This job makes me sick
This job makes me sick
Nov 4, 2004
Writhing worm dinners. Body bag handcuff escapes. Horse rectum entrees. Cars plummeting to the concrete down the side of a building. Believe it or not, there are specialists whose jobs involve brainstorming ever more disgusting repasts and terrifying stunts. And NBC's "Fear Factor" has the best in the business.
"Fear" assistant production coordinator Josh Silberman is behind the intestinal dishes, the buffalo testicles, the flies-and-blended-maggot liquid concoction -- he taste tests everything.
"If I can't keep it down, then maybe it's not edible," Silberman says. "(Also), I need to do it for camera-blocking purposes. I'm not allowed to vomit, or it's not right to expect that the contestants won't." Of course, adds Silberman, "If they puke, my stock soars."
Silberman claims not to use recipes for his gross-out cuisine. Instead, he works with his "gross-stunt team" and "gross producer" Scott Larsen to work out a particular show's needs. Then he goes shopping.
"If they say we need to use cow eyeballs this week, I'll go and pick them up at a USDA-approved slaughterhouse. Then, I'll just use my imagination."
Larsen explains that his department's job is to come up with the worst and foulest imaginable idea and then tone it down, so that it gains approval from NBC's standards and practices department.
Consuming human placenta, drinking human urine or blood or bobbing for objects in blood (rather than water) "just freaked people out too much," Silberman says. "But you can't do what you can't do."
Everything else, however, is fair game, and Larsen boasts that everything the gross department does "is either a delicacy someplace in the world or certified as safe by professional entomologists."
As for the creeping critters on "Fear," rest assured they weren't just scooped up from the back of cabinets in the NBC commissary. These are bugs with a destiny.
"Our insects are all lab-raised," Larsen says. "These are good-quality, clean maggots. They aren't dangerous to you but healthy."
The point being: Nothing fed to contestants on the show will hurt them. "I'm not saying it tastes good, but you won't die from it," Larsen says. "Most of the illnesses from our contestants are psychological. No one's been hospitalized."
It's easy to imagine why impressionable viewers haven't copied the recipes cooked up for "Fear," but thus far, the show also has escaped any such issues regarding its physical stunts, too -- a problem that dogged a show like MTV's "Jackass." That's no accident, stunt producer Perry Barndt says. "We make our stunts idiot-proof and bigger-than-life. You aren't going to see too many kids who are going to be able to get ahold of a helicopter or an airplane. We're always conscious of what can be duplicated. We're also keenly aware of making sure it's completely safe before we attempt it on the show."
Safety comes up frequently with "Fear's" producers and is at the core of every stunt attempted. "The show is designed to look a little haphazard," Barndt says, "but we spend anywhere from a month to a year getting the safety criteria just right before any given stunt goes into development. There have been several times where we've pulled a stunt at the last minute because it just didn't feel perfectly right."
Coming up with those stunts is a team effort, Barndt emphasizes. Everything is tested first with stunt professionals to get the bugs out (as it were). Next, a crew member volunteers to be a guinea pig, whose reaction helps determine if the stunt is right.
"An average person is always a better barometer of how a stunt works than a stuntman," Barndt says, "because a stuntman isn't scared like a normal person."
One of his favorite stunts also was one of the most technical, involving a car spiraling off of a parking garage, doing a 360-degree corkscrew in midair and landing atop 24,000 cardboard boxes.
"It seemed almost impossible before we did it," Barndt says. "But as I've found, a lot of the stuff we have on this show now would have been deemed impossible a few years ago -- like our beam walk between two helicopters. It was pretty amazing that we pulled it off."
True of most of the segments on "Fear," at least for viewers. The irony here is obvious: In a show designed to give viewers a sense of hazard and calamity, the one constant that reigns above all else is keeping it all as safe as possible.
"Fear" assistant production coordinator Josh Silberman is behind the intestinal dishes, the buffalo testicles, the flies-and-blended-maggot liquid concoction -- he taste tests everything.
"If I can't keep it down, then maybe it's not edible," Silberman says. "(Also), I need to do it for camera-blocking purposes. I'm not allowed to vomit, or it's not right to expect that the contestants won't." Of course, adds Silberman, "If they puke, my stock soars."
Silberman claims not to use recipes for his gross-out cuisine. Instead, he works with his "gross-stunt team" and "gross producer" Scott Larsen to work out a particular show's needs. Then he goes shopping.
"If they say we need to use cow eyeballs this week, I'll go and pick them up at a USDA-approved slaughterhouse. Then, I'll just use my imagination."
Larsen explains that his department's job is to come up with the worst and foulest imaginable idea and then tone it down, so that it gains approval from NBC's standards and practices department.
Consuming human placenta, drinking human urine or blood or bobbing for objects in blood (rather than water) "just freaked people out too much," Silberman says. "But you can't do what you can't do."
Everything else, however, is fair game, and Larsen boasts that everything the gross department does "is either a delicacy someplace in the world or certified as safe by professional entomologists."
As for the creeping critters on "Fear," rest assured they weren't just scooped up from the back of cabinets in the NBC commissary. These are bugs with a destiny.
"Our insects are all lab-raised," Larsen says. "These are good-quality, clean maggots. They aren't dangerous to you but healthy."
The point being: Nothing fed to contestants on the show will hurt them. "I'm not saying it tastes good, but you won't die from it," Larsen says. "Most of the illnesses from our contestants are psychological. No one's been hospitalized."
It's easy to imagine why impressionable viewers haven't copied the recipes cooked up for "Fear," but thus far, the show also has escaped any such issues regarding its physical stunts, too -- a problem that dogged a show like MTV's "Jackass." That's no accident, stunt producer Perry Barndt says. "We make our stunts idiot-proof and bigger-than-life. You aren't going to see too many kids who are going to be able to get ahold of a helicopter or an airplane. We're always conscious of what can be duplicated. We're also keenly aware of making sure it's completely safe before we attempt it on the show."
Safety comes up frequently with "Fear's" producers and is at the core of every stunt attempted. "The show is designed to look a little haphazard," Barndt says, "but we spend anywhere from a month to a year getting the safety criteria just right before any given stunt goes into development. There have been several times where we've pulled a stunt at the last minute because it just didn't feel perfectly right."
Coming up with those stunts is a team effort, Barndt emphasizes. Everything is tested first with stunt professionals to get the bugs out (as it were). Next, a crew member volunteers to be a guinea pig, whose reaction helps determine if the stunt is right.
"An average person is always a better barometer of how a stunt works than a stuntman," Barndt says, "because a stuntman isn't scared like a normal person."
One of his favorite stunts also was one of the most technical, involving a car spiraling off of a parking garage, doing a 360-degree corkscrew in midair and landing atop 24,000 cardboard boxes.
"It seemed almost impossible before we did it," Barndt says. "But as I've found, a lot of the stuff we have on this show now would have been deemed impossible a few years ago -- like our beam walk between two helicopters. It was pretty amazing that we pulled it off."
True of most of the segments on "Fear," at least for viewers. The irony here is obvious: In a show designed to give viewers a sense of hazard and calamity, the one constant that reigns above all else is keeping it all as safe as possible.
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