This episode of The Town is presented by 20th Century Studios, Avatar, Fire, and Ash. Don't miss the movie Critics Are Raving is epic and exciting and gorgeous and heartbreaking and stands as one of the greatest films ever made. It's got incredible visuals, jaw-dropping action, and a cinematic achievement. Avatar, Fire, and Ash now playing in theaters and now nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects and Best Costume Design. It is Wednesday, February 11th. I'm old enough to remember where I was on August 23rd in the year 2000. The season finale of a new show called Survivor was watched live by 52 million people in the U.S. alone. Pretty amazing number these days. Survivor was a summer experiment for CBS. All the other networks had passed on the show, but a young producer named Mark Burnett got sponsors to essentially pay for it. celeste munez the head of cbs finally said yes became an absolute sensation of course and essentially created a genre of television the reality competition show complete with the weekly eliminations the real people dropped into extraordinary situations the mind games physical challenges the i'm not here to make friends and other tropes that we see all over tv these days many of them go back to survivor but even then i think very few people would have guessed that the It begins on February 25th. We're doing a series of preview specials beginning this week. They're doing a bunch of new things for the milestone season, bringing back players and doing twists and designs voted on by the audience. But I wanted to go behind the scenes on the show. So there's really only one guy to do that with, Jeff Probst. He's been there since the beginnings, the host, and since 2010, he's been host and executive producer and showrunner, meaning he's involved in every aspect of the show, from casting to twists to random emergencies on set. Of course, the tribal councils. Probst is an interesting guy, always super smart about the business and savvy, in addition to being a five-time Emmy winner. So in the run-up to the 50th season, I asked him to come on The Town, take us behind the scenes, hopefully take a look at producer Craig's audition tape, finally. So today it's Survivor at 50 seasons and the business of one of the most iconic shows in the history of TV. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellamy and this is The Town. okay we are here with jeff probes who is the host executive producer showrunner face of the survivor franchise welcome jeff nice to be here with you matt big fan of your show well that's very nice of you i gotta say i'm a little intimidated you are pretty well known as one of the greatest interviewers in the history of television Wait a second. I just have to take this in. The guy with the most attitude in Hollywood is intimidated at all. I am a little bit. I mean, you like I mean, I guess you're underrated. It's hard to say you're underrated because you've been on television doing the top rated show for 25 years. But you are extremely good at asking questions and teasing out what you need out of your interviews on Survivor. And I think that's one of the many reasons why that show has endured, because I got to be honest with you. I was among the first group of viewers of the show. I remember it very clearly. My law school buddies and I were like, what is this? And we started watching in the summer of 2000. And if you had told me then that this show would, first of all, justify two cycles a year. I know it was very controversial when CBS decided to do that because American Idol was not doing that at the time. And if you had said that this was going to last 50 seasons, I would have said, absolutely no way. People will get tired of it. Well, I remember the first review I read, which said, really interesting concept. The only problem is the host. The Rock and Roll Jeopardy guy. Yeah. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm the only problem with the show. Everything else is interesting. They could have Dunkelman'd you. Oh, don't even say that. Don't say it. My life would be so different. I know. They could have Brian Dunkelman'd you. Yeah, this was the best thing that ever happened to me. So yeah, I hear you. I don't think anybody could have ever predicted this kind of run. There's just no way. You keep your head down and you go one season at a time and you look up and suddenly it's 25 years. I know. It's amazing. If you had to give advice to your season one self after having done 50 seasons of this, what would it be? Do the same thing. Because there's a lot of stuff from like that first season, for instance, that I could cringe at if I were going to be critical. What makes you cringe when you look back? I'll tell you, the big idea we talked about a lot was let's create our own world, our own vernacular. Things like the tribe has spoken and tribal council, castaways, tribe mates, not players in competitions. And so with that came a lot of mythology. Like when the players walked into tribal council, Mark really wanted to have a barrel, a treasure chest full of money. And we didn't like, most of us didn't like it. We thought it was corny, but Mark said, I never want them to forget you were actually playing for $1 million. So he had a really strong point of view. We also had a gong. When you walked in, you had to hit the gong. It seemed corny at the time, but it was part of a ritual. We wanted you to feel like you were the last to the party. We've been here for a thousand years. And we did a conch shell that season where you had to have the shell before you could talk. A lot of those ideas didn't work. But the reason I would say do the same thing is Mark was really generous in saying, just try things and let's see what's working. It's really hard to explain to people now who like Craig or others who maybe weren't watching or even alive at the time, that how famous these castaways became. Yeah. Because a friend of mine, I was living in L.A. at the time. A friend of mine was actually dating Colleen from that first season. Wow. And it was crazy because we would go out and just over that summer, it became like she couldn't even go anywhere because people would come up and say, oh, my God. And it was the first real time that regular people had been thrust into this kind of stardom via a competition show. Now, it's obvious. Everybody knows these people, your favorite reality star, but it's not the same as when 50 million people are watching the finale of a show and there's nothing else like it on television. Well, I had a really interesting vantage point because I was not talked about. Nobody knew who I was. No stories were done about me. It was about the players, but I was often around because we'd be at an event or a press situation so I could watch what you're talking about. I went to the Super Bowl with Richard Hatch after the first season ended, and it was to promote our second season. And every two steps we walked, it was Richard, Richard, Hatch. Everybody in the stadium knew Richard Hatch. And then, Matt, for season two, everybody was aware of Survivor. And it premiered to like 45 million people after the Super Bowl. And now you got Colby and Elizabeth Hasselbeck and all of these people that were instantly thrust into the spotlight. Not a slow burn like the first season. At least they knew what they were getting into. I think for some of these first season people, it was quite a rude awakening. Absolutely. I mean, that is whiplash, especially with Survivor. Because as you said, 50 million. I have a Hollywood Reporter cover that says 72 million people watched part of that finale. Oh, my God. That's a lot of awareness for somebody who was a truck driver from Wisconsin six weeks ago. All right. So I want to talk a little bit about your role as showrunner. I mean, everyone knows you're the host. Everyone knows what you do on camera. But since what was it? The 2010 season? What was the season that you took over from? Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. You are you are the showrunner, meaning you are involved in every aspect from the casting to the twists that they do on the on the show. to everything that we see. So how is the show different under you as showrunner than it maybe was under Mark Burnett? That's a really interesting way to ask that question because so much of Survivor is based on the point of view of the person who's leading the creative and leading the team. And so I did have a different angle I wanted to take and that was number one, I wanted to make Survivor a family show. And I knew what that meant to me. It meant the type of people we put on, the type of stories we focus on. I also wanted to make it even more cinematic. It was already cinematic, but we've taken it to another level. And we've spent a lot of time on lenses and time of day and how we're going to shoot things. And then the other was that I wanted to really take on the Joseph Campbell idea of this hero's journey and design a game that is the lure. The game of Survivor is deliciously fun to lie to see all that stuff But the trick I think is the game is the MacGuffin You play the game because it fun but the experience you get is what changes you And so I very much about that Everybody on our show knows we think of our show in stages and they relate to Joseph Campbell and it's very nerdy and deep, but that's what's keeping our engine fueling. And how did you make it more family? Because it's funny you say that. I remember back in the beginning, there was a lot of debate about whether this was a show you should watch with your children because of the lying and deceit. Now it seems kind of quaint within the culture. I mean, you've got like the president openly lying, but how did you change that? Well, I think you hit on something with the game because I think in the beginning, the players were sort of teaching us what this format was going to be. And a lot of things became personal. Once we started adding more game design, it freed the people up to play. It is a game. So lying is one of the tenets of the game. So you're okay to do that. The other thing is you look at our casting now, the type of people we put on the show tend to be people you want to root for. Not always, but we're not putting people on that you just don't like at all. And then I think the other is the type of stories you tell. I have a much more playful sense now. I love Survivor. I love having fun. I love making dumb comments. I think of kids, Matt, constantly. And again, our crew knows it's six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 year olds. That's who I'm trying to get to, to say, you could do this. You get that imagination going. And when I meet them on the street and I meet them all the time, I ask them, do you think you could make fire? Yes. Do you think you can sleep in the jungle? Yes. They're already thinking about it. Craig really wants to be on the show. We'll talk about that after, but it's been a lifelong dream. I'm sure you get that all the time. Well, we'll find out if Craig has even applied. That's true. Okay. How do you prepare yourself for these tribal council discussions? Like Do you consult with the contestants and say, I'm going to go here, here, here? Do you prefer to surprise them? Do you psych yourself up? You sort of have to be a quasi-psychologist on this show. And how do you prepare? Well, there's no interaction with the players like what you just suggested. There would never be me saying, hey, here's what we're going to talk about tonight. That's part of it. This sounds crazy, but I really, here's what I know going into tribal. I know who we think is going home. It doesn't mean they are going to go home because we have these live tribals where sometimes things change. But I have a basic idea and I also know all the critical information. Who has any kind of an advantage or a twist that might come into the game. So I'm prepared for which direction it might go. But the truth, Matt, this is the absolute truth. I just walk in and I start asking questions and they're not that complicated. It's just trying to read the group and see where, like you can feel tension. Sometimes they walk in and I can tell, oh man, they are in a mood. Other times they're walking in laughing. So you go in that direction, but there's no big science. I don't have cue cards or cheat sheets or anybody in my ear. It is an improv for sure. And it's probably a lot easier as a production now that you have a home base in Fiji. Yeah. Jumping around the world like you did in those early seasons had to be a huge pain in the ass. Now you know the environment you're dealing with. You know how to shoot it. You've got your people, you know, the angles. Like, it must just be a lot easier that way. Were you in support of that, Jeff? Or is that something you didn't want to do, permanently move to Fiji? Well, no, actually, Craig, it was a lifesaver. Here's what happened is, as the years went on, it used to be we could go all over the world and find small islands and then places where we could stay, either build a tent city where we all live in tents or some temporary housing. But as the years went on, a few factors happened. Population growth. A lot of the places that we shot in the past now have hotels on them. The second was the weather. It is changing. And places we used to be able to shoot now have such tremendous storms. In fact, even in Fiji, we've evacuated twice because of high cyclones. And the other was political unrest. There are now countries we simply can't and wouldn't go to. And the last one is the dollar, the falling dollar, the value overseas. So when we went to Fiji, like 10 years ago, I met with the AG and said, here's the deal. If you will pay the rebate, because they give us a rebate, but you never know if they're going to pay it. They're an island nation. I mean, what are you going to do? I said, if you pay the rebate, we will make Survivor synonymous with Fiji and we'll work with your tourism board and we'll make this a win-win. And it has been an unbelievable partnership. What is the season of Survivor cost to produce now well i can't give you the numbers but you can give me a you can give me a ballpark i'll tell you this here's how i'll answer it our budget has not gone down but where you have to be adaptable is your costs still go up crew members get raises format fees go up and so well the probes fee better be going up or i'm going to talk to your reps i'm doing a little leverage there be the face of the show you know it's funny you say that that was the hiccup with when mark wanted to make me showrunner. And he went to CBS. They said, you're going to give that much leverage. You're going to let the guy be the face and let the guy be behind the camera. And Mark said, I trust Probst. And I have never used it as leverage. I'm grateful for it. But it's funny you say that. Anyway, about the budget, here's what I was going to tell you. The budget stays the same, but your costs go up. So you have to adapt. So one thing we did is when COVID hit, we couldn't do our regular 39-day season and then do another 39-day season. Because with the quarantines, we would have been out there like 150 days. And it was untenable. So we sat down and said, how many days do we really need to do this show? We came up with 26 days. That's one third less. And I had a few people tell me, you are going to destroy the format because you can't steal a third of the production days and still deliver the same 13 episodes, 16 hours to CBS. but we thought we had a handle on it and we did and we have done that and then that we went from 60 minutes to 90 minute episodes so we've actually cut one-third of our shooting and deliver one-third more product yeah i saw some grumbling online from fans about the shortened seasons but you know what they still watch yeah and i you know fans the hard thing with survivor fans is they're so passionate but they don't always have all the information right there's a There's a lot of factors that go into making this show. And ultimately, I hope they trust us. But I don't think we're ever going back to 39 days. Yeah. What's the most difficult conversation you've ever had with a CBS executive about the show? Wow. Really, that's a good question. I'll tell you. Years ago, I was not allowed to talk to marketing at all. And I did not understand it. I'm the showrunner. I just shot the show. I know what the show is about. Why don't we dovetail your ideas with what really happened? And I was told, church and state, brother, thank you, stay away. Very frustrating for me. It made no sense. Now, with Amy Reisenbach and Mike Benson, I mean, it's a whole new thing. And I'm a collaborator. We're collaborators. We text with ideas all the time. And that feels great. I can't believe the relationship I have. But yeah, if you talk about some triggers, it would be in the past where I felt like they just wanted us to make the show and go away. And it felt weird to me to not be partners. Well, and you've had some situations that have come up where, you know, contestants being creepy or you have to have standards intervene or there's, you know, weather or things like that just come from doing a show like this. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, really, if you look at the 750 or whatever episodes we've done, we've had very few situations. But what I like about our show and our commitment is we show it. we show it exactly as it happened. We put it right out there and we try to do it in a way where families can talk about it. And this is something I hear from parents all the time. They will say what you just said, Matt. And they'll say, you know, every so often a topic comes up. It could be about race. It could be about gender. It could be whatever. We talk about it. And then you can talk to your kids and say, how would you handle that if somebody did that to you? We had a guy out this guy, Zeke, as being transgender. It was a horrible thing to do, But the guy, Zeke, who it happened to handled it so beautifully. He was so composed that he turned it into this incredible teaching moment. Well, don't you cast people like that, knowing that it could come up? I mean, I used to talk to John Murray on The Real World, where they would cast people knowing that it would become part of their storyline, the coming out or the revelation of some dark secret or something. No, here's what we tell every player. You can ask any player. And we said it was Zeke. your story is yours to tell if you want to if you want to talk about it if you want to come out if this is the time you want to let your family know that you're gay that's all for you we never would have brought it up to zeke and matt we didn't this was his second season playing and it was near the end of the season and this other player was desperate and made a really unfortunate decision but we would have never brought it up that that one of the things that fun about this show is it not scripted It not loosely scripted It not loosely suggested We just watch. The format does the work. We stay out of the way. You go write the show and then we'll deliver it to the audience. So you must watch a lot of the knockoffs, you know, the shows that try to take elements of Survivor or blatantly copy Survivor. Why don't those shows work? Why has Survivor... I know you're going to say it's better produced and you're going to say that there's something about the rigor that you guys bring to it. But at this point, 25 years into this, you'd think that one of these shows would hit. You know, Idle Walked so that The Voice could run. Where is the voice of the Survivor format? Yeah, it's a really good question. I don't know that I have a good answer. I mean, maybe stuff like The Traders. I mean, all of these shows owe Survivor a debt for the entire elimination concept and that, you know, I'm not here to make friends. And, you know, the kind of modern weekly elimination that we know owes a lot to Survivor. But there's never been something like Survivor that has hit the same way. I don't know. I can tell you what I think. I think the format, you may think this is corny. I think one of the things that's unique about Survivor is the format speaks to us. It speaks to something. There are lots of fun shows. There is no show adventure like Survivor where you take a group of strangers and you literally leave them alone in a jungle and you say, no supplies, good luck. By the way, every few days, you're gonna have to vote somebody out. And in the end, all those people you voted out, they'll decide who wins. Good luck, see you later. There's no show like that. There's nowhere to hide. You are stripped of everything. And I think at its core, that's why I was leaning into Joseph Campbell so much. I do think there's something a little bit spiritual about Survivor when you get into it. But I think to the other part of your question, I think a show could break. What's hard right now for a new show is you have to be great every week and you have to be great every season, which means your creative cannot falter. You cannot have a bad season. So you got to dump all your best ideas into season two and then what you got left in three and then by four. so I think the longevity that's what's going to be a test for a show like traders which is really well done and it reinvent itself over year after year after year yeah I know I remember doing a Hollywood Reporter roundtable with you early on in the success of the show and I remember asking why Survivor hasn't done a cold weather season and if I remember correctly it was it came back to that something about that format and the stranding people on an island that is what works and you guys didn't want to screw around with that. Is that the case? Yeah, and the real deeper answer is when you're cold, you're not out climbing a tree to get a coconut or spearfishing. You are bundled up trying to stay warm. So we talked about one location, I can't even remember where it was now, and we just kind of imagined what would happen and we realized quickly the show will crumble because what makes it good is you can run off in the jungle and you can sleep in the dirt, you can go spearfishing. You know, all of these things you can do in nature when it's 80 degrees that you would never do if it was set 15 below. You guys should do a season set in downtown LA. That would be a real test. Yes, Survivor LA. Exactly. I know. But also, when you cast extremely hot people, you want them to be wearing very little clothing. I think that was true for a period of time. If you look at our casting now, we really don't pay attention to that. We really don't. If you study our casting, what's happened is we've gotten more interesting, more diversity, and more stories that really remind me that representation matters because since COVID, we've been much more diverse and every single ethnic group that applies is up. And when we meet them, they almost always say, well, I finally saw somebody on your show that looked like me or talked like me or was where I was from. Was there a conversation as to if Mike White was too famous to be on the show? Not for me. Mike texted me months ago and said, okay, I just want to tell you, if you're doing something special for 50 and you would like me to be a part of it, I'm in, but I will need to know at some point so I can set up my White Lotus schedule around it. Oh, trust me. Trust me. They were annoyed at HBO. I know this for a fact. They're like, yeah, we got to work around Mike's survivor schedule. But even when he first came on, was there a conversation of, should we cast Ned Schneebly from School of Rock on the show or will that disrupt things? Yeah, there was actually a conversation and you're hitting it, which was, it was a different team of leaders over there. Kelly Call was there. But what Kelly said was, do you need him? Because he's a big celebrity. He's a big name. Do you need him? And I said, he will be the single greatest storyteller in the history of our show. And I'd like to have him. And Kelly's like, okay, great. So that was the only question was, and that is how CBS deals with me all the time. There is so much trust. And I've really learned that if you can make the show for the money they give you and deliver, they will let you keep delivering. And so, yeah, they let us have money. What is your day like as a producer on the show? When you're off camera, like when you are during the middle of the shoot, what are you doing on a daily basis? It's pretty much nonstop. You're either, I'm either with the players, that's when we're shooting. I mean, we're shooting the players all the time, but involving me. Or you're either, we have a process, we test, first we test ideas, and that's with no cameras. That's just a small crew, whoever's intimate to the project. And we really try to work out the kinks. Then we do rehearsals, full cameras, and we shoot everything. Then we look at tape, and then we tweak a little bit more. Those are two big areas. And then you have various approvals all day, anything from art department related to, you know, a new risk reward journey that we're doing, or even sometimes how we're going to cover something that's brand new. I'll meet with Scott Duncan, our DP, one of our DPs, and say, let's shoot this this way to make sure that when we cut back to the beaches, it differentiates itself, you know, and it separates. So it's, and if you have tribal council, then you're finishing at 10 o'clock or 1030. Yeah. And when you say rehearsals, are you rehearsing with the contestants? No. No. I was like, why would you give them that opportunity? No, what we do is we have, they're called the Dream Team. It is the greatest paid internship you will ever have in your life. It's very competitive, but we have like 20, 21, 22, 23-year-olds. And their job is to basically to practice these challenges, to find the problems, to find a loophole. And they got to go hard and they do and they get beat up and bloody and bruised. But they are the spirit of our show every season because it's always a new group. And so we run a full, if we have a challenge that's 100 yards long, we've got 30 cameras working and moving and jumping and tripods going over here to reset for a repo. We run everything. And then Dave Dryden, our director, will look at all the footage and go, okay, on this close-up, let's make sure we rack down to the hand to get the knots. Because we only get one shot with the players. We have never done a pickup. We never ask them to do anything again. You don't? Really? I think that's a staple of most shows. Well, we don't. You don't do that. Interesting. Yeah. Why does it take a thousand people to do a season of Survive? You said that recently on another interview. Well, we have 400 of our primary crew, our international crew from, say, 20 different countries. And then we have about 400, sometimes more, local Fijians, which are day workers that come in from their islands. The reason is we build a city. So if you imagine a normal shoot in Atlanta, everybody's in a hotel, you go to dinner, you meet your friends, somebody comes to visit. We're on an island, a mile long island, this kind of older resort that we're lucky to get every season. And that's it. There is no restaurant. We have catering. Our kitchen staff makes 100,000 meals every year. We have our own medical department. We have our own safety department. We have our own accounting department. We have everything. It is like you're a community and... The survivor accountant comes to Fiji? We're paying bills the whole time we're there. That's true. I guess that's probably the plum assignment in the CBS accounting department. Well, here's the cool part of our world. If you ever come visit and you're welcome, is our culture. It used to be that we had a lot of confidentiality. We didn't want anybody to know anything. So nobody could visit location. And it was very isolated. But that was when we were all young and nobody was married or had kids. People started having families and I quickly realized this is not tenable to have these people leave their kids. So really the first big thing I got at CBS was to have them let go of the confidentiality. And I just said, we won't survive. I won't keep coming. Nobody's going to keep coming if we can't bring our family. So now check this fact. We have 73 babies born to people who met while working on our show Wow That crazy Met and have 73 babies. So Matt, if you come to location, like season 50, we were shot there. We have 15 kids, little kids running all over the place. So there's all this joy and happiness because dad's right over there working. Mom's right over there working. Maybe their kid is old enough now to work on the show. We have a lot of parent-child relationships. It's really unique. How much do you follow the drama at the corporate level of your company? I mean, you're one of the longest tenured CBS talents. You're obviously a big priority for them at the company. Do you have any relationship with David Ellison? What is that? Not David, no. All I've heard from George was... George Cheeks, who runs CBS. George just said, hey, I just want you to know, David wants you to know that Survivor continues to remain a massive priority. So just keep doing what you're doing. And, you know, Matt, this, you know, Survivor 50 is obviously a big season for us, but CBS promised me, they made a point of saying, go out there and kill it. And we will support you like you've never seen before. And man, they are. We have so many things happening for 50. Yeah, you're doing this whole run up to the 50s. you're getting plugged up the wazoo on football. It seems like you're getting a priority. Yeah, and they really are. And that's what I meant earlier. I talked to some of my other friends in the industry and they say, well, do you ever get notes? And I said, not really. Mitch Graham, my day-to-day, he might say, hey, clarity issue here. Can you remind me who that is? But for the most part, they continue to let us flourish. And here's the analogy I always use with our team is, we were given this glass ball. It's this beautiful glass ball. I don't want to drop it. and break it. But we do have to be willing to throw that glass ball very high up in the air. And then we just got to catch it because you do have to reinvent. We reinvent Survivor all the time to keep fans happy and to keep players off balance. Well, I think David Ellison should be kissing your ass way more. You're the face of that show. So there's nowhere else you want to take this franchise. Is there a place that you guys haven't been able to go or do or something that you want to do with it? Maybe a digital offshoot, maybe a follow-up show, you know, Survivor alums doing some different game. Is there anything you'd want to do with this that you haven't done? No. And all those ideas are ideas that get talked about. And then you just think about the dilution of the franchise. And it's the same reason I was never driven to have a production company and have 10 shows because I'm more, I want to put all my energy into something. And so I just decided I want to put all my ideas into Survivor because the format can handle any idea. There's not a situation you could suppose that you couldn't try on Survivor because the format is very simple. A group of strangers must work together while conspiring against each other. You can do whatever else you want in there. So there's no limit. And even for 51, we've got an idea of where we want to take the show. So I don't think it's a physical location. I think it's a creative approach to where the game goes. And it's been smart, too. Like, they tried to do all sorts of weird things with The Challenge, which I enjoy, the MTV show. And, like, it just never really worked. And then they did a CBS season with international people. And I don't know. You're right about the franchise dilution and being smart about keeping the show what people love. And I think a lot of times in town, people, they can't resist. They try to exploit what they've got. And then ultimately, they end up killing the baby. All right, Craig has some questions. Craig, please restrain yourself. If you have a contestant video, please, you can send that to Jeff separately. Look, it's a conversation I need to have with my wife. And that's going to be the hardest challenge is to get my wife to agree to even allow me to submit. But I could ask you a million questions, Jeff. I love Survivor. Are there conversations in production meetings about how ruthless you are in terms of the resources and the food that you're providing contestants? Do you have some people who are a little bit more strict and want to kind of remove some of the accommodations that you give people and other producers who are more lenient? Yeah. Well, we talk about it as a group. And right now- Because it's changed kind of what you provide. Yeah, it has. It has. When we stopped for COVID, that was really the first chance we had had to sit down and look at the show. And Matt Van Wagen and I, kind of my partner on the show, we just sat back and started thinking about what the show could be and where else you could take it. And Dangerous Fun was something that we really landed on. And then that became, okay, what about no food? What about no supplies? What about really dangerous advantages that if you pick them up, they may explode on you? And I think that's kind of what you're talking about. And we're really happy with that in terms of, I don't think we should be giving them food very often and supplies, because I think that struggle is part of what gets you down and breaks you down and then opens you up. Have you ever tried to live the survivor way, like the way that contested you to get a sense of what it's like? Have you done a week? I have not done a week. And it's funny. Oh, that's BS. You got to walk the walk. We had some influencers come out for Survivor 49. And we gave them, I think it was a 36-hour test. And oh, my God, they were destroyed. And it did. I know I'm an imposter, Craig. I'm fully aware that I talk smack that I have never walked. That's funny. Thank you, Jeff Probst, for coming on the show. Matt, thanks for having me on. We're back with the call sheet. Craig, let me have it. You probably want to know why I'm wearing a suit. I know why you're wearing a suit. I saw your Instagrams. Yes. You were at the Oscars luncheon, and I have to say, quite a flex out of you sitting in the very front row next to PTA. Okay, can I explain that? First of all, the Oscar nominees lunch, if you don't know, it's like all the nominees get invited to this lunch. The Academy does every year. It's very nice. And it's really like, it's the quintessential Hollywood is just high school with money. What is the point of it? What's the point of the lunch? the point of the lunch is to take a photo where everybody gets their name called they literally get a certificate for being an oscar nominee yeah and they are given a speech brought by the head of the academy that tells them when they win if they win to not thank their agents you know be emotional like it's basically just a prep pep talk for it but what it really is it is like a yearbook photo where you get up on the bleachers and take a photo of the whole the senior class absolutely and it's Like everyone gets their senior superlative and gets up on stage. What it really is, is a chance to campaign. Everybody is there shaking hands, charming people, making themselves known. You know, it's a big faux pas to miss it because it shows that you don't have respect for the academy. So you got to go. And tons of media there. Tons of media. And what they do is they put a journalist at most of the tables. so what they do it was not that i was deemed cool enough to be in the front row and the you know the head table you literally put your hand in a fishbowl of table numbers and pull one out when you check in as media it's a lottery it is a literal lottery to see where you sit and i happen to get table number two so i happen to end up sitting next to paul thomas anderson and across some Jesse Buckley. It was a pretty sweet seat for me. Do you think it was a frozen envelope situation and they wanted you up there? I seriously doubt that. Knowing how the Academy thinks of my coverage, I seriously doubt that. But I will say it's rigged because there are some tables that do not have journalists at them. And guess who sits at those tables? Leo DiCaprio, Timmy Chalamet, Emma Stone. Like no media at those tables. But Timmy was very nice. He says, continue to be nice to him, which is funny. But PTA was great. So honestly, it was a great experience. Like, I don't really care about celebrities much, but it was a fun environment because it was kind of, everybody was kind of unguarded and like actually having a good time. Did you have any takeaway coming out of this that you want to make a prediction on? My prediction today is based on some of the interactions I saw, I'm going to predict that Paul Thomas Anderson will work with timothy chalamet on an upcoming project they had some kind of vibe going like almost like a little sign language thing where they were like making gestures at each other and they they were sort of on a wavelength it was almost like pta was kind of courting him and timmy was courting him back i know actors and directors do that kind of like mutual love affair stuff a lot but this seemed like something was up so i'm going to go out on a limb and say that Chalamet will be in an upcoming PTA project. I mean, sure, right? He's like the hottest director. You know, Timmy's the hottest actor. Also, you know, you follow in the Leo Cabrillo playbook. You work with all the best directors. It would make sense that Timmy would want to work with a guy like PTA. No superheroes and no drugs. No hard drugs. All right, that's the show for today. I want to thank my guests, Jeff Kropes, producer Craig Horlbeck, artist Jesse Lopez and John Jones. And I want to thank you. We'll see you one more time this week.
