To quote another great funnyman, the late Steve Gordon: “It doesn’t suck.”
What kind of research did you do for this book?
In LA in the twenty-first century, everybody knows somebody who has worked in reality. I’m even sleeping with such a person – my wife Jennifer worked for years for E! and the Style network, and then produced a show called House Hunters for the Home & Garden Network. (In Keep It Real, I paid homage to her magnum opus but changed the name to the equally compelling Watching Paint Dry.)
So it wasn’t hard to find knowledgeable sources, but no one would talk to me unless I swore a blood oath to protect their confidentiality. The reality producers and the networks are extremely touchy about anyone revealing what goes into their secret sauce - they make all the employees and contestants sign phonebook-sized nondisclosure agreements, and back them up with legions of trigger-happy lawyers.
CBS recently threatened to sue some of the prepubescent participants in Kid Nation for $5 million each for uttering so much as a peep about what went on during the shoot. On shows like Survivor and The Apprentice, they say the secrecy is necessary because they don’t want the audience to find out in advance who’s won the competition. Personally, I think it’s because they don’t want anyone to know what a total load of crap it is. Yet some of us do anyway.
Thanks to Mr. Bryan for the interview. I'll be sending him the questions for part two in about one week.
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