(upbeat orchestral band music) - [Announcer] The following is a stereo presentation of WYES-TV, New Orleans.

(bright, upbeat orchestral band music) (people celebrating) - [Eunice] The night parades with the smoke from these gas lights, make you think of something that's coming out of a fog.

Something that's coming to you out of a fog.

It makes you look at it as something out of a fantasy, like a store, you know... Something that you imagined, you have to imagine, you have to conjure up.

(upbeat drum band music) - [Narrator] As if by Pandora herself unloosed, dreams and fancies soar, rushing outward, and upward.

Each time the watchers gaze is lost in fog, and mist and clouds.

- [Mike S.] Sometimes a string of cumulus clouds on the horizon look like a Mardi Gras parade.

And I think the shapes are based on some idea of that, round, nebulous things, rolling, floating down the street, right?

So there you are.

Chicken, barge, fish head, you can see things in clouds.

You can see shapes, and faces and bodies in clouds.

- [Narrator] Frost might agree that you could do worse than be a watcher of clouds.

For a very long time now in dens different only perhaps in location and material, metal buildings replacing brick, artists, and craftsmen and dreamers have worked year round to give shape and form to the visions of generations of cloud watchers and Birch swingers.

- These are really old floats.

And what I'm doing now is repairing the side that was damaged while it paraded last year.

And what I did was tore off all the old cloth, and paint and wood, and put some wood slats running across here all the way along this side, you can see.

And I put up some big pieces of cardboard, and tacked it on there.

And what I'm gonna do now is to make a solid, paintable surface, I have to cloth.

And this is regular muslin cloth, canvas cloth.

Of course, a lot of people don't really realize that it takes a lot of pretty tedious work that goes into these floats.

They have to be repaired, and whited out first, and then they have to be laid out by an artist.

Then they have to be painted basic colors, and then they have to be detailed by an artist.

And of course, while all that's going on the props have to be sculpted.

And of course, all of the flowers and so forth.

A lot of embellishments are gonna go on this parade.

- It's the entire process.

You can't really slack on one.

You have to really thoroughly do each job as it takes place.

From the most simplest point of just coming up with a theme and getting the design straightened out.

To the repair work that has to be done, from the damage each year that they come back in, kicked in, smashed.

But sometimes just also due to age some are - This is just paint.

- much more - Latex paint.

- prone to age abuse than others, and so we have to go inside internally.

It's not like any kind of carpentry you've ever seen before.

- [Narrator] It's magic, that's why.

Art, craft and magic.

(machine whirs) - See is the float facing the opposite way.

Again, this is the picture of the float on the other side.

What I'm doing is I'm reversing everything from the back to the front.

I have to mark everything just like coloring books, paint by numbers.

You have to mark everything, so when it comes back to the basic colors, there won't be any problems.

And we know exactly what color goes where.

- [Narrator] That swan Raymond is blocking out is one of Comus' feathered fantasies from the '88 parade.

That was Henri Schindler's first year as a full-fledged float builder.

And he eagerly anticipated completion of his modern day triumphal procession.

- [Mike L.] They have lots of good painting, well-made figures and an enormous amount of paper flowers, and leaves and dimensional decor.

All of what should produce the most handsome effect, because everything will be shaking, and moving in the night sky.

- [Narrator] The owl was built by a direct buildup method.

So were most of the others in Comus' flock as I'll show you later.

The completed bar relief then permitted liftoffs of two additional figures.

- This is my peacock.

More or less, it's the prototype.

I figured, well, if I can do them in clay, I can do them in mache.

I figured I'd build it sort of like nature builds it, you know, one feather at a time.

And this is the real thing, or I hope it looks like the real thing, anyway.

(sighs) This again, is this cardboard process.

I built it very much the same way that I built my model.

Which is I started from the ground up.

And then one piece at a time I've gone over, and I've begun to lay in the feathers, and the different parts of the wings.

And when I'm doing something like this, I try to make ribs at first, like the rib cage of a bird.

First, the cardboard goes up, and then once you get your basic shape, this sort of stuff goes up.

It's called tag board.

It's like a thick paper.

Then after the tag board, we use kind of a heavy papier-mâché.

It's like putting a skin on the piece.

And then after that's done, it's gradually a process of getting it smoother and smoother, until eventually you put on plain old wheat paste, and papier-mâché, and get your really fine lines.

This is an eagle that I'm working on now.

It's hard to tell because he doesn't have his wings on, but they're coming on after.

That's why this part is cut here.

His massive wings are coming on.

- [Narrator] Whether by chance or perhaps, so that Janice might keep a watchful eye, the Momus/Proteus den is located directly opposite the Comus den.

- That we have to deal with the fact that these are night parades.

And in order to make them really visible, and striking on the street at night the colors have to be as intense as possible.

The contrast and value changes also have to be as intense.

The complimentary colors that you can make collide, and really vibrate really gives us the look of it that I think stands us apart from the other companies that produce Mardi Gras floats.

This is the working drawing.

This aids in the construction of the float.

It's not something we strictly follow line for line, or anything like that.

It gives us an idea conceptually, but we're gonna paint on the float.

We're not so frozen to a structured drawing as maybe the other crews are.

I don't know what their method is.

- [Narrator] That's Momus he's talking about now.

Momus has been topical and satirical since 1977.

You remember, when Pandemonium Unveiled, recall the 1877 great satire, Hades - A Dream of Momus.

- Upon what we do.

As painters we try to have fun, and just go as crazy, and wild, and fun, and colorful as we can.

And with these two parades that we do here, I think that they allow us much more representation of room as painters to put that on the floats, to have more fun painting.

And so it's not just a painting of a patternized design like wallpaper, or something.

- We've tried to go back to the old traditions of float building.

And instead of just doing patterns and shapes with large props on it, we're introducing the old fashioned artwork.

And our floats are more like paintings.

And we want Proteus, and Momus, and these old organizations to look like they did in the old days.

Which I'm not saying it's right for all organizations, but I think it's right for the original ones.

Which this organization is one of.

This year, gentlemen, for our Proteus theme, we have stayed in the history of New Orleans and Louisiana.

And continuing in that vein we have picked a theme famous first, and noteworthy second.

- [Narrator] The theme is always the decision of the captain.

Float designers and builders will offer suggestions, however, do research and report to crew members.

- An interesting sidelight that people don't know is that ice was not introduced into this part of the world until 1826.

By sailing ship, it was imported from Maine, cut from frozen streams.

- [Narrator] I saw on the news just last week that glacial ice is being harvested, and imported from Alaska 164 years later.

- It came to be accepted, they in 1868, built the first ice manufacturing plant in the United States.

- As we finish a float in regards to its painting, we then try to think about what props might help amend the shape, or create, have some more fun, something that might shake in compliment to the paint job that's there.

So in the case of the ice house float we decided to make some ice cubes have them come tumbling off in front of the float.

These aren't our primary props, these are what I would call secondary, auxiliary just to add to, and amend the shapes of the floats.

Give an accent of the themes there.

- I like to give a little bit- - [Narrator] Back at Comus now, Raul has been commissioned to built three birds, or props.

He is using molds and casting rather than the direct build up technique.

- So we put clay and amateur model, make a model, make the sculpture by clay.

Like you see here, when this is finished in clay, we put the plastic, we take a mold in plastic.

Paris plaster, the people call it.

When we have the mold ready, in the mold we put papier-mâché.

It's a long process.

But it's a very, very interesting technique, because we produce something strong, and light, and very good finish, it's smooth.

You can see the match.

This is big enough.

I can show you.

Okay, you see this is light.

- I can take that.

- Want to carry this, Jeff?

- I can do that.

- Yup.

(people murmuring) - [Raul] We try to be on time, we need to be in schedule with the production.

We need to work with the budget, too.

I mean the budget is very important.

Because if we have a very big budget, we can make a fantastic thing, we take the time.

But sometime we need to try to make quick enough to be in proportion with the budget.

- Up further, fan it more, pick it up here.

Also, use this royal blue to pop-out the sky blue.

- It was the people who paint the floats and the figures, and the sculptors who also, who build the figures, and the people who make the flowers and the decorations are the float artists.

I think historically the term designer meant the person who conceived, and designed, and drew, illustrated the parade.

And the float builder was the person who oversaw the building of that parade.

Some of these lines have become blurred.

I'm for instance, have seen myself referred to as the float designer.

In many cases, they are my concepts.

I do not do the illustrations, however.

I work and have worked for 15 years with the person who does those.

Whether or not that makes me the designer, or the consultant, or the the builder is immaterial to me.

Many of these are my concepts.

Go back.

(chuckles) Okay, come on.

About right here.

So this whole arch is gonna be hanging with leaves and the trumpet flowers, the daturas.

Paul's been making these palmettos.

He's also working on some seven and nine foot cat tails.

But for the time being, you can get some idea of just from this one, how this is gonna go.

It's gonna be attached up here.

(float pieces scraping) And he's made several dozen smaller ones.

I thought I had one back here.

Let me get one for you.

There are a few dozen of these, which are going to go all along this edge.

Then on top of the float hanging down.

It's gonna be covered.

It's gonna be wonderful.

- Okay, last time you saw the eagle- - [Narrator] That was about a month and a half ago.

- He had a torso and a head.

And since then I've added on wings, real big, elaborate fancy wings, I like real fancy wings.

And a tail, and big nasty kind of eagle claws, and a little sceptre.

Since he's going on a Roman style float, we gave him a Roman style sceptre to sit on.

- [Narrator] It's now just four months until Comus rolls.

- Okay, we've had several changes with these lotus blossoms.

They're quite large.

And first I've had to get the centers just right.

This is the third variation of what should be the center of these.

Because of the size of these flowers the original design, which called for painted flowers on the apron of the float, is going to be changed.

The painted blossoms are just not in the same dimension as the larger ones.

So we're going to wipe this out, and paint the bottom as water.

- Fill in the spots, it's gonna make it look like a pond, but in a soft, fluid kind of way.

Not rough, you know we want it to look soft.

Let's see if I can get that effect for you.

The smallest brush I use when I'm painting a float, won't even match as big a brush I've ever used in painting on canvas.

There's a big adjustment to make painting with a brush so big, it began what.

No, it not realistic.

(laughs) A lot of guys in the business like that.

You don't really see things that there are in Mardi Gras.

There's a lot of make-believe, like a Walt Disney, struck here like a float.

- [Paul] By and large, the design is the blueprint, and it's seldom changed.

But occasionally when you're working on a float, you find out that the shape on the design is not quite the shape of the actual float.

Or you also find that you can't necessarily put something where it is on a design.

You don't have good structure underneath that will support it, you don't have the wood, whatever.

So you can't always exactly follow it.

We do our best because the design is half the battle.

- [Narrator] Basket handles, clouds, forest, architecture.

These are the basic shapes of the old line floats.

Rex has added two double decker, super floats.

- [Paul] The best shapes have survived.

Unfortunately, some of the floats have been cut back, and cut back and are little a lump-ish.

But we work on that as best we can, and there is a construction policy.

We change them up from time to time.

But once you have a good shape, keep it.

- [Rob] The floats are shaped the way they are, because somebody in the past was paid to build them.

And whatever god-awful shape they decided to pick, they made them that way.

We alter them, we use them the way they are.

The float shape itself sometimes dictates what theme gets attached to that particular float.

And some floats we get stuck with not knowing what to do with them.

- [Rob] We have changed many of these floats.

Many of them used to look like the kind of floats you'd build in kindergarten with lumps on the back.

- [Narrator] This little cloud-like float has rolled in many forms.

- [Paul] And when I first got into the business we stripped through layers of external.

It was like float inside a float, inside of a float.

And a lot of the shapes you see today were buried for decades inside.

And they were the most marvelous shapes that have been built out in the past when the artists were really artists, and the craftsmen were craftsmen.

And we're building in the old style.

We do everything from when we rebuild a float, we will build a wood structure, and all the curves and shapes, and design them intricately.

This is all handcrafted work that takes time.

And hence some expenses associated with it.

We could build a much cheaper float by putting on flat canvas on flat surfaces, and then putting on artwork, just attached to it.

We find the curves, and the ins and outs are what we can look in our past and find.

And we're trying to bring the past to the present.

- I think it is certainly a challenge to take the sort of already there float with its hump on the back, and a structure on the front, or a big wave look, or a set of columns, looking like a pagoda.

It's certainly a challenge to make that look fresh, because there's bound to be a sort of a neither fish nor fowl quality to these pieces of structure on there.

They have been generalized sort of, they're not quite as elegant as columns, (chuckles) and then they're not quite as lumpy as trees.

- If I were a float designer, I'd think I get awfully frustrated with that beyond a certain point.

They're always, always, always having to deal with that.

Some diagram being underneath there, although.

When you look at what Schindler has done with Comus the last two years, I mean, it's just magnificent.

George Schmidt told me year before last, he said, "Do not miss Comus."

So I didn't.

(laughs) And I went to see it again last year for the same reason.

And I was really thrilled, because I've always liked those old parades anyway.

The floats are shorter and higher, and the whole proportion is different.

And they have a really mysterious quality of this whole juggernaut coming down the street.

And there's just something wonderful about that.

To me, that's just so much more of the magic of carnival than is, than are these great big, long limousine floats.

You know?

(laughs) You see is of the newer parade.

- [Paul] In the 19th century, and actually well into 1930s with the Depression the floats were built from the platform up every year.

The entire parade was constructed from the wheels up.

There was a new king's float, there was a new title car every year.

With the Depression, things changed dramatically.

There was more to it than the Depression, of course.

The people available to do the work were no longer there.

The French Opera House had burned down.

The theaters, the numerous theaters, and opera house were no longer here.

The people to do the work had disappeared, as well.

There was a man named Anthony Bagnetto, who worked at the French Opera House who painted the Rex parade for 30 years.

He painted that one parade.

There was that level of artistry.

However, I think that the creators and the designers have been very ingenious over the years in adapting the shapes which exist to fit whatever the theme is in any given year.

There is always some construction, of course, but not nearly to the degree that it once took place.

- [Narrator] These little jewels of cloth, paper and paint have been decorated in total secrecy by legions of mostly unknown artists for over a century.

- The golden age of carnival, I think was the golden age of carnival artistry.

We had only a handful of parades, and they were true gems.

Each parade was constructed from the ground up every year.

The designers were fantastic.

The earliest set of designs that we have access to that we know exist, is the 1873 Comus parade, The Missing Links to Darwin's Origin of Species.

The designs were by Charles Brighton, who therefore is the first of the known carnival artists.

It was a beautiful double satire.

It was a satire, not only on the Republican administration, the carpet baggers, from local people all the way to the White House.

The device used was also a satire on Darwin's theory at the time, which was considered by many to be an abomination.

- [Narrator] That was the first parade built here in new Orleans.

George Sulay hired to repair and repaint the delicate papier-mâché figures, previously imported from France, convinced the crew members that he could build the designs himself.

Over the next 40 years, he built the designs of the great carnival artist.

- [Paul] Carlotta Bonnecaze designed Proteus.

And she had an incredible sense of humor, dry wit.

Her Dumb Society parade was magnificent.

The very first parade for Proteus, Ancient Egyptian Theology is a collection of temples, and tombs and faced scenes, and scenes of heaven and resurrection, which have never been equaled.

(bright, amusing orchestral strings music) - [Narrator] Wickstrom, a prominent painter in New Orleans art circles, known for his marine and landscape paintings began designing Rex when his friend, Charles Britain became ill. (elegant, bright orchestral music) - Jenny Wild designed for Comus and Momus.

And she used a very florid art nouveau style.

Mrs. Alexander followed Wickstrom as the designer for Rex, and her style was very similar to Jen Wilds.

It was not quite as art nouveau.

- [Narrator] Are all our golden ages already in the past?

Let's hope not.

These early artists kept a pretty low profile as far as their carnival art, And their names even today are known mainly to our carnival scholars.

- It would be great if we were all famous for painting floats.

I doubt if that'll ever happen.

Maybe this video will help.

- [Narrator] Maybe let's start with Momus.

- I don't want to talk, man.

(chuckles) I'm sorry.

- [Narrator] What is your own artwork like?

- It's pretty hard to describe.

(laughs) It really is.

(brush scraping) It's, I don't know, it's really just hard to describe.

- [Narrator] You work large?

- Yeah, yeah usually.

Not this large, though, this was a whole new experience.

You know painting faces as big as my body, it's a different experience.

My paintings are usually, the largest are about five feet square.

- We're not used to being examined while we're working.

It's an unusual experience.

- [Narrator] Do you make many fiberglass props?

- Well, I wouldn't want to work with fiberglass myself.

I've seen some good props in fiberglass.

I prefer the more natural materials, instead of the heavy industrial type materials.

- [Narrator] Why is that?

- Well, because of the fumes, and this is a lot more flexible.

So I think you can be more spontaneous with it in the props.

I like props that tend to look alive.

Although it's a train, it's not gonna look terribly alive.

On figures and in different things, I don't think it should look too shiny and finished off, but that's just a personal preference.

- Perhaps certain people would like the figures to look more old style, a little more rumply.

More like papier-mâché, and maybe be flat as opposed to being glossy.

Whereas I like, I think with the three-dimensional figure personally, to be glossy brings out more of the contours, more of the form.

- [Artist] Most of the people that work here are artists in their own right, in some fashion.

We have carpenters that can build things from their head.

Whereas, some people couldn't do that.

So you have to, I guess you could call those artists.

- You get this one.

First, we had to cut the top of the float.

You take your plywood and you get your scribe on it, exactly what you want to do with it.

And then you cut ribs, each one of those up there if you see them, they're smaller ribs.

And then from rib to rib you'll form it with corrugated cardboard.

And this is for corrugated cardboard a seltzer and clove.

Wheat paste, wheat paste, and you stick your ends downs, that's what you come up with.

But you have to form it in your mind, as you're going along.

It's no sketch, we have the sketch you know, but there's no form bust to go by, I have to form it out of my head as when I'm looking at it.

- Some of the artists that design the sketches design more of a decorative fashion, and some design more scenic.

Like a meadow with trees, and someone laying in the grass.

As opposed to painting a float like an object.

Like say for example, painting a float as if it were made of marble and drapes.

- I think what you were saying a lot of the basic skills when artists are applying paint in the floats.

As far as like you mentioned perspective the understanding of light, how it causes shadows.

Reflected light, the light goes back up into a shadow.

When you show some of those things on the float, you add a sense of realism.

But overall it is decorative, because you amplify colors.

- Basically the style of a Mardi Gras float in terms of a painting, it's a theatrical style of painting.

It's more exaggerated, because it's rolling down the street.

So unlike a theatrical set, which just sits there and looks attractive.

A Mardi Gras float has to reach out, and just grab your attention.

And razzle-dazzle you for the period of time that it comes at you, passes you, and then what you see as it leaves the periphery of your vision.

- One of the problems is that most of the, a lot of artists today do a lot of abstract work.

And it's very hard to get them to do what we call visual arts and realistic art.

If we need a prop for a float, an Indian, or a cowboy, or a horse, it needs to be realistic.

I'm not saying that in time to come they won't welcome something abstract.

But I don't know about that.

- You do have a couple of different approaches to designing.

Certain groups prefer a particular style over others.

Comus in particular recently has gone to the old decorative style of float designing, where you're away from a large central prop.

And your float is less representative of a theme, and more decorative.

It's more patterns of color, swirls, repeated shapes.

Some of the other parades, Rex in particular, we would do more representational pieces.

We would paint the float to be more of a illustration of that particular theme.

Proteus does an even more job with that than we do.

They tend to do more of a of an illustration with their units.

Which one's better?

It really, six, one half dozen of the other, it depends on what the particular captain likes.

- It doesn't, he can go further up, but he can't go like that.

- [Artist] People always think that there are so many parades in our area, and they're probably 50 or 60 that parade.

But so many of those floats are reused rental floats.

In the city of Orleans, New Orleans, you're only allowed to demonstrate a carriage on the street twice.

There is no limit in Jefferson.

So a given float could be seen in this area six times easily, and it'll be essentially the same float.

The old crews pretty much use the same float only once, it's an old tradition.

- To build floats is very costly.

Then you have to have the proper building to put them in.

And to rent space for X amount of floats is very costly in the city.

You have to have a very large building.

Also, if you're renting, you better have a good lease, because if something goes wrong and you got put out you're in some serious trouble with all these floats with no place to go.

So we found the easiest way out was to rent floats.

And from the years to come, we'll most probably continue to do so.

- I think Kern was the first float builder to rent floats out, so to speak, on a rental basis.

And I think rightfully so.

I think he did open it up, and it has made Mardi Gras perhaps a little more commercial.

And it's a little change, a little twist from the old A line traditional clubs.

But I think it's good, because people, the old A line clubs, there were only one class of people, and one group of people that could actually parade, and have their Mardi Gras parades.

And as we see many of the people in the city want to parade, and enjoy a parade and have a good time.

So there is a lot of controversy about that.

- You had to make it a business, sort of like Disney did, to make the thing where it was workable.

In other words, you could always had maybe a small group making a single individual parade, or two or three parades.

And while it would have individuality and it was good, to get to the part where people could afford to parade the masses, and this was Darwin Fenner, who was a captain of Rex who sent me to Europe to study how they did things and all, and to bring back ideas.

He said, "Blaine, Mardi Gras is gonna open up for everybody, and it has to."

And the only way that could happen that the masses could afford to belong to crews, the floats had to get bigger.

It had to be more open in a democratic way.

God, I got my lumps.

The whole is it has democratized, it has broadened up.

And everybody can be a part of the thing now.

And many years ago, it couldn't be.

And it's because of the mass, because you can actually make the larger floats.

And the figures can be changed and altered.

And you need a businessman's approach to it.

- You ask why the old line clubs don't rent their floats to help offset expenses?

This is not a business for them, they parade for pleasure, in a fine tradition, in many cases, well over a century, they've done it this way, and there's no reason for them to rent their floats.

- So it might seem repetitious, but that's done rightfully so.

It's very expensive to build a fleet of floats, house the floats, insure them.

It's a very expensive proposition.

So we'll sometimes have a float that perhaps is painted with a underwater scene, a water scene, and one float, one crew will use it with a big octopus on it.

And then the other float will, the other crew will use it with a big fish on it, or a big crab on it.

So it changes the float around.

So it doesn't look like the same float that we used the day before or the night before.

- So it's a big business and it's necessary.

And the only way that the thing could work, like any theme park, you get a ma and pa place, and making pies and selling a few things, and throwing a few baseballs at some bottles.

But nobody's gonna come.

The thing has to become an epic thing in a sense.

And it has made New Orleans world famous.

- The size of it, just like in the art world in general, the vast size of it means that just like there being as many art shows as we have now in a big season of art.

It means that the people who work very traditionally, and people who work very wild, people who are completely inventive, can find room in there.

Because there are that many galleries, entrepreneurs, that want to have shows.

Therefore it's going to use up different directions in the arts, different intensities, different degrees of quality, different prices.

- The phenomenon of rental floats is, (sighs) well, it shrivels the heart.

What can I say?

It allows, number one, it allows a terrible system of abuses.

One of which being that you can pull a theme out of the air.

It can be Broadway shows, it can be movies, it can be books, let's say.

And if you have a float with an Indian on the front, if it's Broadway musicals, it could be "Rose Marie."

If it's books, it could be "The Last of the Mohicans."

If it's TV, it could be "The Lone Ranger."

If it's famous movies, it could be "Broken Arrow."

And who knows?

They're all interchangeable.

They lack any distinguishing touch to them.

- We're now gonna turn this whole thing over to the bureaucrat.

No, that's not the word I'm looking for, but the professional float manufacturer.

The earlier carnival was actually people who were involved in theater craft, also.

But now there's this sort of sole emphasis on this business.

And while it seems like it's liberalizing it really isn't, it's just becoming a business.

And like any business it's gonna fluctuate, and change and destroy itself eventually.

You know what I'm getting at?

In other words, the earlier carnival was kept separate from the economy.

See, now it's gonna become a part of our economy which is gonna be disastrous.

Because if our economy fails, the carnival fails.

You see?

And we won't have it.

It'll fluctuate just like everything else does, it'll go up and it'll go down.

There won't be any constancy.

The reason it's so constant, and the reason we still have it is, because of these snobs that run these organizations.

Unfortunately, that's the way they have to behave.

That's the way they behave.

I'm sorry they do, because they've cut their nose off to spite their faces in a lot of ways.

And that's one reason, but probably there'll be, it'll be taken over by Ron Foreman (chuckles) eventually.

And we will have Mardi Gras World.

I don't know, I mean, it's like any human event it's gonna have these pitfalls in it.

- I mean, there's a valid argument on both sides of it I guess in certain kinds of ways.

George wasn't one day, at one carnival, this is several years ago, showed up, showed up for one of those parades Momus, or Comus, I guess it was, or whatever, with a great big placard that said, "Hooray for old money."

(laughs) That's where George is coming from.

And I love it.

I mean, I can still (laughs) I can see that as long as there is a sense of humor in it.

- We had a theme a few years ago that the other car club had, they had numerous floats in a parade that had rats on them.

Rats all over the sides, rats all over the front.

And our theme did not have nothing to do with rats.

So you can well imagine we went out on that Sunday with plenty of rats on floats, and we couldn't do much about it.

(laughs) - If you look at the themes from say 1880, or even from the very beginning, through the First World War there is a lot of sophistication along with spectacle.

I mean, there are parades devoted to Louisiana history, and there are parades about the seasons, and the stars, and flowers, and rocks and minerals, and all of this sort of thing.

But also entire parades would be devoted to one literary work, which I find really astounding.

You have to think that the people who selected these themes, and then built the floats, assumed that at least a significant number of spectators would be familiar with the works that were being presented in tableau.

One of the most interesting things is that Comus did a parade devoted to "Salammbo," by Gustave Flaubert.

And they did this scarcely 30 years after the book had been published.

I doubt that even in Paris, in 1893, they would have devoted a pageant to Salammbo.

This is really avant-garde when you think about it.

I mean, now granted Salammbo is not one of my favorite Flauberts.

It's a kind of top heavy, historical romance, but it has all the elements of a lot of action, battles, women taking their clothes off, temples being defiled.

I mean a big muscular hero dragging the heroine around.

Gods demanding sacrifices of babies, all this stuff.

I mean, it's almost pure Cecil B. DeMille.

And so it does have the requisite elements of spectacle.

But I still find it just amazing that they would select this.

Now of course, one assumes that they don't read.

- Most of the groups that parade in the suburbs, because they rent their floats, first off, they can't control their own destinies.

They have to come up with a theme that will fit the floats available.

There's also though, just a general decline in imagination.

And in what these people go to for source material.

Television seems to be the new source.

Several balls last year people represented California raisins, and TV commercials.

Now, anyone can do what they want, that's what it's all about.

(crowds celebrating and yelling) I think that literary traditions, and spectacular stories of great splendor, and visual interest are far more interesting.

Who wants to go see a parade that they could stay home, and see the real thing on television?

- [Parade Reporter] You're looking at the float, Hail to the Chiefs.

(crowds yelling and celebrating) - [Parade Reporter] I know that because I was reading it.

- I'm very proud of it- - I'm not quite sure what Hail to the Chief has to do with the sports theme.

- [Parade Reporter] I don't know either.

- [Parade Reporter] This is sort of Mount Rushmore on wheels, and it's one of their regulars.

Maybe George Washington was a Redskins fan, or something.

- But the ones that are most beautiful to me, artistically, are where the costumes fit into some sort of a theme, and they work with the float and the float has its art marks left on it like paintings, I think should, there's art marks.

It looks like papier-mâché, it looks like gold leaf applied.

Looks like all this stuff and you can see the trace of some craftsmen, sophisticated and unsophisticated, who have worked on the thing.

- You have to have imagination in order in order to make the, you know, the costumes.

I go about what I think someone else would understand, when they see the title of the float and then they see the costumes.

The first thing the captain does is give us a idea of what floats, what the theme of the parade is, and what each float is gonna represent.

Then we do research on it.

We will go to the library and get some stuff on it.

Like this, one of floats, we're making drinks on one of our floats.

So we're gonna make the post cafe on that float.

The man is gonna be a glass, it's gonna be a drink.

The legs are gonna be the bottom of the glass, and around the top, his head is gonna be the straw.

So when they see that, they'll have to imagine that it's a drink that they're gonna have there.

Then this is the olive, we decided to put just an olive on the float.

We use that in drinks.

This is a stuffed olive.

That's the pimento.

The head piece is the pimento in the olive when it is...

When he gets in that costume, the head piece will be the little red pimento that sticks out of the olive.

And then we had another float with Storyville, and we decided to put the hookers on that float.

We're gonna have bouncers, and we're gonna have customers.

Now, this is all our famous float 14.

We have fun with these guys.

They are younger men and we can dress them in costumes that we can not put on the older fellows.

- A lot of it has to do with what the theme is, and how you depict the theme.

Comus uses nondescript costumes that are very effective, they're beautiful costumes, and they use them year after year.

They have fine brocades on them, and lots of detail, they're gorgeous.

But they can go on any float, the way the floats are designed.

We use a brand new set of costumes every year.

We do away with old costumes.

We sell those.

Sometimes I'll do something with them, but not too often.

It's expensive to make a little costume.

And what I've come to do lately is mainly just make a big collar and design on that collar.

We used to have elaborate arms, and elaborate fabrics on the arms, but the expense got to where we cut that back.

And then one year I had fringe all over the arms, it looked beautiful, but a man came with some scissors and cut the fringe off.

'Cause he got in his way when he was trying to throw the beads.

Well, he just whacked off his own, and everyone else in the group whacked theirs off.

I doubt that most people on the street even see the costumes and notice them, or know the name of a float.

Or could could say, "I liked the one with the dancing ladies on it."

But they'll get an impression of it, and that's what you want them to come away with.

Some people will stand there and watch, and know the mythology, and know the background of the costumes and the floats, but very few.

- [Franklin] Most people in the street now haven't the faintest proclivity what those myths are about or anything.

It's like Joseph Campbell says, "We don't have myths anymore."

(laughs) All that stuff in a way is kind of nuttily meaningless, but it's full of great, great charm to me at the same time.

- I like the toothiness of impressionism and paint strokes, drawing, and things happening.

And I think it's wonderful to see that in the, I guess now, in the most old-fashioned of the floats.

That's the ones I'm most fond of.

I like the floats not too large.

I'm always a little horrified by the idea of things being too big and shiny, and too many people on them.

But maybe that's the way it has to be socially, now, in a more egalitarian society.

Maybe everybody has to get on the float sooner, or later and ride.

- I guess I feel like what what happened with the parade, like baccus and that's happened to all the parades too.

It happened in a way it was just overkill.

It was a response to something that was needed, legitimately needed, but it was a as far as I'm concerned, the wrong response.

In the sense that it went the wrong direction, and went too much in that direction.

Whereas, the response that Comus is making now is a softer response, which is enlivening the thing without totally transforming, and ended up rolling Disneyland, which I've never been to.

But I probably it's wonderful.

(laughs) I was involved in a project to totally remake the Rex parade 18 years ago, or whatever it was.

Which for practical reasons didn't work out.

And we would have done, that was a joint venture with Jean Seidenberg, and we would have done some pretty far out pretty, things very different from what had been being done.

I mean, we certainly would not have been within that tradition that I'm lauding, and talking about the Comus parade.

We had an idea to and divorce the structure of the float necessary to carry the riders from the decor, so that the one could be more or less independent of the others.

And so that the riders were on a sort of a grid system, and can simply be plugged in the sort of pods that were of a structural way to support them.

And then we could build a fairly flimsy structure elsewhere.

Which was as far as I'm concerned would have been nice too, 'cause it would have wobbled a little and all that.

But it also simply would have been much more flexible, and probably more economical in the long run.

Well, maybe not more economical, because that part of it is always there.

And you know, in the floats is the usual one.

These are some more particular sketches of that system indicating a beginning idea for what these pods might've looked like, hexagonal so that they could nestle next to one another if they needed to, or they could be separate from one another.

And we also had an idea that these vases could be maybe telescoping, so they could be at different heights.

It could have been totally different from one float to another, very high in the front, high in the back, high in the middle, all kinds of things like that.

And we wouldn't have been so wed to a structure that was pretty fixed because it had to hold riders.

There's so much sort of late 1960s yellow submarine or Peter Max, or whatever in style.

In a way they come across a little bit dated to me, now.

I think what I'd do now would probably be different from this.

But it's kind of fun to go back and see them as little, little pieces of history that never was.

(laughs) I mean, I was caught up in new, and modern and all that kind of thing at the time we did this.

I've developed a more of a of a taste, and a respect for some of the older stuff, in the meantime.

I'm not sure, it'd be interesting to think what one would do.

I would think I would be failing if I chose to do either just my own thing, or if I chose just to do some sort of a reproduction parade.

Made to look like one from 1886, or something like that.

I think either one of those things would be a failure.

It seems to me that the rich possibility would be in and what I call sometimes creative greed.

I'll have one of each, doing both things at once.

I think I would, first of all I would have each float be a totally different shape.

I mean, I would toss out the traditional shapes, and make them different shapes.

I would use a variety of color from various subdued to Day-Glo kind of colors.

I'd love to see different materials brought in.

I mean, they're all kinds of plastics, and things you can do with fiberglass, and things that are aren't heavy.

So it wouldn't be a weight problem, but would it be just different.

And I would have each one its own abstract design, not using a particular theme, like not having all different kinds of trees that are abstracted.

But truly just designs out of my head, shapes, colors, everything just abstract.

Then each person looking at it can interpret it in their own way.

- The question of the artist's design parade of course is fascinating.

I suppose it would be wonderful to do it just at least once, or to have one parade that was just the artist's design.

But I just have the feeling that after it was all done and had rolled and all of that, I would probably still love the old ones more.

I'm kind of fond of seeing, especially certain of the parades, the older parades.

I'm really extremely fond of seeing more or less the same shapes roll down the street year after year.

- [Narrator] It's all subjective, finally, I guess.

Imagination, accumulation of details, and sensory impressions.

I think Henri called it sensory overkill.

- The purpose of this really is sort of gilding the lily.

This will just pick up light, it'll draw light.

(footsteps scraping) (engine rumbling) (liquid sloshes) (engine rumbling) - [Narrator] Remember the heron float with Paul Poshe's palmetto leaves?

- The big deal about this is the way everything is going to move, when this float is rolling down the street.

The heron is on one leg and it's going to shake quite a bit.

Okay, I won't touch these, I'll just shake the float.

(metal clinking) There'll be 10 riders on here.

It'll be moving through the streets of New Orleans, which are not the smoothest in Christendom.

And everything here will be shaking quite a bit.

It'll be lovely.

- [Narrator] The wooden wheels these old floats that Jules and Jim keep repaired, provide that quivering animation.

- And when I check them, I will jack it up and spin the wheels around and tap all the spokes.

And these are called the fellas, and see if they're loose.

And if the wheel isn't tight and solid these will shift.

And this one was shifting, and it was due to a split metal band on it.

- This metal band is called a tire, just like a tire on the car.

And this is what holds it all together.

And if for any reason this band fails then nothing has any strength at all.

Because even the dish and this wheel depends on the strength of this band to hold it together.

So what I'll do is take this off and repair this band, and put it all back together after I've secured the woodwork in the wheel.

And then it'll be as good as new.

This wheel is made like a dish.

It goes on this wagon like this with the dish to the inside, and the concave part to the outside.

The reason for that is when that wagon shifts if it were to hit a bump, and it would shift this way, it would have to break this band in order for this to push out.

If it were not, if it were just straight up and down, then it would be able to push that center out of that wheel.

The same basic principle is used on all of our truck and car tires, wheels today.

The same principle of that dish that gives it the strength.

See the chains hanging down over there with the hooks on them?

- [Woman] Mm-hm.

- Those are holdovers from the mule drawn days.

Those are called stay chains.

And that was the pulling apparatus, the double tree with the two single trees.

And then those state chains were hooked into the back of the double tree to adjust the load from one mule to the other.

If these wheels were used at their speed that they were intended to be used, behind a mule or a horse, they would wear for just inevitable length of time.

But because of the speed, that's put on them with a tractor, they get undue stress put on them.

That's what causes the break down.

(engine rumbles) - [Paul] What was more colorful than the mules pulling the floats themselves?

This was something.

Sometimes these men, but this was a sanitation department mules that we used.

And sometimes the mules they'll hook up that morning, it was a Sunday morning or whatever it was on a weekend, and they weren't hooked up properly.

And if Sophie was next to Nelly on the wrong side of Nellie, Sophie would sit on the ground.

(laughs) And you couldn't make a mule get up.

Now the guy who ran the mule every day, and picked up the trash with the mule, could make Sophie wheel it.

But he had to come, and he might be at the end of the parade.

This happened and I used to laugh about it, but it stopped the whole parade when the mule sat down.

(laughs) - [Eunice] I like the older parades.

The newer parades, not that I don't like them, they're fun to look at.

But I think, see, okay, I'm a native New Orlean.

And when I was a kid my mother used to take us to see the parade.

We had three parades that we could see.

We'd see Momus, Proteus and Comus, and Rex on the carnival day.

And maybe just growing up with the older parades, I just liked them better.

The floats are smaller, and it's not as long a parade.

To me, the newer parades are too long.

They last too long.

It was the newer parades that stopped, stopped the parades from going through the French Quarters, because the floats were too large.

And they drew too big a crowd, and things like that, to my way of thinking.

But it was nice to me when the parades when through the French Quarter, it was moving.

- [Jon] I'm heartsick that we can't parade in the French Quarter.

God, that was beautiful.

Because the floats then were more in proportion.

- [Announcer] The Garland of Comus.

- [Jon] To the old town of two stories, maybe three stories.

And there was nothing more magical.

- [Narrator] It was grand, it was just wild, it was great.

- [Announcer] Your picture on screen tonight.

- [Jon] The only place now I can think of that's quite as nice to watch, the bowline parades anyway, is up on Napoleon Avenue, right after they line up.

(crowds celebrating) Are the light bulbs on the floods and the flambeaus.

So that suddenly out of pitch blackness things jerking, and undulating, and it's wonderful.

And you know, there's this big explosion of color out of the darkness, and it's really magical.

- [Paul] Once the parade rolls, it really doesn't exist, it's history, it's past.

It's torn down, whited out.

Archie bunker becomes Santa Claus.

Louis Armstrong didn't become anybody.

The props are changed.

The float is just so much canvas to start over with.

- So gentle viewer, what was once preserved the beautiful lithography of parade bulletins, and the prose of Herne, Young and Dufore is now stored as magnetic impulses in your videotape libraries.

But still most vivid and precious perhaps, are your own memories of carnivals past.

And maybe that's what's most important after all.

- [Rob] When we were growing up, nine, 10, 11 years old, we used to chase the floats.

Me and a guy named Shelly Rabe, we used to call Boo-Boo.

A guy named Frank d'Angelo and myself.

We used to start with the parade and chase the whole parade and see how much we could get, collect from the throwings.

You'd smell that burning kerosene, and different fuels they use.

It was a wonderful smell.