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Two Hosts and a Model: Chapter 1 |
| Written by Nathan Weaver | |
| Thursday, 07 February 2008 | |
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Share it:      Chapter 1: Introduction In January of 2003, the late George "The Wiz" Jones met with Deborah DeWitt of East Central College at Rolla, Missouri (ECC) to ask if she knew any students that would be interested in doing a TV show for Channel 6 - Fidelity Communications. DeWitt then called Benjamin Little to see if he and Nathan Weaver would be interested. They jumped on the bandwagon and for almost 9 months the TV series "Two Hosts and a Model" tried time and time again to be born prematurely. In the end, it gagged on its own umbilical cord. From the beginning there was a lot of hard work, lack of preparedness spontaneous scheduling, and in the end only one rehearsal during the entire eight month run. And that was why the show was such a success. It just makes sense. In the absence of professionalism, we had raw creativity. Unfortunately, this also led to some raw talent as well, but that's practically beside the point. It is a well-known fact that TV shows today are not cast on talent. We were ahead of our time. The public just wasn't ready for it. When we think about the show, we think of the film "Citizen Kane." No, the show was not an important step in television as Orson Welles's masterpiece was to filmmaking. We think about the character Charles Foster Kane and find the character very comparable to the show. The older it gets, the more repulsive it becomes. The truth is it was experimental. We had no clue what we were doing (which is what experimental means), but in the end we had learned many valuable lessons. Like, for example, what "Rosebud" means. Essentially the series "Two Hosts and a Model" worked to bring its audience news fast, exclusive interviews and in-depth coverage of the news stories they wanted to hear about. Of course, this meant news stories that were amusing, reports that were fake or just humorous in some way. As far as in-depth coverage was concerned, we did as about as good as any network news show would... we failed miserably. The show was essentially a mock news show combined with sketches and included one local interview per episode. The news stories were putrid, because neither Little nor Weaver maintained experience in broadcast journalism or fake news stories to write anything amusing. No, not even in the least. We stuffed the show with cheesy jokes and strived to be lighthearted, clean and fun for the whole family. The hope was that we could keep people smiling, possibly laughing and entertained for 60 minutes. Yes, this show was an hour long waste of your time. Not a half hour show, but an hour long one. The show itself was shot mostly in and around the ECC campus. But we often made our way off campus to various spots around town to shoot reports, interview guests and put people on the spot at local events in a segment called "Out and About Rolla." As cheesy and one-dimensional as the show was, behind the scenes feuds slowly became common place regarding the content of the show. Many of these themes and disputes were actually worked into the show with small reality scenarios among the hosts, the models and DeWitt (our fearless leader). In the "Two Hosts and a Model: Gone Wild at Student Appreciation Day" episode, Weaver took a class aside to give them extra credit for appearing on the show (as their professor had promised them) and he then improvised this quote, "You know what's funny, you know what's odd? We haven't gotten anything for being on the show and they get extra credit? That's garbage." The quote, though delivered as a funny bit, was actually one of the many truths about the show that was causing strife amongst its members and helped in aiding to the show's demise. Even though the show hasn't been producing episodes since 2003, we still pride ourselves on being a TV show. Yes, we are television series that never airs an episode. And what's wrong with that? Once again, we believe, we are ahead of our time. Copyright 2008 Nathan Weaver |
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