Don Frantz’s resume reads like a greatest hits list of American entertainment — Broadway, Disney World, the Superbowl — but we’ve been talking for 20 minutes about his career, and he hasn’t mentioned any of those things yet. You can chalk it up to being humble, but the more likely culprit is this: Don Frantz is obsessed with corn mazes. The modern American version of the fall attraction is his brainchild, and he’s designed too many to count over the last three decades. Just hearing the question sends him into a fit of giggles.
Chelsea Lupkin
If you’re trying to find a common thread among Frantz’s projects, it’s this: The man knows how to hold an audience captive. “Having someone stuck for two hours — that’s cool,” he laughs. His mind processes everything like a show, so as you wind and weave through towering corn stalks, you’re kept entertained. “When you’re in the maze, every two or three minutes, you’re going to see something, do something,” Frantz says, pointing out mailboxes filled with riddles and giant tubes that you can shout into and get a directional clue in return.
Chelsea Lupkin
The initial idea came to Frantz on a cross country flight, from Los Angeles to New York. He’d been angling for a solution to build an American version of England’s hedge mazes, and nothing was sticking. But on the plane, somewhere over Middle America’s sprawl of crop fields, it hit: Frantz had just watched Field of Dreams. He could manipulate a corn field into a course. He was familiar with them, after all, having grown up on one.
Chelsea Lupkin
Twenty-seven years later, Franz is the guy you call when you want a corn maze. His American Maze Company has designed nearly everything: cartoon characters, celebrities, skylines, you name it. And for Frantz, it’s all just one big show. “This dual life of designing corn fields and doing Broadway has been quite a blessing,” he reflects. “It’s something that takes me back home. It takes me back to my roots.”
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Sarah Weinberg is the deputy editor at Delish and has covered food, travel, home, and lifestyle for a number of publications, including Food Network Magazine and Country Living. She’s originally from the Bay Area, has an unhealthy affinity for the Real Housewives of Anywhere, and harbors strong feelings about fruit salad.
Source link : https://www.delish.com/food/videos/a56341/what-it-takes-to-design-a-corn-maze-video/
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Publish date : 2017-10-27 07:00:00
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