THE BEATLE POLITIC / VEGETARIANISM IN ACTION: GEOFFREY GIULIANO SPEAKS WITH THE LONDON TIMES

THE BEATLE POLITIC is an occassional series in which various themes in the Beatles music and personal lives is examined from a political point of view. The impact of the Beatles was more far reaching than simply four guys making great music but also encompassed many brave new ideas to their generation - animal rights and vegetarianism amongst them.

In mid 1980 Geoffrey Giuliano, his then wife Brenda (Vrnda Devi), their two young children, Sesa and Devin, moved to Toronto, Canada where Geoffrey signed on with McDonalds to portray Ronald McDonald in Canada via Vickers & Benson Advertising. He did the job for about a year and a bit. As time went on Giuliano’s ethical vegetarianism and the dubious goings-ons at McDonalds Corp wore away at him and he left. He was given $5000, presumably to keep his mouth shut, but it didn’t work! Since 1990 Giuliano has freely shared his thoughts about the controversial corporate juggernaught with countless media outlets around the globe. In this indepth 1997 interview conducted in St. John’s Wood, London, held to promote the upcoming McLiable case brewing at the time. Giuliano kept nothing back as he held forth on his slippery times as the world’s most famous clown prince of meat eating.

THE LONDON TIMES INTERVIEW 1997

Question: Are you the "original" Ronald McDonald?
Geoffrey Giuliano: No. The first Ronald is a silly weatherman on NBC named Willard Scott.
Question: How many years did you do it?
Giuliano: It was basically a year and a half. I was the Burger King for just under a year before that in New England. That was a very professional traveling show rather like old time Vaudeville.
Question: Was being Ronald a full time job?
Giuliano: Oh, yeah. I worked at an ad agency, Vickers & Benson in Toronto. I was way up on the 30th floor and had my own window office. One of the first things that struck me was that the executive core of McDonald's and their advertising agency don't eat McDonald's food! They had a cordon bleu chef - you called them up and they would make you whatever you wanted! I also had to do a lot of traveling to gigs in my very own super RV.
Question: What was the background to you being Ronald McDonald and was there a particular moment when you realized that you'd had enough?
Giuliano: I was pretty much fresh out of drama school (SUNY Brockport) and I had really big ideas that the Ronald McDonald Safety Show would help children not to drink bleach and set themselves on fire and things, so I learned it and did it. Then one day, as I was in the dressing room I found a memorandum from one of the McDonald's executives saying: 'To all personnel re: The Ronald McDonald Safety Show, the purpose of this show is to increase the public's awareness and especially young peoples' awareness of McDonald's goods and services'. I thought, gee, I thought it was to help kids!'The purpose of this show is to increase the public's awareness and especially the young peoples' awareness of McDonald's goods and services'. I thought, gee, I thought it was to help kids. The whole act was pretty corny and unbelievable from the start. The story, as we told it, was that hamburgers have nothing to do with a dead cow, that they grow in a happy little patch and you just go and pluck them with the Hamburglar and all the other moronic McDonaldland characters. They cloaked this wholesale slaughter of innocent animals in fairytales and PR. I once went to the McChicken plant where they "prepare" the chickens to make McNuggets. The chickens at one end are alive and come out dead at the other end. It smelled terrible. And there was a slippery goo on the floor. You knew this was a place of death. I remember taking a ride with George Cowan, the President of McDonald's of Canada from gig to gig because I was something he liked to show off, "the" Ronald McDonald. He kept hitting on all the young girls who worked at the "stores." I had a big fat book of unlimited account cards and such, the best make up, the best of everything. Including this goofy 30th floor office with a sexy secretary named Lynne. I used to go in the office, I had absolutely nothing to do, but I had the office and thekey to the executive washroom. It was just madness, cheap, sullied and dirty. You could feel the dirt, and everybody just took with both hands. After awhile it got to be too much and my conscience got the better of me. Things started to eat away at me, and over a few months, I decided "I can't do this anymore, this is sick and pointless". I realized that there would be karmic consequences for me if I stayed. One of them would be that I would make a lot of money. In fact, my mother was once standing with one of the big executives, John at McDonald's of Canada and he said to her, "We expect great things from Geoffrey". I thought to myself, "look, after about a year and a half, that's enough, take this job and shove it! I was out of work for a long time, which was tough, but they gave me a golden hand shake. Since I've 'come out of the closet' as an ethical veggie, now they make the other Ronald’s sign a document promising not to tell, and they give you some blood money if you keep your mouth shut. They gave me five thousand Canadian dollars and I just took off. As for my personal campaign against them, I was lying at home unemployed one day and I saw the Marlboro Man on TV. He was dying of lung cancer from smoking and he was doing an anti-smoking ad. I thought "wait a minute, what a great thing this is." When I did a speech in Toronto at the Vegetarian Food Fair I did my usual rabble-rousing. The next day Simon Halls, a spokesperson for McDonald's of Canada said in the Toronto Star "Guiliano has a right to his opinion. In fact we like vegetarians, we serve chicken and fish on our menu." Chicken and fish! Now, the last time I checked they were not vegetables. Half the time they don't even know what the hell they're talking about, but they don't care. I was talking to one of the marketing guys once and I said, "Do you think this is really good enough, do you think people will like it?" He said "You don't get it do you? You understand how it really works? We put shit out there and people buy it if you put enough money into the advertising."
Question: What do McDonald's think of you now?
Giuliano: Well, they have publicly said that, "Mr Guiliano has a right to his opinions and views and we obviously have a right to conduct our business", which is absolutely correct. Perhaps I flatter myself, my suspicion is that I'm public enemy number one in the US. The big problem is I haven't had as wide an access to the media as I might have if the McDonald's advertising dollar wasn't so powerful. For example, there was a local paper in western New York that did a story on me, and the owner of two McDonald's, one of the biggest concerns in the area, threatened to pull all his advertising if they went ahead. They did.
Yeah, that stuff goes on, you know, this is like a cold war at times, I've had death threats. I've had kidnapping threats. I'm not suggesting they came from McDonald's, but it certainly came from someone with a vested interest in keeping this game going and not being exposed for the murderers they are.
Question: May I ask you for a brief summary of your act?
Giuliano: I took my degrees as a Shakespearean actor. It's kind of a dip down, you know, from being the youngest actor in repertoire in the United States to ever play Macbeth to have my first professional gig as Ronald McDonald! I used to come on, "Hi everybody, this is Ronald McDonald, and boy oh boy, we're gonna have a lot of fun today, we're gonna sing songs, tell stories and learn about safety too. Would you like that"? I put everything into that character that any respectable actor would put into playing Richard III, it was important to me to do a good job. One thing I should tell you, no expense is spared in training Ronald. I'm a graduate of McDonald's University in Chicago and I'm also a graduate of Mark Wilson Productions (an old magician from the 50’s), first for Burger King, then for the McDonald's corp. I had dance teachers and I the best people training me. I also had to undergo unofficial psychological testing. When you sit that kid up on your knee they don't want to find out later that you are a child molester! Amoral promoter of wholesale slaughter, no problem, just don't touch the kids knees! I'm happy to report that I passed all the tests with flying colors. I once went to a town called Bellevue, Ontario and they let school out for the day and there were literally 15-20 thousand kids, my road manager called it Ronaldstock. I had one little microphone and did corny little 'needle through a balloon' magic tricks and stuff. Nobody could see or hear anything but, I mean, I was like a national hero, it was as if the President had come to town. All for Ronald McDonald. That's the kind of hero worship that takes good money to buy, you have pay for that. It's called brain-washing, and you gotta start young. It's like what the Jesuits say, "Give them to us before they're five and they'll be ours for life."
Question: Do you think McDonald's have a specific strategy in appealing to kids?
Giuliano: I was never allowed to eat the food, because that would be unseemly and could smudge the make-up. They don't really like you to think of it as food, it's fun! One thing they did say to me is that the people who control the disposable income aren't mummy and daddy, it's the kids you have to appeal to. They are the ones that say, "We want to go to McDonald's.' The majority of the kids I ran across were not aware that what they were eating had anything to do with a ground up dead animals.
Question: So you weren't allowed to advocate McDonald's products, how then did the kids relate to them?
Giuliano: The McDonaldland characters, I've forgotten all their names, it was so stupid, but we were told if they asked where the food came from that the hamburgers grow in a patch with the French fries next to them, it was really whacked, and the McDonaldland characters were as close as we were allowed to get to the facts. The only grain of truth in those characters was the one called the Hamburglar - he was a criminal who used to steal all the hamburgers. Maybe that was some sort of perverse reflection of the corporate McDonalds mentality. They were all subservient in the court of Ronald, the King, the Monarch of Meat , myself. I was the only one allowed to talk - you had to be highly trained to talk.
Question: So what did you do if kids asked you what hamburgers were made of?
Giuliano: As I said, you were never overtly allowed to mention food or where it came from. It was cloaked in razzmatazz - hamburgers came from a hamburger patch and you picked them. Of course, kids know that if it grows in a patch and you pick it, it's a vegetable. What does that tell you? It tells you they know there's something distasteful there, so they sugar coat it so people don't really put two and two together. How stupid are we as a society that we don't even understand that a hamburger is a dead cow? McDonald’s keeps it one step removed from reality. If they can keep you one step away from the truth and keep you stupid, you'll keep coming back.
Question: How did you get on with the McDonald's executives?
Giuliano: The McDonald's executives, by and large, were goofy, nerdy guys and girls, uptight, square, penny loafer-type human persons. I felt they were high class, highly paid losers. They weren't hip, aware, inquisitive, introspective people. They were just surface little chatty wind up corporate monkeys. Hey, that was a good soundbite! In the end, when I left, the executives said, "Well, go ahead, go, because you're not McDonaldised enough anyway." What the hell does that mean, "not McDonaldised enough"? It's rather like "not being enough of a Nazi". I don't know exactly what it means, but I'm glad I'm not and that I wasn't! I felt like the Pied Piper, except that I was leading the kids into a life of bad food, bad health and bad karma!
Question: How do you and how did you see your relationship to these children?
Giuliano: Well, there's no question that I was manipulating these children. I was a highly paid, highly trained, highly polished actor. Every show was a performance and I had a mandate to get that message out there, and yeah, it was not too hard - anybody can manipulate a child. I just went home one night, and I said "I cannot do this, I can't live with myself if I continue to do this"
Every show was a performance and I had a mandate to get that message out there and yeah, it was not too hard - anybody can manipulate a child you know.
Question: So do you feel that you were in turn manipulated by McDonald's?
Giuliano: I was a young guy on the make, I was just out of drama school, I was the hot shot actor in college, and I thought I was going to be the next Robert De Niro (not!). It turned out I was the next Ronald McDonald. It was mutual, I was just looking for a job.
Question: What do you think now when you see Ronald McDonald on television?
Giuliano: When I see Ronald on TV now, the first thing I think is, "that poor sap needs a fucking job". I just think what a crying shame it is. We could at least lay it on the table, tell the kids what the food is, what they're really eating. Instead we get this fake smiling image. It's what McDonald's makes money on and that's all they're after. Ronald himself, the deification or Godhead of meat eating is just a cover for their greed. Like their charities, the Ronald McDonald Houses. They care about as much for dying kids as they do for live ones! They only care about the money, just money. commerce in it's most brazen, unfeeling, uncompassionate form. They can hoodwink the public with their Ronald McDonald House for dying children and their families, but not me. It's just a hollow attempt to make money, for anyone with any insight. You can see that they're just trying to put on a good front, you know. It's rather like Nazi propaganda. It could even be offensive to someone who sees this for me to compare McDonald's Corporation to the Nazis, but they didn't live it, I did. I saw it. It's very much like a religious cult. They have silly pep rallies, they have team songs, they have little goofy cheerleaders at the Ronald McDonald University and you get a ring after 10 years of being Ronald - a six hundred dollar ring with rubies and gold. It's just goofy and dumb, it's like high school gone really, really bad. I was the figurehead of meat eating on the planet. Not only was I Ronald McDonald, but previous to that I was the Marvelous Magical Burger King. I believe I'm the only person with that dubious honor.
Question: So what would you say if you could address the board of McDonald's now?
Giuliano: Most of the Canadian stores are owned pretty much directly by George Cowen himself and he's in his sixties now. I'd say, "George, you've got a lot to pay for, you know. You better tread carefully, because there is such a thing as karma and you don't have to be a guru to know that. Direct cause and effect is pretty obvious. You do stuff like this, George and it's gonna come back to haunt you." If I were George, I'd be very afraid to die.
Question: What about you? How do you feel about what you did?
Giuliano: Just like the old Sicilian Catholic ideal, that I am by my heritage, I gotta atone, I gotta do something. I gotta, say whatever I can say and appeal to whomever on this issue. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. If you don't have to kill to eat, don't do it!. What's it for, is it so that we can all make a great living? No, it's for a few greedy evil men who are making the profits from this. It applied to me when I was Ronald as I was benefiting directly from this, and so what do you have to do to balance it? What's it for, is it so that we can all make a great living? No, it's for a few greedy evil men who are making the profits from this. It applied to me when I was Ronald McDonald as I was benefiting directly from this, and so what do you have to do to balance it? I used to be Ronald McDonald, and now I've turned that into a golden opportunity, to take each and every chance that comes my way to decry what went on, and continues to go on there. People might think I'm overstating, they might think that this guy has got a chip on his shoulder or something, it's not that big a deal, but just go out to the plant and it will become a big deal. I don't think there's a human being with a heart that can look at the shit that goes on there, that killing, torture, the fear and smell of death in the air and not be affected by it. So I spend as much of my time as I can, and I'm available seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to do anything that anybody wants me to do to fight this big Goliath.
Question: How much effect do you think Ronald McDonald has? He's more recognized than Santa Claus?
Giuliano: Oh the kids love him! They don't know why they love him, they love him because they were told to love him. Somebody paid somebody to make them love him, so it's all a very unthinking, unfeeling exercise. The whole message is like, "this is what we're giving you, take it, shut up and put your hand deep in your pocket, and we'll take the proceeds".
Question: Do you think it was smart of McDonald's to have come up with Ronald?
Giuliano: Oh, it's real 50's, not really very anything inventive. A clown is a friendly, unthreatening thing. It's happy, it has a mask of make up, it's not real. There's no hard edges, it's all soft and blurred, you can easily embrace it. It's also safe and warm like a big animated stuffed toy. It's all just a con job and not a very sophisticated trick at all, it's just been around for so long it's familiar. Like what Hitler said; if you tell a lie long enough everybody believes that it's the truth, it becomes truth. Burger King got rid of the Marvelous Magical Burger King but Ronald is still with us. I'll see that bastard into the ground before I'm done...
Question: If you could look at the image of yourself in the Ronald McDonald suit, how do you react to that? Is it happy or sad?
Giuliano: Well, there I am as Ronald. The image there seems somewhat duplicitous to me. It seems really in your face, but if you look into the eyes, there's guile there - the smile is painted on. I remember when we used to put the black mascara on, they'd tell us to get it really dark to avoid 'pink eye', you know, they didn't want that pink, they wanted everything as as unreal as possible. I remember it was like the army, you know I'd have a kit inspection, they'd come and look and say, "zip that zipper up private", they wanted curls in the wig, but I was always a bit of a rebel - my zipper would be down when it was supposed to be up, that sort of thing. So don't ever think that this is a waste, and don't ever think that we'll go away, and don't ever think that this is not going to work. It will work, one person at a time.
Question: What do you think of Helen and Dave's role in this?
Giuliano: Anybody that does anything in this regard is a hero in my book. What we are trying to do here is raise consciousness, We're not going burn down restaurants or anything. It's all up here, in our heads.
This is one of the things the whole McLibel trial is about. All the people around the world are working towards this end. The consciousness changers and expanders group and that's how real change comes about. So don't ever think this is a waste, and don't ever think we'll go away, and don't ever think this is not going to work. Because i0t will work, one person at a time.
Question: Do you feel you've 'atoned' for what you did?
Giuliano: No. I'm in the process of atoning, and it'll take many years. One and a half years as Ronald McDonald is equal to about thirty years as an ardent, enthusiastic, animal rights activist, and then maybe I'll be able to die with a peaceful mind some day and move on successfully to the next level!