So You Wannabe On Reality TV
by Jack Benza
Published by Allworth Press
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at Amazon.com
Reviewed by Andrea Sisco
I'm going to admit it all up front. I love reality TV. At least some of it. I watch each and every episode of Survivor and The Amazing Race. I've tuned into portions of The Bachlorette, The Mole and Big Brother (I didn't like that one at all). So when the book, So You Wannabe On Reality TV by Jack Benza hit my desk, I picked it up and began reading it immediately.
Whew! This is the book to read if you want to be on TV. I've decided that it is definitely not for me because I'm just too high maintenance and I don't want all of my flaws to be aired on national television. I can't take the humiliation! And I enjoy anonymity far too much. Oh, and my mother really, really loves me and I'd like to keep it that way.
Benza has experience with "reality" TV and shares his experience of participating in over thirty reality, dating, and game shows. He's also produced audition tapes for other "wannabe contestants." He discusses the application traps, audition tapes, personal interviews, physical and mental tests and everything else connected to reality TV in a clear and straight-forward, no-holds-barred manner. And it's not always pretty.
If you want, really want, to break into reality TV, this just might be the book for you. It might also deter you from following that path, and even Benza would say, don't do it unless you're willing to play a part, be humiliated and suffer other "things" at the hands of the producers.
Armchair Interviews says: This book is not only helpful in navigating the reality TV path, but it is both a funny and scary look at this new phenomenon.