say something that was a little derogatory or you know, he had sort of juvenile humor side to it. Sometimes he was usually okay, but sometimes he would just make a dig or totally uncalled for a comment, to just see how you react, and really pushed my button one time. I just wanted to just say shove it and walk out

the door. But when you have a four hundred pound custom made drawing board you walk out the door and a ton of computer equipment. So I said, yeah, I just I bit my lip. But then I decided a couple of weeks later, I said, you know, it's always risky. I'm not gonna I'm not going to have the cushy guarantee that I that I have what they're paying me here, but I'm going to take a flyer and go back on my own. And I did, all right. I worked my tail off, and that's been my nature all along.

But I went back out on my own, and all kinds of things happened. This stuff I just mentioned, and some other opportunities I wouldn't have got if I if I had been breathing that, you know, twenty four to seven, living and breathing it the way I had been for four years. And I enjoyed it. And Vince was very upset. He was just, oh boy, you know, he he hires

you for life. That's that's uh. You know, he really wants to feel that, you know, you've joined a family, and I did feel that bond and I respected it. But I'm just I just had the drive to want to go back and be you know, you know, responsible for my own everything. And Linda was very, very gracious, very She's a great lady, very professional, and no hard feelings there. And she actually soon thereafter I got married, she invited my wife and I down for a party

they gave. They built this phenomenally. I mean, it was just you can't even call it in the state. It was like a country club that was turned into a house. It was just amazing, and they invited us down to this party and it was like a black tie thing. It was a big deal. And Vince just he kind of glanced my way. You know, we never spoke. I just think he just never let me off the hook. He couldn't forgive the fact that I wanted to do my own thing again. And it's unfortunate, but you know,

I stayed friends with everyone there. I made some wonderful friends there, and life goes on. You know, you can't win them all, but.

from his employees. So you must have left a slightly different Vince than you met having those cocktails in the seventies.

and his dad wasn't easily giving up reins. His father was all about the small venues down south, the beer halls, the classic old you know in the shadows, wrestling, the guys, gigging themselves, the whole bit. And Vince just said, it's a bigger world than that and we can take advantage of it. And his dad just didn't quite see it the way Vince did. And Linda, very brilliantly, I think is the reason that Vince succeeded so well, because she just said, don't ever sign another check. That's where we

got in trouble. Leave the books to me. I will take care of the books. She hired Bob McMullen, and everything changed, Everything changed, and She really really strategized the the you know, the greedy details of the business details. Not Vince. He had the creative hand, he had the eye for what would work creatively, and I give them credit for that, but what really put things to the test and made them work financially was Linda's oversight. So in that sense, they're a great pairing.

these days, I'm still doing logos. I do a lot of web development, but I'm back recording songs of my own composition, music and lyrics. And for anyone who's a music fan wants to check them out, just go to

my name Brianpenry dot com and that's my music. So I work with a company based in London that specializes in sync licensing, which is music for TV and film, and they're representing me to companies like Netflix and HBO to create soundtracks and theme music for for shows and that that's what I'm I'm trying to do and nothing's really resulted of any mentioned. Yeah, that's that's meaningful in terms of the kind of stuff I worked on graphically,

but I'm but I'm trying excellent. So yeah, that's what life's all about now. And I raised two wonderful kids who are I can't call them kids anymore. There the early thirties and I just it's like, wow, I still think of them when they were old tadpoles and I just left it YEF so life's good, life is good.

and sixteenth. Find his own booth in the artist's alley. He'll have signed and numbered limited edition prints of the original WrestleMania logo. Very cool.