WEBVTT - Reality TV is Dead! …or is it? 0:00:03.720 --> 0:00:10.800 Now really, really, really well and welcome to really know 0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:13.880 really Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden to remind you that 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:16.160 our show survives on subscribers. 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:20.040 That's the reality, so please subscribe. And speaking of reality 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:24.120 and surviving Survivor Borneo. The very first season of Survivor 0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:27.319 debuted on network television in the year two thousand, and 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:31.640 with it, reality TV began to transform America's television industry. 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:34.720 But twenty five years later, the Hollywood Reporter proclaims that 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:38.000 reality TV is on life support. Sure, shows like Love 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:40.720 Is Blind, Real Housewives, and new up and comers like 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:44.160 The Traders are still very popular, but at the same time, 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:47.680 more and more reality shows are being canceled, less episodes 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:51.640 are being produced, and dramatically smaller budgets are being offered. 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:51.960 For any of it. 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:54.920 Really, no really, Today, the guys will be talking to 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:58.160 Emily Nussbaum, a Pulitzer Prize winning television critic and the 0:00:58.200 --> 0:01:01.000 author of Q the Sun, The Invention of Reality TV. 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:04.880 She'll reveal some of the reality behind reality television and 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:07.560 how much of it isn't reality at all. Plus she'll 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:10.640 discuss the long history of the genre and the practicalities 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:15.000 and impracticalities of its success and impossible failure, which leads 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:17.040 me to say that this episode of our show should 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:20.560 be called reality no reality and now here are two 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:23.240 guys who sense of reality has been unique for as 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:25.559 long as we can remember, Jason and Peter. 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:33.919 So I've come to believe because I know our topic 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:35.559 today is about reality. 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:37.080 Tvager I may. 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:41.800 Be watching more reality TV than scripted TV at this 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:44.720 I may be one of those people. So when I 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:47.000 go on the road, right, when I'm doing shows and 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:50.360 I'm on the road, I hate being alone. 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:51.400 I hate being without my wife. 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:53.240 So if I'm in the hotel, I have the TV on, 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:55.600 and there are channels that are just you know, back 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:57.120 to back reality right right right. 0:01:57.240 --> 0:01:58.880 I'm never watching a scripted show. 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:01.040 So what do you want the reality show you're into? 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:04.760 It could be anything. It could be. Uh, sometimes it's 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:05.480 it's a game. 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:09.160 Sometimes it's I've watched things that I would not watch 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:10.679 in my home. So I'll watch a little bit of 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:12.480 the Kardashians. I'll watch a little bit. 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:17.079 Well, I would have never paid you for a Kardashian. 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:19.359 Well, I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated, but. 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:19.919 It's all fake. 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:23.280 It's off stage it's all I understand that I'm fascinated. 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:25.559 I don't mean to be derogatory. 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:30.520 I believe that these women have found real contributions to 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:32.920 make that are that are making them famous and wealthy. 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:36.519 But initially, if you said what is the individual talent 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:37.280 of any one of them? 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:39.080 I'd go I couldn't tell you. 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:41.320 I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:44.880 they're on my television set. They're not actresses, they're not singers, 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:47.240 they're not dancers, they're not you know, So what is 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:49.840 the talent that you would normally bring to a television show. So, 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:54.440 given that there is no obvious talent and the way 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:58.320 we think about talent, they have built an empire on television. 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:01.160 And it fascinates me because it wouldn't be something that 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:02.400 I would normally have watched. 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:04.600 But they are a phenomena. 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:07.720 Some people are watching them, and so sometimes I put 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:08.920 it on to go what. 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:13.800 Are we I didn't realize that Survivor was the less 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:19.360 moonvest Okade Survivor because they had stuff embedded in advertising 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:23.400 embedded in it already. If it bombed, it made money. 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:27.359 But Survivor supposedly kicked off the reality the reality let me. 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:29.360 Just tell you my cousin Jonathan has been on it 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:31.519 three times. He's been a contestant three. 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:33.400 Is he a star because of that? The people recognize him. 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:38.600 Yeah, he's got big notebariety and you know, and he he. 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:40.840 Was very good, you know, because they swear, you know, 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:42.839 they're not going to give anything away. So we would 0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:46.040 have viewing parties any season he was on, and you know, 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:48.040 as we were watching an episode, he couldn't tell us 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:50.360 what was going to happen, but he could talk about 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:51.960 anything that happened up to what. 0:03:51.920 --> 0:03:53.280 It was like, and he would. 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:55.080 They kind of made him a little bit of a 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:57.680 villain at least the first time he was on, and 0:03:57.720 --> 0:03:59.520 there would be a thing where, you know, he won 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:02.920 a reward for food and then it looks like he's 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:06.160 just going and everybody's starving, right, and they're all. 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:07.360 Going, oh, he's a jerk off. 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:11.680 And what they took out was he went, I'm willing 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:14.640 to show anybody want anybody, anybody want to think because 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:17.159 I know we're all starving to anybody and they're all like, no, 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:17.800 you want it. 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:19.839 Man, fan square and you know he's like you sure, 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:20.920 you know? 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:24.000 And all that's out and he said, you know somebody 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:26.799 who'll say something and then they'll cut to a reaction 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:30.159 by somebody else, and he goes that that statement and 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:33.599 that reaction, we're three days apart. So because they have 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:36.000 to do it, they're building a story that doesn't exist 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:37.119 talking about reality shows. 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:39.200 The reason we wanted to do this episode is all 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:41.440 of a sudden, we start saying headlines in the Hollywood 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:44.159 Reporter and all of the trade papers. Has reality TV 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:47.200 finally taken spinal bow? The death of reality TV? With 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:50.839 ratings plummeting. What this means for the future of unscripted television. 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:55.440 They're now ordering less, less episodes, they're bagging a lot 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:57.680 of it, a lot of it's not happening here anymore. 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:00.000 And a lot of the people worked in that industr 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.960 we were freelancers and are just in dire straits at 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:06.159 this point because it looks like either reality TV is 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:08.000 over or it's going to change. So we wanted to 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:10.400 get an expert who could talk about it. And Emily Nusbaum, 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:13.840 who is a Polisher Prize winning critic, which I got 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:16.960 to ask you about a critic. Yeah, you're that good 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:19.520 at criticism, right, So nobody at home can even beat 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:21.919 you because you used a superlative. 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:22.600 No one has you. 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:25.920 She wrote a book about the reality television industry from 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:29.400 beginning to now called Cue the Sun, which is from 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:33.479 the Truman Show. The fact that Kimry had not did 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:36.600 not know that he was in a perpetual reality show. 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:41.080 And she has devoted a lot of time to examining 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:43.160 reality TV. So who better to have on than her 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:45.000 to tell us if TV is. 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:46.880 She also be able to tell us when none of 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:48.599 our shows were able to stay on there? 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:49.680 Do you think she can do that? 0:05:50.920 --> 0:05:54.520 Almost every episode you tend to bring up our failures, 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:56.320 and I don't look at them as failures. 0:05:56.320 --> 0:05:58.159 I didn't say failures. I said they didn't stay on there. 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:01.560 I looked at them as almost success to Jason. 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.320 Success, She might have the answer, not half half empty, 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:06.520 handful still pretty empty? 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:10.600 Yeah, and you know how I know they didn't. They 0:06:10.640 --> 0:06:15.960 weren't huge successes. I'm not making any money, nothing, but 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:17.360 I'm proud of a bunch of stuff we did. 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:18.880 I'm proud of this. I'm good for you. 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:27.479 Wow. Wow that hurt Okay, hmm you sip with that 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:27.800 for men? 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:28.279 Yeah? 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:32.200 Wow? That one was like a real gut fund or 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:39.680 even in the nuts that hurt probably probably probably Jason 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:41.599 and I always to the joke that when somebody tells 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:44.080 you something erk showering, whatever, the most diminishing thing you 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:47.400 can do is, hey, remember when I my entire family 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:54.919 and that tornado down Sundry probably probably probably means nothing. 0:06:55.520 --> 0:06:58.880 Let's say hi to Emilina's bum Hi, Emilina's bum. 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:01.560 Hi, emilyas we should do it. 0:07:01.720 --> 0:07:03.159 You know what. I was going to sing it too, 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:04.320 because if you say. 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:06.960 It, it's off. It's almost like Frank, wello to our show. 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:08.960 Nice to meet Youaz, thanks for having me. 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:13.000 Oh absolutely so the premise. We keep reading articles lately 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:15.720 in the Hollywood Reporter everywhere reality TV is dead, celebrity 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:18.640 is not. Has reality TV finally taken his final bow? 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:21.400 The death of Reality TV? With the ratings plumbenting? What 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:24.920 this means for the future of unscripted television. Since you 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:27.080 are a critic and you wrote the defenditive book on 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:30.200 reality television, Que of the Sun, we figured you may 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:32.600 be a good place to start to say to ask 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:34.400 is reality to TV dead? 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:37.679 Before I answer this, I have to give the caveat 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:40.520 I always give when people ask me about the prospects 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:42.840 for any television genre, which is just to say, if 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:44.960 I knew anything about economics, I would not have gone 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:49.760 into art journalism television criticism for ten years. But I 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:53.920 know medium amount about the business. I don't think reality 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:57.640 television is going anywhere, and the main reason is for 0:07:57.720 --> 0:07:59.360 the reason I wrote about my book, which is that 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:02.200 it was created to cost nothing. I mean, it was 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:05.640 invented initially as a way not to pay writers and 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:08.800 not to pay actors. So there's definitely a big bump 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:11.520 going on in Hollywood in general, like in terms of 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:15.360 production for TV. But it seems to me that there's 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:17.600 been one thing that's been going on with reality TV 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:20.280 the entire time it's existed, and then in the book 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:22.600 I write about it all the way back to radio 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:26.200 to nineteen forty seven. It's that people are constantly predicting 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:28.520 that it's a fat and it will dissolve any minute now. 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:31.720 So that's why I tend not to trust any current 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:34.840 prognostications that it's about to dissolve. But the other thing 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:36.880 about it is it's just turned into something else. The 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:40.200 whole Internet is reality television, right, So I guess it 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:41.360 depends what you define it. 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:44.640 As Well's funny we did an episode about that where 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:47.800 we had on the Woody Fraser who created That's incredible 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:50.040 because we kind of nailed reality television back to that. 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:52.199 And it started out with food eating, you know, the 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:56.080 Nathan's hot Dog eating contest and the fact that the Carnival, 0:08:56.120 --> 0:09:00.400 food eating, Wild West shows, magic shows all were are 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:02.199 out there and that was the public with the public 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:04.400 use for entertainment. Then all of a sudden that all 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:07.199 came to television with the original reality shows, you know, 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:09.200 people shooting bullets at each other and doing all that. 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:11.800 I know in your book you're talking about Alan Funt, 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:13.560 which I loved, and we'll talk about that in a minute, 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:17.240 and Canon camera. But then it morphed into and now 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:20.080 we are the Carnival and that everybody with the Internet, 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:22.040 we're providing the talent. 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:24.679 Yeah, it's the ultimate dream where everyone is just their 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:25.960 own reality producer. 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:26.360 Right. 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:30.040 But Yeah, when I wrote about reality television in the book, 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:32.880 I basically had to come up with a definition because 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:36.320 there's all these different versions of what people consider reality 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:39.640 TV and what they think it goes back to. And honestly, 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:42.440 even I when I started writing this book, had this 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:45.760 kind of grand idea like I will write, you know, 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:48.600 a nonfiction book about the history of reality TV, I 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:51.760 will include it. All that was impossible. And I also 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:53.880 I think like a lot of people thought of it 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:58.200 as something that went back to like Survivor or the 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:02.120 Real World is really what I thought as And then yeah, 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:06.280 that's incredible, and all of those shows also fit into it. 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:08.360 And when I ended up writing about it. At the beginning 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:10.520 of the book was radio, which I really didn't know 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:12.400 that much about, and it was only once I started 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:13.840 doing the research that I started. 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:15.840 We'll talk about that for a minute, because that blew me. 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:19.360 I never even thought about that having come from radio 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:22.560 that the originally out that Alan front. Actually it was 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:26.320 Candid Radio that started this genre in a way. 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:30.199 Yeah, it was Candid Microphone. And when he made Candid Microphone, 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:35.960 which was this Banana's strange show that was popular but 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:39.160 very divisive and unnerving because it was really the first 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:41.720 prank show. Was all the things you'd imagine for what 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:45.360 became Candid Camera, but it was really new thing. It 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:48.600 was actually part of a larger trend on radio that 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:53.000 wasn't called reality radio. It was called audience participation shows. 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:54.880 And the first time that I realized I had to 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:57.080 write about this was I was, you know, I was 0:10:57.120 --> 0:11:00.520 researching Candid Microphone and Queen per Day, which the book 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:03.360 begins with these shows that are sort of like proto 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:06.840 reality TV on radio, and I found this article that 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:10.800 was basically like, what is this disgusting trend? What is 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:14.160 these audience participation shows where regular people are going on 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:18.160 They're making fools of themselves. It's destroying the industry. It's 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:21.240 a strike breaker, and it shows that the entire country 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:25.720 has become just a place of narcissists who want nothing 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:28.000 but cheap attention and who want to be famous just 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:30.400 for being themselves. And this was an article from nineteen 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:34.480 forty seven. So I was very excited because it was 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:38.240 like literally exactly the same set of concerns that people 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:41.080 had when Survivor came out at the turn of the century. 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:43.480 They were talking about on radio and so then I 0:11:43.520 --> 0:11:46.800 had to do this little like self education and radio. 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:49.480 But Candid Microphone, I mean there were a lot of 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:51.800 different shows like that, Like there were just shows that 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:54.880 were biz shows or shows where people would sort of 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:59.400 be asked to embarrass themselves. But Alan Funt, who had 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:02.040 actually made one of these shows early on and thought 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:05.680 those shows were garbage. Also, he was a sneaky guy 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:09.199 who got a portable microphone and had a dream. I mean, 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:11.520 that's really where a lot of this came from. I 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:15.360 don't I After reading many people's opinions of Ellen Funt, 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:18.360 I did not come away with a positive impression of him. 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:22.360 But he really is the godfather of the entire thing, 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:24.800 because I think you just had to have a person 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:29.360 like that who you know, he was working, he was 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:33.040 in the army, running sort of army radio programs, and 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:36.400 there was this technological change where suddenly you could have 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:39.199 a portable microphone and he got it in his hands, 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:41.920 and his first thought was, I should trick my friends 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:45.400 and tape them without their knowledge, and I should tape 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:48.560 over the red button that shows the microphones on, and 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:51.120 you know, trick people into doing things. And so that 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.600 really became the beginning of the whole stream of prank shows. 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:56.960 Did they get pushback? Did they get pushback that they 0:12:56.960 --> 0:12:59.320 were from the public, that they were mean? Because I 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:02.640 remember when I was a little kid, Alan Funt was 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:05.440 on and I remember the friends of ours said, he's 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:07.880 me I can't stand him. He's making people look stupid. 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:10.040 I don't like that he does that. And then I 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:13.280 think you pointed out that canon camera it's it's what 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:15.719 would They changed the name of it to smile You're 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:18.679 on can. They marketed it as a poth smile You're 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:23.360 being made in it basically and a jingle. People feel 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:26.880 better about the fact that they were being completely the 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:28.040 line and made them look forward. 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:29.840 When I was writing this book, I listened to that 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:32.200 song so many times and so many different versions that 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:34.280 I could not get it out of my head. And honestly, 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:37.920 it is an amazing song. It's very it's a very 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:40.240 catchy propaganda. 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:47.280 Yeah, like it lucky because at what is it? 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:52.600 It says, uh, to look at yourself? Yeah, right, there's 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:54.720 other people do. And you know, it's. 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:56.719 Fun to look at yourself as other people says fun 0:13:56.760 --> 0:14:01.440 to laugh at yourself as other people do. Look at yourself. Yeah, 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:03.400 I know it's in there somewhere. 0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:06.800 He basically says, if you were pranked by Alan Funt, 0:14:07.000 --> 0:14:09.560 you're the luckiest person. And if you push back on 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:11.800 it in any way, you have no sense of humor, right, 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:14.479 because now you're famous and you should be really complimented. 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:18.199 So even besides them making people sign releases for the show. 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:21.200 This was sent the message to anybody that it was 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:24.120 a really positive thing. But it's interesting that people that 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:25.760 you knew said that he was mean, because you know, 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:28.640 when I was growing up, I remember thinking that was 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:33.760 this sweet show and the sweetest guy you Now people 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:36.400 remember it very nostalgically, and sometimes when I say I 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:38.240 wrote a book on reality TV, they're like, I missed 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:41.400 the nice stuff like Candid Camera. I'm like, you should 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:44.160 read the pieces people wrote about Candid Camera and Candid Camera. 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:48.880 Eventually, if I recall, he made one motion picture called 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:50.680 what Do You Say to a Naked Lady where it 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:53.880 was one gag he kept putting putting naked women in 0:14:54.000 --> 0:14:56.880 like an elevator, and that was the Candid Camera. He 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:58.520 couldn't do it on television, but he released. 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:02.400 Yeah, you always wanted to do more dirty stuff on 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:04.320 the show. I mean, he was a pretty perverted guy. 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:07.640 Like like he was he was into tricking people, and 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:11.120 he definitely was like in all his biographies he writes 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:14.560 a lot about Saxon. I think that sort of kink 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:16.880 has something to do. I mean, it's like, you know, 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:20.240 a voyeuristic kind of scheme, but He really wanted to 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:22.160 do more adult stuff than you could do on TV, 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:24.120 for better or worse, and he wanted to make a 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:27.960 movie that was really intense about sex. He made when 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:30.560 that movie, You should rewatch that movie. That is one 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:31.600 of the weirdest movies. 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:33.040 This is a weird movie even. 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:38.520 Streaming online. He made another movie that I couldn't find. 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:41.080 It's about money. I think he wanted to make a 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:44.640 series of movies about all of these taboo adult subjects. 0:15:45.320 --> 0:15:47.680 We should mention to do the book. You interviewed John 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:52.080 Langley to cops? You did? John Murray? Who did Murray Boonham, 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:54.520 who launched Real World? You did? Did you do what 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:56.360 the name of Fox? Mike Darnell did you? 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:56.560 Oh? 0:15:56.600 --> 0:15:59.800 Yeah, I talked to Mike Darnell. I talked to Mike Flie. 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:03.280 I tried to I interviewed more than three hundred people 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:05.600 for the book because one of the things the book 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:08.320 wanted I wanted, you know, it's not a book of criticism. 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:11.520 It's a book of the history of where the genre 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:15.080 came from. And it's about the creation of a workplace 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:17.400 and a whole bunch of jobs that never existed. 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:20.720 I want to sort of define what we're talking about 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:23.480 when we talk about reality shows a little bit, because 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:27.960 there's an argument to be made that the Ed Sullivan 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:31.240 Show and The Gong Show are almost the same thing, 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:34.240 except the Gong Show knew. I wasn't trying to say, hey, 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:36.920 we've got some really talented people here, so we're the 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:39.720 Ed Sullivan Show. I think would fall onto the heading 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:41.040 of variety show. 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:43.080 But no, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, it's 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:45.320 actually I can't remember the name of the show, but 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:48.560 there was a big radio talent show that also somewhat 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:50.640 humiliated people, and it was kind of a carry on 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:53.680 of that. I had to define reality in my book, 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:57.360 and what I said was I called it dirty documentary. 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:00.200 And basically the way I define it is, I say, 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:04.639 it's when you take documentary tools, cinema verite idea of 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:07.399 just put on a camera, put on a recording device, 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:11.440 and watch people, and then you cut it with an aggressive, 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:17.240 pressured kind of format that speeds it up, pushes people 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:20.439 to respond, and turns it into a story and something 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:23.600 you can make episodic. And so I run it in 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:26.920 the book through four lines. And so there's the Prank Show, 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:30.840 which Alan fun created. There's the game show which comes 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:34.320 from radio in which it basically Chuck Barris picked up 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:37.480 all these old radio shows and sects them up. And 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:40.879 then there's the reality soap opera, which goes through an 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:43.359 American family which I write about in the book The 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:46.720 Real World, and through the housewives. And then there's something 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:50.120 I call the clip show, which is like America's Funniest 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:53.840 home videos and cops which are just these short cuts. 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:57.480 But I agree with you, like just a pure talk 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:03.440 show or a sport show or just a variety show 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:05.959 isn't really a reality show. It has regular people. I mean, 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:08.600 I don't define reality TV as like anything with people 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:10.280 reacting spontaneous, right. 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:12.120 And so is also things like. 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:19.560 Ancient Aliens where you have these scientists and pseudo researchers, 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:24.360 and there is that would you know, I don't know, but. 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:26.240 By the way, you guys are hitting on exactly the 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:28.399 parts of the book where I was like, you know, 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:32.000 I know the Gong Show isn't a reality show, but 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:34.439 I need to include it for these reasons, and the 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:37.560 Ancient Aliens and all the Fox shows in the nineties. 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:40.880 It was one of the most fun chopters to write. 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:45.359 I have a whole, huge section on Alien Autopsy, And 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:48.560 I know there are people reading that going that's not 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:51.840 a reality show. But the thing is the story of 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:55.720 Alien Autopsy and how it helped create Fox and frankly, 0:18:55.760 --> 0:19:00.800 how it created the whole TV news problem of things 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:04.440 being simultaneously real and fake. Yeah, it seemed very important 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:07.560 to me. So I would be writing the book and 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:09.040 there would be things I was interested in, and then 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:11.199 I would try to interview everyone involved with them, and 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:12.960 Alien Autopsy was one of them. 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:17.080 But there's a difference to me from an ancient alien show, 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:21.679 which is, you know, who knows they're taking they're using 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:24.640 kind of kookie evidence and trying to make something compelling 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:27.520 and compelling narrative out of it. But I don't think 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:30.200 they're doing what I was talking about in our intro. 0:19:30.359 --> 0:19:32.959 My cousin was on Survivor three times. 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:35.119 Oh that's great, and he would tell. 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:38.400 Me about how they would take things out of context, 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:42.280 reshifted around to create characters and storylines that did not 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:46.439 exist in the actual event, so that they could create 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:49.760 a villain, they could create, you know, a certain impression 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:53.439 that they wanted to and they would take something that 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:55.920