At ShowBiz Pizza Place, Paul rose through the technical ranks — from location technician to Senior Technical Instructor to Technical Support Manager to Director of Entertainment — moving from servicing entertainment technology to directing it. He worked at the meeting point of the creative and the technical: helping decide what the show was, and building the systems that made it run the same way in every location, night after night.
Along the way he became the company’s go-to fixer. When ShowBiz Pizza acquired Chuck E. Cheese, Paul was the person sent to Sunnyvale, California, to “pick up the pieces” and get the operation back on its feet.
More than a stage
A ShowBiz showroom was a genuine feat of integration for its time: multichannel audio, video playback and monitors, synchronized lighting, and animatronic performers, all cued together into a single coordinated show. Paul’s role reached across all of it — and beyond the equipment into programming and national entertainment planning: seasonal content, show schedules, and the guest experience itself.
An Entertainment Committee record dated September 18, 1986 lists Paul presenting the recommended entertainment theme schedule for 1987 — a small window onto how far his responsibilities extended past the workshop and into the creative direction of the company.
The people and the systems
Two threads from these years each have their own page:
- Cyberstar / CyberVision — the integrated show-control work Paul developed alongside Dave Philipsen.
- Yogi Bear — an animatronic character conversion Paul worked on with costume-support manager Jul Kamen, with test installations in Omaha, Colorado Springs, and Augusta.