Survivor: Fiji
Jeff Probst Media Teleconference

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Transcript by SurvivorFever.net

Jeff Probst:  Yes.  I was.  Mark runs his shows very independently and I can tell you that this was an idea that was born organically from us.  I was sitting there on the call as we discussed it and decided to do it.  We were a little surprised to find out that "The Apprentice" was doing it.  But after watching the first episode of "The Apprentice", it's a very different world, very different methods of executing the same idea. 

Question:  Is there a big difference in "Exile Island" this season because it seems like it wouldn't be so much different than the tribe that's already got nothing. 

JP:  Exile Island itself is not different.  The way Exile Island and the immunity idols play is different, how it works.  There's one difference to Exile Island in that it does have literally thousands of deadly sea snakes and you see that play out in Episode 2 when the person on Exile has a run in with a snake.  It's very clear that they exist and are a problem. In terms of how the Immunity Idol is played, there's a couple of big twists.  The first one is that in the past we've always had the hidden immunity idol hidden on Exile Island.  This time what they'll find when they get there, the first clue will tell them that it's not on Exile Island, it's back at your camp.  So it immediately throws kind of an interesting dilemma.  Now that I know this do I share this information with anybody or do I secretly try to be the person who gets sent back to Exile again so I can keep this secret and get more clues and try to find the whereabouts?  And now when I'm back at camp how do you look for an idol when you're living with 6, 7, 8, 9 other people?  So it complicated that and added just one more element to that.  The other big change with the idol, and this time I really believe we figured it out, and I think this will be the way we play it...this time we changed how the idol is played and now the way it works is you must play the idol after the tribe has voted but before I read the votes.  So when you go to Tribal Council you take all the information you have from the beach from living with these people and then you listen to what people are saying at Tribal Council and then after they've voted you've got to make a gut call.  If you have the idol you've got to decide, "Do I think it's me, do I think they're playing me? Do I need to play the idol right now?"   The idol, I can tell you, gets played more than once this season.  It's not a season of Yul holding on til the end. 

Question:  I have to ask you about my three parochial local angles - Boo, Erica and Jessica.  If you could just sort of one at a time tell me what they bring to the game and what my readers can look for from them?

JP:  Boo is athletic.  He's in good shape and has an athletic background.  You'll discover very early on Boo is the most injury prone survivor I've ever seen in 14 seasons.  I'm talking in the course of an hour he goes from perfectly fine to three injuries.  It's almost funny.  The rest of the tribe is kind of laughing because it's not so serious yet.  He clearly has that sort of bumbling contradiction.  He's so athletically gifted but keep the machete out of his hands.  When I met Boo I was charmed by him because he has that New Orleans drawl.  He's very respectful.  It's "yes mam", "no sir."  That's kind of the guy I saw out there.  I mean, he's playing the game and he wants to win but I thought Boo carried himself with a certain degree of self-respect.  

Erica is a sleeper.  Erica is an athlete also.  I think she's a track star in her background and been in the military.  She's a quiet force and she's not easily swayed which also comes up very early.  I think in the first episode you get a chance to see that Erica has her own opinions and even though the tribe may be going left, if she feels it appropriate to go right she will, which historically is not a great move. 

Jessica is the quintessential girl next door.  I was pulling for Jessica because she had some family tragedy in her life and I think it's been a struggle at times.  In fact she wore a shirt, a denim shirt that was four sizes too big because it was her father's shirt.  She wore it in memory of her father.  She's very likeable. It's interesting, honestly, all three of the people from New Orleans were very likeable.  They were just good people.  That doesn't mean one thing or another about the other people but Jessica's the same way. Delightful smile, great personality and I think an underdog.  I said before the show started Jessica was somebody who could win the game. I also said that about Boo.  I thought Boo and Jessica both could win the game.  Of course my track record is horrible. 

Question:  Knowing you're not going to go into specific details, what things surprised you about this season and how things unfolded?

JP:   The whole idea initially was one tribe gets everything, one tribe gets nothing.  The idea was to create disparity between the two tribes.  What surprised me was how quickly there was a sense of entitlement on the winning tribe.  Just in case everybody doesn't know, the general setup is all 19 people arrive on the beach together with no information.  I come over in a sea plane, drop a package down.  In that package there are blueprints for building a massive shelter and there's a map to help them find a stash of wood, lumber and tools.  There's a sink.  They have a living room, they have a kitchen.  This beautiful place they're going to build, all 19 of them build it then they find out they'll be divided into two tribes and square off.  The winning tribe gets the beautiful beach.  The losing tribe gets sent to a new beach with a pot and a machete and some water that you can't drink if you don't have fire. It was huge stakes in the first episode.  The minute there was a winning tribe and a losing tribe there was a clear underdog.  You can't help but pull a little bit for the tribe that has nothing.  And there is this sense of entitlement brewing already with the guys who won.  In addition to winning the shelter they got the biggest housewarming gift we've ever given.  I'm talking a couch, hammocks, all kinds of cutlery and stuff to drink out of, plates and napkins and placemats, sewing machine.  The list was gigantic.  You see,  you cut from the winning tribe where one of the tribe members says "How bad is it that we have more food here than some of the people at home watching have in their refrigerator?  Cut to the other tribe where they are on their hands and knees literally licking leaves to get drops of water.  It's the hardest I've seen a group hit probably since Africa.  They just, they don't have anything and they're not seasoned survivalists.  They don't know what to do so they literally start tearing palm fronds off and laying them on the ground and telling each other, "This works, lick 'em."  That was probably the biggest surprise. 

Question:  You're a sort of purist of this game.  How do you feel about giving a winning team couches, silverware and food?

JP:  I think it's all good.  You'll hear many times in the first two episodes comments from survivors along the lines of, "This doesn't feel like Survivor" or "It's too easy."  "Wow, I thought it would be more difficult than this."  Survivor is about social interaction.  This fulfilled that mantra.  We've now got a new dynamic and after 14 seasons we fortunately found something that worked in which we created adversaries so fast, it grows because it's very hard to catch up to the tribe that has this big of a lead in terms of your living situation.  So you have some animosity.  As far as one tribe not having to survive, I was completely fine with it.  I think it's really fascinating.  You'll see but I can't really explain the disparity other than to say - imagine 3 people lounging on a couch, two people taking pillows from the couch and sleeping on them.  Another guy in a hammock, somebody eating a mango and another woman painting their deck of their shelter with pain that we gave them.  Cutting to another tribe finding a single pineapple and celebrating like they just discovered fire.  It's one of the biggest moments, somebody finds a pineapple and it's like you hear the choir go "aaaaahhhhhh."  It was pretty significant and I thought it played great. 

Question:  Last season we all made a big deal about the race based twist.  How do you think that changed the way the game is played, going forward?

JP:  Not at all.  Not at all.  I think, obviously we discussed it ad nauseum but I knew when I was doing the press conference that it didn't last for too long and I also knew the ending and knew that we had two of the most likeable and deserving possible winners that we've had in a long time.  I knew there was a twist where people mutinied and we got a foursome that everybody was going to root for or I thought people would root for.  I really thought from the beginning that it was going to be a great season and I still think it was a great season.  I feel the same way after having seen it. 

Question:  I know that Survivor, like life, isn't fair but did having one tribe in a very fancy camp with a lot of food and the other tribe with no food and no water, doesn't that throw off the challenges, that it is almost unfair?

JP:  Possibly.  I think that's a fair question and potentially fair criticism.  You have to see it play out but in terms of it being fair, it's not the word I would use.  It just is.  There's nothing to say that the tribe that has the winning shelter will be entitled to it forever, either.  There's nothing to say that just because you won it that doesn't mean we won't take it.  There's nothing to say there will be a final two if we decide there will be a final three.  It always feels unfair the first time.  As a reference I use Africa, the first time we did a tribe switch.  The survivors that got switched from their tribe and had to go to the other tribe and had to leave their alliances were livid.  For the first four hours on the beach all they did was say, "This is so unfair.  This show is so unfair."  Now switches happen every couple of weeks.  So I think that's part of it.  It's a dramatic change in the show that will feel to some people, "wow did they go too far."  And I think, as you continue watching, you'll say, "I don't know. It's pretty interesting."

Question:  This is now the 14th edition, cycle, or whatever you want to call it.  Are you good to go?  Are you signed up to do the upcoming season?  Are you happy with that?

JP:  Yeah.  Oh, yeah, yeah.  It's funny, I'm signed up to do 15 and 16 and one of the best parts of the show for me has been just the self-awareness.  Being able to look at myself and watch how I've changed instead of a human being and watch how I've changed as a host of a TV show.  Yes, I'm good to go and I've come full circle from, "Survivor, what the hell is this?  57 million people watching it.  What does that mean?"  To, "Man, this show, how much longer can we go."  To, "This is the best job I've ever had and probably will ever have and I'm becoming a better person in the process. I'm learning a lot."  I learned a lot last season with the whole racial thing and going through the press and reading things I'd said and seeing things sometimes exactly as I'd said them and sometimes taken out of context, I felt.  But learning through all of it just about myself. I really, I feel like I have the best gig in the world.  I get paid well.  I love human nature.  And the show, you know, I just watched Episode 3 last night about 1:30 in the morning and I just sat there going, 'man the execution of this show' you might get tired of Survivor.  You may say, "You know what, I'm done.  I've seen it enough, it's been on for 7 years, enough already."  But our execution has not lessened any. 

Question:  Is that one of the real secrets for longevity or is it the ability for the show to evolve or a little of both?

JP:  I think both.  You see like American Idol, that show continues to evolve.  They tweak it in little different ways and keep you interested and give you something new to complain about or look at.  I think we've done the same thing and I think execution is critical because people can smell bull****.  They can smell when it doesn't feel right. I can smell it when we do things that aren't right.   I cringe when they happen and I know the audience cringes.  It happens sometimes, you miss or you have an idea that doesn't work.  I'd say anybody who's being fair that would look at 14 seasons of Survivor would have to say, "That show has held up pretty damn well." 

Question:  I've got to ask you a local question about Michelle Yi. 

JP:  Michelle is...let me see how I want to describe Michelle...Michelle is responsible for something that hasn't happened since Africa in terms of a moment out on the beach.  She has a huge impact on her tribe right away.  It's something that is rarely seen on Survivor and I don't think it's happened other than two times in the history of our show where someone has achieved this task and that's Michelle.  She's feisty and she's, I think, a little deceptive.  When you see her and listen to her she has a way of talking that makes everything sound like a question.  I think people might disregard her but she's a bit more of a player than I think people realize.  She shows that with her effort early on. 

Question:  She's also the youngest and looks like she could be the smallest.  Does that play into it, too?

JP:  No.  I mean, not that I really was aware of. 

Question:  The other thing is, you've got 19 this time.  I thought you always started with an even number.  How does that play out?

JP:  Well, we did, we had 20 to begin with.  One woman dropped out literally 6 or 8 hours before we started.  It was, and I say this with respect to her because I'm not making light of it, she had a lot of anxiety to the point where it escalated to a panic attack.  She just, as the game got closer, and she could sense it, we never tell 'em, "Okay, it's about to start."  You can sense the activity changing around you and I think they began to realize, it's got to be getting close.  As that happened she got more and more anxious and she called our doctor over and psychologist over and one of executive producers went over.  It was clear that this wasn't something that we should try to talk her into staying.  She was really having a hard time. As it got closer and closer it was apparent that she just couldn't do it.  We didn't have any alternates.  Sometimes we bring alternates.  If we think there's somebody iffy we'll bring an alternate.  We didn't think we had anybody on the fence so we didn't.  What that meant was, instead of dividing into two tribes of 10 each, we divided into two tribes of 9 each and had an extra person and had to figure out what to do with that extra person.  It played out just fine. 

Question:  I want to back you up to Michelle.  You said the thing that happens hadn't happened before.  Is that early on or late?

JP:  Yeah, early on. 

Question:  First episode?

JP:  Can't say if it's first episode or not. 

Question:  I also have somebody from my hometown, San Antonio, who's competing and it's Rita Verreos.  She's a 38 year old single mom.  How'd she do?

JP:  Rita prides herself on being a single mom.  She wears that as a badge of honor.  "This is a big part of my life.  This is something that I'm very proud of and it takes a lot of my time."  She's also very aware of her looks.  She brought up on more than a few occasions that, "I know I'm attractive and I get hit on a lot and I have no problem with that in fact I'm hoping that happens out here and I will definitely use it.  I'm not looking for romance, I'm looking to win a million dollars. If my body and my looks and the fact that I'm a single mom will help me one bit then I'll use it."

Question:  Did anything else stand out about her as far as playing the game? 

JP:  Rita's pretty good, she's a good nurturer and that probably comes from being a mom.  It's really interesting watching how the different roles play out.  Every tribe needs a leader and every tribe needs a couple of followers.  Every tribe could use some levity.  And I think every tribe needs some nurturing.  I felt that's what Rita provided.  She was the compassionate one that would understand, would listen to an argument, would try to make you feel better after a loss.  That can go a long way.  It keeps you out of the way when people are looking for reasons to vote somebody out.  Rita's nice, suddenly she's okay.  I've learned over the seasons that anything you can do to not give them a reason to say 'yes' to voting you out is a good thing to do. 

Question:  Is the looks thing...is that a positive?  It's a positive to the viewer usually. Would you say it's a positive on the island?

JP:  You mean being seen as attractive?

Question:  Yeah, or even thinking of yourself as attractive or coming across that way.

JP:  That's a question where each person would react differently.  I'm not saying that Rita had a overly healthy self-esteem thing going on.  I'm not implying that.  I just want to be clear, I'm not editorializing on Rita.  That's what Rita would say.  Rita said, "I am attractive, I know that.  I'm not going to pretend I'm not.  I don't mind it and I will use it to my advantage if I can." In terms of how people react, yeah, if you're somebody who's walking around the beach going, "I'm the most beautiful thing in the world."  That might be annoying.  I don't think that was Rita.  So I just want to be clear about that.  The reason I say that is because everybody gets labeled a certain way and she's our hot single mom.  That's not what I'm calling her.  She's Rita.  She is a single mom and she is attractive but that's her own thing.  She very much owns that and will tell you when you talk to her. 

Question:  Okay, so you wouldn't call her 'the hot single mom'.  Did other people call her the hot single mom?

JP:  <laughs>  God, after 14 seasons I still haven't gotten good at this.  I'm not saying she's not attractive or attractive.  I'm just saying these little labels that we put on people, I don't want to be the voice that says, "Jeff calls Rita 'a hot single mom'.  That's not what I would call her.  She's attractive and people will think she's attractive for sure.  If she gets lucky and someone on the island wants to keep her around because they think she's hot, good for her. 

Question:  I know that they're casting the shows now, it's a little bit more active like going to myspace and a few places.  Do you notice a difference?  Have you noticed more variety or more diversity? Age variety I thought I noticed. 

JP:  I haven't really noticed a difference.  The only difference is, there's two differences, one, it's harder to cast a reality show today.  That's just a fact.  There are so many of them [reality shows] and you know, you're going through the people faster.  They aren't turning 21 fast enough to qualify for the age cut off.  So that's one aspect.  If there's a positive I would say that we're finding people that would not normally apply to Survivor which means they aren't probably someone who watches the show and dreams of doing it.  Which means that they come out onto the island and they're not as astute.  They're not so well-versed at what Boston Rob did on day 36 in the All-Stars.  They play the game with a little more individuality and it gives you different moments.  That's why I think the Cook Islands was so good.  People didn't have this bank of logic of "hmmm, this isn't a good move."  That's kind of what I meant when I said about Erica earlier.  You find people who will come out there and say, "Well, I'm not voting with the rest of the tribe."  And as a viewer, you're going, "Oh, just vote with the rest of the tribe. Trust me, don't cast a single meaningless vote to prove your point."  But they will and it makes the show interesting. 

Question:  We're always interested in romance, flirtation, sex.  What's happening this season?

JP:  Oh, the fact that I have to look at the cast photo would tell me that there probably wasn't a lot of that.  I don't think there was any romance. 

Question:  Any frontrunners early on the way Ozzy to some extent and Yul definitely were right from the beginning?  Any heads up on that?

JP:  I would more go down the road this time because of who's on the show as the people who will stand out.  There's a guy, Rocky, his name is James Reid but he goes by Rocky and there's a reason.  He looks just like Stallone's doppelganger minus 150 lbs. He looks like Sylvester Stallone who's been deflated, all the air let out of him.  He walks like him, he talks like him.  He's got some mannerisms.  I kept waiting for him to pull out the turtles and yell out "Adrian".  Rocky leaps off of the island.  He cannot help himself.  He's colorful and funny and challenging and at times irritating and you will know him instantly.  Another guy who is one of my all time favorite survivors is Yau-Man who I think might be the oldest guy.  He's from, coincidentally, Kota Kinabalu where we did the very first season in Borneo.  He grew up on those islands.  So he is really at home.  This is a guy that knows how to open a coconut quickly, efficiently.  I really do think that people are going to adore Yau-Man.  We have another really interesting person in Dreamz who is Andria/Dre, his real name.  He goes by Dreamz on the show.  He was homeless, really, a homeless kid, a street performer.  His story comes out on the show but in a nutshell, he lived in garbage dumpsters, scrounged for food.  He's a gymnast.  Him and his brothers would put on shows to make money.  This is a kid literally off the street who has survived and made something of his life.  He's an underdog.  He's a guy that you listen to his story and you instantly forgive a lot of things because you know where he's coming from.  I think his biggest challenge on the show is going to be his social adaptability.  It's not something he's used to.  Hang around 20 people and having to fit in and compromise and say the right thing is not something he grew up with.  He's used to doing whatever he needs to do to take care of himself and his family right now.  You will see that dilemma play out for him this season.  That dilemma right there of how do I adapt to other people and try to get along when my instinct says 'do what's best for you right now' cause that's how you grew up. 

Question:  It sounds like a really interesting cast this year.

JP:  It is an interesting cast.  It's back to what we were talking about earlier in terms of casting, going out and finding these people.  When I first met Dreamz and he came in the room and told a story, he talked for about 45 minutes.  Normally our interviews at this point after they've gone through all of the layers of casting, we'll talk to somebody for 10 or 15 minutes and know, yes or no.  Dreamz, we couldn't stop him and we couldn't stop listening.  And this is a kid that would never have applied to Survivor on his own.  He wouldn't even know how to apply.  He wouldn't think about applying, I don't think. 

Question:  How surprised were you to hear that your long time Survivor doctor admitted he was using cocaine because of stress from his job?  Adrian Cohen, of course.

JP:  I've only just heard about it.  I can only say that from my personal experience with Ado he's always been very professional.  He's a very experienced emergency doctor.  He's helped me on several occasions.  He's helped most of our crew at one time or another. He's helped castaways.  Many times Ado was the first guy helping locals. We go into some pretty remote places where people see us and need help and Ado is the first guy to say, "We can help this kid" or "We can help this guy over here."  So I don't really know much about it.  I haven't talked to Ado.  It certainly wouldn't be fair for me to comment on it. 

Question: What happened to the car challenge?

JP:  It is back.  The reason that it wasn't there last year is that before the show started we didn't have a car sponsor.  I'll tell you til I'm blue in the face, GM did not drop out because of our race thing.  We know in advance they didn't want to be in the show anymore so they left.  Ford came in and I'll tell you this, the car challenge is back and the car curse, the question of the car curse is back.  The car challenge plays an instrumental role in this season, a huge role.  I feel bad that GM was a sponsor all these years and Ford comes in the first season and gets a lot of bang for their buck. 

Question:  You don't really want to elaborate, eh?

JP:  That's enough.

Question:  Is there more than one secret Immunity Idol this year? 

JP:  Yeah.  Yes, there are two.  That's one of the questions that they have to figure out.  Because when they first go to Exile Island the clue literally says, words to the effect of, "you will find this back at your beach."  Subsequent clues tell them where exactly to look.  So the dilemma we had was, how do you have the same clue apply to both beaches and hide the idol in the same spot?  Then they slowly realize, wait a second, there's one on our beach, there's gotta be one on their beach.  If there's ever a switch or a merge or any of that stuff, it became a really big game of cat and mouse of who knew what, who might be looking for the idol, who wanted to go to Exile Island and why? Like I said, it plays several times in the show. 

Question:  Is there going to be a final three this year or is that being kept secret?

JP:  I think that's being kept secret but I'll tell you this, I think the final three is a great idea because it makes it more difficult for one person to control the game and bring with them the least likeable person and give us a final Tribal Council that has no drama.  With three people you give yourself one more chance to have somebody that the audience roots for to be in there.  So simply from a structure point of view, I don't know why we would ever go back to two. 

Question:  I know it's very difficult with like 19 or 20 people to kind of give a lot of background on who each person is but I've noticed that in the last couple of years even when it gets down to like the final six that there are like a lot of things that we don't know about these people.  Was there more of an effort make this year to like have people talk about their kids on camera, their wives on camera?

JP:  That's a good question and a good observation and one that I share with you.  The fact that we share less and less about the survivors' personal lives and show less and less of them making fire is a result of the evolution of the show.  As the show continues to evolve and we continue to learn what the audience likes, it's a delicate balance of us feeling, 'Gosh we've shown them trying to make fire 14 seasons.  Do we really care to see that or would we rather start establishing who's aligning with who?'  Ultimately it is a subjective call by the people creating the show and the episodes.  We don't consciously try to keep that stuff out but we only have 44 minutes to get everything in and it gets harder.  You know, this first episode went through I think 5 passes.  Normally we're down to 3 at the most.  It was 17 minutes long, the first cut.  Normally we're at five minutes.  There's so much stuff happening, you have to take out sometimes entire storylines that are compelling, they're good.  We could do a DVD with additional scenes.  There's just not enough time. 

Question:  That would be interesting to see.  The question kind of comes from like all of us who do all these interviews after people got booted off along the way.  There was someone that I spoke to, I think it was last year, and when he called me and we started talking about it and he was like, "No, I'm gay."  I was like "What?"  It was never mentioned at all throughout the whole show.  I just thought that was really interesting where that would have been such a focal point in the early episodes or early seasons. 

JP:  I think also there are times when it's not a story point.  Richard Hatch being gay and being stuck with Rudy, who's a homophobe, that's a story.  If you happen to be gay and it never comes up and never plays out we don't see any reason to say, "Oh and by the way, he's gay."

Question:  I was talking about the bigger picture of not really knowing a lot of people anymore.

JP:   It's a fair question. I don't have a great answer. 

Question:  You already talked about Yau-Man, unless you have anything else to say about him.

JP:  Yau-Man, nope.  I can't say more than to say he, after this season is finished, he is one of my favorite all time survivors. 

Question:  Can you think of one [twist] that you should never have tried doing this and will never do it again?

JP:  There's one that comes to mind right away and if I sat here I'd come up with dozens because they happen.  The first one that stands out for me is the outcasts in Pearl Islands.  Again, this is a personal opinion.  Some people think it's one of the greatest things ever.  I just don't.  That's one of those ones where I'd just say, that's one where we stepped too far to the left and we even broke our rules of 'you're voted out, how on Earth is it fair for you to come back and let somebody else have to go home as a result?'  Now that could be influenced because I've become friends with Andrew Savage who is the guy who got voted out.  I can tell you that on the day I argued til I had no voice left and then said, "Okay, whatever Mark says is the final word and I'll go execute it as best I can."  There's no doubt among our crew that I never thought that idea was good.  They happen all the time.  Bailing early last season in the Cook Islands, bailing early with the racial division, I wish we'd had a little more guts to stick with it a little longer.  But I don't run a network.  I don't run Survivor.  I don't know of all the other considerations that you have to think about.  I'm the guy that can sit there and just take pot shots at ideas and say, you know, "I don't like it."  But that was a big heated moment when we decided when the drawing line was going to happen.  It was a big heated moment.  Some people were on one side saying, "It's plenty, this is what we do.  We don't want them to get too entrenched."  The other side was saying, "Why don't we just go and we'll see what happens when we're out there."  So they happen a lot. 

Question:  My question is concerning any parallelisms to a show like Real World.  You two are kind of like the graybeards of the reality genre.  What kind of similarities or differences do you see in that show and how both of you have been able to survive so long?

JP:  I guess the similarities I see, and while I haven't watched a lot of The Real World, I certainly have watched it, one similarity is you're forcing conflict by the nature of your show.  That's the obvious one.  I think Survivor has a structure that allows it a little more organically, where I think The Real World has to be a little more creative in terms of the living situations or what they have them do.  The nature of our show forces conflict.  Some of the other similarities, you're taking different people from different walks of life and shoving them together in one, in their case it's a house, in our case it's an island and forcing them to live together.  Again I would say, where Survivor has an edge up is that we force them to do things.  We force them to build things or go find water or things that require action and decisions.  We rely on that for our reality.  We rely heavily on that they have to build a shelter.  We could always give them a shelter but that would kill it because we want them to have to work together and make a lousy shelter and then argue about it.  The differences would be that Real World is confined to a much smaller age demographic and that works for them.  The people that like Real World I'm sure typically are that age and can relate to the problems that younger people are having in their first time out on their own.  I think ours is different in that you're taking a wide range of people who all have different experiences, many of whom have lived lives and raised children and forcing them to try to get along with other people while attempting to win an individual game.  So you force people to work together as a group all the while the subtext is it's an individual game.  We're only working together so long as we have to, til I can get rid of you or you get rid of me. 

Question:  Both of you guys in comparison to other reality shows have to reinvent yourselves so often.  Every year you reinvent yourself and keep yourselves fresh.  Related too, is kind of in the casting.  I was wondering what your strategies are for keeping yourself fresh and what you look for in casting to keep people involved in the show?

JP:  In casting you're looking for a lot of things.  It's a complicated menu.  First and foremost you need somebody that is compelling.  Sometimes it's hard to quantify that or see it on paper.  It's as simple as somebody can come in the room and tell you a story about the most horrific car accident and you're falling asleep.  The next guy walks in and tells you about eating a sandwich and you're falling off your chair laughing.  It's that intangible thing that makes you want to listen to what somebody says.  It's what Simon Cowell has. I watch Idol for Simon Cowell.  I'm fascinated by him.  I don't know if he's really that nice a guy.  I've only met him a few times but I like him on the show.  That's why I watch.  That's what we're looking for in the room, that person that makes you go, "I can't believe they just said that. I can't believe it."  You may not agree with them, you may not like them.  There are people on our show I never want to see again.  Never.  But man were they great TV.  Likewise you meet people that you adore and you think are the neatest people in the world, so accomplished...never going to be on Survivor.  You're boring.  I really don't know how else to say it.  When you have a guy like Dreamz who, I don't even know how old he is...this is another thing that's evolved, I used to know that he's this old, he came from this...I just now know the...I just realized what is important is the essence. When I see a guy like Dreamz walk in and tell me that he's lived in garbage cans and that he's made it and that he and his brothers have taken care of each other and they're still a family and they do street performing and "I want to do Survivor."  I'm like, "God are you kidding?  You're the greatest gift in the world to walk in here."  When a guy like Rocky walks in and you think he's going to get in a fight with somebody before he leaves the casting room, again you're going, "Man, you've gotta be on this show. I don't know how you're going to do or if anyone is going to like you but you're fascinating."  And I think you hit on it in casting.  Man, when I turn on some of the shows that are on I see two huge things that I'm still glad we don't have to deal with and that is lousy casting and even worse execution.  Like somebody had a nugget of a pretty good idea and they gave it to somebody marginal and they ended up with a less than adequate show.  And they're all over the place, less than satisfying show. 

Question:  Are there any shows on cable that are your favorites?

JP:  You mean in the reality world?  I'll tell you a show that I like watching, coincidentally, that I just discovered, is Survivorman.  I don't know if you guys have seen it.  A guy goes out and they drop him in a remote location and it's a situation like "I was snowmobiling and I had an accident and I'm left alone" or "I was kayaking and I flipped my kayak and I'm left alone."  They leave him for 7 days.  He has to film it.  He's got 3 cameras.  He has to get all his own shots and he has to get his way back or find his way out of his situation in 7 days.  It's pretty interesting just watching the guy, some of the things he can do and him showing you what he can make out of very little, you have a few items with you.  I like that show.  Nothing else comes to my mind in terms of reality. 

Question:  You already talked about Mr. Chan and that was going to be my main question.  What interests me about him is when I saw his bio and everything, he's one of our local guys, 54 years old and very slight of build.  Does that at all work against him?

JP:  Yeah.  I mean, Yau-Man, for as likeable as he is and charming as he is, he's at a huge disadvantage because he's old and appears almost frail, not just slight.  He appears like you could snap his arm and break it.  But what Yau-Man is good at is getting out of the way. From day one Yau-Man says, "I know I'm a liability.  I know I've got to work to earn my keep."  And he does.  There's stuff in there that we couldn't even include in the first episode because of time but he performs so...not performs...he puts forth so much effort that I found myself thinking, "I wouldn't vote this guy out early.  He's giving us everything he's got right now."  And he may not be as strong as Rocky or Mookie or Boo or Alex or Edgardo, all these guys we haven't talked about.  We have some really strong guys.  This is definitely a season dominated by strong guys in their late twenties, early thirties.  Yau-Man can't compete against any of those guys.  Give him a chance and he will prove that he's worth keeping around.  The other thing about Yau-Man is that, and I'm probably going to regret saying this but I'm sure I'll say it in a way that's not politically correct, but one thing that we gain from forcing a more diverse cast, and Yau-Man applied so he's not somebody we sought out but the point is the same, is that you get more flavor.  Yau-Man brings a different background and it's interesting.  Yau-Man grew up on the islands.  He's not a normal person on Survivor and in my world, he's not a normal person in my life.  When he tells you that he knows how to open a coconut, this is a guy who's done it his whole life.  He grew up playing on the beaches.  There's something about that that I feel is really breathing some fresh air into our show where you're forced to remember that you are not the center of the friggin' universe. 

Question:  I was checking out the website and saw that this cast has got to be the most racially diverse out of all the seasons of Survivor.  I was wondering if that is directly in response to the Cook Islands? 

JP:  What do you mean?  Even compared to last season?  

Question:  Even the fact that you have an Indian...in terms of Asians...you have various different countries.  The number of white people is probably, I think, five, from what I can tell.  I don't even know, I can't make that judgment.  

JP:  Actually it's four because the person that dropped out was white.  Caucasian now that we're talking about ethnically diverse.   But yes it was in response to the last season in this sense Mark was, I would say, adamant, is the right word.  Mark was adamant that we not just make this a one time thing and just go back to casting as we normally do.  What surprised us was our submissions didn't change.  We didn't have a preponderance of Latinos applying to the show. We didn't have more African-Americans applying to the show or more Asian-Americans.  I talked to our casting director about five weeks ago about this and she said basically the numbers remained the same.  So in terms of hoping that we would have new applicants, it didn't happen.  I don't really know what that means.  I'm not smart enough to figure that out.  We knew, we felt that our show was more interesting.  So we have to go out and work for it, that's fine, we found some great people.  Again, it was hard work for our casting department.  They're tearing their hair out because it's getting creative to find these people and it's not easy.  But yeah, we didn't just want to go back to 18 white people and 2 others.  Cause that's what it feels like sometimes.  It's not representative of the country.  It's not as interesting.  You just have to work harder.  But I will also say that we're very much aware that we can't and won't paint ourselves in a box that we are going to have equal numbers of each ethnicity from now on.  We're aware that Native Americans aren't represented.  There's all kinds of other divisions that you could make.  We're not the end all be all on race relations.  We're just simply trying to a) keep our show fresh and b) make it more interesting and maybe more representative.

Question:  Do you find that the applicants are more...how does it relate to the general population?  Are there more people of color or fewer?  

JP:  Definitely fewer.  The majority of people that apply to this show are still white. 

Question:  Can you think of an idea why that might be?

JP:  No.  I'd like to know.  I'm interested in that stuff but I don't understand the level of what type of people watch what type of shows, why they watch them and how their socio-economic background factors into that.  I don't know what we do in our storytelling that might make it appeal to one group and not another.  It's complicated.

Question:  In the past you have divided groups by gender and race and now class.  I was wondering, what's the motivation behind that?  Is that social commentary or just to create conflict amongst the groups?

JP:  It's to create conflict.  We never sit around and say, "Okay this time we're going to experiment with this notion."  We're trying to create conflict and see what happens.  We're no smarter than anybody else watching the show.  We just keep thinking, 'okay, what's another way you can divide people?"   I said this at the beginning, I did not expect to see...you know the experiments where...I can't remember the name of it but you know when they take a group of people and they say, "you'll be the prisoners and you'll be the guards?"  As the experiment evolves you see their personalities change.  That's what happens out here.  It's really clear. There's a group of people who suddenly become entitled simply because they're on a television show and they won a challenge and got some stuff and the other group of people didn't.  They're now a little better quote/unquote.  And the tribe that loses suddenly becomes desperate and a little irritated.  It's almost like they want to storm the castle and kill the king because he's a mean king.  Neither of those are true or untrue, they're just the relative perspective of the people having the experience.  But man it's fascinating.  I mean, you show up after the first challenge and there's a feeling of, "We want to kick their ass."  Each tribe is saying it to the other.  One guys says, "The further we can kick them and keep them down, the more likely they are to give up."  There's no sense of "Gosh, we should help them out. We should give them something.  They're just human beings."  It's, "Hell no we should smother them if we can."  Even to this day it's fascinating to me. 

Question:  I'm sure the environment contributes to the overall survival aspect of it. 

JP:  Absolutely.  As I said, when you've seen Survivor for 14 seasons you get used to seeing people starving and ribs showing and tempers flaring.  But if you can ever watch a moment and actually try to imagine that it is you out there and that you really haven't eaten since three days ago and imagine all the food that you have eaten in your real life.  Then watch these guys bent over with their shorts already falling off their waists, they are withering away and they are licking leaves for droplets of water.  You get reminded, Survivor is real.  Even though we've seen it for 14 seasons now it's no less real.  I mean it's contrived and yeah, we're here watching and we set it up but those are real palm fronds that you just tore down and that's real dew and you're licking that moisture and you're really, really thirsty. And those other guys?  Those are mangoes they're eating.  Is it fair?  I don't know.  You're the one who signed up. 

Question:  What did you bring out there and what kind of luxury items do you bring.  Number one luxury items for the cast?

JP:  For the cast?

Question:  Well for you, yourself and the cast?

JP:  The cast, no luxury items.  We still ask them to bring a luxury item and sometimes we use it.  It does come into play a little bit this season.  The luxury items are a fuzzy teddy bear or a picture of your family or something.  But for us on the crew...you know, Fiji was not an easy shoot for us, especially coming off the Cook Islands where we were in one of the most beautiful places on Earth and we had hotels.  Everything was so much nicer.  We had showers that were controllable and toilets that flushed.  In Fiji we were in tents again.  We stepped it up a little.  We put wood floors in our tents.  We put in air conditioning units.  So, I'm not complaining and they always take good care of us.  In terms of the luxury items, it's not a luxury situation.  I just try to bring things from home that can keep my life as normal as possible because I don't like being away from home.  I love the people I work with.  There's a real gypsy feel to Survivor location.  I honestly wish that everybody on the phone right now could visit location because there's a romance to it that is undeniable. You would become more pro-Survivor having seen what it's like out there.  It's a group of people, 300, 350, in this case living in tents that are about 5 feet from each other.  You have no privacy.  If you sneeze, the dude next to you knows it.  There's these little roads that we make and you have guys sitting on the decks playing guitar or making kava every night and having a kava buzz.  It's just like a community that doesn't exist anywhere and couldn't ever exist anywhere.  It doesn't have the hierarchy of a movie set where you have huge stars demanding things.  We're all in it together.  If it rains all our tents are leaking.  If it's muddy at the challenge we're all getting muddy.  There's this camaraderie that's really nice.  That's the lifestyle.  It isn't like you're bringing your Winnebago out there and having your masseuse.  There isn't that element. 

Question:  If you ever want to fly me out I'd be more than happy to see the crew. 

JP:  Everybody that's come out there, they don't want to stay.  If you're only there for a day or two you think, "I can't wait to get home."  But if you can get over the hump, just like the survivors, if they can get past day 3, 4, or 5 usually it's a different experience.  Same thing out there, just get over the fact that you're going to sweat all day, everyday. And you're going to smell ways you never knew you'd smell.  You may not want to shower after awhile. Suddenly it's really liberating. 

Question:  You talked a lot about Dre who's from our town.  You said that he's had a lot of social challenges ahead of him.  What do you think are some of his strengths in the game? 

JP:  Resilience in a word.  Look at his experience.  I couldn't imagine going through anything like Dreamz has gone through.  I grew up with family that loves me and brothers and friends and a support system that was so vast and so deep this day when I think about what it would take for me to be homeless, I would have to work very hard to make that happen.  Dreamz had none of that.  When I imagine being a kid and having to deal with this and look after your brother like Dreamz did and not only make it, not only persevere but actually achieve something.  Dreamz is a really sharp kid.  He's an accomplished gymnast.  Physically he's a specimen.  The dude is ripped.  He's in great shape.  He'll be a threat in challenges and he's so honest.  He's just so real.  That could hurt him immensely in this game because Dreamz hasn't figure out necessarily how to lie and cheat with a lot of finesse.  Dreamz is just Dreamz.  "I'm just Dreamz.  I say what I think.  I do what I want to and I want to have fun and I want to win and I want to kill that other tribe."  Sometimes you're laughing at Dreamz and sometimes you want to go, "Stop, stop, stop. Dreamz stop. Don's say it.  You're killing yourself."  But he's really memorable. 

Question:  Can you talk about how you guys found him?

JP:  I wish I knew and I don't.  I just have one other thing I wanted to say.  There's one other thing that happened late in the game.  There's a big ethical decision that has to be made that I think people will care about.  I think by the time it happens you will be invested in the people involved, that you will care.  It's the quintessential question of Survivor.  Where do ethics begin and end and where does the game begin and end?  It poses that question.  What is your word worth in this game and in your life and is there a difference?  Would you act the same way at home?  When we were out there and it happened it was a big moment.  I think on the show it will probably have the same sort of significance.  It's something to look out for. 

Colleen Sullivan:  Jeff, to answer your question, Dreamz was suggested by a friend of one of our casting associates.  That's how we found him. 

JP:  One last thing.  I think I said that Yau-Man applied and I think we did find Yau-Man.  I saw his application.  I know he sent in a tape but I'm pretty sure that we found Yau-Man.  It was Gary who we didn't talk about whose nickname is Papa Smurf, who is a school bus driver, I think he is the only guy this season that applied.  

Colleen Sullivan:  Yau-Man was actually found through the U.S. Table Tennis Association website.