Liza Mundy Post Staff Writer Monday, July 21, 2003; 1:00 p.m ET
Being on the original "Survivor" episode made Bethesda's Colleen Haskell semi-famous, semi-disgusted and, oddly, semi-ready to dive in for another dose of reality TV. Post staff writer Liza Mundy, whose article about Haskell and the world of reality television appeared in yesterday's Washington Post Magazine, was online Monday, July 21 at 1 p.m. ET to field questions and comments about the article. Liza Mundy is a Magazine staff writer. The transcript follows. Editor's Note: washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Atlanta, Ga.: (I don't want to come across mean.) There appears to be a trend where people on reality television are surprised they're (in)famous. How is that possible, when a person has to sign up/audition to be on the nationally aired program. Do the producers/casting agents tell you your life won't change? What if anything does anyone tell you about the potential fame?
Liza Mundy: Hi everyone, and thanks for signing on. I think that for the cast members on the early reality shows, like the first Survivor, it was indeed a huge surprise that the show succeeded as well as it did, and that they all were, willy-nilly famous. As I mentioned in the piece, the first Survivor cast members were asked to sign a contract clause in which they agreed that the program might flop and never air. Even the producers, at that point, didn't know what the show would turn into. And I got the sense from the cast members I spoke with that even after the success of that first season, they weren't prepared for the interviews, appearances, publicity, etc., and often didn't know that they could--say--request to be paid. Later cast members knew all this. I agree that it's surprising, now, if someone on a reality show doesn't realize that they are likely to become a celebrity, at least briefly. It seems to me as though for many people, that is the whole purpose.
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Bethesda, Md.: Just a comment: Lisa, that was a brilliant article. At points, I found myself reading sections outloud to my wife and parents, especially the "wild kingdom" analogy and the section recounting the interviews with "ice" and others, how it turned into a train wreck, but not the right kind.
washingtonpost.com: Question Reality (Post, July 20)
Liza Mundy: Thank you. Much of the reporting was fun and funny, so I'm glad if that came across.
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San Francisco, Calif.: I saw Colleen Haskell acting once without knowing who she was, and I thought she did a very good job. If people judged her alone, besides her celebrity, I think she we will be well thought of? How does her acting future appear?
Liza Mundy: I agree about Colleen. She is smart and telegenic and for a person with no acting training, does well on camera. I asked her what she thought might have happened if she had been cast, say, in a good indie film, rather than a dumb, superficial show-biz vehicle like the Animal. She agreed that she might have felt differently about acting if she could have found some more interesting material. But basically, she says she just never had the desire to act--in college, she ran lights backstage--so the auditions just didn't seem worth it to her. I think the whole thing just felt ludicrous and weird to her. She does want to be a producer--she likes that aspect of entertainment--but I don't think she's going to change her plans and seek a way to get back on camera.
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Washington, D.C.: What do you think Colleen felt about Jenna's continued attempts to be "famous?" I see Jenna every once in awhile on TV and I think it is really rather pathetic that she (and hundred of other reality tv stars) live in LA and try to pretend that they are famous or interesting.
Liza Mundy: Colleen and Jenna are still good friends. I think Colleen admires Jenna's pursuit of an entertainment career, because she sees Jenna as a person who really wants such a career. I did speak to Jenna; for her, a single mother, Survivor allowed her to genuinely change her life, and get out of a situation in which seh was working two jobs (day care and waitressing) to support herself and her kids. She's not making a lot more, and she's still cobbling together work, but I gather that it's a lot more fun, and more flexible than the jobs she had before. She does get to see her daughters more now, she says. I don't think Jenna is pretending to be famous or interesting; I think she's probably just having somewhat more fun than she was before.
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Washington, D.C.: Were you able to get a look at Colleen's legs? Are they still scarred from the insect infestation?
BTW, if you want to find out if any of the newer Survivors take the game seriously, try calling DC man-about-town Matthew von Erfelda, who came in second on S6.
Liza Mundy: Nope; so many interviewers had done so before, I didn't ask about the bug bites.
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San Francisco, Calif.: We have seen people hurt during reality shows. Have the producers of reality shows planned ahead what to do should someone be killed or serious injured during a show? If so, what preparations have they made?
Liza Mundy: I wonder that myself. I know that on Survivor, there were doctors present on the island in case anybody gets seriously sick. Ask for the shows you're talking about--I assume you mean the action-competition shows--I dont' know for sure, but I would think that anybody competing on these shows must sign some big-time liability waiver. I do recall that a couple of women were genuinely, seriously injured on one show, don't recall which one. I agree with you that many of these shows seem to be a lawsuit waiting to happen. Wait till somebody on Fear Factor turns out to be deathly allergic to earthworms, and just never knew it before.
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Potomac, Md.: Everyone talks like Survivor was the first reality show when Real World and Road Rules were on MTV for years before Survivor. Survivor looked just like Road Rules with a larger budget.
Liza Mundy: You're right about that; Real World is, what, ten or eleven years old now? The granddaddy of reality television. Just think: some of the original Real World cast members are pushing middle age.
I sense that people in the reality-show biz do pay homage to the creators of Real World; Kevin Greene, the producer of the Michael Essany show, was talking to me about how the Real World people masterminded the "venting to the camera" interview segments that so many reality shows now use for transitions. I don't know about you, but I love those segments. Especially on the dating shows like Blind Dates. They are just so mortifying.
Anyway, suffice it to say that you are right. MTV started it; in fact, these days MTV is practically a reality-show channel. But Survivor was the show that really took reality into the mainstream. There was a huge, huge jump in viewership.
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Chantilly, Va.: Liza: Great story!
Did you happen to ask Colleen what she thinks of the upcoming Survivor that apparently will feature some of the most notorious contestants from prior episodes (Susan Hawk, Jerri, etc.)
Personally, I can't think of a worse idea. One of the charms of shows like Survivor is getting to know the people. We already know Susan Hawk et al and I really don't need to see them mugging for the camera in their pathetic attempt to extend their 15 minutes.
Liza Mundy: Colleen didn't pass judgment on the other contestants, but she did say that if asked, she would never do the "all-stars" segment. (I dont' think she was asked, though. Far too normal.) I agree with you, that it seems unbearably unpleasant to anticipate seeing all the strongest personalities and most notorious whiner/manipulators brought together, a sort of modern-day No Exit, a living hell of noxious personalities. Sort of like watching Godzilla versus Mothra. Whom do you root for?
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California:
Liza M.--What an excellent article, I found
it had a lot of insight into current culture. I
only watch one reality show, The Amazing
Race, and that's because of the travel
aspect. I had heard of Colleen Haskell
tho and Michael Essany and had a vague
idea who they were. I wondered if any
connection has ever been made between
Michael Essany's goal and the fact that
he is from the same state as David
Letterman? Perhaps the fact he is from
flyover country (not a farm!), close to
family, etc. to him seems to only reinforce
the notion that he could be like Dave!
Thanks again for the interesting piece.
Liza Mundy: Thanks. Dunno if being from the Midwest makes a person aspire to be a celebrity interviewer, but after a couple days in Valparaiso (I can say this, because I'm from a small place myself) I could certainly see how boredom would drive you to write letters pleading with famous people to come visit. To me, it is pretty impressive that Michael Essany prevailed. He has a kind of Gatsby-esque determination (morning: write fifty letters to publicists. afternoon: internet research. evening: watch carson reruns.) What do you do with ambition like that? Admire it? Run as fast as you can away from it? I'm not sure.
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Washington, D.C.: Why doesn't someone at E! have the heart to tell Michael Essany that he isn't funny and doesn't have the show-biz looks to make up for it? David Letterman once observed that, after having interviewed enought of them, most movie stars think they are special simply because they have won a genetic crapshoot that makes them handsome or beautiful. But most of them are vapid and clueless. The smart ones, like Colleen, know enough to get out of the business before they get sucked into the endless rounds of trying to get cameos and roles. Do you agree?
Liza Mundy: I don't know what E! is going to do with his show. The producers don't seem to know, either. You get the sense that all this reality stuff is just being made up as people go along. For example, E! is also getting ready to air a reality series on--ready for this?--homelessness. There is apparently one producer who really wanted to do it, so they let her produce it. But the publicist told me she wasn't really sure what to make of it. I mean, what the hell is it: documentary? unscripted drama? are they going to give the homeless people makeovers? I told her that if they were going to do a reality series on homelessness, they are going to have to lose the exclamation mark from their name, at the very least.
But seriously, you know, I like the Michael Essany show better than most other reality shows I've watched. What other reality show--aside from, say, Stupid Pet Tricks--has a sense of humor? The other ones take themselves so seriously.
The producers I talked don't seem to know what will happen to the Michael Essany show; they fear that the fact that it doesn't feature people eating cockroaches is a problem. (By the way, Jenna from Survivor told me that it wasn't until the first bug-eating segment aired that they realized what a smash success Survivor was going to be.) But they are happy with the next batch of Michael Essany shows, so they are guardedly hopeful.
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Chicago, Ill.: The article was extremely interesting and what made you decide to write it?
By the way, Real World was around long before survival. It was the original "reality show"!!!
Liza Mundy: Let us just say that there is a member of the Washington Post Magazine editorial staff who watches a lot of reality television. More, I will not say.
Re Real World: See above. I myself have to confess to watching the whole Real World Seattle season. It was the two guys from VMI who kept me going: I loved watching their tearful, emotional interviews, wonderfing what life had been like for them in the VMI rat line.
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Washington, D.C.: Why, why, why on earth was that photo selected for use on the cover? Colleen is such a darling, and that photo made her look like a washed-out drug abuser. I saw the cover photo and thought that was what the story was going to be about - the negative effects of reality t.v. on a sweet personality.
Liza Mundy: Really? I liked the cover photo. I thought it got away from the slick entertainment covers, and made her seem like a person with an actual inner life.
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Washington, D.C.: Is Colleen Haskell as cute in person as she appears to be on tv and in the photos for your article?
Liza Mundy: Yes. One of the things that struck me--watching her, Freddy Rodriguez, and even Shawn Ashmore--is how interesting they are to look at. It's some sort of quality that clearly comes across on camera but is also apparent in real life. IT's not the same thing as being good-looking. It's being interesting-looking.
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Somewhere, USA: I'd disagree that the Real World was the original reality show -- it's a show where kids are put in a house and then the producers wait to see what happens. There's no game going on, no sense of competition. That was the hallmark of Survivor, and which gave birth to the RTV craze.
RW and RR are, if anything, riffs on that PBS documentary from the '70's -- "American Family"?
Liza Mundy: I'll just let this argument play out. I guess it depends on how you define reality show: some are basically extreme game shows, some are pseudo-athletic competitions, some are a buncha people in a house, some are weird amalgams. "Unscripted drama" is what the TV people like to call all of them, and I think that Real World and Survivor both fit this description. I continue to regard Mutual of Omaha as the unsung original.
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Virginia: Who cares about Colleen? Michael Essany is the better part of your story. Tell us more about this social reject.
Liza Mundy: Yes, I also thought Michael Essany was ultimately what the story was about, in that he somehow represents the new breed of reality stars: people who are self-consciously using the genre to suit their purposes.
I don't know if I was in Valparaiso long enough to give you an extended character study. He is, of course, superhumanly driven. I couldn't decide if whether he is somehow, in this drivenness, an American type. He is only 20: very astute, very conscious that the network is using him; very ambitious in that he is tryign to use them at the same time; very clearly aware of the compromise he is making. And as Colleen pointed out, he is also talented. I mean, for a twenty-year-old, he is really not bad. I certainly coulnd't have done it, and couldn't do it now. One of the luxuries a print reporter has is that your readers never get to listen to your interview questions. Wherease he has to do it right there on camera.
I don't know, I guess the funny thing about the Essay household is how teh whole crazy situation is, by now, utterly normalized. I think the family would look askance if you suggested that the whole set-up is strange. Either that, or they know it's strange and they just think it's funny. I loved it when Tina Essany was just standing there washing dishes, talking about how weird it was to call Henry Winkler by his first name. For the most part, the Essany parents don't seem cowed by most of the celebrities, in part because they don't really seem to know who many of them are and therefore don't seem to regard them as overwhelmingly important. They seem unimpressed by much of popular culture--the Essany parents, I mean--and that strikes me as teh correct posture. Michael Essany is another matter. On the other hand: let's say your ambition IS to be a late-night talk show hosts. How else are you going to get there?
All I can say is that when I was there, there were so many layers of irony working, I got lost. Who was in on the joke, and who wasn't, ultimately became impossible to judge.
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Greenbelt, Md.: Hi--
The article mentioned that there were websites devoted to Colleen, so I took a quick look online and found this one:
http://colleen-a-flower.com/photoarchiveframes.htm
Wow. The man who developed this website seems to have gone overboard in articulating his devotion to Colleen.
What is Colleen's reaction to websites like this one?
Liza Mundy: I asked her about that, because it seemed so creepy to me, and Colleen says that she tries to ignore them. I think that one consequence, for reality-show women (and probably, men) is that they become virtual stalkees. Jenna also said she had an obsessed fan who followed her around to the point where it became a problem. I think Colleen just tries not to think about it.
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Bethesda, Md.: Liza: I sent in a comment earlier about how much I enjoyed your article. You may also enjoy an article written by Chris Rose of the New Orleans Times-Picayune (my hometown newspaper) about his attempt to lampoon the cast of MTV's Real World when they set up camp in an old mansion on St. Charles Ave. The interaction between the "Real World" cast with real world New Orleans characters makes for a great read.
Liza Mundy: Thanks; I'll post this.
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Washington, D.C.: Not to critize, but why exactly was Haskell on the cover and in the title? The article seemed to be more about the Essany show and reality tv in general.
Liza Mundy: I don't make those decisions, but I will say that it's hard to represent a complicated story on a cover, and she does personify the topic of reality-shows and their aftermath. Cover images are stronger when they're simple. Plus, she's local. Plus, one doesn't entirely dismiss the interesting-to-look-at angle.
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Somewhere, USA: No more regular folks on reality shows: I heard somewhere that casting people were now having an almost impossible time casting regular people for these shows. All of the people signing up want to break into show-biz and us regular folks (having seen what can really happen) have learned that we don't want to have our privacy invaded - not to mention being humiliated by all of the new "twists."
Liza Mundy: Yep, I think that's true; then again, WHAT are those people on Blind Date thinking?
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Gaithersburg, Md.: There is a reality show about making over homeless people! It's on the Style Channel and it's called Second Chances.
I only watched for a few minutes, and it was surreal.
Liza Mundy: God. You're right. There is.
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Forestville, Md.: I have an opinion, but why do you think people do these reality programs? What the heck are they thinking?!?
Liza Mundy: I asked this of Colleen; Michael Essany; the producers: everybody has a different answer. I think that people who enter the so-called athletic competitions do it, in part, to see if they can win, or do well; people who enter the romance shows probably want to emerge as a star or starlet.
I keep coming back to the fact that most--if not all--reality show cast members are young, and in that sense, probably a little more willing to do dumbass thigns they may or may not regret for the rest of their lives.
(I was watchign Fear Factor, once, and one of the twenty-something guys said he had actually PRACTICED eating cockroacvhes, to prepare for the show. Sometimes, I wonder about the connection between these shows and, say, fraternity hazing rituals. Ultimately, a lot of it is just plain juvenile.)
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RE: Road rules is not reality show: I disagree with Somehwhere, USA's claim that Real world and Road Rules are in a different catagory than Survivor. Except for its larger budget which allowed Survivor to stick them on an island and make them do more exotic activities, there was just as much bickering, petty disagreements, drama, and sexual tension in Survivor than in any MTV "reality" show. If Somehwere, USA's argument that Road Rules isnt a reality show because its just a bunch of young people arguing, then what makes Survivor one?
Liza Mundy: I'll just post this.
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Alexandria, Va.: I have to admit that I haven't yet read the article, but from the blurb on the cover, I had to laugh. Poor Colleen got famous on Survivor and has been trying to get over it ever since.......I can think of a few ways to stay out of the public eye, and none of them include doing a cover story for the magazine of one of the nation's biggest newspapers.
Liza Mundy: Colleen wasn't seeking the publicity; she was just too polite not to answer my questions. And ultimately, I think, she may have glad of the chance to meditate on what had been unpleasant about the aftermath. If so, I don't think that's so reprehensible of her.
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Somewhere, USA:
Ms. Mundy, will you ever go back to writing a column? We miss you!
Liza Mundy: That is really nice of you. After six years of column-writing I wanted a break, and the chance to write more long, uh, serious stories. Like this one! But maybe someday I'll do a column again, thanks.
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Somewhere, USA: I was working in Africa when "Survivor" started, and we found the premise of well-off Americans playing a game pretending to be basically poor folks living off the land for several days or weeks humorous, and maybe a bit insensitive (how many of the players and viewers realize how many people live like this and don't regard it as a game)? Frankly, I was surprised at the show's ongoing success. No matter how one views the show, it's not "reality television" (an industry-generated phrase that the media seems to have swallowed lock, stock and barrel), but "unscripted" dramas. To each their own.
Liza Mundy: And a good note to conclude on. Thanks to everyone.
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washingtonpost.com: That wraps up today's show. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion.
Stay Tuned to Live Online:
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That wraps up today's show. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion.Stay Tuned to Live Online:
• Noon Outlook: U.S. and the Middle East: Former Army officer and author Ralph Peters
• Noon Media Backtalk: Howard Kurtz
• 1 p.m. Post Magazine: Surviving "Survivor": The Post's Liza Mundy
• 2 p.m. Travel Tips: The Flight Crew
• 2 p.m. Democrats in 2004: The Post's Dan Balz
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