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♥♥♥ TAR14: Mel & Michael White - Father & Son

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Snooky:
He was probably the only one who like doing that, besides Victor who didn't get to do it!
 :lol:

georgiapeach:
Reliving The Amazing Race with Mike and Mel White
by Reg Seeton

 
The funny thing about The Amazing Race is that the competition is so touch and go that even certain recognizable faces and well-known names haven't been able to win CBS' hit reality adventure. Albeit certain faces and names have mainly come from the world of reality TV, this season of The Amazing Race saw screenwriter Mike White, scribe of such films as School of Rock, Orange County and Nacho Libre, jump into The Amazing Race with his dad, Mel.

For Mike and Mel the race was an adventure of a lifetime, as the father and son duo kept pace with the Season 14 teams through Austria, Romania, Russia, India and Thailand. From Mel making the decision to paraglide over the Austrian Alps to Mike running through the streets of Novosibirsk in underwear and work-boots, Mike and Mel were strong competitors, always in contention for top spot until they hit the bustling streets of Phuket, Thailand. At the end of the leg, Mike and Mel fell unlucky in Amazing Race love when they picked the wrong cab and became the latest team to be eliminated from The Amazing Race.

The day after their elimination, we took a call from father and son team, Mike and Mel White, to find out why they didn't stop to get directions, how The Amazing Race was different than how they pictured it, and what it was like to paraglide over the Alps and run the frosty streets of Russia with barely any clothes on your back.

THE DEADBOLT: So why didn't you guys stop the cab and go over to the other teams?

MIKE WHITE: Right at the time we saw them our cab driver was talking to dispatch and going, ‘Oh, I know where it is. I know where the gorilla is.’ Then we looked out the window and we saw all of the teams, and it wasn’t like they knew where they were going. They were just running around the streets looking crazy. So it just felt like at the time that this guy seems to know and these people are obviously lost. But then when he took us up to where he thought the gorilla was and it was obviously wrong. By the time we got back into the center of town, they were all gone and we didn’t know where they went.

MEL WHITE: We asked people in the airport in Bangkok who live in Phuket where this was, and they all said it’s at Patong Beach. So we had that disinformation. Then we had a cab driver who couldn’t turn around, because we couldn’t tell him to, and we made a bad decision.

THE DEADBOLT: So how tough was Thailand compared to India?

MIKE: Actually, it wasn’t. We thought that India was just as [tough]. I mean it was just one of those days where we didn’t know how lost we were. We knew we were behind. It was frustrating dealing with the cab driver because he kept taking us to wrong places along the route. Like he would call his dispatch and find out where the other cabs were going so he would take us to places we were supposed to go, eventually, but not in the order we were supposed to go in them.

So he dropped us off, at one point, at the end of the rickshaw race. So we were like, ‘What are we doing here?’ And it seemed right because there were all of these flags for the show. Then it was like, ‘No, wait! This is the finish line.’ So we had to go somewhere else. It was a confusing day but it wasn’t actually that hard. It was hot, we were sitting in a cab, and they didn’t make us do that much. I mean the filling of the barrels was kind of fun, but it wasn’t that bad.

THE DEADBOLT: How far behind were you guys at the end?

MIKE: We were like five or ten minutes.

MEL: Kisha and Jennifer got lost on the way back. So if we had just a few more minutes somewhere along the line, we would’ve stayed in there. If we had a driver who understood anything, we could’ve been in there.

THE DEADBOLT: How did your strategy change from the beginning of the race.

MIKE: Not much. I think for us we decided that we weren’t going to get too caught up in what all of the other teams were doing, because there was a lot of drama with Tara and Jamie, Luke and Margie, and Tammy and Victor. You see it on the show. Sometimes they would like people and they would be mad about stuff, and it just felt like it took your energy away from what you wanted to focus on. So we just kind of ran our own race, for better or for worse.

THE DEADBOLT: Which team was your closest ally?

MIKE: Probably Kris and Amanda were the team we spent the most time with because we were on all of the flights with them. Once they were eliminated, it was Tammy and Victor. But Margie and Luke, we thought we were working with them for some of it. It turns out we weren’t. Turns out they weren’t working with us.

THE DEADBOLT: So, Mel, what was the view like when you were paragliding?

MEL: Yeah, I’ll never forget that. The Alps down below, so idyllic, with green and cows and pastures and everything. So I was so relieved, first of all, that we were flying. I mean that in itself was a tremendous thrill, and then to be flying in that particular place. I only regret that the guy said, ‘Do you want to go down fast or slow? It’s very turbulent today.’ I said, ‘We’re in a race, let’s do it fast.’ But I wish we could’ve just skimmed over those alpine peaks without anything pushing us down.

THE DEADBOLT: Did you think that you were out of the race at that point?

MEL: Well, I could see them still running down. I thought we were gone, it was over, goodbye. As I was sailing out over there, I could see them running still. So that was just a very exhilarating moment to think we passed that disaster.

THE DEADBOLT: Mike, you didn’t look too happy when you were running in your underwear in Russia. What was that like?

MIKE: It was fine. It felt like one of those obligatory, humiliating moments that only happen on reality television. I was frustrated, too, because I didn’t want to run in those boots. But they wouldn’t let me change my shoes.

MEL: [laughs] Imagine what wearing a thong was like. I thought he looked really good, though, didn’t you?

THE DEADBOLT: Yeah, he looked great. Cold ...

MEL: He looked like an Olympic star with those two guys running behind him in full uniforms.

THE DEADBOLT: What was Siberia like as a challenge?

MIKE: That leg was actually kind of fun, the Novosibirsk. But the one that involved the U-turn, the one with the logs, that was probably the lowest point of the race for our team. It was so cold and so not a fun challenge. Also, just the amount of flying it took to get there. By the time we got there, we were just so out of it. It was tough, a tough leg.

MEL: We picked an airplane that landed at one end of Moscow, another plane that took off from another airport clear across Moscow, and we had to go through these four subway systems. We had an hour or we’d have missed that plane, which we did miss. So just running to those airports, by the time we got to Jaipur, man, we could hardly stand up.

THE DEADBOLT: At any point did you guys feel like you were in a Bing Crosby, Bob Hope road movie?

MEL: [laughs] Every day I did. We were having as much fun as those two, only I can’t sing. Mike is a vegan, remember, and there were whole days where he couldn’t eat anything. We often didn’t have water until we got to the pit stop. That’s why she [Margie] was saying, ‘Can I have some water?’ And Phil was ignoring her, so she fainted to show him.

THE DEADBOLT: So that must’ve been doubly hard on you, Mike, energy-wise?

MIKE: It really wasn’t a factor until toward the end of our run. Like in the last couple of legs or so, I was just dragging a little bit. The good news is that my dad got more energized the deeper into the competition we went. I leaned on him.

THE DEADBOLT: How was the race different than what you pictured before starting off?

MIKE: You know, the truth is, it was even more fun than our expectations. Well, at least mine. I was just shocked by how amazing it is that they are able to accomplish such a complicated organizational feat. I mean I’m sure there was lots of drama behind the scenes that we never knew about, but it’s just such an incredible kind of virtuoso feat of producing.

THE DEADBOLT: So why did you guys choose to go into it in the first place?

MIKE: I just wanted an adventure and some fun. I’d seen the show for years and it just seemed like the funnest thing you could do. So we just went for it.

MEL: I don’t think anyone can understand unless they’ve done it before, what it means to stand on that starting line and have Phil say, ‘You’re beginning a trip around the world.’ So losing that first leg was a nightmare for everybody on the race. For me, I was so afraid that whole day that we would be last. Once you’re not last on the first leg, then it gets easier. But I can tell you, I was really afraid I was going to screw up that first day.

THE DEADBOLT: Now that you’re away from it, how has the race brought you closer together?

MIKE: Now we just have such a well of experiences to revisit. What’s crazy is how much there is to talk about in the two-plus weeks we spent racing. You know, it just feels like we have a lifetime of comical memories to go over. So that’s cool, and I think it’s fun to make new memories and bond over them.

MEL: Michael will call me up in the middle of the day and just start laughing because he’s thinking about something only he and I remember. So we have private jokes, too, that are really fun.

THE DEADBOLT: So Mike, one last question: Did Cesar [of the Dog Whisperer] take care of your dogs while you were on the race?

MIKE: [laughs] I wish. My dogs are now perfectly trained thanks to Cesar. But I have a friend who comes and takes care of the dogs when I go out of town.

-- Reg Seeton

 

 

http://www.thedeadbolt.com/news/105594/ar14mikemelwhite_interview.php

marigold:
An interesting article:

The Amazing Race’s star-studded surprise

The competing duos on The Amazing Race 14 got festive with some famous fans in Los Angeles on March 22. “The contestants teamed up with Amazing Race alums and had a scavenger hunt in Hollywood,” an insider tells In Touch. “What they didn’t know was that the keepers of the clues awaiting them at the end of the mini-race included Sean Hayes, Molly Shannon, Laura Dern and Jack Black!” (Jack starred in School Of Rock with Race contestant Mike White, who also wrote the hit comedy,) After the hunt, father and son Race team Mel and Mike held a viewing party, where Laura Dern posed for pics with Racers, and season 11 All-Stars winner Erik Sanchez “walked around wearing nothing but an apron!”

http://www.intouchweekly.com/2009/04/the_amazing_races_starstudded.php

marigold:
An interview with Mel and Mike:

Thailand is the end of the road for The Amazing Race's Mike and Mel

Mike White wrote and co-starred in School of Rock, but now he's probably best known as the guy who couldn't stop smiling as he raced around the world with his father, Mel. Exhausted from an intense leg in India, they never had time to recover before landing in Thailand. "I think we were delirious the whole day," Mike tells In Touch. Unfortunately, a confused cab driver in Thailand turned out to be too much for the father/son team to handle and they became the latest team eliminated from of The Amazing Race. "You live by the cabbie and you die by the cabbie," laughs Mike. "Our taxi driver didn't speak Thai or English," adds Mel. "I don't know what language he was speaking."

What was your first impression of Thailand?
Mike: We were so tired the minute we got off the plane. I think we were just delirious the whole day.
Mel: I love Thailand, but man that was a bad return. Our taxi driver didn't speak Thai or English! And I don't know what language he was speaking.

What went wrong for you on that leg?
Mike: Well, you know, you live by the cabbie and you die by the cabbie. We had some amazing cab drivers, but there is a lot of luck involved in that. In Thailand, we seemed to get a guy who really was kind of baffled by the whole enterprise. But that being said, we did make a mistake when we caught up to all the teams but decided not to follow them.
Mel: In airports, we'd try to learn everything we could from people going to the same destination. Everybody in the Bangkok airport told us that the gorilla we had a picture of was located at Patong Beach. I mean, invariably they all said that. So we had it in our minds that the zoo was too obvious, and that was a mistake. Usually the locals helped us, but this time it seemed that they were all in it to deceive us.

Mel, if I recall, you injured your groin during the first leg. Were you prepared physically for this race?
Mel: I have cholesterol and high blood pressure, so I would rattle from all the pills I was carrying as I ran! But an older body doesn't do what a younger body can. So at the starting line, I pretended I had a younger body and I stretched really hard to keep up with the younger people, and it twanged.

Did the race turn out to be harder than you imagined?
Mel: I don't know. It was pretty hard.
Mike: The truth is that my dad was feeling older early on. But our energy levels switched somewhere along the way. My dad got more and more competitive. The more he did well, the more he was in it to win it, and at the same time I started flagging.

Mike, are you proud of your dad?
Mike: Oh, yeah. I mean now whenever I think of my dad I think of him hustling across India feeding camels and dancing. He was awesome and he not only inspired me but the other contestants once they realized that we were not a team to be dismissed.
Mel: Hey, I'm getting proposals from every rest home in America.

What was your favorite part of the race?
Mel: My favorite leg was India because my dad was such a superstar. And I've never been to India before and it's such a beautiful place and the people were so fun. After being in Siberia for so long, it was like being dropped in the middle of a carnival.
Mike: Almost every pit stop involved a cultural moment or event and I loved all of them. But they went by so fast. I'd say to Phil, can't you have them do it again? Of course he wouldn't. But my favorite moment without question was jumping off that cliff and parachuting in the Bavarian Alps. It was so exhilarating to be hanging up there. I'll never forget that!

What was the most difficult part?
Mike: I'm basically vegan and don't eat any of the food that was around. So as it got to the sixth or seventh leg, I was just running on fumes.
Mel: One day we had cheese sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner and he doesn't eat cheese, so he was really hungry.

Would you do it all over again?
Mike: Heck yeah! We're ready for the invite for the All-Stars or a rematch. We'll be there for sure.

Mike, what did your Hollywood friends have to say about your performance?
Mike: Yes, I think The Amazing Race has a different subset of viewers in LA this season. But people were really supportive. Last night and today I got a lot of e-mails from people that were not taking it as well as we did. They didn't seem to snap back as quickly as I thought they would. We had all the teams fly out last weekend and we actually organized a race around LA. Jack Black, Molly Shannon and Sean Hayes popped up along the race to give out clues and Phil was at the finish line. It was just a cool thing just to prove that the race never ends for anybody.

http://www.intouchweekly.com/2009/03/thailand_is_the_end_of_the_roa.php

slayton:
The Amazing Race: Thrill ride
By Casey Gillis

I don’t know about you, but Sunday nights just got a little less exciting now that Mel and Mike White are no longer on “The Amazing Race.”

The father/son duo’s journey came to an end during the series’ seventh episode, which aired on Sunday and had them racing through Phuket, Thailand.

The long-running CBS series, now in its 14th season, follows teams of two as they race around the world, competing in various challenges along the way.

Mel, a gay rights activist who lives in Lynchburg, and Mike, an actor/director/screenwriter who lives in California, were one of 11 teams to compete this season, which included stops in Germany, Romania, India and even Transylvania.

It was a cab driver snafu that ultimately sealed their fate, but don’t feel too sorry for the pair. After talking to them on Monday, I think I’m taking their ouster harder than they are.

Mel said he wishes they’d gone farther, but he has no regrets.

“It was just too much fun,” he said in a joint phone interview with his son.

“You know, you think, ‘If I’d done this or that.’ You have little regrets there that you’ve just gotta chase away. I’m not gonna think about that cab driver. There’s just too much fun to balance it out.”

When they arrived at the pit stop in Phuket, Thailand’s largest island, Mike said they were ready for whatever host Phil Keoghan told them.

“We were in a good place psychologically,” he said. “It would be fun to go all the way, but we felt like we really had had the ‘Amazing Race’ experience. I feel like some of the teams, early on, who got eliminated in the first couple days … that would have been sort of crushing because there’s such a build-up to going. To have the race last for two days just would’ve been depressing. But we were there two plus weeks.”

It was an eventful two weeks that saw Mel paragliding 6,000 feet over the Bavarian Alps and racing down a 3-mile Siberian bobsled course at 50 miles per hour, while his son bungee-jumped from a 70-story drop in Switzerland and ran through the streets of Siberia in only his underwear.

Together, they danced in the streets of India, helped a family of Transylvanian gypsies move and hung out with elephants at the Phuket Zoo.

“To describe ‘The Amazing Race’ is to not find adequate adjectives, and I’m very sincere about that,” Mel told me back in February. “It was thrilling every day. It was awe-evoking every day.”

For the most part, they stayed right in the middle of the pack, but do have two second-place finishes and one first to their name.

“We thought we were done so many times,” Mel said Monday. “We knew we were done a couple times. (Then), ‘We’re first? Huh?’”

It was the race’s fifth leg, in India, that proved to be the most stressful, when Mel struggled during a roadblock that required him to do some serious manual labor.

“When we finished in India … we talked to each other after that leg was over,” Mike said. “It was like, ‘You know what, Dad? We have nothing to be ashamed of at this point. Whatever happens, happens. Let’s enjoy it. We can’t lose now. It can only just be gravy.’

“So when we got behind in Phuket, we were determined to have fun, even if we ended up going out.”

And they did, joking and laughing through most of their tasks.

“We were just so lost most of that day that when we were actually anywhere where we knew we were supposed to be, we were in a good mood,” Mike said. “We were kind of reveling in the moment that we were at least on the path.”

That’s what was so endearing about the Whites. They were completely worth rooting for because they never got so wrapped up in the competition that they forgot who they were or how to enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime experience.

They also never failed to crack me up, whether Mike was describing his father as “part Woody Allen, part Billy Graham and a splash of Judy Garland,” or Mel was saying that he could paraglide over the Bavarian Alps all day, “if I had a sandwich.”

Mel and Mike played the game with class and such wit, and I feel very confident in saying that even if Mel had no ties to Lynchburg, he and Mike would’ve been my favorite team.

Both men say they’d do it all over again in a heartbeat if asked back for an all-star edition.

CBS, the ball is in your court.

The Whites sound off

Mel on the first episode, which had them hauling four 50-pound cheese wheels down a steep slope in Interlaken, Switzerland:
“Michael was so generous and loving to me and pulled me up that hill. The cameras don’t give you any indication of how steep that hill was, and slippery. To start the race on that hill, I thought, ‘What are the next days going to be like?’”

Mike on keeping their composure in the race’s stressful situations:
“Well, it just doesn’t seem like losing your composure is necessarily going to get you done with the task any faster. You know what I mean? Sometimes when we were behind, it was actually more calming. It’s when you’re ahead and you feel like they’re all gaining on you that you’re like, ‘Ugh.’ But when you’re behind, you just sort of feel like you’re gonna give it your best and whatever will happen, happens.”

Mike, on running the race with his dad:
“My dad’s always been my friend, and he’s always been my dad, obviously. But it was just cool to be in the foxhole with him and strategize and kind of share the victories and share the tension of being behind. There was so much comedy, too. Even in the craziest moments, you just look around, and it’s just hilarious. It’s been fun to laugh about some of that stuff, even months later.”

Both on their most memorable moments:
Mike: “I just remember when we were dancing in India, we had already collected all the money that we needed, and my dad was just so into it. I was trying to bring him back. I was like, ‘Dad, we’ve got the money,’ and he was still dancing with the Indians and screaming for money. He was so into it, it was just funny to watch.”

Mel: “It’s gotta be paragliding over the Bavarian Alps. First of all, for the wind to change was so exhilarating. And then to see that beautiful countryside from that far up, that’s a moment you can’t forget.”

http://www.newsadvance.com/lna/lifestyles/local/article/the_amazing_race_thrill_ride/14848/

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