Survivor Book Spills The Beans
Credit: USA Today
"Richard Hatch was destined to be the first castaway voted off, and being gay had nothing to do with it," Survivor executive producer Mark Burnett writes in the opening sentence to Survivor: The Ultimate Game.
Burnett's first impression couldn't have been more wrong. Hatch, of course, became the $1 million winner on CBS' hit summer reality show.
Written with Martin Dugard, Survivor the book (TV Books, $17.95) is Burnett's daily journal covering the 40 days and nights on the island of Pulau Tiga as they happened.
Sadly for fans, the "official companion book" fails to live up to its expectations as a tell-all book. It is merely a portable Survivor season, an episodic summary sprinkled with a few grains of surprises. Burnett gratuitously mentions the show's sponsors throughout.
The last chapters, covering the show's finale, were obviously slapped together. The final days on the island are wrapped up too quickly, and the "in-depth" interview with Hatch is just three pages. Typographical errors abound.
However, the book is not without its moments. Among the revelations:
Months before he was selected as a contestant, Richard had already alerted his hometown newspaper of his impending success.
B.B. Andersen contemplated quitting the show on Day 2. On Day 4, he held a meeting and announced to his teammates that he wanted to be voted off and considered throwing the bug-eating challenge.
The production crew was rooting for Gretchen. "In a perfect world, if anyone deserved to win the million dollars, it was Gretchen," writes Burnett. "The desire to see her win was almost unanimous. She was wholesome, she was a survivalist, she looked great in a bathing suit. She was worthy."
Burnett predicted Pagong's demise from the first days. The crew nicknamed the immature tribe as the MTV Beach House, then Party of Five. "They wandered about and sat about and lay about and complained. All their problems were someone else's doing, especially their lack of food."
Greg's antics were upsetting the cast and crew, especially host Jeff Probst. Greg would stalk camera crews, jump from bushes to scare people and talk to himself, and "his body odor was palpable several feet away." Greg "began to allude to performing an act of violence against the island before he left." After Greg's outbursts during a tribal council, an urgent meeting was held to discuss making life more difficult for Pagong. "Greg refused to play by the tribe's or the television's rules . . . achieving his goal of controlling life on the island." After he was voted off, Greg cried.
Susan despised Sean for his alphabetical voting system and high-maintenance lifestyle, which included shaving his chest. As a final insult, Susan borrowed Sean's razor to shave her bikini line.
On Day 31, a local boat hired to ferry the crew between Pulau Tiga and the mainland was lost at sea during a storm. Burnett prepared a statement announcing their demise, but the ship and the two crew members were found two days later, unharmed.
On Day 34, Kelly won a visit to a Malaysian bar on a neighboring island. Instead, the crew blindfolded her, sailed the boat in circles, then went to the other side of the island to the crew compound, where a meeting room had been quickly transformed into a bar. "She never suspected a thing."
By Day 36, Tagi alliance members were purposefully fooling the production crew by discussing fake strategies. Suspicious sound engineers planted hidden microphones to catch the truth, and Tagi's true motives were discovered.
The production crew and Malay employees were convinced the island was haunted. Crew members heard voices, and one felt a presence on her back. At every tribal council, the torch of the person about to be voted off would mysteriously go out before voting had begun. The torch had to be relighted so Probst could snuff it out for the cameras.
"I think being gay is the main reason for my success," Richard later says. "I love myself and consider myself one of the most moral and ethical people I have ever met. I think a very important part of preparing to win involves coming to the island whole — knowing who you are before you get there."
