FedEx Office

FedEx Office (officially FedEx Office Print & Ship Services, Inc., formerly FedEx Kinko's, and earlier simply Kinko's) is a chain of stores that provide a retail outlet for FedEx Express and FedEx Ground (including Home Delivery) shipping, as well as printing, copying, and binding services. Unlike its main competitor, The UPS Store, all FedEx Office stores are corporate-owned.

History

Paul Orfalea, whose nickname was "Kinko" because of his curly hair, founded the company as Kinko's in 1970. Its first copy shop, which Orfalea opened with a sidewalk copy machine, was in the college community of Isla Vista next to the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. He left the company in 2000, following a dispute with the investment firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice ("CDR"), to which he had sold a large stake in the company three years earlier.

Orfalea wrote in his autobiography that disentangling him from Kinko's took enormous effort from the lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. The problem was that rather than adopt the traditional franchising model (by which the promoter creates a corporation that sells franchises), he had built the company as a series of loosely connected personal partnerships between each store owner and himself. By 1997, he had established over 127 Kinko's partnerships. All had to be carefully dismantled and rolled into a single S corporation to convert the company to a more centralized corporate-owned business model. Orfalea and several other key partners believed doing so would decrease time Orfalea spent mediating disputes between different factions of Kinko's partnerships and enable the oldest partners to cash out smoothly and transition to a new generation of managers. However, the new structure also made it easier for CDR to gradually force him out of his own company.

Peter Jackson

Sir Peter Robert Jackson ONZ KNZM (born 31 October 1961) is a New Zealand filmmaker and screenwriter. He is best known as the director, writer and producer of The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–03) and The Hobbit trilogy (2012–14), both of which are adapted from the novels of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien. Other notable films include the drama Heavenly Creatures (1994), the mockumentary Forgotten Silver (1995), the horror comedy The Frighteners (1996), the epic monster film King Kong (2005) and the supernatural drama film The Lovely Bones (2009). He also produced District 9 (2009), The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011) and the documentary West of Memphis (2012).

Jackson began his career with the "splatstick" horror comedy Bad Taste (1987) and the black comedy Meet the Feebles (1989) before filming the zombie comedy Braindead (1992). He shared a nomination for Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with his partner Fran Walsh for Heavenly Creatures, which brought him to mainstream prominence in the film industry. Jackson has been awarded three Academy Awards in his career, including the award for Best Director in 2003. He has also received a Golden Globe, four Saturn Awards and three BAFTAs amongst others.

King Kong

King Kong is a fictional giant movie monster, resembling a colossal gorilla, that has appeared in various media since 1933. The character first appeared in the 1933 film King Kong, which received universal acclaim upon its initial release and re-releases. The film was remade in 1976 and once again in 2005. The character has become one of the world's most famous movie icons, having inspired countless sequels, remakes, spin-offs, imitators, parodies, cartoons, books, comics, video games, theme park rides, and even a stage play. His role in the different narratives varies, ranging from a rampaging monster to a tragic antihero.

Overview

The King Kong character was conceived and created by U.S. filmmaker Merian C. Cooper. In the original film, the character's name is Kong, a name given to him by the inhabitants of "Skull Island" in the Pacific Ocean, where Kong lives along with other over-sized animals such as a plesiosaur, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs. An American film crew, led by Carl Denham, captures Kong and takes him to New York City to be exhibited as the "Eighth Wonder of the World".