“I’m a redneck,” ruddy Susan Hawk, a 38-year-old truck driver, told Richard the first night. “I don’t know nothin’ about anything corporate. But, Richard, corporate ain’t gonna cut it out here.”
On the second day, when Team Pagong had managed to light a fire, and Richard had shared with his teammates that he was gay, the two teams were summoned via “treemail”—a parchment map inside a wood canister hanging from a tree. They were to gather mid-island for their first “challenge” —a competition between the two teams.
Jeff Probst, the handsome host, greeted them. Looking cool as a cucumber in freshly-pressed khakis, he appeared freshly showered, well groomed, and perfectly coiffed—in stark contrast to the competitors’ grimy faces, salt-caked hair, and wrinkled beachwear. Cast in a role that combined “The Skipper,” “The Professor” and God—and speaking in a voice that evoked Rod Serling in the Twilight Zone, Probst ran through that evening’s challenge. He pointed offshore, where two “pots” of fire blazed atop two wood rafts. Each team was to carry their raft onto the beach and deliver it to the “Goddess of Fire”—a towering, carved wood statue painted in bright colors. En route, teams had to light a line of torches as they passed. The prize for whichever team completed the competition first: 50 fireproof matches.
Team Pagong won the relay; Team Tagi was sent to a “Tribal Council”—to vote one of their team members off the island. Sweet-faced ukulele player Sonya, a 62-year-old Californian, was booted: her teammates saw her as “the weak link” because she’d stumbled during the torch-lighting relay.
Having been brought up to date on the plight of the castaways—all of whom were familiar faces I’d first seen on audition tapes—we hiked through the forest to that day’s challenge site. The art department was hammering and sawing, busy constructing a long wood table that sat low to the ground and was set with 15 wood plates and 15 bamboo “glasses.” Cameras were poised from every angle, mics dangled from trees, and for hours the technicians tested different angles and lighting.
“Hey, James, you hungry?” asked Mark, holding up a jar with live beetle larvae—about the size of a thumb—crawling inside. “This is what they’re going to eat! They’re called Butok.”
“Cool,” said James.
“Bug,” said Cameron.
“Disgusting,” said my dad. As we watched from the sidelines, out of view, the cameras began rolling when Team Tagi and Team Pagong arrived and sat on bright pillows around the table.
“We realize,” said Probst, “that by now you’re probably hungry. So we’ve prepared a local delicacy.” He held up a large glass jar filled with crawling larvae, which resembled slugs, except even more revolting. “They’re like sushi around here.”
The challenge, he explained, was for every team member to eat one of the squirming larvae—starting with the head. If somebody didn’t participate, their team would lose.
“I can’t do it!” yelled Gervase, the basketball coach from New Jersey, but at the last second he bit off the head, chewed, and swallowed. To break the tie, one person from each team—Gervase and Stacey—was timed to see who could swallow two of them fastest. Gervase lost. His team, Pagong, had to go to Tribal Council that night.
After heading to the staff’s primitive “Survivor Bar,” where we dined on boiled fish head stew—“Hope there’s no larvae in here,” mumbled my dad—we hiked into the jungle, where the crew was readying the site for the upcoming council meeting.
“Watch out for snakes,” warned Mark, carrying James, and handing sticks to Dad and me. Cameron, whom I rarely let out of my arms the entire time on the island, amused himself by observing nature.
“Monkey!” he said, pointing at the wide-eyed creature perched on a banyan tree. “Monkey,” he repeated every three steps. The simians were swinging everywhere, outnumbering their upright cousins by about 500 to 1.
Finally, we crossed a rough-hewn plank bridge tied together with twine. A fire was blazing in a stone pit; nearby stood wooden torches, unlit. We stood off-camera with a dozen reporters, waiting for hours before Team Tagi emerged from the darkness and crossed the plank bridge, each member banging the gong as they entered the Tribal Council. Under the full moon, it seemed like something straight out of a Joseph Campbell book.
“Oh jeez,” I whispered to Mark. “Look!” Just a few feet from where we stood, a pack of rats was scurrying around.
Probst instructed the Pagong castaways to each pick up a torch, light it, and place it in the torch holder as they gathered around the circle. “Fire represents life,” he intoned, “and these torches now represent your continuing survival on the island.” Their task, he reminded them, was to vote someone off their team. To my mind, the weak link was biochemist Ramona. The poor woman was so ill that she’d barely come out of the shelter for days. However, B.B. had pulled a stunt—captured on camera—that really ticked off his fellow castaways: while the rest of Team Pagong washed their beach garb in the sea, B.B. was found washing his clothes in the cooking pot—and using precious drinking water to do so.
Team Pagong looked glum as one by one they filed off to an isolated bamboo platform to write a name on a piece of parchment, put it in a canister, and justify their vote on-camera. Minutes later, Probst retrieved the canister and tallied the votes. He unfolded the first piece of paper as dramatically as an Emmy Award presenter. It said B.B. The next said Ramona. Then B.B. Then Ramona. Then B.B. Then two more for B.B.
“The tribe has spoken,” Probst said, with melodramatic intoning. “B.B., get your torch.” White-haired B.B. brought his blazing wood wand to Probst, who snuffed it with a bamboo ladle. “B.B., you must leave at once!”
I almost started crying, and so did many of the team members as B.B.—cast in blue light—walked off alone into the jungle.
“Do you think the tribal council is hokey?” asked Mark as we left.
“Yep,” I said. “But it works.”
Smacking mosquitoes every step of the way, we hiked back to our huts, passing the press tent, where reporters from People and other major magazines were holed up. Our accommodations consisted of primitive bamboo cabins, with two cots and a crude “bathroom.”
Dad wasn’t overjoyed when he was shown to his sparsely-furnished hut. “Why do we have to spend the night here?” he asked, looking at the sad, little bed with its mosquito-net canopy. “We’ve got a fantastic suite over on the mainland. Let’s just grab the helicopter and go back!”
“Get into the spirit, Dad!” I said, slapping another mosquito.
The next day, the sun began blazing at dawn, and monkeys awoke us, pounding at the bars of our windows. The sticky air felt sickeningly dense as we hiked to the beach to see the art department’s latest creations: they were busy painting and sawing, making a jungle obstacle course.
Mark explained the next challenge, showing us something that looked like an old treasure map. The convoluted relay began with a swim into the sea and finding a bottle with a map inside. Afterward, the competitors had to run through the jungle looking for clues under masks nailed to trees.
We moved on to Tagi Beach, where Dirk, the Wisconsin dairy farmer, was reading the Bible; several of the women castaways were stretching their arms to the heavens, doing tai chi; Richard, the corporate trainer, was explaining to the camera how the others had reacted when he’d told his teammates he was gay. The famished castaways were thrilled: they’d caught rats, and were dining on roasted rodents for lunch. My father looked at me, horrified.
While they were truly living out in the wild, one thing was artificial: cameras, tucked away in palms and banyan trees, followed the castaways’ every movement; microphones dangled like black bananas from fronds. They taped the castaways when they were building and sleeping, foraging and eating, and trying to fish with fashioned twigs. Beyond capturing their survival ordeals, every day castaways were pulled aside and interviewed, privately assessing the challenges of that day—asides that weren’t heard by the rest of the team.
We made
a couple of trips back and forth from the island to the luxurious Magellan Hotel on Kota. On one of the boat rides back to the island, we were joined by People magazine reporter Kelly Carter, a beautiful, statuesque woman. She was decked out in full safari gear, like Indiana Jones. Halfway to the island, the boat driver pointed out a diving spot where we could check out coral reefs. Deadly sea snakes also lurked in the waters. Unfazed by the warning, Mark, James, and Kelly dove in to check it out, while I stayed in the boat with my Dad and little Cameron, who was asleep in my arms.
Wherever we were, unless we were taping, Mark’s phone rang every few seconds, with more questions about art or that day’s activities: he was in nonstop meetings with the producers, the lighting guys, and host Jeff Probst. While Mark didn’t have a second to waste, we had little to fill our time. Dad and I spent days reading books between taping sessions. After a while, even the thrill of viewing the behind-the-scenes activities had worn off, and Dad wanted to return to civilization.
“Get me back to the hotel now!” he demanded. “I hope I never lay eyes on fish head stew again. And tomorrow I want to lie around by the pool.” Frankly, I didn’t mind the idea of a break from the bugs, the snakes, and the rats. Mark didn’t mind the last-minute change in plans, but the helicopter was already in use. So we took off with the hired Malaysian boatman, who often took people back to Kota Kinabalu, on the mainland.
The sun was dipping low in the sky when Dad, Cameron, and I set off in the small boat on the 30-mile ride back. James wanted to be a “big boy,” so he stayed behind on the island with Mark, getting a “job” working in the art department. Midway between Pulau Tiga and the mainland, a speedboat appeared and signaled for the driver to stop.
“Oh, great,” I said, thinking they were the Coast Guard. The three men had the swagger of military men, and they all carried large guns.
“Shit,” said Dad.
The rifle-toting trio began barking at our boatman, and he nervously said something back. They said something; he looked back at us, and anxiously replied.
“Excuse me,” I said to the boatman, who knew little English, “what’s the delay? Can we just get on our way?”
“Shh, Dianne,” Dad whispered. “Let him handle it.”
I turned to the gun-toting men. “What’s the holdup? It’s getting dark, and I need to get my kid here to sleep, so we need to go now!”
The armed men in the boat looked mystified, spoke among themselves, shot a few angry words at our boatman, and then sped off.
“Wonder what that was about,” I mused as we resumed our journey.
“Dianne,” said my dad, “they were pirates!”
“Oh, Dad, right!” It turned out that he was right. Piracy was an underreported problem in those waters, and pirates typically left their victims stripped of watches, jewels, and money—sometimes even taking their shoes. Other times, they kidnapped them and held them for ransom, sometimes taking their lives.
When the boat finally sputtered up to the pier, we hopped out and immediately caught sight of an old Coke machine.
“Hallelujah, civilization!” cried my dad.
Actually, we weren’t quite home free: before us was a two-hour ride in a truck with bad shocks on a pothole-ridden dirt road in the dark. Every few seconds there was another KA-BOOM as the truck hit another hole. But we made it. From then on, I tried to make the trip to Pulau Tiga exclusively via helicopter. Dad refused to return at all. “That was plenty for me,” he said, catching rays at the pool. “I’ll wait for it to come out on TV.”
I spent the next six weeks camped out half the time in our luxury suite on the mainland, and the other half in our air-conditioning-free island hut. On Pulau Tiga, I was pulled into the unfolding saga: Richard stopped wearing clothes, Colleen and Greg struck up a steamy romance, and other castaways made secret deals.
Survivor was contrived, dramatic, hilarious, and scary on many levels. Unlike Eco-Challenge, the feats the castaways performed weren’t life threatening: the contests were more like competitions at summer camp. On the other hand, they really didn’t have food or water, or shelter outside of the crude covers they’d erected themselves. Beyond their “battle for survival,” the battle for $1 million brought out their conniving sides: power plays and alliances were forged and dramatically broken, the teams merged into one, and the competition became cutthroat and fraught with betrayal.
While the island situation grew incredibly heated, in all senses of the word, the other half of the time I was hanging out on the mainland in Kota Kinabalu at our swanky hotel, heading out for festive dinners and long, hilarity-filled nights of dancing with the banished castaways. It proved to be good bonding time for my dad and Cameron. The two often fell asleep in the bed next to each other, and watching this scene night after night always brought a smile to my face.
Mark wanted to keep the ousted castaways close at hand: in the final episodes, they would be brought back in as judges. Besides, we were all worried that the castaways—or one of the 140 crew members—would leak information about the identity of the remaining survivor before the show even aired. CBS let it be known they would sue anyone who divulged that information, and they’d be hitting them for the whopping sum of $4 million.
With each week of shooting, the plot developed compelling twists and turns—transforming into not only a real-life soap opera, but a mind trip—and Mark’s stress level grew. So did his confidence that what was being captured on video would grab America’s hearts and wallets—until the very last week, when a boatload of potential sponsors showed up.
“What if they hate it?” Mark asked me as we set out to greet them, throwing a barbeque on the beach, and taking them for tours, including a behind-the-scenes look at that night’s tribal council. Afterward, Mark took them to the production hut and showed them the rough cuts. They were duly wowed. The next week we flew back to the States.
From May 2000 on, the image of Mark was a blur. My husband was an action figure running here, running there, and working the phone 24/7. Always adept at juggling, Mark was outdoing himself: he worked with the editors cutting down thousands of hours of videotape, he helped line up more sponsors, and he gave nonstop interviews—in between working with a writer to knock out a Survivor book to be released that fall. At one point, he jaunted off on a private plane to Russia to research a new show that would launch people into space and house them on the Russian space station Mir.
Writers who previewed the opening episode raved in the days leading up to the premiere at the end of May, and CBS revved up its in-house publicity machine. Shock jock Howard Stern plugged Survivor on his radio show, and Bryant Gumbel touted it on TV. Survivor was raking in tremendous publicity before the first show had even aired!
On Memorial Day, we were lazing on the Malibu terrace of Burt and Navabeh Borman, the well-to-do couple who had hired Mark as a nanny 20 years earlier. They’d remained friends, and were impressed by Mark’s leaps and bounds up the ladder. As we sipped chardonnay with the ocean crashing below, I noticed a small plane flying over the beach. It was pulling an advertising banner.
SURVIVOR —Premiering May 31st on CBS!
Survivor aired as a “summer replacement” series. It’s a notoriously tough season: most shows that make their trial runs in the summer wither and die by the time fall rolls around. We believed the show would hold its own, but we didn’t expect it to become a cultural phenomenon. Survivor fever struck the country from the airing of the first show.
“Survivor,” wrote Adam Buckman in the New York Post, “is no Gilligan’s Island. In fact, I’m not really sure what Survivor is. I just know I liked it—a lot.” A syndicated columnist called Survivor “manipulative, melodramatic and sometimes outright hokey, [but also] fun—lots more fun, in fact, than Regis Philbin and his entire collection of ties.”
For the second episode, we attracted 18 million viewers—and the numbers only grew. Every week, viewers nationwide were glued to their sets to see who would get voted off the islan
d next. Even people who hated it couldn’t stop watching it.
“Since its debut on May 31,” noted The Washington Post, “Survivor has not only demolished [Who Wants to Be a] Millionaire in head-to-head competition but has built in popularity each time. At its peak last Wednesday, the show was watched by 25 million people—1.3 million more viewers than the other five broadcast networks combined.”
Magazines and newspapers ran profiles of Mark, Jeff Probst, and the contestants. Richard and Rudy became fodder for water-cooler banter. And the show soon graced the covers of both Newsweek and Time. The response was amazing, but Survivor’s popularity was a double-edged sword.
“Mark,” I said, when he called me in June, “what do you mean CBS is sending guards? People watching us 24/7? Why do we need bodyguards to watch over us?”
After only three episodes, Survivor was prompting death threats. One came in the form of an e-mail from a woman who was not amused by the bug-eating contest and not entertained when Team Tagi grilled rats for dinner.
From then on, every morning when I woke up, guards hired by CBS—usually off-duty policeman, sheriffs, or detectives—were in our driveway; every night when I went to bed, they were there, sleeping in their cars. They trailed me to the grocery store, and they followed us when I took James to karate, where I always stayed and watched him. Before long, the number-two guard became like another member of the family. He started out watching us from his car, and then ended up sitting in the front seat of my car with me. He helped out when I shopped, hung out in the family room, and slept on the couch. The guards were particularly helpful in mid-July—hauling crates of wine and helping set up tables in the backyard in preparation for Mark’s birthday party.
He survived the deserts of Madagascar …
The Road to Reality Page 15
