Fish out of water scenarios can be cleverly rendered or stultifying and predictable. In the right hands, taking an unlikely subject out of their familiar and placing them in wholly unusual and foreign situations can be an exhilarating adventure, like the fantastic travel, culture and cuisine show, “No Reservations” hosted by American chef, Anthony Bourdain.
The show’s host is genial New York journalist Touré, a hip, urbane writer with a heavy side of charisma and a bitchin’ t-shirt wardrobe. It is that combination of gifts, journalistic training and experience combined with his good-nature that sets the stage for really well-produced segments giving us glimpses of paths less traveled in American life.
Brooklyn native Touré’s producers cook up interesting situations for the writer to be immersed, Touré is not involved in this process. He arrives on the scene with cliff notes and producers at hand giving him the heads up on what he is in for. His job is to find out the “whys” and learn how all on the fly, and in this process become enmeshed with his drafted tutors through the experience.
Touré’s curiosity and sense of humor are the requisite grease that enables him to dig in and get his respective subjects to open up their Kimonos and reveal themselves. He’s really good at it, and he gamely gets his hands dirty learning a new skill with his willing “teachers.” The production company has done a bang up job in finding some fascinating little Yankee sub-cultures that are out there.
The screener that was sent to me for review had three excellent shows. The first was titled “Demolition Derby” which showed off the verdant countryside of rural Indiana in the summer. Larry Staats is Touré’s jovial derby mentor; the training is fast, furious and real, and the hits are tough, but in the end, our host triumphs and finishes respectably in a proper Derby match.
Rodeo days, Toure in makeup
Big Sky country was up next for “Rodeo Clown” in Cody Wyoming. Master Rodeo clown Timber Tuckness throws Touré into a comedy/country calisthenics boot camp, where he has to master jumping neatly inside a tall padded can to avoid being gored by a Bull, and also come up with pithy cowboy joke monologues to entertain the throngs. Not easy.
The last episode “Extreme Pest Control” was fascinating to me. Touré goes to the Bible-belt of Florida, the Panhandle, and meets up with a pest control guy whose motto is, “what would Jesus do” literally. He doesn’t kill the bugs, snakes or varmints - he relocates “all of God’s creatures.” Pest control man Johnny Vincent gets Touré to handle snakes and track through some pretty vile local swamp land. The bee hive relocation footage had me nearly out the door; insects and spiders are my big fear, and no amount of money or fame could have enticed me to do that scene.
The Bee scene in Florida
Grade: A This is good television, well worth watching and family friendly.
I had a chance to ask Touré some questions about his new show.
You immerse yourself easily into these odd little subcultures of American life. Is this your use of your writer's skills - being able to extract the interesting bits of information out of people to get the story?
Touré - I absolutely think this show is an extension of my journalism career. Before, I'd go into a situation with a rapper and write about them while keeping myself out of the lens. Now I go into a situation and explore it and my reactions to it and while I don't use pens, I do write the words that I say which means that I get to express how I feel about what's going on.
You fearlessly go into these very Caucasian sub-groups that even I would be a bit trepidatious to venture in. Are you going to show us slices of off-the-beaten path of African-American lives too?
Touré - Well, one thing I really like about the show is that it's raceless. It's not about a black person entering white worlds. Race is almost never a factor. In the first episode my mentor and I talked about how I might stand out at the derby track because I'm black and we could've made a much bigger deal about my experience as a black guy in a small world not used to seeing black people but we didn't think that was as interesting as the rest of my journey through the derby world.
I really loved Indiana Larry, the derby dad. His demolition joie de vive really jumps at you, plus his t-shirt was just classic. Tell me how your producers found him.
Touré - I'm sorry I don't know how they found him. I meet the subjects on the first day of shooting and I'm purposely kept in the dark so the process of discovery can happen in front of the camera.
I wasn't expecting to like Johnny as much as I did, he was just filled with the happy, good stuff. His respect for the "vermin" most pest control guys would summarily kill was refreshing. What was the most disgusting thing you had to deal with out on the field with Johnny in the Panhandle?
Touré - The most disgusting thing was the walk through the muck in search of the giant snake. Muck is packed mud and each time you stepped in it the smell of stank, old mud from layers down would escape from the ground and attack our noses. That was a lot.
Your show promotes the tag line, "I'll try anything once." Really? Be honest now, where's your tipping point here. I mean it.
Touré - Of course there's things I won't do. They asked me to try competitive eating, but I just couldn't ever do that. We talked about shark diving but I don't swim well enough for all that.
I'm a back-east city girl -and when I went to Wyoming for the first time, the huge open spaces nearly gave me an anxiety attack. Tell me about the rodeo clown experience, and the sheer geographical differences for you, a New Yorker, in Big Sky country?
Touré - That was a great episode. It was a bit of a culture shock as a longtime New Yorker, but everyone I met was super friendly and welcoming. In most episodes we're shooting all day so I don't get a chance to really look around at the town very much, but my mentor Timber Tuckness was a great guy, super funny, could tell jokes all night long. A great American entertainer in the Will Rogers vein.
Worst injury you have sustained so far in production of this show?
Touré - In the lumberjack sports episode I got hurt pretty bad. I spent a lot of time in spikes in their pool which had little rocks covering its floor. So every time I fell off a log I'd go into the pool and bang my heels into the rocks. After over 100 crashes over three days my heels were hurting so bad. Plus we shot the episode in October even though lumberjack sports are summer sports. So Wisconsin was really cold and the water I was falling into was really cold. After three days my ankles were solid like ice.
How big is your crew when you remote on location for these segments? Tell me about them, any funny stories, like the Bee sting melee? Did you have a near crew mutiny on your hands?
Touré - The crews are always very small, pretty much as small as they could be. There's a director who serves as the cameraman, a production assistant who's also an assistant director and sometimes shoots with a smaller camera and a soundman. There were no mutinies; nearly all of the danger is to me alone, none to them. The soundman got stung quite a few times and ran off to get his composure, but he came back.
Larry StaatsFeb 21st, 2008 - 22:21:45
I think you did a real good job with your story, Thanks!
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