With the way the markets have been over the past year and a half, many investors may feel like they've been in a prolonged episode of Fear Factor. That's the hit NBC show in which people are put through one outrageous ordeal after another, from bungee jumping head-first from a 12-story building to lying in a vat of hundreds of biting worms, all for the chance to win a $50,000 prize.
The Daily Interview decided to take investors' minds off their losses today by speaking with Matt Kunitz, executive producer of the much-vilified reality TV show. Kunitz defends his show as a "nice, safe thrill" and says that those who call it "tacky" and "gross" are out of touch with reality. He also describes how the show handles the mountain of liability issues that come up.
TSC: Did you ever think you'd end up the producer of a show that asks people to do such things as swallow live crickets, warning them to chew them well or the crickets could crawl back up their throats? Kunitz: I guess when I was going to film school it never occurred to me that this would be the type of show that I would be producing, but the fact that I am producing a show that the audience is responding to, that's the highest-rated show of the summer, that, to me, is great and exciting.
TSC: What kind of kick do you want viewers to get out of Fear Factor? Kunitz: Our audience can live vicariously through the contestants. The contestants might be on a high beam 100 feet up in the air or being attacked by a police dog or lying in a pit of rats, and the way we shoot it, the people at home can feel like they're a part of it and actually participating, but yet they're doing it from the safety of their armchair. It's a nice, safe thrill.
TSC: Those rats you poured on people -- hopefully they were well-fed and weren't from the subways and sewers of New York City? Kunitz: The rats were raised in a laboratory and were as clean as rats can be. They were
very well fed in advance of the stunt.
TSC: Fifteen to 20 reality shows will be airing on the tube this fall. Is this going to force you to push the envelope even further? Kunitz: No, I think we just need to continue making good shows that people will respond to. We'll take
Fear Factor as far as our imagination will take us, as long as we continue to do it in a safe manner. Safety is our number one concern on
Fear Factor. For example, everyone was surprised that we won't have the show on immediately in the fall. One of the reasons why is because we take so much time in planning the stunts to make sure they're safe that we won't be able to deliver these shows until late December.
TSC: How do you come up with these ideas? Who's the brains behind such stunts as having people eat sheeps' eyeballs while surrounded by sheep with eye patches? Kunitz: It's almost all brainstorming. [We invite] whoever wants to come -- everybody from the production assistant to the producers -- and we just start throwing out ideas. Someone might ask, "What can we do with a blimp?" And then someone might say, "What if we hung a ladder from a blimp and they had to climb down and retrieve something 3,000 feet in the air?"
Then we turn to the stunt department to ask if this is doable, and they come back to us.
TSC: Who's in your stunt department? Kunitz: They're veteran Hollywood stuntmen. Perry Barndt, who's done and supervised stunts for 18 years, runs the department. He's our coordinating producer, and he's brought a whole team of highly qualified stuntmen with him. On any given stunt, we might have up to 10 different stuntmen.
When I hired him, I told him I didn't want him just to be the stunt supervisor. I wanted to make him a producer on the show because I wanted him to take ownership and be empowered on the set because safety, again, is our number one concern. And I wanted him to be empowered as a producer, to be able to say, "You know what? We're not ready. We're not going to do this stunt." No director could ever tell Perry, as a producer, "We have to shoot now. The sun's going down."
TSC: Speaking of safety, how many lawyers do you have working with you and what kind of a release form do the contestants have to sign? Does it essentially say, "If I die, my family won't sue"? Kunitz: We have a whole floor of lawyers. [
Laughs] They, as well as a standards and practices department, review everything that we do. And there's probably five or six lawyers that are actively involved. The contestants have to sign about a 40-page release. It releases
NBC of all liability. These contestants come on knowing what they're getting into. And of course, we have insurance and plan the stunts as safely as possible. But this release is no different for
Fear Factor than it is for any other reality show out there.
TSC: Is it possible there could be dead bodies or perhaps cricket-related ulcers on one of the reality TV shows this season? Kunitz: Last season, we did nine episodes and we didn't have a serious injury. Not a broken bone. Not a single stitch. The stunts may seem huge, horrific and scary, but the reality is ... they're not dangerous.
TSC: Would you yourself do any of these stunts? Kunitz: Absolutely. I wouldn't get in the rat pit, though.
TSC: How hard is it to get these contestants? Kunitz: We have
no trouble casting the show. We'll have thousands of people show up for the casting call. We had 6,000 people apply last season and the show hadn't even started airing yet.
We have big open calls in up to 10 major cities in the U.S, and if anyone's interested in applying, they can go to
www.nbc.com/fearfactor. Or, they can apply by videotape, which they have only a week to do. The deadline will be Aug. 1.
TSC: What do you say to the critics who've called reality TV -- among other things -- tacky, vile, rotten, despicable, gross, mean-spirited and degrading? Kunitz:They're clearly out of touch with the audience. We had over 14 million viewers last week watching the show. The 20 or 30 critics who are saying the show is awful aren't in touch with the 14 million viewers who seem to like it, or love it. This is the number one show of the summer in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic.
TSC: Do you think this is a fad or a new genre that's here to stay? Kunitz: It's definitely a new genre. Every new season, you'd see 15 new sitcoms and 15 new dramas and now maybe there will be 10 new sitcoms, 10 new dramas and 10 new reality shows. And some will work and some won't. What's pretty interesting is that there hasn't been a failure of a reality show yet. I think you'll see
Survivor last for many years, and you'll see
Fear Factor last for many years.
And you can see how these can become appealing for the networks to put on the air. It can cost up to $13 million to produce just one episode of
West Wing, and we can put on an entire season of our show for less money. So you can see how these can become so appealing to the networks, not to mention that we get such huge ratings.
