Bill Sumner Interview
Was that a real tiger with Lance Parrish or the work of a computer wiz ?
Lance Parrish is one that we really had to do and was really stupid . That was a real 700-pound tiger and he ended the shoot when he took a big growl at Lance ! I ’ ve got a shot here somewhere of Lance going , “ Oh my God !” We were on the set out in Los Angeles , and there ’ s a guy with a whole pile of steaks . He ’ s throwing them at the tiger to keep him happy throughout the entire shoot ! It turns out that it was the same tiger who was the Exxon tiger . There were two actually . If one got nasty , we could substitute him for the other one . It was an interesting shoot . When they brought the tigers to the studio , they unloaded them in the back alley and had them on long leashes with several people handling them . One of them was sniffing around like cats do in a new place , and there was a recessed door in the alley . The tiger went sniffing in the doorway and there was a drunk guy passed out in there . He woke up to a 700-pound tiger staring him in the face and he shot straight up in the air and took off running ! All these things happened during the shoots . We had a good time doing it .
You can ’ t do that kind of stuff these days .
Right ! It was guerilla shooting . That ’ s how a lot of the stuff used to happen . When we did “ Hometown ” with Mark Jackson , it was the same kind of situation . We had Mark in the limo with us and a couple of little portable strobes , and we drove over the bridge a few times and said , “ How are we going to do this ?” I said , “ I ’ ll tell you what . We ’ re going over the bridge and we ’ re all gonna jump out real quick , and by the time you bring the car back over , we ’ ll be done and ready for you to pick us up .” That ’ s exactly what we did . These sports posters were some of the most fun things I did .
© NIKE Inc .
Volume 1 | classickicks . com | Classic Kicks | 25