From national celebrations to world records shows with nearly a million fireworks, Phil Grucci is the creative force behind some of the world’s biggest fireworks shows. We talk fireworks shows are put together, how fireworks are made and the world’s best fireworks shows. Then, we countdown a special Top 5.

Interview with Phil Grucci of Grucci Fireworks

Phil Grucci 0:12

By the time I could realize that you had the pressure of a family business, I was already addicted, green and red is probably the easier colors to make. So when you see a firework show that's predominantly red and green, it's just because they can't make a good blue.

Nick VinZant 0:30

Most fireworks, you've launched at one time

Phil Grucci 0:32

960,000 devices, which was a world record. In eight minutes 52 different cities spread out around the entire Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Nick VinZant 0:44

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it really helps us out. So no matter when you're listening to this or where you're listening to this, we have all seen and been captivated by a firework show. But what does it take to actually put one of these shows together? It is so much more interesting and complicated than I ever would have thought. Our first guest is part of a family that has been making their own fireworks and designing firework shows all over the world for six generations. Our first guest is the creative director for grucci fireworks. Phil grucci. So as the creative director, when you get ready to put together a firework show, like what goes into that.

Phil Grucci 1:37

So when that call comes in, we kind of feel the client out on what they're looking for. And that puts us in an area of the scale of the performance, the performance where it's going to be if it's going to be in downtown Manhattan, or is it going to be out on out on a farm out in eastern Long Island that sets our stage? What is the stage is a roof of a billion dollar building? Or is it out on a barge on the Hudson River, for example. That's the staging. Naturally, this the business aspect of it has to happen such as what the budget is that they have. Some of our programs range into the 1000s of dollars into the millions of dollars. So obviously, that puts you into into a box that you have to work to create something, its budget and what the stages. Once we have that, if it's if it's a performance that we're choreographing, to music, it's setting a music score. So we listen to all the music depending on what the celebration is naturally, on the Fourth of July and Independence Day, everything is very patriotic, everything is very pure and colorful and red, white and blue. If it's a wedding, then it's generally what's the bride's favorite music? what's the what's the groom's favorite music? What's the message, what's the theme. So when we pick that soundtrack, we go through that process of then scoring that music, and then that becomes the bed or the timeline that the fireworks performance is, is is designed to. But then there's some clients that have a theme that that we have to create uniquely and what the celebration is about. And then then the design is the meticulous setting of every single firework device that's going to be displayed in that program at a very precise moment in time based on what that music what the tempo is. If the music is big, robust and Baroque, naturally, the fireworks have to match that. If it's soft and delicate, you don't want to be bah bah bah bah bah bum in the sky real loud, you want to be soft and delicate with the product that you select. So it's, it's very much like casting a ballet or a dance, you know the certain characters or certain performers act and do things uniquely than others do. So we'll have a firework that's called the Golden Comoro that's very elegant and at first, it's very gentle when it when it when it displays and then we'll have a firework device called a reporter salute that all it does is make a bright white flash and a bang. And those get choreographed into that performance at the appropriate time when it matches that design, tempo and feel. So then that's all the design side of it, then that's about a third of the activity every every minute of fireworks you see in the sky takes me about two hours of scripting and design time to kind of plot that material out on where it's going to be at what angle it's fired from which portion of the theater or the stage that we're working with, where does it get located. And we have 12,000 points to pick from to discharge fireworks from. So that's how how elaborate some of the performances can be when we're picking a single device that's going to be on the pinnacle of the building, and it's gonna fire at a 45 degree angle to the to the south. That's the kind of precision that goes into some of our performances. So once that design is completed, then it goes to the programming department. And they they meticulously take line by line and, and put it into a computer program that then generates all of the drawings and scripts and all of the to give to the prior technicians that are in the field to know how to actually install this, this program that I may have envisioned on on my system here at the studio, but then translate that into paper where the pyrotechnicians in the field can set all of that product up properly and have the green when fire when the green was was the fire in the pink one fire when the pig was was the fire. Then it goes down to our factory in Virginia. And all of those characters, all of the gold willows and all of the red strobes in the Gulf that are split split comets, they all get put in a range. In order by which they have they're going to be displayed and they get numbered. So each circuit every single firework has an electric circuit that it gets fired from. They all get packaged, and then they get shipped from our factory, which is a regulatory rich oversight that we have. We follow a lot of laws to move explosives because it's not sneakers and socks to any place around the country of the world. So sometimes we have to put our fireworks in containers and shipping by sea. Most of all of the fireworks get shipped around the United States by truck. And on the rare occasion when the time is very short, the client has to pay the the exorbitant expense to fly it by air. Then when it gets to the site. That's another five is six. The largest program we ever displayed was a Guinness World Record which we had 250 pirate technicians working on site for over a month and a half. We serve 15,000 lunches to this team to be able to put the show together that only last six and a half minutes.

Nick VinZant 6:47

I cannot believe how complicated that is. I honestly thought and I don't mean any offense like I thought it was like a guy pressing a button.

Phil Grucci 6:58

There is a guy who presses a button at the end of the day guy or gal we've got plenty of female pyrotechnicians, but there are the pyrotechnic pyrotechnicians eventually does press that button that starts at all. But all that work that I just talked about has to happen before that proverbial push of the button happens.

Nick VinZant 7:17

So you got like your average Big Show say? city fireworks, your average like city fireworks. When when do you need to start planning for that fireworks event? Like how long does that whole process take?

Phil Grucci 7:31

No,that's a good question. Most of the time, we prefer to get eight to eight months to a year to prepare for a show. Fourth of July we have 8080 some odd firework displays that will produce in that one weekend that one day. And what I didn't include before in my description is all of the logistics that has to happen. Moving crew around getting the airline tickets, getting the hotels, the hotels, getting the trucking routes, getting the permission from the area that you're going into the display, the show, the fire department, the Coast Guard, the FAA, all of the regulatory parts of it,

Nick VinZant 8:05

it's pretty much based off of music is usually how you're going to kind of choreographic right that kind of dictates everything from and it flows from there.

Phil Grucci 8:12

This these days, most of the shows are choreographed to a music score. There are a few that still wish to have them traditional which they're beautiful shows where you really focus on the beauty of the product and not the the influence of music.

Nick VinZant 8:29

When we talk about these fireworks, you know, the big ones that are being sent off into the air like how are they different from the stuff that I buy it the stand like how is it different from that

Phil Grucci 8:39

the chemistry is pretty much the same as far as the combustion create colors and the crate noise and create crackle and whistle. It The difference is the volume is the size is the sum of the chemistry is different because of the user and the trained aspect of the professional prior technician then the general public. And by and large, most of it is larger. Some of our devices are 12 inches in diameter and the burst size of three or four football fields. There's differences in how its how it's fused. So when you light it with a with a with a lighter, it takes so much time before it ignites as compared to most of all of our products are filed electronically. So we have very elaborate computer systems that will initiate things electronically. He said a lucrative business, my family's been producing firework displays for six generations now. We don't have a Learjet but we do support our families. You know, we work for the money that that we make through the through the business. There's a lot of employees that are not Gucci's but yet they've been with us for 3040 years. So it's it's lucrative to the extent that we support our families we live comfortably but it's not a business where where we can retire in one year.

Nick VinZant 9:56

Was it something that like does this something that You really wanted to do, or was this because it's a family business like, Look, this is always going to be your path.

Phil Grucci 10:07

No, no, no I, I went to college and I got my degree in finance and business administration. And I knew when I was a very young age as a young male, you got that that energy and that power in the blood when you were a young 16 years old. Remember being on a barge with my dad in Coney Island. I, every Tuesday, during the summer, we would have a performance for the music park in Coney Island, and then every Wednesday would be Rockaway Playland. So I got into my blood in a very young age, back in the 70s. It was, it was a little easier than it is now. So Mike, my son, Christopher, and my nephew, Cory, they couldn't touch anything, or even be anywhere near the fireworks until they were 18. So they kind of missed that, that period of time they get addicted to it as much as I did when I was, you know, that was the only thing I really knew that was as exciting as as you know, as anything. And I chose, wow, this is what I want to do. I didn't choose it, because I felt I was obligated to do it because of the heritage I was too young to by the time I could realize that, you know, you had the pressure of a family business. I was already addicted. So I and I even today, even with the challenge, it's not an easy business. It's not an easy occupation. But the part of it that keeps you going is the art form. You know, the creative aspect of it and see something is short term, you create it, you see it the sky. You see the pleasure brings to your question before Yes, it's it's, it gives us financial benefits to survive and feed our children and put clothing on our backs and have nice houses and nice cars. But the addiction part of it is is the creative part and watching a firework show and turn around Look, look at the audience and you're looking at the five year old grandchild next to his or her grandfather, or grandmother. And they're looking at the firework show in their face looks almost exactly the same. The only difference is one has more wrinkles than the other but the expression on their face. It's pretty much the same. The jaws open. They're not looking at cell phones, they're not. You know, they're not they're not they're not texting, they're not playing games and watching for that 20 minutes or 10 minutes or however long The show is that watching that firework show. And for the for the elder people, the adults for that 20 minutes or whatever it is they have no, they have no worries, they forget about all the problems that they may have, or the problems in the world.

Nick VinZant 12:43

What do you think? Is it about fireworks that kind of captivated us so much? Because it is like it's a bright light in the sky and a loud noise. But for some reason, like it really gets our attention. One it's,

Phil Grucci 12:58

it's it's energetic, right? It's it's energy. It's a lot of it's forceful and in and it's dangerous to an extent right to the audience. It's like, it's that little mystery that's going on behind that, behind that behind the fence line saying, Wow, you could hear the power. And it also it also tickles all of your senses. If you think about it, right? You can watch a movie, or you can watch a powerful fireworks program on television. But do you get the same reaction if you're if you're live? No, you get a better reaction because it's live because you could feel it on your skin, you could feel the pressure on your face, you can, you could smell it too, right? You could smell the smoke in some cases, and it's bigger than life, you know, it's something that's what you feel like you could reach out and touch it. And it's, you know, your peripherals filled? Where do you Where can you get a medium like that in the art forms? That provides that kind of excitement. And then a little bit of an I do believe is the fact that it's it's it's got a little element of danger in their perception, like going to a car race, right? Think about how many times or what opportunities you have to really hang with your family. And all of you enjoy the same thing.

Nick VinZant 14:06

So we don't usually get into this this early. But I think a lot of these kind of sum up questions that we would normally talk about. So are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions? Absolutely. What is the most impressive firework to you?

Phil Grucci 14:23

The most impressive to me. This is a show that we actually manufacturer and it's a show that my dad kind of it was I should say kind of did develop and and displayed it in such a way that it became close to our trademark lock. It's called a Gucci. It's a golden flitter split splitting comment in the Shell has multiple dimensions to it. So when it bursts one The color is very rich, it looks like 14 karat gold, but it's got a shimmer to it. And it has inside of the shell. It's got 52 of these very large comments that when it bursts, it looks like a spider's legs that are coming in And then just as it appears like it's going to go out the ends of all of that the tentacles at the bottom, all spit, split and explode at the same time. So it's a double dimension, dual dimensional item. It's very elegant, we typically would display that right before the finale. So when you have those fireworks that I always think of the one that's like, boom, and then it goes, boom. And then there's like, shoot, and then a boom. Right? So that's multiple shells inside of the same multi break shell. That's correct. Yep. Or, or the Shell has one break. But the components inside of it, then have multiple breaks. So you can have a splitting comment, as I meant just mentioned a gopher to splitting comment, which is one break one burst. But all the little cola comments inside of it have another secondary burst. So you get kind of a two stage effect that

Nick VinZant 15:52

are they fickle? Are they pretty, pretty reliable in the sense that Yeah, we're dealing with explosives, but this thing is going to act exactly how I think it's going to

Phil Grucci 16:00

it's by the time we bring it to the site to the display site into our staging area. It's it's been tested at the factory. Now it is it is a an item that's primarily made by hand. That's why it's still very much an art form and a craft because a lot of the products are molded by hand, although the components may be molded with biodegradable polymers and things like that. But the the construction of it is made by hand. Do you ever have a failure? Yes, sometimes we do have a failure of the device. So it may not look as perfect as it is but that's that's way down in the in the sub percenters, you know some single digit percentages? And you know, there's there's laws and there's regulations on the distances to the audience and things like that to accommodate for that. So have you noticed the firework display? You should not be very close to that point of discharge when that fire is coming out?

Nick VinZant 16:57

How much like how would your average firework that that we see in a firework show like how many how many things of TNT or like how powerful and explosive is usually?

Phil Grucci 17:09

Well, there's there is a T and T equivalents to it. But you know, and the general public doesn't necessarily know what a factor of one, this is a one half of it, you know the value of t and t. But the the explosive that we work with primarily is black powder. So we're T and T is more of a cutting type of a high explosive for for doing damage black powder, although it's explosive. And although it makes noise and it does things like Push, push fire auction to the sky and burst fireworks open. It doesn't have what's called the Verizon says TNT does. So the TNT equivalent of black powder is lower. If you did like them, and you did and they did like unintentionally in bulk. There could be there could be substantial Calla collateral damage done in the area that they fire, if they're not launched out of a mortar to be fired in the sky as they're intended.

Nick VinZant 18:05

Is there one firework that you guys have that you would say like Oh, God, like, Hey, guys, we this is, you know, you know, Betsy here is is she's the dangerous one. Are they all pretty much the same?

Phil Grucci 18:17

That well know that there are items that you have to have, you know, as I mentioned before, yeah, there's a distance that we have to the audience based on the firework, diameter in size. So yes, as the, the size and the weight of the firework gets larger, larger, they become more and more powerful. So if we bring out a 12 inch in diameter shell, it's treated with a little bit more a lot more distance to the audience, because it's going to burst about 10 times the diameter as this little two inch shell that you might be able to even see sold down south, you know, legally a consumer fireworks area. But there's not those items you look at and go oh, this was a lot less reliable than the other one. In your opinion, what

Nick VinZant 19:03

is the most overrated firework, not saying it's not good? Just the one that you're like?

Phil Grucci 19:10

That's a good question. I never, ever thought about overrated. You know, I don't. You got me stumped you. You're right. Some of these questions I've never heard of what's the most overrated I guess the most overrated fire or could be a salute. It's a it's a, it's the one that goes in the boom, you'll hear boom, a white flash of path of, you know, it's the chemistry that's used inside that gives you the white flash. It's the easiest firework to make. Because it's very, this two components and then you put in a cardboard tube and that's what you know what the bad guys make as far as you know, the contraband and illegal illegal explosives that are out there. People call them fireworks, they're not fireworks, they're illegal explosives, because it's so easy to make. So that one I would say is overrated because you get too much this too much attention to it. Because everybody says, I know how to make fireworks and you make that it's too easy.

Nick VinZant 20:05

What's your favorite color of firework blow my least favorite,

Phil Grucci 20:11

green, green and red. And the reason why green or red is because some back to the green and red is probably the easier colors to make. So when you see a firework show that's predominantly red and green, it's just because they can't make a good Blue. Blue is very difficult blues and purples are very difficult to make a good blue.

Nick VinZant 20:35

What's the hardest color to make

Phil Grucci 20:37

blue, blue is because of the temperature, the temperature band in order to create blue is much narrower than some of the other colors. So the temperature that you have to burn Burn the copper which which is the metal that's used to create the color blow. It has the range that you have to get it into in order to get that blue spectrum is much narrower than the other colors that you that you can create white Cz. And like I said the reds and greens are kind of kind of the easier ones to make in the color spectrum, blues and purples, those are a little bit more difficult. And then the other thing too, is to control the burn. Having the ability to control how fast they burn, because you can make a really good blow. But it burns too slow. And if it burns too slow, all of the blue items that are coming out of your firework show are landing on the ground. So if you can't control how fast they burn, then you may have something that becomes that shell that you say hey, we can't shoot that because all the products will land on the ground and put the grass on fire put the woods on fire.

Nick VinZant 21:44

Most fireworks you've launched at one time

Phil Grucci 21:46

960,000 devices which was a world record. In eight minutes 52 different cities spread out around the entire Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Nick VinZant 21:59

Can you tell me how much they spent on that?

Phil Grucci 22:01

Well, the 12 million, which is not relatively speaking, it wasn't that much for them for that for that size.

Nick VinZant 22:09

This question is kind of interesting. When you watch other people's firework shows, what is a rookie mistake that other people make in programming their firework shows like if you're watching somebody else's firework show, you'll see it and be like that's a rookie mistake

Phil Grucci 22:25

too much too much of anything is sometimes not a good thing. So sometimes people feel that the more you put up in the sky, the better the show is going to be. So you may have seen some shows that what we call white out, so if you if you fire the beautiful blues, the beautiful greens, the beautiful reds, the beautiful oranges, purples, and all that and you fire them too quick and you have too much in the sky. It basically waits out you don't see the colors anymore. plus another factor is when you when you when you fire too much, you got too much smoke. And then after a few minutes of the program, it obliterates the sky. Well, you can't see the fireworks behind it.

Nick VinZant 23:08

What is a show that you said that you feel like people people should go see that at some point

Phil Grucci 23:14

is a performance that we have every year at the hagley Museum in library which, which is in Maryland. And it it's at the old DuPont factory that made black powder on the brand new on the Brandywine River. And that's a program that they've maintained their traditional ways where the old set pieces in the in the fire paintings in the pinwheels and all of the old style of fireworks still exist in that program. We've been displaying that for many years now. And that one for us is a special one because it brings back all of that old school type techniques they haven't gotten overly addicted with the technology where everything becomes a little stale sometimes when you when you have super precision and it's always you know this this is after a while you want to see a little bit of organics to it things kind of free flowing. And that hagley Museum and Library is the one that you'd want to go see.

Nick VinZant 24:12

What would you say overall is like when you look look at your career so far what would you say is like that's the coolest thing I've done

Phil Grucci 24:19

it Yeah, that's there's a few of them. And that's what gets you waking up in the morning to do it another one sometimes I wonder while you're while you're producing them whether you could take on another one of them because you because your body can physically take it anymore. But yeah, one I would say was the world record in 2014. When we had it was in the Middle East and we had that's where we had the 250 pyrotechnicians and we had the 12,000 devices on the on the on the on the roof on the building of the Burj Khalifa which is the world's tallest building. We lit up the entire island that was in the shape of a palm tree with 250 boats and 50 Two flatbed trailers full of fireworks and then we had the world islands. We had 132 Islands up, you fired from all simultaneously at the same time. And when you came in a week, when we accomplished that feat, it was something that when you get compliments from your own industry members and your competitors and said, How the heck did you guys do that? From a from a tactical and logistics perspective, it was pretty impressive. From a creative perspective, you know, there was probably Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge when we when we produced the Brooklyn Bridge Program. And most recently, I see most recently, but 2014 was the 200th anniversary on that of the national anthem of our Star Spangled Banner. And we were commissioned to produce a firework show, they wanted to have something unique. And it was just at the time, when we developed and patented a microchip that we put inside of some of the very high end fireworks that we display. And that microchip gives us the ability to launch an item in the sky, and put a 30 foot.in the sky of a color. And when they came to us for the celebration of our national anthem, it was at Fort McHenry, which is in Baltimore, which is the area that Francis Scott Key, actually penned our national anthem. So we propose to them to put an American flag in the sky that's 700 feet wide by 500 feet high, right at Fort McHenry. And they gave us they commissioned us to do that, and to sit there and watch that flag unfurl in the sky in front of the front of the fort, to commemorate our 200th anniversary of our national anthem was, that was a special moment in my life, because all of the design and the engineering that it took to create that and it it came off, like perfectly it looked so spectacular.

Nick VinZant 26:48

This is the last one for me. What's the next thing like what's the future

Phil Grucci 26:53

Oh, you know, something, what the future is right now was where we're where we're putting a lot of our resources on the environment. Right so fireworks, when they go up in the sky, they burst and went up it goes up comes back down to the ground paper or whatever they're made with or whatever they made some of it burns up. So we're we're working very strongly very hard and investing a lot to to reduce the carbon footprint to to make the debris that comes down biodegradable, it is biodegradable now because it's all paper, but make it such that it can be molded, you know, with similar to the way you mold plastic, but yet it's not plastic, we don't use any plastics in our fireworks, because you know, over the waterways and things like that it's not it's not healthy for the environment. So we're going down the path there. We're also going down a path in technology where some of its on the business side which is boring, you know, the production management, all that good stuff, but on the fire, specifically, to be able to address something, put the address, so when you've loaded into the mortar, you don't have to have any wires attached to it you just loaded it into mortar very quickly and the firing systems find those shells, you know, with RFID technology and things like that. to the audience, it's not really it's not really seen but it but to the for the efficiencies and safety it's it's it's an advancement for us. And then we're always developing things like the Pyro drone, like the microchip and things like that. So the audience does appreciate those new and innovative scenes. So right sometimes gets get going in multiple directions. Fortunately, we have a factory that of Virginia, we have just under 200 people in our factory in Virginia so we could develop and make our own fireworks without you know, off having go offshore and get made in in Europe or into in China or Asia. So it's exciting, exciting. But another part of our business is actually in simulation manufacturing products for our Department of Defense. So you know, hand grenades simulators, and mortar simulators and things like that. Fireworks have a great synergy. Bang smoke flash, right loud noises. So we make all these training devices that are not lethal. And then we can train the troops on the delay time of throwing a hand grenade and the bank without having the lethal the lethality of the of the shrapnel. So that's another part of our business that's actually saved us during the COVID periods because our factory was essential. And when the fireworks displays basically stopped in 2020 a lot of our employees we moved them down to Virginia to sustain their employment while we were going through this 2020 horror of of COVID.

Nick VinZant 29:36

America loves fireworks. But what country likes fireworks the most.

Phil Grucci 29:42

America has one I could tell you I don't know. You know there's a lot of there's a you saw last year in 2020 if anyone of any neighborhood that I know of this last year just opened up, you know to shooting their own firework shows because of you know being pent up in house and things like that. I guess the the other one would be maybe Spain, you know, Spain does some pretty impressive firework displays, China naturally on their Chinese New Year, they have huge firework shows coast to coast, although they're, they're starting to suppress having those kind of, you know, they in China, there are no regulations or were no regulations, the public can go out in the middle of the street and display something as large as what we would when we would produce right in the room, you know, on one of our professional displays, but they were having, you know, many, many injuries, and they started to cut down on it. So, but I think I think the United States is, by and large, the United States consumes the most fireworks in the world in the consumer fireworks science. So the public, the general public, is only I think two states in the country that do not allow fireworks, the majority of the other states all allow some form of firearms. So it's very popular here. And I suspect this fourth of July, you'll see quite a lot of activity out there. I just asked you to please make sure whatever anybody that's listening, don't do it. If it's illegal, it's not worth it right now with the security of the of the world and the country. And you know what we're going through right now, if you are caught with fireworks illegally in your community, you could be in a lot of trouble and it's not worth it go to we do a professional show, or only use the consumer fireworks that are legal in your area in your community.

Nick VinZant 31:26

I want to thank Phil so much for joining us if you want to connect with him. We have a link to him on our social media accounts. We're Profoundly Pointless on Twitter, and Instagram. And we have also included his information in the episode description. Do you trip Do you trim your armpit hair? Yes, I shave it all off. Actually. you shave it straight off.