World's Biggest Pinata or Bust

If you build it, they will come. Carnival Cruise Lines maintains a reputation for doing things big. This created piñata scene in an over sized parking lot could not have been a carnival by any other name. After a construction crew and structural engineers erected, adorned, and prepped a six-story 50,000 pound mock donkey, they hired professional actors to bring her down to her flippable flappable knees. That is where I came in. Enacting controlled chaos, actors and stunt men wielded everything from baseball bats to swimming pool skimmers before a giant wrecking ball staged its final destruction.

Over the course of the better part of the last two weekends, Carnival Cruise Lines filmed footage from helicopters, high-rising hydraulic cranes, and shoulder mount cameras for a nationwide television commercial to promote their grandness in piñata over achievement. After Guinness representatives measured and mulled over the donkey, the colossal piñata officially broke the World Record. The cruise line also provided live video coverage to their website and offered free cruise giveaways, a celebrated event hosted by loquacious senior cruise director, John Heald. Local television stations and newspapers rode the donkey story by inviting the public to take part in the event.

Breaking opening the belly of the beast proved to be another story. Still feeling a parade mentality from the city’s celebration of the Philadelphia Phillies winning the World Series a couple of days prior, several thousand people lined the perimeter fence waiting to be let in to fleece their empty shopping bags, backpacks, and suitcases with free candy. When only a few hundred spectators were permitted passage through the front gate, the denied crowd became unruly. Rattling the metal fence and shouting obscenities, spectators transformed into an angry mob largely shut out of the public event.

For the actors, it was not much better locked on the inside of the fence. The free-to-roam public surrounded the donkey like a Western horror movie and they pushed actors from their marks. Realizing the crowd's tenacity for freebies, actors began to surmise the potential for disaster. Bullhorn shouting to hungry children holding trick-or-treat bags only a week removed from Halloween that they must reset back to their first mark for another take while the helicopter shooting aerial views has time to circle the sky is never a good idea in commercial work. At this point, I wondered who the bigger donkey was me or the mock donkey impregnated with mega candy. Actors began to look for their way out of Dodge and the Hollywood term "checking the gate” held literal meaning. Police rode motorcycles into the parking lot to enforce crowd control and got actors off the set and ensure our personal safety. The police said nay to the tail end of the donkey event continuing and the entire set closed down in anti-climatic Hollywood fashion. The crowd dispersed without incident and the wounded donkey got a stay of execution.

A week later, shooting resumed on a closed set without the general public invited. Four hundred actors encircled the piñata to film the money shot and wrap up a commercial long in the making. Crew members separated actors from their coats in order to gain cinematic look and this tested an actor’s mettle to ignore the chilly temperatures and cheer on cue with glowing looks of awe and amazement.

My friend Damien Colletti and I were two of the few actors ponied aside to loot the candy after the piñata finally gave birth to the bon bons. I got stripped of my trench coat and sweatshirt, leaving me only a blue tee shirt with a big no-no of a Commerce bank logo pointing at the camera. I made short work of turning inside out my shirt and removing the tag. It was time to blaze saddles and kick some big old donkey ass. Following cues over the bullhorn, I ran ahead of the other selected looters and through the encircled crowd. Lofting myself airborne and parallel to the ground, I did a flying belly flop on 8,000 pounds of raining candy and prizes like a kid in his own candy store.

Of the hundreds of actors hired to be in this commercial scene, I landed first on top of that coveted candy pile. With cameras rolling for several minutes, people piled on and we danced in a food-frenzied giveaway orgy that left the weak of heart and brittle diabetics turning away. This may be the only time taking a flop is a good acting move but you got to pin the tale on a donkey pinata when given the schtick.