Volume 2, No. 12. June 28, 2002
Bottoms'
up
You
would have thought President George W. Bush had entered the Golden Bear Amphitheater
at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California. The cheers for the man
stepping into the spotlight June 16 were loud and long. And if you had thought
the president had graced the stage that Sunday evening, you would not have been
entirely wrong; Timothy Bottoms’ most recent role was playing the U.S.
president on the Comedy Central series That’s My Bush!
The
sustained ovation for Bottoms, however, came from an audience of coaster enthusiasts
cheering the actor who played the extortionist in the film Rollercoaster.
That 1977 thriller helped spawn the American Coaster Enthusiasts when, as a
publicity stunt, the film’s producers organized a coaster-riding marathon
at Kings Dominion in Doswell, Virginia, one of the film’s settings. Three
of the marathoners —Richard Munch, Roy Brashears and Paul Greenwald—decided
to start the club, which now has a membership of 8,000.
Kicking
off an 18-month celebration of ACE’s 25th anniversary, the club launched
its 25th annual coaster convention with a panel discussion featuring some of
the talent that produced Rollercoaster. Seated on the amphitheater stage
just yards down the midway from the Revolution where the movie’s
climactic scenes took place were scriptwriter William Link, cinematographer
David M. Walsh, designer Henry Bumstead, the wife of producer Jennings Lang,
Monica Lewis Lang, who had a small role in the movie as a tourist at Magic Mountain,
and Bottoms, along with Munch and moderator Alan Jay Glueckman. Afterward, the
audience moved to the Magic Moments Theater for a screening of Rollercoaster
in Sensurround.
For the occasion ACE auctioned off a ride with Bottoms on Revolution, his first time on the coaster since he was filmed riding it 25 years ago. “I rode it a lot 25 years ago,” said the actor who then and now harbors a fear of coasters. But with bon vivant he took the front seat with Richard Hatem, a scriptwriter from Pasadena whose credits include The Mothman Prophecies. Hatem bid $675 for the right to the ride, fulfilling what he said was a dream. “I’m completely obsessed with Rollercoaster because that’s what inspired me to go into scriptwriting,” Hatem said. “I learned a lot about structure and character from that movie.”
On this night Bottoms learned that he has an ardent fan base among coaster lovers. “It fed my ego,” he said of the reception he received in the amphitheater. “On Bush I got fed pretty good, but this is really cool."
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