Flashback 2000: Flying without the greatest of ease

Jon Weiss does his job (photo courtesy of ABC News)

     Labor Day is this Monday, and I've been thinking about jobs, and the meaning of work, and what makes a job interesting. Which, strangely, made me remember this column.

     The Human Cannonball hasn't called yet.
     He was supposed to phone at 1 p.m. Now it's 1:30. Another professional milestone: waiting by the phone for the Human Cannonball.
     Excuse me: "Clown 'n Ball." Jon Weiss, the "Human Clown 'n Ball." He's with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which pulls into town next week.
     I will admit I am a sucker for the circus. I would go every day. I think that's the problem with days like today: a heightened sense of circuslessness.
     I did not ask to talk to the Human Cannonball — excuse me, Clown 'n Ball — because he blasts 65 miles an hour, reaching 5 Gs of force as he leaves the 9,000-pound device.
     I wanted to talk because of the Supreme Court case.
     What, you don't remember Zacchini vs. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Company? It's one of my favorite cases. The right to privacy is not guaranteed in the Constitution, but was cobbled together through court cases, and it is one of the minor glories of America that a landmark of privacy law developed from a man being shot out of a cannon at a state fair.
     Hugo Zacchini's act consisted of being shot out of a cannon into a net 200 feet away.
     In the fall of 1972, Zacchini was performing at a county fair in Ohio. A reporter from a local TV station showed up with a camera, and Zacchini asked him not to film his act. The reporter didn't but, pressured by his boss, returned the next day and secretly shot Zacchini being shot out of a cannon. The 15-second act was broadcast that night on the 11 p.m. news.
     Zacchini sued, claiming "unlawful appropriation" of his "professional property." He won, then lost on appeal. After only five years the case wound its way to the Supreme Court. Justices White, Burger, Stewart, Blackmun and Rehnquist sided with the human cannonball.
     "The broadcast . . . goes to the heart of petitioner's ability to earn a living as an entertainer," wrote White, ruling for Zacchini, a decision which, in my layman's eyes, seems to touch upon this whole Napster mess.
     Just now the phone rang. Jon Weiss, the Human, er, Clown 'n Ball, calling from Cleveland.
     "I've always admired the cannon act," said Weiss, who joined the circus as a clown in 1982, then shifted to the cannon. "In 1987, one of the double-barreled cannonballers decided he'd had enough — it's very stressful. You have to have a lot of confidence in your ability to do it. Once you lose that confidence, that's it."
     So how do they shoot a man out of a cannon?
     "We try to keep it a trade secret," he said. "It's almost like a magic trick; everyone wants to know how it's done, but we try to keep it within the circus industry. It's very dangerous."
     He hadn't heard of the Supreme Court case, but he was familiar with Zacchini.
     "He's from a very famous family," Weiss said. "Mariel, Hugo, there's a bunch of them. They invented the repeating cannon — it shot one person, then a second person."
     Weiss told me he has been shot out of a cannon nearly 5,000 times. Does it, I wondered, ever get dull?
     "It's never the same," he said. "I try not to make it dull. You always try to improve what you're doing, trying to fly further or straighter or land different."
     Weiss has three young children — Jonny, 5, Nicole, 3, and Max, 8 months. How does being shot out of a cannon — which Weiss likened to being in a car wreck or getting punched in the kidneys_compare to raising small children?
     "What I do for a living is not work," he said. "Work is raising kids. It is a lot easier being shot out of a cannon than raising kids."
     Sure, but how many stay-at-home dads could fill the Allstate Arena? Not that they'd want to. They'd probably get stuck having to clean up afterward.

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 26, 2000