Should Andy's Journey Be a Movie?

Ready for one of the weirder confessionals to date? Come along as we explore whether they’ll make Andy’s Survivor journey into a movie, how someone hacked a game show in 1983, and maybe the most toxic version of reality TV in history.

Should your favs have a movie made about them? If you’d told me a year ago that there was a movie about Cirie’s journey through reality television or about Dr. Will’s journey to winning Big Brother, I’d be interested in watching them. I’m LOVING Andy on this season, and he and Genevieve teaming up is really exciting. In the preview for this week’s Survivor, he looks like Tom Cruise as he takes off his glasses with epic music behind him. Back in the day I’d say that Andy’s story this season, if it continues on the same trajectory, would be worthy of an epic film.

Today, my opinion has changed. Reality TV should stick to reality.

Part of why we love reality TV is that it is, real. Even if the games and casts are designed for drama, these are real people having real, unscripted experiences. And there are films, once in a while, that attempt to cover reality TV. I’m going to jump into two films that have made me think twice about future reality TV adaptations.

Want the bad or the good first?

Alright, let’s start with the bad. Sometime in 2025, director Samir Oliveros’ The Luckiest Man in America will come out in theatres. This film covers the Michael Larson scandal, when Larson won $110,237 in one game on our favorite network CBS’s Press Your Luck back in 1984. The short version is that Larson studied that game and figured out how to beat it. Much to their chagrin, CBS execs had to pay Larson his winnings after accusing him of cheating.

In The Luckiest Man in America, we see this all go down over that one episode of the show. Paul Walter Houser, best known for playing creeps and characters and Richard Jewell, gives a great performance as the game show contestant. Unlike New Era Survivor episodes, we’re missing a ton of his backstory. While the game is exciting, the film is missing the verisimilitude - the reality - that we get when watching game shows and reality TV.

I got to see the film at the Toronto International Film Festival so you don’t have to. It’s a good story although I’d prefer one that told more. I’d love to see more of Larson’s prep. Any superfan of a show dreams of what their preparation would look like. I know when I’m watching these shows I’m always thinking about how I’d play in the tough situations. Details matter and since his prep was such a huge part of why he won, it was a mistake to leave so much of that out of the film.

When Jon said the above quote in the first episode of this Survivor season, he called out the reality, including his own, that what players think they’ll do on a show often isn’t what they will do. Few players are able to take that prep and execute. Somehow, Larson studied Press Your Luck and hacked the process, yet we miss all of that in the film, not to mention his future run-ins with the law later in life (including a multi-level marketing scheme that would have made for a fascinating act three). In this case, real life is more interesting than the film and that’s usually true, except…

Reality TV documentaries can actually work.

If the Larson scandal represented one of the first times a cast member exploited a game, Sunsunu! Denpa Shōnen, a Japanese reality show represented one of the nastiest times a reality show exploited its cast.

Its star, Nasubi AKA Tomoaki Hamatsu, is the subject of Clair Titley’s doc, The Contestant (2023 - available on Hulu). If you think today’s reality stars get exploited - if you think any edit on this season of Survivor is cruel (even Rome’s downfall episode) - you’ll be appalled at this story. And different from Luckiest Man, it’s a heck of a watch.

The documentary shows how in 1998 producer Toshio Tsuchiya came up with the idea to trap a naked Nasubi alone in a room and challenged him to enter mail-in sweepstakes until he won 1 million yen. Without spoiling too much, if you’re unfamiliar with the story, Nasubi eventually gets out and then gets exploited again before earning his freedom. Unlike Luckiest Man, we get Nasubi’s backstory, including life before the show, and life after the show, which in many cases are just as, and sometimes even more interesting.

At the centre of the film is Nasubi’s very weird relationship with Tsuchiya, who made him go through a dehumanizing experience and almost killed him. Nasubi’s commentary gives us insights into someone who has experienced something that no person should ever experience; it makes an 100 day Big Brother season look like a spa vacation.

The reason why the documentary works is because the reality of reality TV is the interesting part. We want to see the real stories of these people. We want to see who they were before their experiences, who they became after, and what they might become. It’s why exit press interviewers often ask, “Would you play again?” When people have unique experiences, we expect those experiences to color their futures.

Nasubi’s thoughts, 20+ years after his unique experience, are profound and contemplative. Titley highlights some spectacular things that Nasubi did in the 2010s, including some charitable work with his torturer, Tsuchiya. Reality television manufactures unique relationships between its cast and also between the casts and production; this documentary puts the latter at the forefront. Nasubi and Tsuchiya’s relationship is the foundation of the engrossing doc whereas Luckiest Man doesn’t get deep enough into Larson’s relationships back home to make us care.

Personally, I find the players’ pre and post reality show stories exceptionally interesting. Survivor Fiji’s Earl Cole builds tires for outer space now? Big Brother’s Britney, Danielle, and Derrick are on Traitors season 3? The White Lotus and The Wheel of Time’s showrunners not only make good finales but made it to their own finales? We get to know these people and we root for or against them as they continue their real lives. The old adage that reality is stranger than fiction holds true, or holds real.

That’s my way of saying, no, Andy’s journey, or at least his Survivor experience, as fun as it is, is probably not the best premise for a screenplay. The documentary though… you roped me in for that one. Andy’s Rueda Awakening, anyone?

-Kevin

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