POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

Performance prop from Sydney Olympics closing ceremony

Object No. 2001/84/6

This quad cycle has significance in material culture due to its role in the closing ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games, an important event in the recent history of Sydney and NSW. It has the potential to communicate in exhibitions and publications about the Sydney Olympic Games and has significance in its design, making, use and the cultural meanings ascribed to it. The closing ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games took place on Sunday 1 October at Stadium Australia, Homebush Bay. It included solemn formalities, an informal parade of athletes and a farewell party that took the form of an unregimented parade with floats that celebrated and often mocked aspects of Australian popular culture. The intention was to conduct the ceremony with decorum until the extinction of the Olympic flame, and then to unleash a party. The artistic director of the closing ceremony David Atkins explained 'The athletes have finished competition, and are ready to party, and we have set about creating a party to end all parties. We have decided to invite everyone into our giant Australian backyard - fully equipped with Hills Hoists, barbecues, an eclectic mix of music, performers and all manner of Australiana. Australians have a tradition of throwing great parties, and this one will be imbued with a sense of fun, larrikinism and goodwill.' According to Ric Birch (speaking on Channel 7's 'Olympic Sunrise'), the opening ceremony was to represent Australia at large, but the closing ceremony was Sydney's show. Irreverent humour was evident from the opening (untelevised) sequence, in which the sports satirists Roy Slaven and HG Nelson welcomed the crowd and coached them in how to use the contents of the small eskies that each of the 110,000 audience members could find on their seats. These contained essential Australian backyard barbecue equipment including fly-swats which, when held aloft, gave a distinctively Australian flavour to the Mexican wave. The quad cycle was central to the comic 'lawnmower man' segment that started the telecast with a slapstick chase. It appeared on the arena just as a mock ceremony, complete with officials and a marching band, began. Driven by a rogue groundkeeper (played by Neill Gladwin), it appeared to be an out-of-control lawnmower that ploughed through a stage, speakers, officials and the marching band, careering off through the entrances to the field of play (known as 'vomitoriums'), and back on to the arena, pursued by an ever- growing crowd. It even threatened to crash into Ric Birch, perched on one of the infamous kangaroos on bicycles from the Atlanta closing ceremony, before being eventually pulled to pieces. The 'lawnmower man' segment set a comical tone that characterised much of the closing ceremony. The lawnmower itself was one of a proliferation of suburban images that characterised the ceremony, such as Hills Hoists, blowflies, lifesavers and thongs. Each was treated with self-deprecating irony rather than clich‚. The wit and quality of the 'Parade of Icons' showed the influence of the late Peter Tully as artistic director of the Mardi Gras in, for example, the 'pit chicks' in silver hot pants who carried the eyelashes, stiletto shoes and giant mascara for the Priscilla bus. The opening ceremony told a mythic story of nation-building that dwarfed individuals. It was evocative and subtle. The closing ceremony, however, celebrated personality, celebrity and attitude. Loud and brash, more like a rock concert than a profoundly theatrical event, it was an extravagant send-off -- fun, festive, shamelessly excessive and decidedly weird. The 'lawnmower man' segment provided an unexpected, innovative start to the proceedings.

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Summary

Object Statement

Vehicle, quad cycle, metal/plastic/rubber, designed by Neill Gladwin, made by Ua3 David Trethewey, used in the Lawnmower Man segment of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games closing ceremony, Sydney 2000

Physical Description

Vehicle, quad cycle, metal/plastic/rubber, designed by Neill Gladwin, made by Ua3 David Trethewey, used in the Lawnmower Man segment of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games closing ceremony, Sydney 2000 Honda ATV, breakaway simulated quad bike with a detachable orange flashing light on a metal pole. The body of the vehicle is made from red plastic. The bike has four black rubber wheels. The various components of the bike are joined together by black nylon cords and black plastic straps that can be released to allowed the vehicle to be dismantled quickly.

DIMENSIONS

Height

2360 mm

PRODUCTION

Notes

Neill Gladwin, Sydney NSW, 1999-2000 The original storyboard called for a breakaway ride-on lawnmower that could be dismantled by a crowd into pieces small enough to be carried away, each person carrying one piece. Designing it was a major challenge to the highly skilled special effects team. The mower chosen was an industrial greenkeeper's model. The manufacturer of Toro lawnmowers agreed to donate five of these machines for the segment. A company called Ua3 was contracted to modify one lawnmower to come apart as a special effect. Initial field trials of the machine were encouraging, with the only drawback being a top speed that was slightly slower than desired. During the SOCOG procurement and three weeks of work on the prototype, the sponsor withdrew the offer to donate the mowers. The next machine tested was an Arcticat All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV), Arcticat being the supplier to SOCOG. Again, negotiations became fruitless, resulting in another two weeks setback. The third machine was a Honda ATV, a machine similar in many respects to the Arcticat. Negotiations settled quickly and delivery of the machine was taken with only four weeks remaining of the original production schedule. The script called for the vehicle to chase around the stadium, creating havoc and finally ending up on the field, swarmed upon by a crowd that appeared to tear it apart, bare-handed. Multiples of the vehicles were used by three separate but identical riders to appear in several places very quickly, adding to the slapstick, fast-motion, silent movie effect. The multiples were not modified for dismantling - they were regular Honda ATVs. The machine to be dismantled was made to resemble these. Attaching the ATV's four wheels was a particularly tricky problem to solve. They needed to be fully functional, yet removable in seconds. Various approaches were tried before a solution was found with the use of camlock coupling fittings. These are used in industry as fast, leakproof connections for hoses and pipes handling petroleum, chemicals and other liquids and dry products. They are designed to connect and disconnect in seconds with no threading, twisting or tools required. The vehicle needed to dismantled within 30 seconds with bare hands. The first attempt took 33 seconds to dismantle completely. After an hour of rehearsals, the team achieved a time of 7.6 seconds, a tribute to their fine team work. The ATV became known to the team as the simulated quadbike or quad cycle. Ua3 (David Trethewey), Pyrmont, Sydney, 2000 Components of an electric golf cart were used with special frame components fabricated to simulate the regular Honda ATV quadbikes used in the segment. Special parts were made to facilitate quick dismantling, adjusted to standard body panels.

HISTORY

Notes

Sydney Olympic games- Closing Ceremony- lawn mower man segment, Stadium Australia, Sydney Olympic Park, Homebush, 1 October 2000. The quad cycle was ridden by Neill Gladwin in the role of the lawnmower man. He also directed the segment. During the 1980s Gladwin performed with Stephen Kearney in the comic duo Los Trios Ringbarkus, which they started in drama school in 1979. His national and international reputation as a director was founded on directing physical comedians such as Lano and Woodley. For three years he was the director of South Australia's major children's theatre company, Magpie. Gladwin was also artistic director for the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games closing ceremony. The comedy of the 'lawnmower man' segment lay in the way spectators thought that a serious mishap was taking place. It appeared that the incompetent lawnmower man had become stranded on the stadium arena as the closing ceremony got under way. He searched frantically for the keys, tried to push the quad cycle, then finally got it started. Then he crashed into an official function, collapsing the stage and sending the officials tumbling, and was chased around the area and through the tunnels by marching band members. In an interview with the Western Australia 'Post' (27 July 2002), Gladwin revealed that he conceived the idea of the lawnmower routine during a long discussion with Rick Birch, director of the opening and closing ceremonies. 'It was madcap comedy with a great sense of anarchy. It's become a tradition of closing ceremonies to have a trick comedy act. At Barcelona they staged a walking race where the competitors sabotaged each other by rolling up the lane markers and other crazy stuff. At Atlanta there was a marching band that got lost.' Gladwin thought it would be fun to send up the formality with a sense of slapstick. He said 'People in the stands were saying "Oh no, I knew someone would stuff it up. Typical." People couldn't work out what was going on. Even the SOCOG people were taken in. When they brought out the officials on the stage for the thank-you speeches from the manager of corporate services, the SOCOG people were puzzled and saying to each other "I don't know him, do you?" '. The 'officials', of course, were actors. The stage collapse was carefully engineered by a team of film stunt people. The lawnmower came apart in 10 seconds. Gladwin said 'We changed the original for another one in the tunnel. It was held together with pins and bits of string, designed to come apart in 10 seconds.' The sequence in the pedestrian race and tunnel with a boxing kangaroo and police car was filmed in advance and cut into the broadcast. Gladwin said the tight security surrounding the stunt was almost blown because the running sheets for the closing ceremony called the routine 'lawnmower man'. 'I spotted it and they rushed around and changed it to "opening sequence", he said. In the printed program for the closing ceremony, it was simply described as a 'Welcome' segment. Made for and owned by the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, and donated to the Powerhouse Museum after the Games.

SOURCE

Credit Line

Part of the Sydney 2000 Games Collection. Gift of the New South Wales Government, 2001

Acquisition Date

5 October 2001

Copyright for the above image is held by the Powerhouse and may be subject to third-party copyright restrictions. Please submit an Image Licensing Enquiry for information regarding reproduction, copyright and fees. Text is released under Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative licence.

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