Sticky stunt fuels explosion of fame
Ever since Stephen Voltz and his pal Fritz Grobe shot a homemade video in which they turned 101 bottles of Diet Coke and some Mentos candies into a spectacular display of liquid ``fireworks," they've become stars.
They're weird and improbable stars -- the two grown men wear white coats and goggles as they unleash the fizzy display -- but stars nonetheless.
The video, posted on the Internet on June 3, has been viewed more than 5 million times by people worldwide. The two men have appeared on ``Late Show With David Letterman," the ``Today" show, and MSNBC's `` Countdown With Keith Olbermann." They've been mentioned by National Public Radio and The Wall Street Journal. Rolling Stone magazine called them ``wizards."
``Be careful what you wish for. It was way more intense than we ever could have hoped for," said Voltz, a 37-year-old from Norfolk with a law practice in Holliston.
Voltz and Grobe are prime examples of a new phenomenon: word-of-mouth sensations on the Internet, ordinary people catapulted to fame.
Grobe, 37, of Buckfield, Maine, said it has been a ``fantastic ride."
Now the two men, who collected $25,000 in advertising revenue from their first video, are hoping to capitalize on their fame by luring people regularly to their website to see what Grobe calls ``the latest crazy thing."
Grobe is a full-time performer who has traveled around the world as a juggler. He says he briefly held a world record for bouncing 15 balls between himself and another person.
Voltz, a divorced father of two, grew up idolizing street performers in his native San Francisco. He said he was lucky his newfound fame came at a time when work was slow at his law practice.
The men met at a performing arts camp in Maine six years ago, realized they shared a love of off-the-wall theater, and formed a creative partnership that now includes putting on a monthly variety show at a theater in Buckfield.
Last year, the friends were intrigued to hear about a weird reaction that happens when Mentos are dropped in Diet Coke. The candy produces wild, uncontrollable bubbles and powerful geysers of soda. As word has spread about the secret formula, people have posted videos of their experiments on the Internet and have debated the causes of the phenomenon.
Grobe and Voltz decided to stage a show at the Buckfield theater using about 10 bottles of soda. That went well, so they decided to go after something bigger.
The pair spent the next eight months studying the reaction, finding the right music, and choreographing a large-scale stunt. ``After all that work, we said we had to do 100 bottles," Grobe said.
They practiced with less than 20 bottles of soda. They had never done anything the scale of what they captured on video on April 30. It took about eight hours to set up the rows of 2-liter bottles at a friend's farm in Maine.
Even Grobe and Voltz were astounded by the results.
In the video, ``Extreme Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments," which can be seen on the site of their production company, Eepybird.com, the two men with strange aplomb set off a series of fountains that shoot off in different directions to a techno beat soundtrack. At the end, the two raise their arms like Olympic champions.
``It felt a lot like filming blowing up a building. All this preparation, all this careful setup, and you have one chance to get this right. It's not like we had enough money or time to do it again," Grobe said.
``Until we saw the video, we really had no clue how the whole thing was going to work," added Voltz. The video was filmed with one camera and got almost no editing.
On the Eepybird website, the two also offer helpful answers to such questions as whether dropping Mentos into other sodas will produce the same reaction, and whether somebody's stomach would explode if they wash a Mento down with Diet Coke.
(Their answer to the second question: Probably not. But ``do not, repeat, do not be stupid and test the limits of your stomach. Don't even think about it," they add).
The media attention is starting to die down, which the two men say is a relief.
They plan to post new videos on their website by September, but wouldn't reveal details of what they called a ``top secret" work in progress.
Grobe said the ingredients for the video that brought the men fame were ``nothing fancy," but the two had the ``drive and stupidity to take it further than anyone else has taken it.
``This has caught on like wildfire," he said.
