Paul & Vince would like to welcome Jeanne Fleming, who has been the director of New York City’s famous Village Halloween Parade since 1980. The event is the world’s largest Halloween parade and the only major nighttime parade in the United States, attracting over two million spectators each year. Jeanne is known for many other events and festivals, including Sinterklaas in Rhinebeck, NY, the Harbor Festival Fair, and the Official Land Celebration for the Centennial of the Statue of Liberty.

1.

Paul & Vince: Tell us, Jeanne, how you came to be in this very unique carreer.

Jeanne: I went to Bard College just outside the city, and when I was in my twenties, I created the first cooperative arts program between the thirty colleges north of New York City. We had funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, and I ran festivals in every art form. I would go up to Vermont every year to Bread and Puppet Circus and I began making large puppets, making large outdoor theatre pieces, pageants of a sort, based on mythic themes and ideas I had.

There were several artists doing similar work that was hard to qualify, and we started calling it multimedia, or multidisciplinary, or Celebration Artists. And one of these artists was Ralph Lee, who started the West Village Halloween parade. He started the parade to showcase his work, and it was simply a walk from his home at Westbeth Artists Housing to Washington Square Park. But of course, it grew and grew, and after seven years, he retired, and I took it over. And today, it involves over 80,000 people and over 2 million spectators. It’s unlike anything in the world.

Paul & Vince: Amazing. And did the parade grow organically, or were there any surprising issues when you took it over?

Jeanne: Oh, yes, the parade grew very quickly. But by the time I got more involved, there were problems. People were sitting in cars. People were standing in crowds in the streets, and it was hard to get through them. People in the Village were complaining.

So, I said to Ralph, “I’ll come and help you. I’ll do all the things you don’t like.”

And so I did. I started working with the police, I worked with the neighborhood, and I raised all the money. I did everything except make puppets, which Ralph continued to do. But after two years, Ralph decided he didn’t want to do it anymore.

Paul & Vince: Really…Why?

Jeanne: Well, he had seen the parade as an exhibition of his work. I had seen the parade as an extraordinary opportunity for thousands of people to look into their imaginations, come out, and be together in this celebration, and be who they wanted to be for one night. It was a night when everyone got along, so diverse, like the soul of New York City to me. I loved it, and so I really wanted to keep the parade going.

I said, “This is just too important for the soul of the city”. I still feel that way 45 years later.
 
But you should know that even though it feels organic, the Halloween parade is totally organized. It has to be. You can’t invite 80,000 people to come out in New York City without it. You do not get a permit unless you’re organized, and so I have to have a really good logistical mind.

I ran the largest event ever held in New York City —the Statue of Liberty’s 100th birthday, attended by 12 million people. And I work with amazing people — professionals and volunteers. A lot of the people who work with me have worked with me for over 30 years. It’s a small staff. There are four of us who really work on it intensely. I do most of the work throughout the year. Nobody’s paid a whole lot. People do it out of love, really, it’s just the way it’s always been.

2.

Paul & Vince: Tell us what a typical day of the parade is like for you?

Jeanne: Okay, so we prepare all the puppets at my house upstate, which makes it all possible, and so I’m the last person to come down to the city, maybe with a giant head or the tail of the snake in the back of my car. And I’m on the phone or computer, taking care of a million last-minute things. Then, in the car, I often do interviews over the phone, because we have press from all over the world covering the event. Then I arrive, and that’s always fun, because the barricades are closed but they open them all up for me. I drive in, and as soon as I’m out of my car I’m inundated with 50,000 people who have all kinds of questions about this and that and what they’re supposed to be doing and all of that and then I get to see all the regulars.

Paul & Vince: Who are the regulars?

Jeanne: There are a lot of people who come to the parade who’ve been coming for years and years, and they know me. Everybody can recognize me because I wear this hot pink leather jacket so the cops can find me easily. That’s why I wear it.

I hook up with my walkie-talkie girls immediately. There are two women who have walked with me in the parade for at least 30 years. They come, they have walkie-talkies, so we can all communicate.

There are pedicabs that VIPs are in. My board members start to arrive. I get them all settled. And I have to go to the different streets and just make sure everybody’s okay.  And then at six-thirty, all the puppets and all the people move onto the street, and the floats move. Everything moves.

The parade is run like a stage show because it’s timed for television, for the NY1 broadcast. So, everything’s lined up at five different locations, and I have a timed schedule because I know how long it takes to get from each location to the television cameras. And so the whole thing is timed, but the timing also involves a continuous flow of 80,000 people who feed into the line all night for three-plus hours. They’re letting out about 2000 people at a time, and it’s planned so that each group always has music, because music keeps the parade safe. If you have music, you feel joyful, and you dance, and you have direction. We have marching bands and 38 different kinds of music in the parade, music from all over the world.

Paul & Vince: It must be an honor to march with you at the head of the parade. Do you get requests?

Jeanne: Oh yes, I walk with my walkie-talkie girls, and someone will always be there who, for some reason, their life dream was to walk at the head of the parade. Sometimes we have terminal patients, or we have people who march in honor of those who have died. We have a lot of that because it’s a celebration of death and birth. It’s led by dancing skeletons, because they know how important it is to dance and to live, because you’re going to lose all of that.

Paul & Vince: And you’re timing everything, is that right?

Jeanne: Yes, I get to the front of the parade, and I time it. The parade has to take one hour and seven minutes.
We can slow down or speed up depending on how the timing is going. Sometimes I stop the parade entirely and just let the band play for the crowd. A lot of it, too, is the feel of the crowd, what they’re like, how they’re reacting, that kind of thing. And the other job that I have is that I hug every cop along the route I go up, and I thank them for making it possible to do this absolutely insane, out of control, nutty thing.

3.

Paul & Vince: Can you tell us something that people would find surprising about your job?

Jeanne: Well, the first thing is that we have a shoestring budget. The entire event is free for the public, and that’s crucial. We rely on donations and ticket sales for special seating, so your support really means the world to us. The second thing is, I’ve always run it with some magical thinking, and part of that is, if I take care of every individual, it will be safe. So, I answer every email. In the old days, I used to lose my voice before the parade day, because people would call me at all hours. Now, of course, I get hundreds of emails a day, and I try to answer every single one. Everything from, “I’m coming from the UK with my ten-year-old autistic daughter, where do we go?”, to, “What should I come dressed as?” So, I explain the special area we have for kids. Or after 9/11, someone wrote and said that they usually come as a devil, but it didn’t seem right, and so I told him maybe he should come as an angel, and he did, and he was radiant.

Paul & Vince: Wow, you really give everyone attention.

Jeanne: I do. Sometimes people write to me and say, “I really want to pop the question to my girlfriend in the parade, and I’m trying to figure out how to do it.” Then I help that person figure out a moment where they can do that. We’ve arranged weddings, so many things.  One letter I got years ago that blew my mind was from a man who was napalmed in Vietnam, and his entire face was disfigured. He worked as a park ranger alone in a tower, because no one could see him. He was so scary that the only night of the year he felt that he belonged was when he came to the Halloween Parade. Beautiful girls would dance with him, and people treated him as if he were normal because they thought he was wearing a mask. Things like that make you understand why you do your work. It’s an ancient ritual happening in modern times, and it still is – it’s a ritual of transformation.

4.

Paul & Vince: Well, your work is obviously powerful. But what are your favorite things to do in New York City on your day off?

Jeanne: I always have fun in the city, no matter what I’m doing. I love theater, I love dance, I go to see art. I always have a friend who has a show going on. And we get a lot of our supplies and things at Materials for the Arts, which is a great nonprofit. Because, as I mentioned, our budget is tiny, and Materials for the Arts is a treasure trove.

…and one more, Just For Fun

Paul & Vince: And now it’s time for our Just For Fun question. If you had to invent a new holiday, what would it be and how would we celebrate it?

Jeanne: Well, that’s part of my job. I have to invent. And recently I got a little card from Paul Rudd, a neighbor of mine, that said, “You are magic.” And I don’t like to talk about magic, because I think magic is basically hard work. It’s paying attention to every single detail. That’s when magic can happen. But I decided that, after that, it might be very interesting to look Magic straight in the face. So, I’ve decided to gather artists, a great person in each art form. And everyone will be able to talk about magic. It will be a series of huge dinner parties, where everyone will bring something, there’ll be music, there’ll be dancing, and there’ll be theater. And we begin with everyone dancing the Hokey Pokey.

Paul & Vince: The Hokey Pokey, really?

Jeanne: Yes! I have a long tradition of making everyone that I work with dance the Hokey Pokey, because Hokey Pokey means “hocus pocus.” It’s magic!. But what makes magic? You have to “put your whole self in”. And the thing I’ve learned is, the thing itself is never as interesting as the process of making it and for me, for me, it’s all the ideas, it’s all the people, it’s all the disagreements. That anything great comes of it: that’s the magic.