Speaker 1: Now really, really, really well and welcome to really know
Speaker 1: really Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden to remind you that
Speaker 1: our show survives on subscribers.
Speaker 2: That's the reality, so please subscribe. And speaking of reality
Speaker 2: and surviving Survivor Borneo. The very first season of Survivor
Speaker 2: debuted on network television in the year two thousand, and
Speaker 2: with it, reality TV began to transform America's television industry.
Speaker 2: But twenty five years later, the Hollywood Reporter proclaims that
Speaker 2: reality TV is on life support. Sure, shows like Love
Speaker 2: Is Blind, Real Housewives, and new up and comers like
Speaker 2: The Traders are still very popular, but at the same time,
Speaker 2: more and more reality shows are being canceled, less episodes
Speaker 2: are being produced, and dramatically smaller budgets are being offered.
Speaker 3: For any of it.
Speaker 2: Really, no really, Today, the guys will be talking to
Speaker 2: Emily Nussbaum, a Pulitzer Prize winning television critic and the
Speaker 2: author of Q the Sun, The Invention of Reality TV.
Speaker 2: She'll reveal some of the reality behind reality television and
Speaker 2: how much of it isn't reality at all. Plus she'll
Speaker 2: discuss the long history of the genre and the practicalities
Speaker 2: and impracticalities of its success and impossible failure, which leads
Speaker 2: me to say that this episode of our show should
Speaker 2: be called reality no reality and now here are two
Speaker 2: guys who sense of reality has been unique for as
Speaker 2: long as we can remember, Jason and Peter.
Speaker 4: So I've come to believe because I know our topic
Speaker 4: today is about reality.
Speaker 3: Tvager I may.
Speaker 4: Be watching more reality TV than scripted TV at this
Speaker 4: I may be one of those people. So when I
Speaker 4: go on the road, right, when I'm doing shows and
Speaker 4: I'm on the road, I hate being alone.
Speaker 3: I hate being without my wife.
Speaker 4: So if I'm in the hotel, I have the TV on,
Speaker 4: and there are channels that are just you know, back
Speaker 4: to back reality right right right.
Speaker 3: I'm never watching a scripted show.
Speaker 5: So what do you want the reality show you're into?
Speaker 3: It could be anything. It could be. Uh, sometimes it's
Speaker 3: it's a game.
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's I've watched things that I would not watch
Speaker 4: in my home. So I'll watch a little bit of
Speaker 4: the Kardashians. I'll watch a little bit.
Speaker 5: Well, I would have never paid you for a Kardashian.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated, but.
Speaker 5: It's all fake.
Speaker 4: It's off stage it's all I understand that I'm fascinated.
Speaker 3: I don't mean to be derogatory.
Speaker 4: I believe that these women have found real contributions to
Speaker 4: make that are that are making them famous and wealthy.
Speaker 4: But initially, if you said what is the individual talent
Speaker 4: of any one of them?
Speaker 3: I'd go I couldn't tell you.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why
Speaker 4: they're on my television set. They're not actresses, they're not singers,
Speaker 4: they're not dancers, they're not you know, So what is
Speaker 4: the talent that you would normally bring to a television show. So,
Speaker 4: given that there is no obvious talent and the way
Speaker 4: we think about talent, they have built an empire on television.
Speaker 4: And it fascinates me because it wouldn't be something that
Speaker 4: I would normally have watched.
Speaker 3: But they are a phenomena.
Speaker 4: Some people are watching them, and so sometimes I put
Speaker 4: it on to go what.
Speaker 5: Are we I didn't realize that Survivor was the less
Speaker 5: moonvest Okade Survivor because they had stuff embedded in advertising
Speaker 5: embedded in it already. If it bombed, it made money.
Speaker 5: But Survivor supposedly kicked off the reality the reality let me.
Speaker 4: Just tell you my cousin Jonathan has been on it
Speaker 4: three times. He's been a contestant three.
Speaker 5: Is he a star because of that? The people recognize him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's got big notebariety and you know, and he he.
Speaker 4: Was very good, you know, because they swear, you know,
Speaker 4: they're not going to give anything away. So we would
Speaker 4: have viewing parties any season he was on, and you know,
Speaker 4: as we were watching an episode, he couldn't tell us
Speaker 4: what was going to happen, but he could talk about
Speaker 4: anything that happened up to what.
Speaker 3: It was like, and he would.
Speaker 4: They kind of made him a little bit of a
Speaker 4: villain at least the first time he was on, and
Speaker 4: there would be a thing where, you know, he won
Speaker 4: a reward for food and then it looks like he's
Speaker 4: just going and everybody's starving, right, and they're all.
Speaker 3: Going, oh, he's a jerk off.
Speaker 4: And what they took out was he went, I'm willing
Speaker 4: to show anybody want anybody, anybody want to think because
Speaker 4: I know we're all starving to anybody and they're all like, no,
Speaker 4: you want it.
Speaker 3: Man, fan square and you know he's like you sure,
Speaker 3: you know?
Speaker 4: And all that's out and he said, you know somebody
Speaker 4: who'll say something and then they'll cut to a reaction
Speaker 4: by somebody else, and he goes that that statement and
Speaker 4: that reaction, we're three days apart. So because they have
Speaker 4: to do it, they're building a story that doesn't exist
Speaker 4: talking about reality shows.
Speaker 5: The reason we wanted to do this episode is all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, we start saying headlines in the Hollywood
Speaker 5: Reporter and all of the trade papers. Has reality TV
Speaker 5: finally taken spinal bow? The death of reality TV? With
Speaker 5: ratings plummeting. What this means for the future of unscripted television.
Speaker 5: They're now ordering less, less episodes, they're bagging a lot
Speaker 5: of it, a lot of it's not happening here anymore.
Speaker 5: And a lot of the people worked in that industr
Speaker 5: we were freelancers and are just in dire straits at
Speaker 5: this point because it looks like either reality TV is
Speaker 5: over or it's going to change. So we wanted to
Speaker 5: get an expert who could talk about it. And Emily Nusbaum,
Speaker 5: who is a Polisher Prize winning critic, which I got
Speaker 5: to ask you about a critic. Yeah, you're that good
Speaker 5: at criticism, right, So nobody at home can even beat
Speaker 5: you because you used a superlative.
Speaker 3: No one has you.
Speaker 5: She wrote a book about the reality television industry from
Speaker 5: beginning to now called Cue the Sun, which is from
Speaker 5: the Truman Show. The fact that Kimry had not did
Speaker 5: not know that he was in a perpetual reality show.
Speaker 5: And she has devoted a lot of time to examining
Speaker 5: reality TV. So who better to have on than her
Speaker 5: to tell us if TV is.
Speaker 4: She also be able to tell us when none of
Speaker 4: our shows were able to stay on there?
Speaker 3: Do you think she can do that?
Speaker 5: Almost every episode you tend to bring up our failures,
Speaker 5: and I don't look at them as failures.
Speaker 3: I didn't say failures. I said they didn't stay on there.
Speaker 5: I looked at them as almost success to Jason.
Speaker 4: Success, She might have the answer, not half half empty,
Speaker 4: handful still pretty empty?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know how I know they didn't. They
Speaker 5: weren't huge successes. I'm not making any money, nothing, but
Speaker 5: I'm proud of a bunch of stuff we did.
Speaker 3: I'm proud of this. I'm good for you.
Speaker 5: Wow. Wow that hurt Okay, hmm you sip with that
Speaker 5: for men?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Wow? That one was like a real gut fund or
Speaker 5: even in the nuts that hurt probably probably probably Jason
Speaker 5: and I always to the joke that when somebody tells
Speaker 5: you something erk showering, whatever, the most diminishing thing you
Speaker 5: can do is, hey, remember when I my entire family
Speaker 5: and that tornado down Sundry probably probably probably means nothing.
Speaker 5: Let's say hi to Emilina's bum Hi, Emilina's bum.
Speaker 3: Hi, emilyas we should do it.
Speaker 5: You know what. I was going to sing it too,
Speaker 5: because if you say.
Speaker 3: It, it's off. It's almost like Frank, wello to our show.
Speaker 6: Nice to meet Youaz, thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: Oh absolutely so the premise. We keep reading articles lately
Speaker 5: in the Hollywood Reporter everywhere reality TV is dead, celebrity
Speaker 5: is not. Has reality TV finally taken his final bow?
Speaker 5: The death of Reality TV? With the ratings plumbenting? What
Speaker 5: this means for the future of unscripted television. Since you
Speaker 5: are a critic and you wrote the defenditive book on
Speaker 5: reality television, Que of the Sun, we figured you may
Speaker 5: be a good place to start to say to ask
Speaker 5: is reality to TV dead?
Speaker 6: Before I answer this, I have to give the caveat
Speaker 6: I always give when people ask me about the prospects
Speaker 6: for any television genre, which is just to say, if
Speaker 6: I knew anything about economics, I would not have gone
Speaker 6: into art journalism television criticism for ten years. But I
Speaker 6: know medium amount about the business. I don't think reality
Speaker 6: television is going anywhere, and the main reason is for
Speaker 6: the reason I wrote about my book, which is that
Speaker 6: it was created to cost nothing. I mean, it was
Speaker 6: invented initially as a way not to pay writers and
Speaker 6: not to pay actors. So there's definitely a big bump
Speaker 6: going on in Hollywood in general, like in terms of
Speaker 6: production for TV. But it seems to me that there's
Speaker 6: been one thing that's been going on with reality TV
Speaker 6: the entire time it's existed, and then in the book
Speaker 6: I write about it all the way back to radio
Speaker 6: to nineteen forty seven. It's that people are constantly predicting
Speaker 6: that it's a fat and it will dissolve any minute now.
Speaker 6: So that's why I tend not to trust any current
Speaker 6: prognostications that it's about to dissolve. But the other thing
Speaker 6: about it is it's just turned into something else. The
Speaker 6: whole Internet is reality television, right, So I guess it
Speaker 6: depends what you define it.
Speaker 5: As Well's funny we did an episode about that where
Speaker 5: we had on the Woody Fraser who created That's incredible
Speaker 5: because we kind of nailed reality television back to that.
Speaker 5: And it started out with food eating, you know, the
Speaker 5: Nathan's hot Dog eating contest and the fact that the Carnival,
Speaker 5: food eating, Wild West shows, magic shows all were are
Speaker 5: out there and that was the public with the public
Speaker 5: use for entertainment. Then all of a sudden that all
Speaker 5: came to television with the original reality shows, you know,
Speaker 5: people shooting bullets at each other and doing all that.
Speaker 5: I know in your book you're talking about Alan Funt,
Speaker 5: which I loved, and we'll talk about that in a minute,
Speaker 5: and Canon camera. But then it morphed into and now
Speaker 5: we are the Carnival and that everybody with the Internet,
Speaker 5: we're providing the talent.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's the ultimate dream where everyone is just their
Speaker 6: own reality producer.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: But Yeah, when I wrote about reality television in the book,
Speaker 6: I basically had to come up with a definition because
Speaker 6: there's all these different versions of what people consider reality
Speaker 6: TV and what they think it goes back to. And honestly,
Speaker 6: even I when I started writing this book, had this
Speaker 6: kind of grand idea like I will write, you know,
Speaker 6: a nonfiction book about the history of reality TV, I
Speaker 6: will include it. All that was impossible. And I also
Speaker 6: I think like a lot of people thought of it
Speaker 6: as something that went back to like Survivor or the
Speaker 6: Real World is really what I thought as And then yeah,
Speaker 6: that's incredible, and all of those shows also fit into it.
Speaker 6: And when I ended up writing about it. At the beginning
Speaker 6: of the book was radio, which I really didn't know
Speaker 6: that much about, and it was only once I started
Speaker 6: doing the research that I started.
Speaker 5: We'll talk about that for a minute, because that blew me.
Speaker 5: I never even thought about that having come from radio
Speaker 5: that the originally out that Alan front. Actually it was
Speaker 5: Candid Radio that started this genre in a way.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was Candid Microphone. And when he made Candid Microphone,
Speaker 6: which was this Banana's strange show that was popular but
Speaker 6: very divisive and unnerving because it was really the first
Speaker 6: prank show. Was all the things you'd imagine for what
Speaker 6: became Candid Camera, but it was really new thing. It
Speaker 6: was actually part of a larger trend on radio that
Speaker 6: wasn't called reality radio. It was called audience participation shows.
Speaker 6: And the first time that I realized I had to
Speaker 6: write about this was I was, you know, I was
Speaker 6: researching Candid Microphone and Queen per Day, which the book
Speaker 6: begins with these shows that are sort of like proto
Speaker 6: reality TV on radio, and I found this article that
Speaker 6: was basically like, what is this disgusting trend? What is
Speaker 6: these audience participation shows where regular people are going on
Speaker 6: They're making fools of themselves. It's destroying the industry. It's
Speaker 6: a strike breaker, and it shows that the entire country
Speaker 6: has become just a place of narcissists who want nothing
Speaker 6: but cheap attention and who want to be famous just
Speaker 6: for being themselves. And this was an article from nineteen
Speaker 6: forty seven. So I was very excited because it was
Speaker 6: like literally exactly the same set of concerns that people
Speaker 6: had when Survivor came out at the turn of the century.
Speaker 6: They were talking about on radio and so then I
Speaker 6: had to do this little like self education and radio.
Speaker 6: But Candid Microphone, I mean there were a lot of
Speaker 6: different shows like that, Like there were just shows that
Speaker 6: were biz shows or shows where people would sort of
Speaker 6: be asked to embarrass themselves. But Alan Funt, who had
Speaker 6: actually made one of these shows early on and thought
Speaker 6: those shows were garbage. Also, he was a sneaky guy
Speaker 6: who got a portable microphone and had a dream. I mean,
Speaker 6: that's really where a lot of this came from. I
Speaker 6: don't I After reading many people's opinions of Ellen Funt,
Speaker 6: I did not come away with a positive impression of him.
Speaker 6: But he really is the godfather of the entire thing,
Speaker 6: because I think you just had to have a person
Speaker 6: like that who you know, he was working, he was
Speaker 6: in the army, running sort of army radio programs, and
Speaker 6: there was this technological change where suddenly you could have
Speaker 6: a portable microphone and he got it in his hands,
Speaker 6: and his first thought was, I should trick my friends
Speaker 6: and tape them without their knowledge, and I should tape
Speaker 6: over the red button that shows the microphones on, and
Speaker 6: you know, trick people into doing things. And so that
Speaker 6: really became the beginning of the whole stream of prank shows.
Speaker 5: Did they get pushback? Did they get pushback that they
Speaker 5: were from the public, that they were mean? Because I
Speaker 5: remember when I was a little kid, Alan Funt was
Speaker 5: on and I remember the friends of ours said, he's
Speaker 5: me I can't stand him. He's making people look stupid.
Speaker 5: I don't like that he does that. And then I
Speaker 5: think you pointed out that canon camera it's it's what
Speaker 5: would They changed the name of it to smile You're
Speaker 5: on can. They marketed it as a poth smile You're
Speaker 5: being made in it basically and a jingle. People feel
Speaker 5: better about the fact that they were being completely the
Speaker 5: line and made them look forward.
Speaker 6: When I was writing this book, I listened to that
Speaker 6: song so many times and so many different versions that
Speaker 6: I could not get it out of my head. And honestly,
Speaker 6: it is an amazing song. It's very it's a very
Speaker 6: catchy propaganda.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like it lucky because at what is it?
Speaker 6: It says, uh, to look at yourself? Yeah, right, there's
Speaker 6: other people do. And you know, it's.
Speaker 4: Fun to look at yourself as other people says fun
Speaker 4: to laugh at yourself as other people do. Look at yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I know it's in there somewhere.
Speaker 6: He basically says, if you were pranked by Alan Funt,
Speaker 6: you're the luckiest person. And if you push back on
Speaker 6: it in any way, you have no sense of humor, right,
Speaker 6: because now you're famous and you should be really complimented.
Speaker 6: So even besides them making people sign releases for the show.
Speaker 6: This was sent the message to anybody that it was
Speaker 6: a really positive thing. But it's interesting that people that
Speaker 6: you knew said that he was mean, because you know,
Speaker 6: when I was growing up, I remember thinking that was
Speaker 6: this sweet show and the sweetest guy you Now people
Speaker 6: remember it very nostalgically, and sometimes when I say I
Speaker 6: wrote a book on reality TV, they're like, I missed
Speaker 6: the nice stuff like Candid Camera. I'm like, you should
Speaker 6: read the pieces people wrote about Candid Camera and Candid Camera.
Speaker 4: Eventually, if I recall, he made one motion picture called
Speaker 4: what Do You Say to a Naked Lady where it
Speaker 4: was one gag he kept putting putting naked women in
Speaker 4: like an elevator, and that was the Candid Camera. He
Speaker 4: couldn't do it on television, but he released.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you always wanted to do more dirty stuff on
Speaker 6: the show. I mean, he was a pretty perverted guy.
Speaker 6: Like like he was he was into tricking people, and
Speaker 6: he definitely was like in all his biographies he writes
Speaker 6: a lot about Saxon. I think that sort of kink
Speaker 6: has something to do. I mean, it's like, you know,
Speaker 6: a voyeuristic kind of scheme, but He really wanted to
Speaker 6: do more adult stuff than you could do on TV,
Speaker 6: for better or worse, and he wanted to make a
Speaker 6: movie that was really intense about sex. He made when
Speaker 6: that movie, You should rewatch that movie. That is one
Speaker 6: of the weirdest movies.
Speaker 3: This is a weird movie even.
Speaker 6: Streaming online. He made another movie that I couldn't find.
Speaker 6: It's about money. I think he wanted to make a
Speaker 6: series of movies about all of these taboo adult subjects.
Speaker 5: We should mention to do the book. You interviewed John
Speaker 5: Langley to cops? You did? John Murray? Who did Murray Boonham,
Speaker 5: who launched Real World? You did? Did you do what
Speaker 5: the name of Fox? Mike Darnell did you?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I talked to Mike Darnell. I talked to Mike Flie.
Speaker 6: I tried to I interviewed more than three hundred people
Speaker 6: for the book because one of the things the book
Speaker 6: wanted I wanted, you know, it's not a book of criticism.
Speaker 6: It's a book of the history of where the genre
Speaker 6: came from. And it's about the creation of a workplace
Speaker 6: and a whole bunch of jobs that never existed.
Speaker 4: I want to sort of define what we're talking about
Speaker 4: when we talk about reality shows a little bit, because
Speaker 4: there's an argument to be made that the Ed Sullivan
Speaker 4: Show and The Gong Show are almost the same thing,
Speaker 4: except the Gong Show knew. I wasn't trying to say, hey,
Speaker 4: we've got some really talented people here, so we're the
Speaker 4: Ed Sullivan Show. I think would fall onto the heading
Speaker 4: of variety show.
Speaker 6: But no, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, it's
Speaker 6: actually I can't remember the name of the show, but
Speaker 6: there was a big radio talent show that also somewhat
Speaker 6: humiliated people, and it was kind of a carry on
Speaker 6: of that. I had to define reality in my book,
Speaker 6: and what I said was I called it dirty documentary.
Speaker 6: And basically the way I define it is, I say,
Speaker 6: it's when you take documentary tools, cinema verite idea of
Speaker 6: just put on a camera, put on a recording device,
Speaker 6: and watch people, and then you cut it with an aggressive,
Speaker 6: pressured kind of format that speeds it up, pushes people
Speaker 6: to respond, and turns it into a story and something
Speaker 6: you can make episodic. And so I run it in
Speaker 6: the book through four lines. And so there's the Prank Show,
Speaker 6: which Alan fun created. There's the game show which comes
Speaker 6: from radio in which it basically Chuck Barris picked up
Speaker 6: all these old radio shows and sects them up. And
Speaker 6: then there's the reality soap opera, which goes through an
Speaker 6: American family which I write about in the book The
Speaker 6: Real World, and through the housewives. And then there's something
Speaker 6: I call the clip show, which is like America's Funniest
Speaker 6: home videos and cops which are just these short cuts.
Speaker 6: But I agree with you, like just a pure talk
Speaker 6: show or a sport show or just a variety show
Speaker 6: isn't really a reality show. It has regular people. I mean,
Speaker 6: I don't define reality TV as like anything with people
Speaker 6: reacting spontaneous, right.
Speaker 3: And so is also things like.
Speaker 4: Ancient Aliens where you have these scientists and pseudo researchers,
Speaker 4: and there is that would you know, I don't know, but.
Speaker 6: By the way, you guys are hitting on exactly the
Speaker 6: parts of the book where I was like, you know,
Speaker 6: I know the Gong Show isn't a reality show, but
Speaker 6: I need to include it for these reasons, and the
Speaker 6: Ancient Aliens and all the Fox shows in the nineties.
Speaker 6: It was one of the most fun chopters to write.
Speaker 6: I have a whole, huge section on Alien Autopsy, And
Speaker 6: I know there are people reading that going that's not
Speaker 6: a reality show. But the thing is the story of
Speaker 6: Alien Autopsy and how it helped create Fox and frankly,
Speaker 6: how it created the whole TV news problem of things
Speaker 6: being simultaneously real and fake. Yeah, it seemed very important
Speaker 6: to me. So I would be writing the book and
Speaker 6: there would be things I was interested in, and then
Speaker 6: I would try to interview everyone involved with them, and
Speaker 6: Alien Autopsy was one of them.
Speaker 4: But there's a difference to me from an ancient alien show,
Speaker 4: which is, you know, who knows they're taking they're using
Speaker 4: kind of kookie evidence and trying to make something compelling
Speaker 4: and compelling narrative out of it. But I don't think
Speaker 4: they're doing what I was talking about in our intro.
Speaker 4: My cousin was on Survivor three times.
Speaker 3: Oh that's great, and he would tell.
Speaker 4: Me about how they would take things out of context,
Speaker 4: reshifted around to create characters and storylines that did not
Speaker 4: exist in the actual event, so that they could create
Speaker 4: a villain, they could create, you know, a certain impression
Speaker 4: that they wanted to and they would take something that
Speaker 4: was said on Tuesday and a reaction from something else
Speaker 4: on Friday and make it.
Speaker 3: The reaction to the thing on Tuesday. So they're manipulations.
Speaker 4: Reality to create the storylines and impressions they want. That
Speaker 4: is different from what the sort of pseudo documentary shows do.
Speaker 4: So I'm wondering which one when we're talking about these articles, Peter,
Speaker 4: because the cover, like I would say, game shows are
Speaker 4: more threatened than reality shows at this point, I don't
Speaker 4: think there's a game a new game shown.
Speaker 3: I know they're lauching them, but they don't. But they
Speaker 3: don't last, they don't make it.
Speaker 4: I see posters all the time for the billboards for
Speaker 4: these new game shows with you know, big stars hosting them.
Speaker 4: When I go, I see half a season or one season.
Speaker 4: I never see them again. So I don't know if
Speaker 4: the games are holding. It seems to me anecdotally as
Speaker 4: I as I keep my hotel television on, there's enough
Speaker 4: of the ancient alien kind of cops and you know,
Speaker 4: that stuff to last your lifetime.
Speaker 3: It's not going anywhere. The stuff that seems to.
Speaker 4: Be dying are the Allen Funt type shows, the stunt shows,
Speaker 4: the kardashianesque shows, the bachelor shows, where that seems to
Speaker 4: be where the audience that is really jonesing on those
Speaker 4: may be moving more.
Speaker 5: Except that the housewife those housewife shows right are pery.
Speaker 5: They're not going anywhere, right.
Speaker 6: I mean, Bravo is a massive institution. I haven't seen
Speaker 6: real signs of economic weekness on the part of Bravo.
Speaker 6: I mean, if you have, you should let me know.
Speaker 6: That's really interesting about your cousin and survivor do you
Speaker 6: know what what seasons did he appear on.
Speaker 4: His first one bought so many have been in Fiji
Speaker 4: or Fujia. But it's no secret who he is. His
Speaker 4: name is Jonathan Penner. They call him Penner on the show.
Speaker 4: He was on the first season with Poverty and I
Speaker 4: can't remember you know, some many other stars of that season.
Speaker 4: But he's done it three times because he's one of
Speaker 4: he's a fan favorite and he loves doing the show absolutely.
Speaker 4: But you know, he would often talk about, Yeah, they're
Speaker 4: not making us do or say anything. They're not telling
Speaker 4: us to do or say anything or you know, do
Speaker 4: less than we can on an ability, But they are
Speaker 4: taking footage from different days. They're creating scenarios and conversations
Speaker 4: that you know didn't actually take place.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's a continuum from I mean, I guess documentary
Speaker 6: to abjectable Like that is just part of this discussion.
Speaker 6: Like there are shows that do very you know, there
Speaker 6: are shows that more closely resemble documentaries, and there are
Speaker 6: ones where the whole thing is basically what's called soft scripted,
Speaker 6: and soft scripted is shows that are more like you're
Speaker 6: talking to the cast and the crew, and the crew
Speaker 6: says that you guys should go in the kitchen and
Speaker 6: have a big fight and then go on to the
Speaker 6: porch and throw a cup. Like that's just much closer
Speaker 6: to improv than it is to anything having to do
Speaker 6: with them having an actual fight. But there's all sorts
Speaker 6: of stuff in between, And you know, part of what
Speaker 6: I write about in the book is the development of
Speaker 6: these roles of the producers and the cast members and
Speaker 6: how they interact. It's interesting to say that about Survivor
Speaker 6: because although I know there's you know, there's obviously manipulation
Speaker 6: and Survivor the first season. I talked to most of
Speaker 6: the people who are on the first season. They had
Speaker 6: plenty of complaints about the stuff that happened, but they
Speaker 6: did not think that they were misrepresented as far as
Speaker 6: the events of the show, and I wonder whether it
Speaker 6: changed as it went on. I know they added some
Speaker 6: stuff to that show later on, and generally the rules
Speaker 6: for producers changed a lot as things went on, and
Speaker 6: sometimes those were economic changes, Like it's a lot easier
Speaker 6: to tell people to go into the kitchen and fight
Speaker 6: than it is to hang out with them for four
Speaker 6: months waiting for them to get into a point like
Speaker 6: doing it the fake way is cheaper. So that's a
Speaker 6: lot of the issue. And there are all sorts of
Speaker 6: other kinds of con you know, cons and hoaxes and
Speaker 6: stuff like that that have to do with it. But
Speaker 6: the one thing I will say is I talked to
Speaker 6: a lot of people who were on reality shows, and
Speaker 6: obviously many people who made them or were behind the camera.
Speaker 6: And sometimes I'll talk to people about the book and
Speaker 6: they'll be like, well, everything on those shows is fake anyway,
Speaker 6: Like I can't believe people are such suckers and they
Speaker 6: think it's really happening. And that really bugs me. Around
Speaker 6: the show is because you know, it might be misrepresented,
Speaker 6: it might be taken a little out of context. Certainly
Speaker 6: the editing might be the step, but people actually go
Speaker 6: through things like even on I mean, the book is
Speaker 6: not about modern shows. It's it runs from nineteen forty
Speaker 6: seven to two thousand and nine. But I just wrote
Speaker 6: this big investigative piece about Love is Blind. I don't
Speaker 6: know if you know the show where the people you
Speaker 6: know are divided by a wall and then they get
Speaker 6: married on the show. And I talked to these people
Speaker 6: who have enormous complaints about the show, But did they
Speaker 6: fall in love and get married? They actually did. I mean,
Speaker 6: it's not all scripted and it's not all made up.
Speaker 5: Well, because you were you were, you reveal a lot
Speaker 5: of stuff about that where NDAs, the way they were
Speaker 5: treated was not not the best experience for a lot
Speaker 5: of them. And what was the biggest problem for the
Speaker 5: people on that show?
Speaker 6: And Love is Blind? I mean, the great thing about
Speaker 6: writing the book was everybody's NDAs had expired, so they
Speaker 6: could tell me various stories about manipulation and cruelty and joy,
Speaker 6: you know, without having to worry about breaking in NDA.
Speaker 6: The people on the people on Love is Blind, like
Speaker 6: the people on all modern shows, have to sign these
Speaker 6: just brutal non disclosure agreements that mean that it's not
Speaker 6: just that they can't spoil the show or even talk
Speaker 6: about abuse. They can't talk about anything without the producers
Speaker 6: letting them do it. So that was a different kind
Speaker 6: of piece. That was like an investigative piece about a
Speaker 6: bunch of legal stuff. And there are a handful of
Speaker 6: people from that show who are working to change the
Speaker 6: labor role of people in reality television, and like you're saying,
Speaker 6: they're like people on game shows. There's a category in Hollywood.
Speaker 6: It's called that I didn't actually didn't know about while
Speaker 6: I was writing the book, because the book is not
Speaker 6: that much about the legal thing for performers. It's more
Speaker 6: about the attempt to unionize producers. But there's this more
Speaker 6: recent thing, and so I learned that it's called a
Speaker 6: bonafide amateur is the category. So bonafide amateur is somebody
Speaker 6: who doesn't qualify as a scripted performer like in SAG,
Speaker 6: but also doesn't qualify as like a professional nonscripted for
Speaker 6: like a news host or a talk show host or
Speaker 6: all of those kinds of things. So it's a little
Speaker 6: carve out for people who have new rights whatsoever, can
Speaker 6: get paid nothing and you can do anything you want
Speaker 6: to them, and they can't talk about it. So in
Speaker 6: my personal opinion, that should probably change. Yeah, that seems wrong,
Speaker 6: And I think the reason it hasn't changed is because
Speaker 6: people have contempt for reality television. They have contempt for
Speaker 6: people who go on reality television, they have contempt for
Speaker 6: people who make it. And I understand where some of
Speaker 6: that comes from, but I think it blinds people to
Speaker 6: the actual ethical problem and the fact that there are
Speaker 6: real victims of this.
Speaker 4: Do you know, from talking to producers of all kinds
Speaker 4: of shows, I've always kind of wondered if there's a
Speaker 4: different job or a different satisfaction or difficulty in the
Speaker 4: job of producing a reality show that is intended to be,
Speaker 4: for lack of a better word, inspirational, versus producing one
Speaker 4: that is intended at its best to be kind of prurient.
Speaker 4: So the difference between perhaps a Queer Eye and.
Speaker 3: You know, Big Brother kind of.
Speaker 6: Yeah, No, there definitely isn't. It's one of the difficulties
Speaker 6: of talking about this at all, Right, Like, not all
Speaker 6: scripted shows are the same, and not all reality shows
Speaker 6: are the same. They have different intents, they have different methods.
Speaker 6: I asked every producer and cameraman and editor. I mean,
Speaker 6: I talked to a lot of different people on these
Speaker 6: shows what line they wouldn't cross? I asked them all,
Speaker 6: like what kind of show do you love to make?
Speaker 6: And what kind of show do you won't you make?
Speaker 6: Like is there anything that crosses your line? And a
Speaker 6: lot of people love making things that are warm and inspirational,
Speaker 6: but I thought that the line they wouldn't cross would
Speaker 6: be more like torture shows or prank shows. And so
Speaker 6: many people said a lot of people love making things
Speaker 6: that are warm and inspirational, but I thought that the
Speaker 6: line they wouldn't cross would be more like torture shows
Speaker 6: or prank shows. And so many people said dating shows like.
Speaker 6: There are one guy who was like, I love doing
Speaker 6: shark shows where people cry and are frightened and it's
Speaker 6: really authentic emotion, Like that's part of why people get involved,
Speaker 6: is they like that. He's like, dating shows crossed a
Speaker 6: line for him because he felt like it messed with
Speaker 6: you know, it's like young drunk girls who genuinely want
Speaker 6: to fall in love and are easy to manipulate, and
Speaker 6: it felt cruel. And this guy I was talking to,
Speaker 6: by the way, and it's not like a major feminist
Speaker 6: or anything, but he felt like the shows were misogynists
Speaker 6: and it just crossed a line for him. But I
Speaker 6: always think that that question is interesting because I mean,
Speaker 6: first of all, many people in many different careers have
Speaker 6: ethical questions about their jobs or things they won't cross.
Speaker 6: But reality, when you're working on one of these sets,
Speaker 6: it's kind of an intense, humid bubble of it's just
Speaker 6: a different set of what's acceptable. So I think the
Speaker 6: dirtiest chapter in the book in a lot of ways
Speaker 6: is about The Bachelor, because that's a show that has
Speaker 6: very different ethics than something like Queer Eye, you know,
Speaker 6: or there are a lot of or Survivor for that matter,
Speaker 6: there's the job is to people's heads and get them
Speaker 6: to fall in love and then have a nervous breakdown
Speaker 6: and be heartbroken in public.
Speaker 5: Well, you know what, it's weird because I wanted to
Speaker 5: check out the Golden Bachelor or Bachelor, which everyone went.
Speaker 5: The fact that you have thirty people that I'm going
Speaker 5: to try and make you fall in love with is
Speaker 5: already mind blowing to me. It's just such a funny.
Speaker 6: Because it's not mind blowing to like, there's so many
Speaker 6: young women who I talk to who it's like their
Speaker 6: favorite show and it's just par for the course. When
Speaker 6: the show started, people found that shocking. I mean, but
Speaker 6: when Survivor started, people thought that show was going to
Speaker 6: destroy the world because they were eating bugs. So it's
Speaker 6: like every kind of line they push over.
Speaker 5: But Survivor, I'm just trying to survive here. I've got
Speaker 5: three people that I don't know. Really, No, you're not
Speaker 5: enough of a Survivor watcher.
Speaker 4: Survivor is built on false alliances, betrayal.
Speaker 5: Yes, the stories there, that's going. But here I'm trying
Speaker 5: to manipulate a show so that this woman or man
Speaker 5: picks one of these thirty people to commit to, to
Speaker 5: give their allegedly their heart to, and then I'll see
Speaker 5: you later, have a nice wedding, and we'll hopefully we'll
Speaker 5: see you later. You'll be Ryan Sutter, the guy from
Speaker 5: the first season.
Speaker 6: Whatever it will, but Ryan Sutter and married. Yes, Hey, Jason,
Speaker 6: would you go on Survivor.
Speaker 4: I don't think i'd be good at it, would I
Speaker 4: got I've thought about it.
Speaker 3: I actually have thought about it.
Speaker 4: You know, at my age, I don't know that i'd
Speaker 4: be very good either in the camp or at the challenges.
Speaker 4: But I I don't think i'd be good at no
Speaker 4: knowing someone was manipulating me. I am very gullible, so
Speaker 4: when someone seems to be, you know, speaking earnestly to me,
Speaker 4: I tend to go, oh okay, So we have that
Speaker 4: connection now, and that must be a real thing. I'm
Speaker 4: I think I'm I'm too gullible, and I would have
Speaker 4: to play a role of some kind, some sort of
Speaker 4: avatar in order to do the kind of social manipulation
Speaker 4: that you need to do in order to maneuver through
Speaker 4: that game.
Speaker 3: I don't think i'd be very good at it, but.
Speaker 6: I'm like you, I'm first of all credulous and I
Speaker 6: trust people, and I have no poker face.
Speaker 4: It would be particularly I think, But I have advocated
Speaker 4: that my older son would be great on it.
Speaker 3: He loves he loves it.
Speaker 4: He's he knows the game the show backwards, and other
Speaker 4: than he's not good when he's not fed.
Speaker 6: Yes, that is a particular downside. The first season the show,
Speaker 6: which I wrote about it, people were actively starving, and
Speaker 6: I think I heard it on later seasons they realized
Speaker 6: that having people be so starving that they literally are
Speaker 6: falling apart and all the time, it's not good telling you.
Speaker 5: They are normally such a like with the survivor's stuff.
Speaker 5: What are the worst? There have been tragedy, really bad
Speaker 5: tragedies that have gone on have been covered up.
Speaker 4: Well, my cousin almost lost his leg, but that must
Speaker 4: be not a one off.
Speaker 5: That's got to be when you're out there, you hurt yourself.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, this is a very There have definitely
Speaker 6: been incident. I don't know that they were covered up.
Speaker 6: That's a very professional show. And they I mean, unless
Speaker 6: I unless I've been completely conned my senses that when
Speaker 6: stuff happens, they have medical help around them.
Speaker 5: But there's so many somebody fill in a.
Speaker 6: Fire during the second season the third season, and Mark
Speaker 6: Burnett's big comment about it was he said, if that
Speaker 6: guy had stopped filming, I would have fired him. So
Speaker 6: it was a whole episode about the guy falling in
Speaker 6: the fire. People had various feelings about that.
Speaker 5: But even Mike the backlor had had issues and all
Speaker 5: kinds of stuff that they came to light. The way
Speaker 5: they created people, and like we're talking about the nda is,
Speaker 5: I don't know how many people should have gotten therapy
Speaker 5: if they've participated in the particular I.
Speaker 6: Mean, these are all slightly different things. There's physical dangers,
Speaker 6: there's shadiness just not putting everything up front, and then
Speaker 6: there's mental illness and you know, that kind of harm.
Speaker 6: And I definitely think that they cast people on shows deliberately,
Speaker 6: especially on some of the more drama prone, you know,
Speaker 6: like on Big Brother. I talked to a woman who
Speaker 6: was on the first season of the show who's pretty sure.
Speaker 6: You know, they have them go through therapy and get tested,
Speaker 6: and there's a certain kind of crazy that they're looking
Speaker 6: for to cast, because it's somebody who is going to
Speaker 6: lose it and make for powerful television, but who's not
Speaker 6: enough aware of their own problems that they can protect
Speaker 6: themselves from it. I mean, it's kind of baked into
Speaker 6: the casting for the show. And you know, this is
Speaker 6: there's all sorts of separate subjects about this, but one
Speaker 6: of them is that there actually are what's it called.
Speaker 6: There are therapists who work on the show, and their
Speaker 6: job is to work for the producers, but the cast
Speaker 6: members are often experiencing therapy for the first time. And
Speaker 6: I just don't understand how any of this can be legal.
Speaker 6: If you're curious about any of this, there's a show
Speaker 6: called unreal. That's a scripted show by Sarah Gertrude Shapiro,
Speaker 6: who was a producer and very repentant producer from The Bachelor,
Speaker 6: and it's the one scripted show that's really like a
Speaker 6: behind the scenes show about the making of a show
Speaker 6: like The Bachelor. And one of the major characters in
Speaker 6: it is this therapist who just learns everything about the
Speaker 6: girls and then goes to the producers and says, this
Speaker 6: is a good time for you to push her about
Speaker 6: her annirex and that stuff is not exaggerated like that
Speaker 6: is genuinely what goes on, especially on the shade ear
Speaker 6: of the shows. And I do think and you know,
Speaker 6: and then there's also like drinking. Some of this has
Speaker 6: changed over time. I mean there's been clamps downs because
Speaker 6: you know, there's a larger discussion in Hollywood about abuse
Speaker 6: all that kind of stuff that I think has shifted.
Speaker 6: There are discussions about diversity on the shows that have changed.
Speaker 6: A group of the black survivors all organized and cut
Speaker 6: an agreement with CBS. So there's been like a lot
Speaker 6: of discussions about like the ethics and the makeup of
Speaker 6: the show. But the basic task of the producers is
Speaker 6: to squeeze people until they crack.
Speaker 4: I want to I want to ask you about one
Speaker 4: very specific show, and it's a fairly recent one, just
Speaker 4: to see if you even think it falls in the
Speaker 4: category of reality.
Speaker 3: Were you able to watch Jury Duty?
Speaker 6: Yes? I did watch Jury Duty, which is I don't
Speaker 6: know if you read the section in the book that's
Speaker 6: about the Joe Schmo Show. Now, do you guys know
Speaker 6: what the Joe Shmo Show is?
Speaker 5: Why do Why don't you?
Speaker 6: Jury Duty? Jury Duty is basically a remake of exactly
Speaker 6: the same thing that went out with the Joe Shmo Show.
Speaker 6: And I talked to most people who were involved with
Speaker 6: the Joe Shmo Show. So the Joe Schmoe Show came
Speaker 6: out in I think it was like two thousand and
Speaker 6: three or something like that. It was after the big
Speaker 6: turn of the century reality boom, and it was the
Speaker 6: first show that was like a reality show that was
Speaker 6: a parody of reality show. So it was kind of
Speaker 6: an inside response. It was made by a guy who
Speaker 6: worked at Big Brother, and the idea of the show
Speaker 6: was they were like, what if we make a show
Speaker 6: that's a reality show and kind of a prank show,
Speaker 6: but the goal is to show somebody being kind and
Speaker 6: generous rather than somebody being a venal, sadistic monster, like
Speaker 6: he was winning a lot of the shows, the competitive shows.
Speaker 6: So what they did is they created a fake reality
Speaker 6: show that was called Lap of Luxury that was set
Speaker 6: in a big house and everybody in that house was
Speaker 6: an actor except for one guy, and that one guy
Speaker 6: was the Shmo, the Joe Schmo, And it was sort
Speaker 6: of a parody of all these different shows. So all
Speaker 6: the characters that the actors played were parodies of other
Speaker 6: reality characters, Like there was a guy who was like
Speaker 6: Puck on the Real World, and there were you know,
Speaker 6: this was on Spike, which was a TV channel for guys,
Speaker 6: so it had a lot of like girls in bikinis
Speaker 6: and stuff like that, and there was a character based
Speaker 6: on Rudy from Survivor. So this one guy, they cast
Speaker 6: this very sweet guy on the show and he goes
Speaker 6: in and he thinks he's on a reality show, but
Speaker 6: he doesn't realize it's a prank show where he's the
Speaker 6: only non he's the only pranked person. And the making
Speaker 6: of the show was really fascinating and it drove everybody
Speaker 6: almost into a nervous breakdown. Who was making it, because
Speaker 6: the problem with casting an empathetic person at the center
Speaker 6: of a show like this is he starts to develop
Speaker 6: loyalty and feelings toward these fake characters around him, and
Speaker 6: so he started feeling protective of the older guy. And
Speaker 6: if there was like a gay character that was like
Speaker 6: a stereotypical character, and people would make fun of him,
Speaker 6: and he would defend that guy, and he started getting
Speaker 6: a crush on Kristin Wig, who was in the show.
Speaker 6: Kristin Weig was playing the psychiatrist in the show. So anyway,
Speaker 6: the whole thing almost broke down. And when I talk
Speaker 6: to people about the show, they felt a lot of
Speaker 6: morally complex things about it, including one of the major
Speaker 6: guys in the show who's like, yeah, I regret having
Speaker 6: done it. It was really painful.
Speaker 5: So then they.
Speaker 6: Make this new show. It's just basically the same thing, right,
Speaker 6: like Jury Duty. The only difference is they were a
Speaker 6: little careful on Jury Duty, like it's about Jury Duty.
Speaker 6: It's it's like a documentary about so it's not like
Speaker 6: so intimate like living in a house, of competing for
Speaker 6: money and stuff, and they I think they kind of
Speaker 6: went out of their way not to have them fall
Speaker 6: in love with people. Yeah, yeah, I guess you could
Speaker 6: fall in love with that actor.
Speaker 5: Yeah right. They didn't make it responsible for the woman
Speaker 5: who kept falling. It was a wonderful It was brilliant.
Speaker 6: It was a brilliant show. It was a brilliantly made show.
Speaker 6: It was a very funny show. But you know, I
Speaker 6: wrote a book about these shows, and I like some
Speaker 6: of these shows, but there's a problem of like writing
Speaker 6: about the sausage factory thing, and I have a real
Speaker 6: distised for you know, I just don't like prank shows.
Speaker 6: And so when I watched that show, I was like,
Speaker 6: oh my god, nobody even remembers that they made the
Speaker 6: Joe Schmoe Show. Now they're making another show. Everybody's acting
Speaker 6: like it's this big breakthrough, and sure enough, they're reviving
Speaker 6: the Joe schmo Show. Oh I don't think anybody cares
Speaker 6: about my fingers.
Speaker 3: Well that's the answer to is reality show dying? Now?
Speaker 5: No, they're they're redoing.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 4: You know, the argument that we that our research was
Speaker 4: showing us is that the argument that it's dying is
Speaker 4: because the industry, the producers in the industry are being
Speaker 4: existentially challenged because they're being given less time, less resources,
Speaker 4: less money to make these things, and so how can
Speaker 4: you possibly do something that is creative and inventive or
Speaker 4: has quality or that you can build in a sustained way.
Speaker 4: So it feels like they're asking reality shows to deliver
Speaker 4: on impossible budgets. And of course once the producer does,
Speaker 4: the network's go, well, see, obviously it can be done,
Speaker 4: and so they continue to do it.
Speaker 6: You know, the thing that sells a reality show or
Speaker 6: I'm sure a show fucking violent kind of new spectacle,
Speaker 6: bad press, you know, like like Mike, Mike Darnell is
Speaker 6: you know, absolutely shameless and straight up about this. He's like,
Speaker 6: we didn't want to make a show that people thought
Speaker 6: was a good show. We wanted to make a show
Speaker 6: that every you know, outrage liberal and feminist, and a
Speaker 6: lot of people on the right also would all be
Speaker 6: like this is garbage and it's destroying the world. Because
Speaker 6: then you get a lot of press that says you.
Speaker 4: Can't be describing, you can't be describing when animals attack.
Speaker 5: Three Well, I remember, and I remember Mike Darnell at
Speaker 5: one point was the pushback was he wanted to take
Speaker 5: a real jet airliner and do a live crash into
Speaker 5: the desert with dummies in it, cameras everywhere, so everybody
Speaker 5: could see what it would like to be in a
Speaker 5: plane crash. That was the reality show that he tried
Speaker 5: to get and it was pushback. But like you said,
Speaker 5: the amount of publicity for that, for the plane crash
Speaker 5: thing was insane. It was mind blowing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he wanted to do all these things, like he
Speaker 6: loves television. Yeah, do you guys know him?
Speaker 3: I know Mike, I know him.
Speaker 6: But what did you what did you pitch to him?
Speaker 6: That's so I'm always so interesting because you know, this
Speaker 6: stuff is regular. People don't know about the negotiations. I'm
Speaker 6: interested in shows that didn't get made, Like I had
Speaker 6: to leave out so many shows from this book that
Speaker 6: were just ideas.
Speaker 4: A lot of what I pitched, and Mike was in
Speaker 4: on those pitches because I had a deal at Fox
Speaker 4: when he was at Fox, and I my company was
Speaker 4: interested in doing a improvisation hybrid and so you know
Speaker 4: it fell under reality or fell under Yeah. But I
Speaker 4: got to know Mike pretty well and we had a
Speaker 4: lot of conversations about when animals attack and magicians reveal
Speaker 4: their tricks.
Speaker 3: I was about to say.
Speaker 6: I was like, I think maybe I'm misremembering. I thought
Speaker 6: you came up in a conversation about magicians because the Magicians.
Speaker 6: I was so mad about his Magicians show.
Speaker 4: He and I had a conversation about revealing magic and yes,
Speaker 4: and I once punked him. I went in to pitch
Speaker 4: something else, and I punked him by going, you know,
Speaker 4: my company had found out that there is there's a
Speaker 4: loophole in the FCC that you actually can show a
Speaker 4: live execution if you do it under certain and he
Speaker 4: and his ears perked up. But I'm kidding, Mike, I'm
Speaker 4: kidding you sick.
Speaker 6: I love that story. I love that story because I'm
Speaker 6: telling you, live executions came up over and over again
Speaker 6: when I was making this book. This was the thing
Speaker 6: Chuck Barris would raise all the time, Like he would
Speaker 6: sort of troll interviewers and be like, you know, it's
Speaker 6: not true that I would show a live execution because
Speaker 6: I haven't gotten the you know video, like people always
Speaker 6: talk about that as being the end result. But so
Speaker 6: did he He seemed interested.
Speaker 4: Huh, Well, listen, you know, Mike has I don't want
Speaker 4: to I don't want to say that.
Speaker 3: He would have ever, you know, done something like that.
Speaker 4: But I think what he was interested in was I
Speaker 4: was saying that I found a loophole in the you know,
Speaker 4: in the guidebook. And he was certainly interested in pushing
Speaker 4: the envelope because he has had enormous success at doing
Speaker 4: the thing that everybody says you can't show that it's
Speaker 4: too ugly or it's or it's too unethical, and you know,
Speaker 4: it's a conversation, is revealing a magic trick? Truly unethical. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's an argument to be had when when an animal
Speaker 4: attacks somebody, if you are saying, well, these were the
Speaker 4: conditions this animal attacked in, it was provoked, this is
Speaker 4: what happened, or this is how you extricate yourself from
Speaker 4: that kind of situation, you can make a case for
Speaker 4: it is informational. But we all know that no one
Speaker 4: can turn away from a train wreck. We can't do it.
Speaker 4: So you know, you just don't know.
Speaker 6: All of all of those shows were based on exactly
Speaker 6: exactly that premise you can't turn away, and it was
Speaker 6: all using that was using like already done footage just together.
Speaker 3: And you can't turn away.
Speaker 4: And that's incredible from the guy who says he's catching
Speaker 4: bullets in his teeth.
Speaker 3: You can't turn away. So and I actually.
Speaker 6: Didn't realize how many people got seriously injured on That's incredible.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, until I started research. I was like, oh
Speaker 6: my gosh, like a guy joined tunnel, like they had
Speaker 6: that that don't try that on television thing.
Speaker 3: Because of that was when our friend of him, he
Speaker 3: talked to WALLYE.
Speaker 5: Frasier and he said, what happened was he found a
Speaker 5: guy who could swallow coins and then regurgitate him in
Speaker 5: the order that you called for, Like you say, okay,
Speaker 5: do the Nickel dime quarter quartered on Nickel And so
Speaker 5: he's taping it and the woman from Legal, the network
Speaker 5: Legal goes, there's no frigging way you're run running a
Speaker 5: guy swallowing coins and regurgitate him. So what he said,
Speaker 5: I came up with the famous and because of that,
Speaker 5: she said that a lot of the floodgate stuff and
Speaker 5: do not try this at home was all they needed
Speaker 5: for a legal disclaimer.
Speaker 6: Exactly.
Speaker 5: Wow. Right, Well, we look forward to the next book.
Speaker 5: But this book is called.
Speaker 3: You the Sun, and it's and it's it's really fun.
Speaker 3: It's really fun.
Speaker 5: It's from the the beginning the beginning of radio stunts,
Speaker 5: which is fascinating to me. I'll find on radio through
Speaker 5: through the Apprentice, and then now we're going to do
Speaker 5: your next book. I guess starts with influencers and am
Speaker 5: we'll see where it goes, right.
Speaker 6: I'm going to find something very.
Speaker 5: Sweet as Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 6: Thank you it was great meeting you guys. Thanks for
Speaker 6: inviting me.
Speaker 3: So what did so?
Speaker 4: I can't tell if she thinks reality shows are dying
Speaker 4: or not. I don't think she does think that.
Speaker 5: Who knows what's going to be the next thing that
Speaker 5: takes off? Would you have thought eating hot wings and
Speaker 5: talking about answering questions would have been a show that
Speaker 5: you also would have said, No, one's going to go
Speaker 5: for this. You're not going to get Scarlette Johansen to
Speaker 5: come on and so for millions and millions of dollars
Speaker 5: because they're going to do it live on Amazon. Now,
Speaker 5: who would have known that that's what people want to want? So, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's interesting. I will say this about if the streamers
Speaker 5: are going to go down. I do have a big
Speaker 5: movie coming out on Netflix in March, so can can
Speaker 5: we hold on to Netflix?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 5: Huge? But those big movies on those streamers are always
Speaker 5: going to make money. Is how the streamers make money.
Speaker 5: It's the Electric.
Speaker 4: States, Darring Lille, Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt and us.
Speaker 4: Will they come on, by the way, the Russo Brothers
Speaker 4: onto this show?
Speaker 5: Yeah? No, would you? And that's what I like if
Speaker 5: you were John Sally is that player attitude of I'm
Speaker 5: going to go out and conquer no matter what I
Speaker 5: go to you? Will they come? Why would they have?
Speaker 4: I have a bigger question, will they come on this show?
Speaker 4: I'll get rid of that question to go. Will they
Speaker 4: use me in another film that's about Kerry?
Speaker 5: All right?
Speaker 4: Well they used you not when it's pretty cool and
Speaker 4: they were great, mister Grogan, I'm welcome.
Speaker 3: Do you have anything for us from our conversation? And
Speaker 3: then I'll play a little game with you in that theater.
Speaker 3: I have so much.
Speaker 7: I enjoyed the trailer the other day.
Speaker 3: They just released the trailer trailer for the movie. Yeah, Electrics,
Speaker 3: were you in it?
Speaker 5: Because do we even know?
Speaker 3: I'm barely in the movie.
Speaker 4: I am in the first If you want to go
Speaker 4: page count, I'm in the first fourteen pages of one
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty eight.
Speaker 5: More importantly, did you get a trail? I got a trill?
Speaker 3: Okay, nice? And I learned how to do mocap.
Speaker 5: I learned motion cap.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yes, there you go now here.
Speaker 7: I had actually some interesting reality TV trivia for you.
Speaker 3: We could do briefly.
Speaker 5: What was the most popular episode of reality TV ever?
Speaker 3: Oh, I'll give you, I'll give you a hint.
Speaker 7: There was fifty one point seven million viewers.
Speaker 4: Oh, for God Sex when when Heraldo opened out capone's safe?
Speaker 3: Is that possible?
Speaker 5: God? It's got the finale of something where everybody watched
Speaker 5: to see how it would end. Yes? What was the
Speaker 5: big show where everybody would have won?
Speaker 7: It was the big cultural phenomenon reality show?
Speaker 5: Was anybody winning a big amount of money? Yes? And
Speaker 5: he would later go to jail for it? Oh?
Speaker 3: Was it the Richard Haber right, Sir? Survivor Season one?
Speaker 5: Richard High? There you go? Good? Thank you?
Speaker 7: Beg you fifty one point seven million, and they have
Speaker 7: not repeated that. Can you guess what was the most
Speaker 7: popular reality show in twenty twenty four with twenty point
Speaker 7: nine million viewers.
Speaker 4: I'm guessing it's The Bachelorette or the Bachelor, And I'm
Speaker 4: guessing it's just America's got talent.
Speaker 5: I know, how Howe Mendels does.
Speaker 3: I don't know that.
Speaker 7: No, they yeah, very good guesses. It was apparently Love
Speaker 7: is Blind Blind.
Speaker 5: Which is the show that she said, Oh here, yeah, okay, wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: And just to give us a little bit of comparison,
Speaker 7: what was the highest rated TV event in history history?
Speaker 3: Yes, it had one.
Speaker 7: Hundred and twenty five to one hundred and fifty million viewers.
Speaker 5: What was it? It's one hundred and fifty million views? Huh, yeah,
Speaker 5: I know Nixon resignation was huge. I know there's a
Speaker 5: couple of us the finale. Could it be it was
Speaker 5: the news? It was the news events.
Speaker 3: I would imagine it was that. Well. I was going
Speaker 3: to say the landing on the Moon for the first.
Speaker 5: Time, Kennedy Kennedy funeral.
Speaker 7: Jason is correct, the landing lading Mars, which landing on Wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the biggest.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would neither actually happened. So you know my
Speaker 4: grandmother's great story, it neither happened.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: My cousin Jeffrey was watching it with a little portable
Speaker 4: television past his bedtime. My grandmother Hill that caught him
Speaker 4: and said Jeffrey turned it off to grandmother about to
Speaker 4: walk on the moon, and my grandmother went the walk
Speaker 4: on the Moon tomorrow.
Speaker 3: There you go, it's the true story, all right. You
Speaker 3: want to play a little game.
Speaker 5: And by the way, we haven't been back, so it's
Speaker 5: just that's right, right.
Speaker 4: Uh So these uh, this is a game similar to
Speaker 4: ones we played before.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: Some of these are actual reality shows. Some of them
Speaker 4: are complete love Are you ready? Real or fake? I
Speaker 4: Want to Marry Harry Female contestants vie in contests to
Speaker 4: ostensibly marry Prince Harry.
Speaker 5: Exactly. That's real.
Speaker 4: That's a real, real David. No, that's a real show.
Speaker 4: I want to Marry Harry and it was huge.
Speaker 3: By the way, who won? Nobody? Uh?
Speaker 4: The Tank a Japanese show in which contestants play they
Speaker 4: are sealed in a century deprivation tank to see who
Speaker 4: is the last.
Speaker 5: Oh, I think that's real too. I think I read
Speaker 5: about the guy one. I think, go ahead, how do
Speaker 5: you film that?
Speaker 3: No, it's I made that up.
Speaker 5: That's completely But there was a guy. There was a
Speaker 5: sensory deprivation guy lived in it like an apartment or
Speaker 5: something that's not sensary.
Speaker 3: Does profession that's isolation. Okay, this show fine, would you shoot?
Speaker 4: Fantasy courses and scenarios challenge contestants to navigate unusual visual
Speaker 4: setups and live confrontations and only shoot the bad guys.
Speaker 4: So it's like, you know, walking through a maze and
Speaker 4: there are scenarios in this pop up.
Speaker 5: I'll I'll see you.
Speaker 3: Good idea, but.
Speaker 5: No, it's I made it up totally because we're gonna
Speaker 5: be doing it.
Speaker 4: Hu Best Funeral Ever, in which loved ones hand over
Speaker 4: the remains of the deceased and allow elaborate, funfilled funerals
Speaker 4: to be created for them, like rolling a bowler's casket
Speaker 4: down the lane from.
Speaker 5: One last trive reel. I would do that. I probly
Speaker 5: would be in that drone a minute.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely true. Bestneral sixty Days.
Speaker 4: The contestant is given a false name and background, then
Speaker 4: thrown into a general prison population. If they make it
Speaker 4: through sixty days without revealing themselves or tapping out, they win.
Speaker 5: I don't think that's opening because you can't go off
Speaker 5: the other to.
Speaker 3: Play off insurance. Insurance wouldn't cover it.
Speaker 5: No, I made it up. Totally.
Speaker 4: Sexy Beasts, in which people vie for affection and dates
Speaker 4: while wearing elaborate, fully prosthetic face covering makeup.
Speaker 3: Sure, true, that's a real show.
Speaker 4: My Strange Addiction showcases people who eat drywall to compulsive
Speaker 4: anal bleaching, all kinds of strange addictions.
Speaker 3: Sure that's piker anal bleaching. Yes, it's a real show.
Speaker 4: Alter ego celebrity judges assess singers who sing live, but
Speaker 4: the judges only see a CGI generated avatar of them.
Speaker 3: No, No, that's a real show. Okay, that's a real show.
Speaker 3: That's set your ripoff of mass singer. Come on. Born
Speaker 3: in the Wild, a.
Speaker 4: Documentary series about people opting to birth their babies in
Speaker 4: the thick of the woods without medicine or technology of
Speaker 4: any kind.
Speaker 5: That's not happened.
Speaker 3: No, that's a real show.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 4: Good and last, but not least, what is that Contestants
Speaker 4: via to correctly identify commonplace items that are shown in
Speaker 4: extreme close.
Speaker 7: Up real This is the sequel to Your Your Your
Speaker 7: human uh splotches.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I made it up.
Speaker 3: That sounds like a great show.
Speaker 5: We should make it and we're out, thank you.
Speaker 4: Those are reality shows. That's what people are watching and
Speaker 4: not watching. And you're wondering if they're gonna die. Not
Speaker 4: when I can come up with six beauties like that.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 3: You'll be tuning in for would you shoot?
Speaker 5: Your phone is going to be ringing off the hook tonight,
Speaker 5: my friend?
Speaker 3: Where's Mike Darnell? What do you shoot? When you need them?
Speaker 5: When you need them?
Speaker 3: They need to replace Yellowstone? Right, I mean, why not?
Speaker 5: There you go called Bloodstone. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 5: Thank you, great pleasure. It's always fun.
Speaker 4: Thank you everybody, and thank you Emilina spum and uh
Speaker 4: safe right, why we.
Speaker 3: Listen to our damn show?
Speaker 5: Can you ever go un chew too?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, before you swallow?
Speaker 2: Now that's another episode of Really No Really.
Speaker 3: It comes to a close.
Speaker 2: I know you're wondering what are considered some of the
Speaker 2: best reality shows ever. Well, we'll see who those survivors
Speaker 2: are in a moment, but first let's thank our guest,
Speaker 2: Emily Nustbomb. You can follow Emily on her Instagram where
Speaker 2: she is at Emily Nusbaum, or you can visit her
Speaker 2: website Emilynusbomb dot com. Our little show hangs out on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube,
Speaker 2: and threads at Really No Really podcasts and of course,
Speaker 2: you can share your thoughts and feedback with us online
Speaker 2: at reallynoreally dot com. If you have a really some
Speaker 2: amazing factor story that boggles your mind, share it with us,
Speaker 2: and if we use it, we will send you a
Speaker 2: little gift. Nothing life changing, obviously, but it's the thought
Speaker 2: that counts. Check out our full episodes on YouTube, hit
Speaker 2: that subscribe button and take that bell so you're updated
Speaker 2: when we release new videos and episodes, which we do
Speaker 2: each Tuesday. So listen and follow us on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And now
Speaker 2: the answer to the question, what are considered some of
Speaker 2: the best reality shows ever? Well, Variety magazine, the entertainment
Speaker 2: industries insider news source has determined a list of twenty.
Speaker 2: Some of the right spots of the list include at
Speaker 2: number twenty, America's Next Top Model, Tyra Banks, and other
Speaker 2: judges picked from a bevy of hopeful wannabe models. Number
Speaker 2: fourteen is Shark Tank, and I think the idea for
Speaker 2: Shark Tank was sold on Shark Tank. Number nine The
Speaker 2: Real Housewives, where all that is real is that they
Speaker 2: are in fact housewives. Number eight The Amazing Race and yes,
Speaker 2: it is number five American Idol, and no, most often
Speaker 2: they're not. Number four Top Chep, number three RuPaul's Drag
Speaker 2: Race where no one eats but they do win Emmys,
Speaker 2: and number one The Big Guy Survivor forty seven seasons strong,
Speaker 2: and folks are still fighting, bitching, moaning, lying, scheming, and
Speaker 2: starving for a shot.
Speaker 3: To win a million bucks.
Speaker 2: And you're probably watching at least one of these since
Speaker 2: Talker Research estimates Americans watch an average of ten hours
Speaker 2: of reality TV per week.
Speaker 3: If only we could switch that to podcasts.
Speaker 2: Oh well, really, it really is production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 2: Blase entertain
Speaker 3: Fo