Boney Island

By Abigail Stone

BONEY ISLAND

4602 Morse Ave.,

Sherman Oaks

THE PRO Former Simpsons animation producer Rick Polizzi

CONCEPT When he couldn’t find Halloween entertainment suitable for his two young daughters, Polizzi, the producer and author with Fred Schaefer of Spin Again: Board Games From the Fifties and Sixties, created Boney Island in his front yard. Inspired by New York’s Coney Island, it originally was conceived as an amusement park. In the 16 years since, the annual display has morphed into what he describes as a “magical water story” with a cast of animated skeletons who perform magic tricks, dance and sing. And with each year, the cost has grown. “Some people might think I’m crazy, but I’ve gotten so much goodwill from it and made so many contacts.”

WHEN On Oct. 24, the lights to this free display will switch on and will fire up at 6 each night through Halloween. Details: boneyisland.com

I also had a love of Dark Rides – the kind you’d find at Amusement Parks and Carnivals. So it was natural that I would set up rides in my backyard or through my house and have friends come over to “Polizzi Park” to catch the latest attraction. I would pull them on a wagon past different displays with music and narration going. Sometimes a smoke bomb might go off combined with a bright light from my Instamatic Flashcube to simulate an explosion. Sometimes, creepy lighting, hanging threads and a ton of cotton batting would transport them into a Spider King’s lair. Whatever the scenario, I knew I wanted to design rides for a living. Flash to 1996 and now I have two daughters who loved Halloween, but every spook house around had people chasing you with chainsaws, or guys in masks screaming their heads off. So, since I had a decent sized yard, I decided to create a Halloween display that I would want to take my girls to.

Lovely Bones

‘The Simpsons” Rick Polizzi has a closet full of skeletons, and they’ve made him a star in Sherman Oaks

By Leslie Gornstein Photographed by Duncan Stewart

In its eight years of ghastly, grinning history, producer Rick Polizzi’s Halloween home spectacular has attracted dozens of gawking children and their equally impressed parents, scads of industry types who work with Polizzi on “The Simpsons,” and at least one beer-sipping supermodel. Every year, Polizzi, 46, transforms his home in Sherman Oaks into a veritable theme park with hundreds of fully mechanized skeletons acting out an array of kooky tableaux: dangling from trees with bottles of whiskey, climbing in windows, even flying over the house in a hot-air balloon. The project takes two months to set up and thousands of dollars each year. And every October, Polizzi gripes about the cost and the tedium: hanging all the skeletons, synching music to their movements, rigging motors and strings to make the skeletons party properly, and erecting elaborate props like spider-infested cotton candy machines.

“Every year, whenever I am working on it, I say I’m sorry I started it, and I yell that this year is my last year,” says Polizzi, the father of two daughters, ages 8 and 12. “But it’s cool to see everyone wandering around your place, killing your grass.” The idea started when Polizzi spotted some cheap, life-sized skeletons during a late-summer shopping excursion “cheap” being the operative word. “I thought, ‘Gee, I could get these to work,” “Polizzi recalls. “If I would have found inexpensive Easter bunnies, I would be doing an annual Easter thing. So the skeletons were 10 bucks each and I bought about 10 of them.” Polizzi’s initial idea was to create a scene where the skeletons would be hanging Halloween decorations around his house. But that quickly evolved into a more complex tableau where the skeletons were drunk and screwing everything up

As the years passed, Polizzi influenced more. by old-school Disneyland rides than the gory, modern-day haunted houses staged by local f/x whizzes started piling on the silliness. The skeletons grew tired of decorating the house and started looking for other stuff to do. One year they decided to “clean up” while the Polizzis were away. Says Polizzi, “So they were roasting marshmallows over a pile of (our) laundry they set on fire.” This year, with more skeletons than ever, the mischievous monsters are promising to transform his home into a haunted carnival complete with fireworks, spiderweb cotton candy, a skeleton rock band, batting cages (where skeletons play baseball with flying rodents) and a boneyard bowling alley.

HELTER SKELTER Every Halloween, over-the-top scenes like these are found outside Polizzi’s home. “The Simpsons’ producer says it costs him thou- sands to put up the animatronic show.

Not surprisingly, the extravaganza, which comes to life around the second week of October, has made Polizzi a hit with some of his A-list neighbors. For instance, Gisele Bundchen, the leggy Brazilian supermodel, swung by last year during the festivities to introduce herself as a new neighbor, and to invite Polizzi over to her. place for a beer. “I’ll never complain again,” deadpans Polizzi.

This year, with more skeletons than ever, the mischievous monsters are promising to transform his home into a haunted carnival-complete with fireworks, spiderweb cotton candy, a skeleton rock band, batting cages (where skeletons play baseball with flying rodents) and a boneyard bowling alley. Not surprisingly, the extravaganza, which comes to life around the second week of October, has made Polizzi a hit with some of his A-list neighbors. For instance, Gisele Bundchen, the leggy Brazilian supermodel, swung by last year during the festivities to introduce herself as a new neighbor, and to invite Polizzi over to her. place for a beer. “I’ll never complain again,” deadpans Polizzi.

My friend, Rex Danyluk, has been instrumental in getting Boney Island up and running. We’ve also included the 4-story treehouse in my front yard into the production. Rex has been working on a portable water display that we’ve designed a show around. Our animatronic Maestro, Maxilla the Great, conducts musical cauldrons along with a tree full of mischievous pumpkins in a dazzling display of ultraviolet water and light.