Apparently, like late night talk shows, a lot of Reality TV is "soft scripted." That is, you generally tell the actors what to do without actually putting words in their mouths. You can see what this is like if you watch Charlie Rose & Jay Leno. Jay Leno interviews always go really smoothly, and anything he brings up ellicits an entertaining response. Charlie Rose interviews are all over the map. The difference is, Jay Leno guests are pre-interviewed. You talk to a someone on the staff and they get from you a bunch of stories. They then feed Jay the lines that he needs to trigger the stories from you. Charlie Rose interviews ramble, stop, start, and generally seem to be oddly paced for television.

So, someone who writes in the LA times found a script for Queer Eye, and it goes something like this:

THOM wonders what exactly was Patrick going for with regard to his living room design. Bad 70's at best. Brown and white shag carpet, blue and white ill fitting slipcovers, folding TV diner trays, and clip on utility lamps, yikes! And in the midst of it all, a desk and the obligatory large screen TV. It is not an inviting space in anyway. It is no wonder his social life stinks, the apartment certainly does. Mrs. Mullare says she put all this furniture here years ago when Patrick moved in and he has done nothing to the place the entire time. THOM should explain to Patrick that while this is his parent's home, as long as he is committed to staying here, he must make it his own. Patrick tells THOM he loves Italian design.

I assumed it was a script for the editor, but the "should" thing threw me off a bit. That part sounds like an instruction to Thom rather than the editor, but I could easily be wrong, and a number of industry savvy folks are saying that this is indeed the case.

He says he also has proof that The Simple Life and some show on MTV called Made are semi-scripted. I've never seen either, but I'm willing to believe it. He also says that a crucial scene in The Restaurant was re-enacted. I have no problem with that really. The camera crew wasn't around to catch the incident, but it was important to the plot, so they added it back in.

The problem I have with this "article" (online you can't tell it except by looking at the URL but it seems to have appeared in the Opinion/Commentary section of the newspaper, whatever that is), is that it lumps all reality TV into the same bucket. Survivor is not the same as The Simple Life for one major reason: There is no prize on The Simple Life. Getting the Queer Eye guys to come to your house is the prize, so there are no contest/legal implications to the rest of it being scripted.

Survivor, The Apprentice, The Biggest Loser, Fear Factor and other programs are contests. Game shows where the participants have to stick around for a few days or weeks in order to win. Scripting or otherwise fixing it would somehow nullify the legitimacy (and legality) of the contest. Maybe if I read the small print in the credits (which often says "Portions of this show not affecting the outcome may have been edited") I'll see somewhere that the whole thing is a scripted hoax, but in my mind they are two different classes of show.

The Osbornes and that show with Jessica Simpson are pure promotional pieces. Jessica Simpson's career was in the toilet before it appeared, but record sales soared once people saw it. Since the focus of these shows is on the recurring characters (Ozzy, Jessica, Paris, the Fab 5, etc.), and any effect they have on people is just in passing, (the Fab 5's victims of the week, for example), I don't think too many people care that the episodes are somewhat staged. At least to the late night talk show level.

When I saw The Blair Witch Project, I didn't want to see or hear any of the hype surrounding the movie until I'd seen it. It paid of in spades - my suspension of disbelief (actually, I didn't have to suspend anything - I believed) - made me terrified. The friends I went with said the movie was hokey, but I was completely shaken, and it was only at the end when the credits called for script writers, camera men, and composers that I realized I'd been duped.

If Reality TV is staged, perhaps it's for the best that we don't know?

Anyway, here are the original article & the Queer Eye script so you can decide for yourself:

The New Quiz Show Scandal -- Reality Television (bugmenot.com)

#150 - Queer Eye for the Straight Guy - Second Draft (PDF)

Another article in the seemingly media-obsessed LA Times (perhaps it's target audience of the paper that serves the Hollywood community that dictates the contents?) talks about something I've mentioned before - product placement in The Apprentice. It's so rampant that the episode that didn't have 3 prominent sponsors stood out like a sore thumb. I mean really... Dog washing?

It says Mars Inc. nixed a suggestion from the producers for a recent episode that would mimic the classic I Love Lucy skit where they're working an assembly line that's spinning out of control and eating chocolates and stuffing them down their bouses. I really have to wonder how they would have worked that in to the episode. Contestants on the Apprentice are supposed to have pretty much free reign over how they accomplish the task, so how could a suggestion like that from the producers could be worked in to the episode?

The situation in the episode itself was laughable - a bare bones factory, a production rate of a few dozen bars an hour, and a Master Chef crew that inspects every bar (really?). I don't think anyone believes candy bars are made this way, not at Mars Inc. anyway, but it believable that they could be given a task related to making candy bars there.

The really funny part is that Mars Inc. thinks people will believe that's how candy bars are made (maybe the first few for a test market), and this belief will create "brand evangelists."

Most telling quote in the article: Mark Burnett saying, "The show is entirely about entertainment."

Products Are Stars in New Ad Strategy

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