My wife insists on proudly displaying a fully mounted, stuffed  grizzly bear which her great-grandfather supposedly killed  (with his barehands, yeah right…) in our  PROFESSIONALLY designed small living room.  Help me  convince her how bad this idea is.

Signed: Horrified Hubby

Maite’: I say you’re just gonna have to bear with it.
Ahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaa!!!!   Whew…  Someone had to say it.

Daniel: Now that we’ve gotten past that bit of ugliness…  There is
really no place in good design, or any design, really, for the
aggrandizement of animal slaughter.  I say, donate it to a museum.
There’s honestly no compromise for me on this.  Respecting history is
one thing, but some traditions are best left in the past.

Maite’: I agree.  If it were less obtrusive, like a mounted marlin or
a set of stag horns, you MIGHT get away with it in a covered patio or
basement home theater.  But a full size grizzly?  Yikes…  A museum
it is.

Daniel: Right now, local natural history museums, school libraries,
inner city science centers, are all way under funded.  Send that beast
to a place where it can actually teach someone about conservation.

By JD Roberto

This is the second in a series about the reality of reality television. – Daniel

JD Roberto hosting "Food Fight"

Would it upset you to know that before any season of any major Reality TV show a group of producers gets together and decides what’s going to happen?    Is your notion of “unscripted” television offended by the idea of storyboards and series bibles piled up in production offices around Los Angeles ?   Well, it shouldn’t be.   Without these basic tools, your favorite reality show would be a wandering, directionless snoozefest.    Story needs structure.   In the real world, the phrase “let’s just turn on the cameras and see what happens” is only uttered by freshman at NYU film school, frequently with less than ideal results.

Even in the elite world of documentary filmmaking, creators begin the process with a sense of what story they are going to tell and how, in a perfect world, it’s going to unfold.   The 2008Academy Award winning documentary Man on a Wire is described by the New York Times as being “constructed like a heist movie.”   And check this quote from the trade magazine Variety:

Cleverly, he [director Marsh] inserts some re-staged material from the beginning moments that feel like the windup to a heist movie, but unlike many docs including freshly staged action, the line between new and archive is fairly invisible.

If the documentary film that won Sundace, the BAFTA and the Oscar is “constructed like a heist movie” and lauded for blurring the line between actual events and recreations, what should we expect from prime time entertainment?

The collaborative art of making reality TV is a complicated and nuanced endeavor  (yeah, I said art, sue me).    Getting a sense of how casting, story editing and post production adhere (strictly) to age old rules of storytelling will enhance your appreciation for good reality TV and, I hope, your distaste for the bad.

It’s also exactly what we’re going to do next week…

Dear Dan & Maitae,

Thanksgiving is looming and I’ve got  in-laws, friends, friends of friends, family members, pets, and even an old college professor coming over for dinner, and we have no dining table (unless you countmy husband’s old bachelor pad card table with a crooked leg.) The table we love is a Mahogany dining table, but it’s an 8 week wait, or we can buy one we don’t love right off the floor.  Help!

Signed: Run out of of time

Dear Run:

Maite’:Which is gonna last longer, the marriage or a good dining table?  Seriously, I think we both know the answer.  Tell everyone
that you have the flu and send them to Whole Foods for a little
precooked Tofurky goodness, and go buy the table of your dreams.

Love the Tofurky

Good design trumps true love any day of the week, in my book.

Daniel: Slow down there, Scrooge.  I agree that you shouldn’t buy a dining table under duress; in a year, you’ll be glad you waited.  But you can still have a fabulous dinner.  Put a couple six foot folding tables together (40 bucks or so from Home Depot) and go buy a couple yards of way over-the-top fabric for a table cloth.  No one will even notice that they’re eating on Masonite and tubular steel.

Maite’: Actually, that’s MY old trick that Daniel just stole, AS
USUAL!!  You can get a really cool piece of fabric downtown (you’d need 5 yards or so) for about 3 bucks a yard.

Velvets, satins, tapestry chenilles, whatever, you’re just gonna throw it away afterwards; which means you can laugh in the face of spilled red wine and the cranberry sauce you threw at your husband when he told that one joke of his.

Daniel: For a very organic and Autumnal  touch, get some of those mini pumpkin squash things, cut a slit in them lengthwise, and use them to hold up place cards. Printing them on parchment paper gets you extrapoints.  Throw some red and brown fall leaves on top of the tablecloth, on the plates.

Maite: String some English Ivy through your wrought iron chandelier  for an original, organic touch.

Daniel: Then just laugh and laugh when your cousin’s  obnoxious baby spews applesauce all over everything…

Yuck.

From Indoor Kitty: “Orange is young and full of daring, but very unsteady for the first go-round.” ~ Jimi Hendrix Bold as Love

Vickie sent us this:

Orange Surprise

What are we looking at? At first we thought these were pumkin pendants hanging from the ceiling but I was wrong. This very exciting designer lighting piece is a creative use of … Find out at… http://www.interiordesign.net/article/CA6667890.html! You’ll never guess but I will say this: the material is very familiar to those of us who like to toast the Holiday’s. Opps did I Give it away?

Nestle building, Mexico

From Arquitectos Rojkind came this:

Where's the cookies?

Going to find some milk

Herb Ankrom and I worked together on Extreme back in 2005.  He is an incredibly caring and conscientious producer, and can show you a pretty good time in New York as well….  but that’s a story for another time.  Here are three questions with Herb Ankrom.    -Daniel

1. What has been your most memorable experience in reality TV?

My most memorable experience would have to be my time on Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Its hard to select just one moment on that show – there were SO many. Being able to do two things I love – help others and produce at the same time was a magical time and one I hope to be able to do again some day. One highlight I can remember was producing a segment with Elton John when he came to be a part of an episode – that was an amazing moment!

2. Do you think Reality TV can positively affect the world?

I absolutely believe that Reality TV can affect the world, I was a part of that for five seasons on Extreme. I was lucky enough to be very involved with the families of that show and do have a very good opportunity to see how the show affected them after the show was done – and to see what an impact the show had on the community once we were there and after we were gone!

3. What are you currently working on?

My business partner and I have just completed season 2 of our ABC show “True Beauty.” We also have sold a show to NBC which is very exciting, and we are in the midst of development on several other series! So, its an exciting time for DC/TV!

Herb Ankrom on the set of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition