Fall 2005; Our Interview with Co-Creator Elise Doganieri
Last Updated: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 12:59 PM
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Interviews: The Amazing Race: Season One DVD - Fall 2005; Our Interview with Co-Creator Elise Doganieri
The Amazing Race, Season One, began its nascent television broadcast on September 5, 2001. During the show's opening teaser a black bus carrying the Race's eleven teams an Amazing Race banner splayed against its upper windshield is skirting across the television screen on it's way to Central Park, host Phil Keoghan and The Starting Line. The bus looms atop the foreground, crossing a dark iron Manhattan bridge; in the background the apocalyptic New York City skyline. The World Trade Center's Twin Towers are standing there like naked idols, staring back at us in iced melancholy. Barely a week later they would vanish in war. Close to four years later amid rumors, pleas, wishes and waits The Amazing Race, Season One, will be officially released on DVD in the Fall of 2005. Elise Doganieri, Co-Creator and Supervising Producer of The Amazing Race, has confirmed this via telephone. And she should know.
By David W. Taylor (Email Me)
Reality Reel Media
05.24.05
If you are an Amazing Race fan of any stripe, Season One is a legend that cannot be missed if never witnessed; if this broadcast is as pleasantly familiar as an old friend... it must be owned, securely tucked away and revealed often. This maiden production was one of those odd hurtling creative epicenters where the pungent mix of teams, locales and unforeseen flukes tumbled and pinched together to create an Old Master's paragon that would never be quite equaled. If so inclined, one could conceivably also call it simple beginner's luck. One could... but that would be way too simple.
Season One may surprise a few neophytes. Even if you were convinced that Rob Mariano was a conniving brute in the just concluded Season Seven, nothing can prepare you for the cold-blooded warp and gaucherie of the First Season's Team Guido. You will likewise never experience an India so eerily claustrophobic nor so strange. No team will ever captivate your heart as the endearingly self-effacing Kevin & Drew. They will become as welcomely familiar to you as a pair of worn sneakers that tickle your feet.
And you will never feel the rush of such an imposing roller-coaster Detour as you will run right smack into within the first hour. You will never see such camaraderie, such tenacity nor such frozen fear. A teams flub amidst staggering fatigue will consume you. It will seem a star-crossed tragedy. You will laugh. You will cry. And I can assure you, you will never, ever behold an Amazing Race Finale and Race to the Pit Stop as magical, as gut-wrenching, as so beautifully poetic as the one that ends Season One. It is a fait accompli for the ages.
Naturally, the question arises: why wait four long years for the release of such an unmitigated classic? It has always been painfully ironic to note the release of other, shall we say (and kindly put), less substantial works whether Reality based or scripted that seem to plop upon retail shelves within hours of the cessation of their broadcast run. Elise Doganieri whose husband and partner is The Amazing Race's Executive Producer, Bertram van Munster is well aware of the fan-based frustration: "To be honest with you, I don't know what the long wait was to do a DVD. It was always something that CBS had discussed and wanted to do. I think just because our shows happened so quickly we got so caught up producing this show and it took so much of our time that to put a DVD together of this magnitude, we just had to wait for the right time."
"And yeah, the popularity has grown and grown and it does seem like the right time. We've gotten so many requests from the fans, you know, all the viewers. And I know people actually wrote in to CBS saying, 'Where's that DVD?' I have a feeling it's going to do very well because Season One still seems to be many people's favorite. And there's still so many viewers that are watching now that have never seen the first episode that I think they're going to want to see this."
In the fall of 2001, The Amazing Race was one of many Reality entries though a hefty component of CBS's '01 fall Reality lineup that were now scattered ubiquitously throughout cable and the network channels due to the popularity of shows like MTV's The Real World; though what really kick-started this burgeoning genre was, and who could forget it!, the first Season of Survivor (Borneo) which captivated much of mainstream America in the summer of 2000. Hopes for The Amazing Race where equally astronomical with CBS managing "an incredible promotional for us," notes Elise. "We had planes flying over the beach with banners. Billboards everywhere. There was a huge push for Season One."
Expectations were ripe. But as we all know only too well, 9/11 darted into our lives, like an errant bullet to the head, and The Amazing Race took its own hit as did much of our lighter entertainment fare due to our collective grief and component distractions. The Race stumbled. And in some respects has only fully recovered within the context of the recent Finale of Amazing Race 7 with its, at long last, well deserved (and long sought after) 16 million viewers. A record.
Elise Doganieri was in Morocco of all places during the New York morning of September 11, 2001, scouting locations for The Amazing Race 2. "I'm a New Yorker so I was... it just didn't seem like it was real, being so far from home. I actually saw it on television and I felt like I was seeing something from a movie. I just couldn't believe that that had really happened."
"I got the call from Los Angeles, Elise explains, her voice blackening with dread. They just told me to go back into my hotel room and 'Don't leave and wait there until we tell you. We need to get you back home. We don't know what's going on.' So I just actually waited in my hotel room with another producer that I was with and watched it all on television. And I think I was glued in front of that TV for 24 hours."
Elise recalled also becoming faintly skittish about the immediate future of her just released project, her personal vagary: "We just didn't know what was going to happen. We aired on September 5th, and then of course the tragedy happened on September 11th... and the unfortunate effects of 9/11 on everyone's lives did take a toll on everything. We didn't know if people would want to even watch a show where people would be traveling around the world in planes. But there was a core group of fans that did watch..."
Yes, ah, that spunky core of Amazing Race fans... I was one of them. Stuck on Season One; loving Season Two, Season Three... ratings sinking, the Reality buzz moving off elsewhere. Alone, hopeful. Knowing, never waning, that The Amazing Race was the best thing going. And I can hear from Elise that she knows of us... she talked about our efforts with CBS clamoring for the Season One DVD; with the "building of a fan base" that carried The Race through its lean times: The Dark Years. Were here now, ogling ourselves from the other side. The memories evaporating. Yet, only now.
Today, The Amazing Race is doing well. According to Elise its a global marvel. "It airs in about 120 countries around the world... it's the number one reality show in Canada. And we've got an amazing amount of fans in the Asia-Pacific area, you know, in China. Singapore is huge. It's on AXN over there. And yeah, we're all over the world. We watch the show whenever we're traveling or scouting, if we can turn the TV on somewhere!"
"I remember when we did Norway when we were shooting Season Six the show was on in Norway... I think it was Season Two!, she recalled adoringly. And, it gets harder to shoot now because people really do know the Race. And so when they see a camera crew with a bunch of backpacked people running around they say, 'Is this The Amazing Race?' So it gets harder and harder to be incognito."
Probably obnoxiously, I get increasingly curious about the DVD package as a whole. Interviews? Special Features? Elise can't reveal all the details. In fact the DVD package is still a work in progress the extra features and package designs and such are all still fluid but the snippets she can share are indeed tempting: "I think everyone's going to be really pleased with this DVD set because I just saw the first cut of it. And what's so great about it is the interviews with some of the cast members. I don't want to give away who's on it... but there's certainly some very popular teams that I know people are going to want to see, and hear what they thought."
"What's really nice is that they've inter-cut moments in the Race and then they interview the team that was there and you get the feeling of what was happening in that moment," explains Elise. "There's a very long special feature and a lot of little branches during the DVD a section where you can click and hear what the contestants have to say. It's really good."
"I worked with the team of people who actually put the DVD together along with our post production department, who went back and found a lot of great little highlights... never before seen footage. It's great material that we just didn't have time in every episode to put in the show. So there's a lot of footage that actually I hadn't seen before. So watching it was like, 'Oh my goodness, I remember when they did that!' So it was fun for me to watch." Elise adds, "There are interviews with myself and Bertram on the DVD, Phil Keoghan, the host, and a good portion of the cast members."
At this point I feel like I have as much information about the Season One DVD as I need, except maybe the retail price of the darn thing. I want it, like, yesterday and the fall of 2005 seems like a thousand years from now. Elise Doganieri, when nudged, seems to allow a hush of allusion that DVD sets for other Amazing Race Seasons may be also in the early planning stages saying, "I have a very good feeling we'll be doing more after..." and that's almost enough of what I need to hear. Or, rather, what I want to hear. Nearly all of my shadowy Race fantasies are coming true. Which is weird. I guess I should thank... Rob & Amber? Maybe an Emmy?
Elise is presently out scouting locations for The Amazing Race 8 and 9. They've just started the final casting for Season Eight: "Families of four... It doesn't have to be mom and dad and the kids. It can be grandma and cousin so and so. As long as they're a family unit of some sort, it can be any group of four. And we have a minimum of eight years old. But we haven't actually met any of the teams yet." The broadcast date will also be sometime in the fall. My mind darkens at the thought of a summer without The Amazing Race. I suppose before the slew of Amazing Race prizes pop up in Fall 2005, there is noble sacrifice.
"And I hope you enjoy the family version," reassures Elise. "We're actually getting very excited about doing it because it feels like Season One all over again. It's a new and exciting challenge for us because now we've got four instead of two people on a team, and it's kind of brought new life into the production. There's a whole bunch of different things you can do with families rather than with two person teams. So I think it's going to be a great Season!"An especially memorable part of our talk was the two of us just chatting excitedly like, well, two Amazing Race fools and aficionados about THAT Finale, THAT Pit Stop Race that brings Season One to its fabled end. Yes, friends, its that remarkable. Alas, here, it's a subject for another column, another time. A treatise onto itself.
Though, thinking back, the lapidary phrasing of that last taxi ride, elevated train pursuit and foot race between Frank & Margarita and Rob & Brennan to Flushing Meadows Park, the eliminated teams, the Globe, the Mat and Phil Keoghan was the crowning elixir for a First Season so enchantingly run. It is reason enough on its own to be glad that AR1 will someday soon be available as a permanent record of Reality Television excellence. Of Amazing Racing.
Elise Doganieri's stunning recollection of that hallowed time both horrific and celebatory of that rushing, eclipsing, ethereal vignette, and the captivated tenor of her voice, will forever sparkle as testament to her own sweet fondness for The Amazing Race; Season One. Her dear Creation. And the upcoming DVD... well, "I was smiling the whole time I was watching it. With this breaking news, my own smile has already started cracking.
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