Watching Reality TV

I know it got lost in the “Big Brother” news from yesterday, but I actually did watch the finale of “On the Lot” Tuesday night as well.  I haven’t been watching that show very much since several weeks in.  And I’m not the only one either.  Which is why I was surprised that the hostess Adrianna Costa seemed to make it sound like this was only the first “On the Lot”, there may be others!  Wha?  Seriously?  There might be another “On the Lot” next summer?  I’d be awful surprised if that’s the case.

At any rate, after much fanfare and downright torturous stalling (Costa is a horrid host, by the way), Will Bigham was revealed to be the winner of “On the Lot”.  And as such he is the recipient of the $1 million development deal with Dreamworks studio.  And you know what?  They actually showed Will meeting with Steven Spielberg outside of Dreamworks studio and I wasn’t exactly expecting that to happen.  So kudos to Steve for actually showing up.  That gave this ailing show some much needed credibility, I thought.  It needed something, didn’t it?

I’m very sorry for the lack of posts the last day or so and the sporadic loading of this site.  Apparently there have been some server issues that are out of 451Press.com’s control.  Looks like everything is starting to work again so that’s a very good thing!  I hope I’m able to get this post up before things go bad again!  Again, very sorry and thanks for your patience!

At any rate, I haven’t been watching “On the Lot” for weeks now and unless I accidentally stumble across it, I often forget it’s still on.  But then I remember that “Pirate Master” was the one that was canceled.  We’re down to the final four contestants, after Tuesday night’s elimination.  Who was eliminated?  Zack Lipovsky, the special effects guru.  Remember him?  I thought he was a shoo-in for the final, so it’s surprising to hear he was booted.   Apparently, it was a surprise to his co-contestants as well as several of them expected Zack to go all the way.  Next week’s August 14 episode will reveal the next filmmaker to be sent home and the week after that, August 21, we’ll have the finale and learn who has won the $1,000,000 Dreamworks development deal.  ‘

Wow, this show has been on a lot longer than I would have expected.

Maybe it’s a sign that I’m becoming a “reality TV snob”. Suddenly the dippy shows on network television seem so dang boring while the more “highbrow” cousins on the cable networks are infinitely more interesting. Though, I’m not entirely sure you could call Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs” necessarily “highbrow”. Yep, this is the second time this week I’m bringing up “Dirty Jobs”. There hasn’t been a whole lot on TV this week and Discovery Channel has been running repeats of the show every night this week. And who am I to resist the lure of Mike Rowe? Last night, on their 100th episode special, Mike (and friend) sang this song to a montage of “dirty jobs” and I just had to look this one up on YouTube to share with you all. And just my luck; YouTube had it. So enjoy!

In other news, I know I said I was going to mention “Ice Road Truckers” and I still haven’t. Basically, all I can say is that this show is really, really awesome and you really, really need to watch it. Basically, these are truckers who have to truck supplies to diamond mines up in the arctic north of Canada. Supplies can only be brought up for about 4 months of the year, when the many, many lakes up there are frozen solid and can be driven upon. That’s where these truckers come in. If the supplies don’t make it up in time, then the mine is set back for a whole ‘nother year and since this is the diamond industry, that’s a lot of money lost. Oh, and while these guys are driving on the ice, it’s actually moving. And they can’t go too fast or a wave will form underneath the ice, causing it to break open and the truck to fall in. They can’t go too slow or the ice will break and the truck will fall in. Oh, and they ARE driving on ice here so they have to watch for wheels spinning out, jackknifed trucks and every other dang thing. It’s about 30 below zero and blowing snow can cause the drivers to not be able to see past the hood of their truck. This? Is INTENSE. You just gotta watch. It’s so good.

You’ll notice I’m not talking about “On the Lot” today. I didn’t watch it last night. Because, frankly, I give up. That show tried hard but it was too little, too late. I’ll keep an eye on any major news concerning the show and let you all know what I know, but I’m not going to watch it if I can at all help it. I don’t get paid THAT much.

The History Channel’s new reality show, “Ice Road Truckers” debuted on Sunday with 3.4 million viewers, the cable channel’s most watched show ever. I’d like to think the reason is because “Ice Road Truckers” is a reality show set up much like “Deadliest Catch” is and we all know how much I love THAT show. “On the Lot” brought in a depressing 2.5 million viewers this week, down nearly a half a million viewers from the week before. They’re losing huge chunks of their audience every week. I don’t know about “Pirate Master”’s ratings yet (it just aired last night and I didn’t even watch… the horror!) but I imagine they’re equally dismal. The thing is, “Ice Road Truckers” airs on a more obscure cable channel (we’re not talking TBS or USA here) and “On the Lot” airs on a network channel that virtually every television in America can tune in to. Yikes.

“Ice Road Truckers” follows six truckers for two months as they haul important supplies to diamond mines that are located across frozen lakes that actually act as roads. This all happens in Canada’s Northwest Territory and men actually die doing this job (sound familiar). I mean, who wouldn’t want to watch that? I’m already kicking myself for having missed it on Sunday and am setting up my TIVO right now to remedy the situation. You’d be wise to do the same, sounds like.

There’s a little bit of everything today, so let’s get started:

• Notice the super-cool, completely professional (snort) looking masthead up top!  451Press has now implemented the option to use customized mastheads for the blogs and I think it’s a fabulous idea.  Expect that this one will change periodically as my mood strikes.  Do you like it?
• Remember when I mentioned that “On the Lot”’s ratings were up last week after having an abysmal rating of 2.9 million viewers the week before?  Well this week, they were back to 2.9 million viewers again.  Variety even reported that “On the Lot” was dragging down ratings for “House” which airs directly afterwards but still has about double the viewers the reality show has.  OUCH.  So does anyone want to take bets for how long until this show is finally pulled from the lineup?
• Expect to see Jennie Garth from “Beverly Hills 90210″ fame to join “Dancing with the Stars 5″ this fall.  Apparently former co-star Ian Ziering was able to talk her into it.  Also, it’s rumored that Melanie “Scary Spice” Brown will be joining the cast as well.
• If you were wondering, the contestants on CBS’s “Pirate Master” aren’t responsible for keeping the boat afloat.  Apparently the ship runs with a “ghost crew” that works things behind the scenes.  Of course!  I pretty much figured as much.
• Frankie Abernathy, a former cast member of MTV’s Real World: San Diego, died over the weekend from cystic fibrosis.  Frankie left the show midseason after much drama that is ever-present on the MTV reality show.
• Donald Trump apparently hasn’t gotten the hint and is developing another reality show, this time for FOX.  He’s pimping a “Lady or a Tramp” style show where women are sent to “charm school” in order to learn how to be proper ladies.  Riiiiight.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, ya’ll.  The world is chock full of reality news today.   But that’s the juiciest of the juicy.  Enjoy your Thursday!

I didn’t enjoy my television as much last night as I normally do on Tuesday nights.  “Deadliest Catch” was spot on, of course.  But then, it always is.  It’s so incredibly difficult to find any show with any sort of consistency in the world of reality TV and “Deadliest Catch” delivers week after week.  I have great affection for this show, as you may have noticed.  Last night saw the final hours of the opilio crab season, as the boats scrambled to snap up huge amounts of crab before going to the sorting facilities to offload their catch.  And snap up huge amounts they did!  Many pots full of 700+ crab were hauled on deck and that’s just amazing right there.  The deckhands were punch-drunk excited when they started calculating what sort of money they’re dealing with.  Ice threatened more than one boat.  It’s quite a gamble, going north to look for crab.  Getting stuck in the ice or losing pots under the ice or having the ice bust open the hull of the ship would be disastrous.  Luckily, it would appear our boats made it out just fine.  And next week?  The boats cash in and we find out just what kind of money they made this season.  And, we say goodbye.  Until next year, that is.  *sniff*

“On the Lot” was on last night as well.  We saw five more contestants films.  I’ve since confirmed that these are indeed their submission films.  And tonight, there was no one film that just jumped out and grabbed me.  Andrew’s “Polished” was pretty decent, as was Shira-Lee’s “Beeline”.  But those films had their faults and fell short of perfect or even “great” in my book.  However, there were some poor films this go around so I think Andrew and Shira-Lee are safe.  Kenny, dear Kenny, did a very serious if disorienting film about grief and alcoholism called “Edge on the End”.  I think he and Marty (who did another serious short called “Dance with the Devil”) are the ones at risk this week.  Marty has great style, but he’s insufferably egotistical and has yet to show any substance to his films.  And Kenny is all style and strange film angles and rough cuts.  Which is fine and good, but depending on what they’re looking for in this competition, I don’t think he stands a great chance.  By having the public vote for the winners, I would gather that they’re looking for a mainstream director and Kenny is anything BUT mainstream.

In other “On the Lot” news, our bottom two from last week are Trever and Hilary.  I would agree that Trever’s film last week was pretty poor, but so was Hilary’s.  And at least Trever’s 1 minute short was awesome, whereas Hilary’s was NOT.  So that makes her with two poor films and him with one and guess who went home?  Yep, it was Trever.  A big bummer, as far as I’m concerned.  I thought she was sure thing to be leaving last night.   Next week?  Five more films.  And then we move on.  I HOPE.

While the format of the show has improved over the last several weeks, the damage of the first week of shows was crippling.  FOX has consistently been losing viewers with each episode of “On the Lot”, almost 3 million each airing.  The good news?  Tuesday’s show saw a resurgence of viewers to the ailing reality TV show.  And thank goodness, because if the show continued losing viewers, they would have found themselves in the negatives.  Maybe the public finally knows when to tune in (with the constantly changing schedule, that’s a surprise right there) or maybe the viewers who had tuned in initially heard about the changed format of the show and are giving it a second chance.  Whatever the reason, I’m sure the executives over at FOX are breathing a sigh of relief today.  “On the Lot” was supposed to be the reality show to beat this summer and has so far failed to live up to its own hype, unfortunately.  Let’s hope that the ratings continue to rise or at least stay steady for the duration of the show.  I don’t think it’s that bad, because if I did, I definitely wouldn’t be tuning in every week.  Sure, the hostess is pretty horrid, but the films are interesting and that’s what the whole point of this show is supposed to be.

Oh Tuesday night, you wonderful thing you.  Once again, we start off with “Deadliest Catch”, right in the heart of opilio crab season.  With it?  Some nasty, nasty waves.  And super cold freezing temperatures.  You know what those two elements add up to?  ICE.  Everywhere.  The boats are getting covered with it and the crew must knock off the ice every spare moment they have.  Which, if you’ve been paying attention, they don’t have a lot of.  The highlights from this episode include the fate of the Time Bandit.  If you recall, they were laid up before with a crab pot line tangled in one of the propellers.  So while Andy Hilstrand dons scuba gear to go down and perform some repairs, the law catches up with one of the deckhands.  Apparently he missed a court date or some such and got hauled off to jail.  After some chuckling and joking about letting him cool his heels there for a while, the captain and crew go collect money from an ATM to post bail for the guy and get him back fishing as soon as possible.  Meanwhile, the Northwestern is having tremendous luck.  Good weather and tons of crab.  According to Edgar, they are breaking previous records for the most crab caught in such a short amount of time.  The good fortune allows for some teaching moments with their greenhorn (The same one who thought it might be funny prank Edgar.  It wasn’t.).  He wanted to try throwing the hook so they let him.  However, each time he missed he had to lose a piece of clothing.  Which, in the super cold freezing temperatures is pretty tough to take.  But the greenhorn stuck to his guns and earned some valuable respect while he was at it.  He hopes to earn a jacket bearing the Northwestern’s colors, but he hasn’t gotten it yet.  Mostly because he then started whining about how much his hands hurt.  Bad move, as Edgar recommends to Sig that they try some “old school” fishing with the greenhorn.  They make him hand coil the line, clear the pots of clingers by hand, transfer the hundreds of pound of crab to the hold by hand… basically?  Showed him how good he does have it and that maybe he should stop the whining.  I think he learned that lesson pretty well.  The opilio crab season is winding down and the boats are going to be returning to the processing facilities to get counted up soon.  Then we’ll see who came out on top!

We enjoyed another episode of “On the Lot” last night.  Well, maybe “enjoyed” is too strong a word.   But it wasn’t bad.  We’ve been cut back to one episode a week and last night we only got to see five of the filmmakers films.  Luckily, they were mostly pretty good.  Hilary bombed yet again, however.  And Trever (who impressed me so last week with his golf film) didn’t do so hot with his blind date comedy, “Teri”.  The best was easily Sam’s “Broken Pipe Dreams”, about a guy who has issues with a toilet and then proceeds to accidentally flush an engagement ring down the drain.  He ultimately wins out over the toilet and finds redemption.  It was very imaginative and fun to watch.  Our guest judge last night was Michael Bay who has directed many a summer blockbuster.  I found he was a tough nut to crack as he seemed to find something wrong with every film, except for Shalini’s “Laughing Out Loud: A comedic journey” which he said “gave me a chill.”

My best judgement is that next week we’ll see one of these five be eliminated (I’m thinking it’ll be Hilary) and also see the next five films.  Okay, whatever works right?  I just wish they’d figure out how they’re going to do this show already and stick to it.  I’m starting to feel rather confused over here.

It may be summer, “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars” may be over but there is still some warrant for a Wednesday Reality Roundup. For one thing, we still have “On the Lot” to talk about. I still believe in this show. I think the new “American Idol”-esque format is working for it. A lot of other critics out there are hating it and that’s a shame because I think it’s so much more interesting now than it was last week. Anyhow, last night was the “results show” from the previous night’s films. I was a little disappointed and surprised by the way the voting turned out. I expected “Replication Theory” to at least get in the top three. And I was hoping that Kenny (Wack Alley Cab), Hilary (Bus #1) and Jessica (How to Screw in a Lightbulb) would be the ones leaving. And NONE OF THEM DID. Instead it was Carolina (Deliver Me), Claudia (Blind Date), and Phil (Please Hold) who went home and I’m just dumbfounded.  I was also perturbed to see Getta Rhoom in the top three for the night.  While I didn’t think it was as bad as the judges said the previous night (and, oh by the way, they totally don’t think that way about it now), I didn’t think it was one of the best.  ARGH.  I want this show to have a chance people.  But in order for that to happen, we’ve got to think smart on this.  We have to actually pay attention and vote for the best films.  AND NOT FOR THE WORST.  Who the hell voted for Wack Alley Cab?  I think you need professional help, whoever you are.  So, we’ll be back next Monday for more films.  I have hope for the future.

Let’s not forget that “Deadliest Catch” was on last night as well.  And the reason I live “opie” season was in full effect with giant waves threatening to swamp the boats and wash the deckhands off the into the Bering Sea.  And that makes for some pretty good television as far as I’m concerned.  The Northwestern finally got some really good luck in the form of super-full crab pots which is great news for them after last week’s engine failure.  A greenhorn aboard makes a big mistake by trying to prank Edgar and that goes over about as well as a lead balloon.  Dummy.  So far, Opilio crab season hasn’t seen any fantastic yields and the boats seem to be struggling more than anything else.  Still, it’s all good television.  And I’d forgotten that the special, “After the Catch” was on afterward.  I tried to watch but what with getting dinner and putting children to bed and other distractions, I wasn’t able to watch as much of it as I would have liked.  But it looked like an interesting conversation between the different captains and Mike Rowe (the narrator of the series) on some of their experiences.  I think it’ll be on next week too, so I hope to catch it then.

So that’s it for now.  Enjoy your Wednesday!

Wow, what a difference a few days (and some really poor ratings and reviews) makes!  Last night’s “On the Lot” was a completely different show and I mean that in the best way possible.  Instead of the “Apprentice”-like format from last week (and we all know how I feel about “The Apprentice”) we had something much more akin to “American Idol”.  In fact, if it hadn’t been for the judges and contestants, I probably wouldn’t have recognized this as the same show.  Best of all?  We finally got to see some of these films!  It was “comedy week” and each of the 18 directors had a 1 minute short film to show us.  And it felt a lot more like a film festival than a cheesy reality show and that really worked for me.  I’m not going to go into all the films and the nitty gritty details (the show was two hours long last night, I’d be sitting here typing all day and we’d have a fricken’ novel on our hands).  I will point out my three favorites and the three films that I voted for last night.

The first was “Dance Man” by Adam Stein.  This guy left Harvard Law School to make movies and from the looks of this short, he made the right choice.  I thought it was hilarious.  The short was about a man who could not speak, but instead had to communicate via dance.  We saw how this disability affected his life, including his love life until finally he met a woman who also communicated via dance and they lived happily ever after.  It was, in a word, hilarious.  The judges loved it as well and didn’t have a bad word to say about it.

Zack Lipovsky, our resident special effects guru from last week had a little film called “Danger Zone” about some bad ju-ju going down in a safety lab.  The entire short was shot in 360 degrees and one take.  It was amazing to watch and pretty funny.  The judges nearly wet themselves over this guy and I don’t think he’s going anywhere for quite a while.  He’s got talent, I’ll give him that.

Sam Friedlander had the final short of the evening and it was called “Replication Theory”.  Basically, it details the history of people blaming their farts on other things by replicating the sound.  Sounds goofy but it totally worked.  Loved it and I don’t generally tend to go for that sort of humor.  But it was delivered with such honesty and friendliness, you couldn’t help but enjoy it.  The judges loved it too, despite the farting.

Who do I think will be leaving us tonight (tonight??)?  I fear the future of Kenny Luby (his short was PAINFUL), Hilary Weisman Graham (her short was just disgusting) and Jess Brillhart (her short was confusing).  I don’t know if we’re going back to last week’s format or not.  I’m sort of hoping not because last night’s show was SO much fun for a change.

We had the second episode of “On the Lot” last night and we got to see some of the fruits of the contestants labors. The 24 hour short film challenge went pretty well, from the clips that I saw. Particularly the one that capitalized on Zach’s talents as a special effects guru. Some were a little off and I was particularly pleased to see the judges call out the team that did the overly stylized by content free short film. We need to see a lot less of that in Hollywood. Sometimes I think movies are called Artsy and Hip because people want us to think they’re Artsy and Hip and that drives me nuts. Anyhow, that’s my issue and not related to last night’s show (much). A bunch of people are eliminated, including Hannah Sink which makes me happy because her name bothered me. Yes, I can be that fickle. Leave me alone. Then the contestants got another challenge: make a short film in ONE HOUR. They’re given the set, the script and a bunch of actors and they have one hour to put it together. I’d tell you when to tune in for the next episode except that I have no idea when it will be. Frankly, I’m a little worried about “On the Lot” because so far its been rather boring, we’ve seen far too little of the films and I haven’t really seen anything to make me care yet. This could be a great show, and I’m just really not seeing it yet. Bummer.

“So You Think You Can Dance” aired it’s season 3 premiere episode last night. It, much like “American Idol” focuses on the auditions at the beginning. So among the people who, you know, can actually DANCE, we had the people who think they can dance. And apparently, much like singing on “American Idol”, a lot of people on “SYTYCD” think they can dance. And they can’t. YIKES. But that’s part of what makes the show so fun. We even had the cranky judge getting all up in some guy’s grill about his complete lack of talent and how this guy is wasting everyone’s time and yet, here they are, showing this whole thing on television and taking time away from the people who can actually dance. So, whatever. People are weird, and this show proves it.

Oh dear me. This is almost too much reality for one girl to take. We start off, as usual, with “Deadliest Catch”, that most awesome of Discovery Network shows. The weather is wicked being that it is January and this is Alaska. The waves are nuts and the boats are getting knocked around like toys. Makes for some awesome television, let me tell ya. A rogue wave knocks one of the boats and actually busts up the “spooler”. Thank goodness no one was on deck when it happened or everyone would have been in big trouble. At another point in the show, one of the deckhands gets his leg got caught in the line on the trap and if he hadn’t moved so quickly, the guy would have been yanked overboard. Yikes! Meanwhile, things are looking pretty bad for the Northwestern. Just when their luck was looking up and they started raking in some SERIOUSLY full crab pots, the boat starts acting up. Some investigatory work is done and basically, the engine is kaput or trying to become kaput (it all is a bit over my head, actually). The long and short of it is, the Northwestern is hatin’ life. Which is awful cuz I love those guys. Starting next week: we’ll get to watch a miniseries that takes place after the show called “After the Catch” where the nutjob from “Dirty Jobs” interviews the different captains and finds out the behind the scenes scoop. Sweet! Sign me up!

Then, we moved on to “American Idol”. Talk about being down to the wire. After some banter about Paula’s broken nose, we get to the nitty gritty. Blake won the coin toss last episode so he chose to go first. He starts off with his completely awesome rendition of “You Give Love a Bad Name” by Bon Jovi which is even awesomer than the last time. Even Simon is effusive about the performance. Jordin chose to sing “Fighter” by Christina Aquilera and I thought she got a little “screechy” during the middle of the song. Definitely wasn’t her best song. So round one went to Blake, hands down. But the next round, he chose “She Will Be Loved” by Maroon 5 and she chose “A Broken Wing” by Martina McBride, which you’ll remember she rocked rather soundly the first time she sang it. So even though he did a great job with his song, Jordin smoked him during this round. The last round, I thought, was rather unfair. The Idols were told to sing the winner of the songwriter competition’s song, called “This is My Now”. I wouldn’t say it was made for a woman (because it wasn’t), but it was definitely far better suited to Jordin’s style of singing rather than Blake’s. He was frustrated with the song, obviously, but shrugged it off. Jordin did a little better (but I still thought she sounded flat, probably the song’s fault and not hers) and finished off with tears in her eyes, guaranteeing her a healthy chunk of the sympathy vote. Whatever. I so voted for Blake, it’s not even funny. We are treated to Daughtry singing “Home” live on the stage at the end of the show, a very fitting tribute. And I’m still upset that he didn’t win his season. Taylor Hicks is a frickin’ hack. Ahem.

Now, here’s where things got interesting. We had the “Dancing with the Stars” finale and results show (Two hours though? Seriously? What do they think this is, “American Idol”?). But we also had the premiere of “On the Lot” which simply MUST be watched. Praise the heavens for Tivo, is all I can say. “On the Lot” looks like a really promising show. We had the usual reality premiere drudgery, where we’re introduced to a mob of contestants and everything is still rather confusing and disjointed. However, we were introduced to the judges, who are awesome. We have Carrie Fisher, Brent Ratner and Gary Marshall, quite the big-wigs in my opinion. I was impressed. The first task was to take a basic story premise and pitch it as a feature film to the judges. Some people dropped the ball in a rather horrifying manner, while others stepped up and one guy gave such a good pitch that Gary was ready to hire him on to do the flick when he was done. The eliminations were painful, but necessary and fair. Painful only because I know it had to be so disappointing for those who were hoping for more from this experience. The show will be on next on Thursday and we’ll see the contestants’ first big efforts: a 2 1/2 minute short that they had literally NO TIME to put together. As a team. Yeah, should be fun. I know I’ll be tuning in.

On “Dancing with the Stars”, what else is there to talk about other than who won? I was pleased to see Apolo and Julianne take home the trophy. They deserved it. Laila was a good dancer, but she and Maks lacked the chemistry and all around enjoyment that Apolo and Julianne had. Joey had flair up the ying yang, but he lacked the skills to beat Apolo. Overall, it was a very satisfying end to the show. Just don’t tell that to Laila or Joey. In her words, Laila was pissed to be booted out in third place. And Joey looked very obviously disappointed to come in second. But they had to know the audience loved Apolo. So yay! That’s the sort of reality finale I like to see. However, maybe in the future they can cut it back to one hour tops because two hours for that stuff was TORTURE. They didn’t have near enough content to fill a full two hours and it was awful having to suffer through the drivel to get to the good stuff. Think about that next season, ABC.

You’ve heard me mention the new reality show coming this spring from the great minds of Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg, “On the Lot.” Did you know you could take part in the action, though? The newly expanded website located at http://thelot.com features an online submission form for aspiring filmmakers and is accepting films through February 16. Making movies not your thing? Love to watch? Then you can pore through the dozens upon dozens of submissions, watch all the films and submit your own critique and rating. Careful though, I’ve already spent more hours time doing that than I’d like to admit. I’ve seen some disturbing films, interesting ones, funny ones, and even a pretty boring one. One thing is for sure, these directors have more talent for this sort of thing in their little pinky than I do in my entire body! If you’re looking for a quick example, check out “Steve McQueen and Me“, which I enjoyed quite a bit. Want to learn more about the show? Check out an excerpt from the official press release after the jump.

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Sounds like a cross between “The Apprentice” and “Project: Greenlight” to me! Some of you may have already heard about Steven Spielberg’s new show, “On the Lot” which is set to air this May. In the show, viewers will get to vote for which director gets eliminated each week. The goal is for Spielberg to find new directing talent. He had been talking with super-reality producer Mark Burnett about collaborating on a film when the topic came up. “I mentioned that I was interested in sweeping the world to find new actors and directors. I said, ‘You know, it could also be a reality show’.â€? Mark Burnett then ran with the idea. According to him, “We all watch movies and sit there saying this movie is great or that one is crap. This show gives the audience the experience of being a critic.â€?

Spielberg won’t actually be a part of the show, not like Trump is with “The Apprentice”. He will show up for the finale, presumably to congratulate the winning director.

I really love the idea of this show. I love television, of course. But I also love, love, love movies. So this is a wonderful pairing of the two loves. I can’t wait to see what kind of talent this show brings forth.