I somehow feel it’s bad etiquette to go on about the brilliant holiday I had in LA this year. So I won’t talk about the brilliant Warner Bros. Studio Tour I went on, visiting Vasquez aka Star Trek Rocks, or eating at the oldest McDonald’s in the world. Look, the last one is exciting to me, leave me alone.
I also spent a day at Universal Studios Hollywood, the best part of which me was my second studio tour of the week, with a highlight being a look around the beautiful set for upcoming comedy St. Denis Medical. Walking from a soundstage into a completely realistic four-wall set will never cease to be a magical thing.
But it wasn’t the most magical thing I saw that day.
The actual theme park section of Universal I found less interesting; the “action sequences” you get on the tour in your tram are brilliant, but more than enough for me. I certainly didn’t bother going on The Mummy or Transformers rides, and nothing I have read about them since makes me wish I’d tried them. So while it was interesting to see the ongoing construction of the new Fast & Furious rollercoaster, due to open in 2026, I know I will never actually ride the damn thing.
As we walked past the construction site, there was a construction worker standing there, in full uniform. He looked vaguely annoyed. And he was holding up a sign.
I AM HOLDING UP THIS WALL WITH MY BARE HANDS
We walked past him again later on. This time, his sign read:
DON’T READ THIS
And checking on Twitter, his sign has also been known to say:
SUPER SECRET BLUEPRINT
Universal Studios literally paid someone to stand around all day outside a construction site, holding up stupid signs.
In a park where show business is the name of the game – where even a studio tour gets a couple of mini thrill-rides thrown in – this strikes me as the most brilliant showbiz touch of all. To take a necessary evil – an ugly construction site in the middle of your theme park – and turn it into something funny, is everything I love about entertainment.
And like all the best showbiz touches, the fun is in the scale. It’s in paying someone to stand there all day, purely in the service of a joke. Of all the jobs that need to be done every hour of every day at that park… somebody knows that it’s also deeply important to give somebody the silliest job in the world.
Just to add that tiny bit of extra magic. Because without that magic, entertainment is nothing.
A version of this post was first published in the October issue of my newsletter.