Bruce Prichard Recalls Filming Big Show/Boss Man Cemetery Sequence, Says It Was Big Show’s Idea

– On the latest Something to Wrestle With, Bruce Prichard looked back on the infamous Big Show and Big Boss Man cemetery sequence and his involvement in it. The sequence is one of the more infamous moments of the Attitude Era and took place in November of 1999 amidst a feud between the two. The storyline went that Big Show’s father died (he was alive in real life) and Boss Man would interrupt the funeral to build heat toward their eventual match. It was a silly, over the top scene that ended with Boss Man dragging the casket out on the back of his car, with Big Show jumping on and riding it.

Highlights from the discussion, plus the full podcast, are below:

On how he got involved with the segment: “Well, I remember getting the phone call at home. I was living in Monroe, Connecticut. And it was either a Saturday or a Sunday, but over the weekend. And it was one of those, [Vince McMahon voice] ‘Hey pal. Ah, we got this shoot over there in the cemetary. I think it’s up there close by you. I’m wondering if you could, ah, just slide by and maybe help ’em out there a little bit.’ It turned from helping them out to, ‘Yeah, I need you to go shoot this’ [laughs] type of deal.”

On whose idea the angle was: “I didn’t have a whole lot of the creative. It just was very broad strokes. And the idea for the whole angle was Big Show’s idea. And now we’re at this point, but we just got, you know, the shoot got crazier and crazier as we got there, we’re looking around and ‘Can we do this?’ and ‘Can we do that?’ And ‘What about this?’ and ‘what about that?”

On dealing with the cemetery people: “I had been reminded several times throughout the time while I’m there from the groundskeeper and the gentlemen who ran the cemetery, ‘Okay guys, we have a funeral, a grave site service that will be taking place … can you guys either be done by then or can we wait until the service is after?’ I said, ‘Oh, don’t worry man. We won’t do anything to disrupt.’ Then it was also made sure that we don’t mess up the cemetery or grounds, or anything like that. Well that — we tried, okay? We tried. But it just kept getting crazier and crazier, and we had what was meant to be similar to the Blues Brothers police car that they had where they went around town promoting the Blues Brothers concert … and thought that would be great for Bossman to have. So he’s got this cop car with a big speaker on top of it. And it actually worked.”

On doing it while people were around: “As we go through this, man, there are — it’s a weekend, so there are families that are coming with their children to visit Grammy and Poppy’s headstone, leave some flowers and pay their respects and what have you. There’s this whole television production going on kind of in the middle of the cemetery. Because it’s the only place they had where we could actually dig a hole and do this whole thing. And I needed to get it done.”

On filming the whole sequence: “So we laid it out, we just said, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’ So there was actually a service going on in the cemetery with people around a grave site. And we tied up a casket to the back of a car and drug it through the cemetery, tearing up the grounds as we drove away. With the Big Show jumping on the casket and riding it for a while before taking one of the worst bumps in the history of the business. And as soon as we did it, I said ‘Okay guys, we’re out of here.’ And we left and I left my production manager to kind of deal with the fallout. But I got a call the next day, and was told that we would never be able to use that cemetery again. Which I kind of knew, as I was high-tailing it out of there. But it goes down as probably one of the best pieces of television that has probably ever existed.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Something to Wrestle with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.