Know your limits
One thing I’ve always said about being an actor is that you have to know your limits – you have to know what you’re willing to do in your career or to advance your career, and act accordingly. If you don’t want to do nudity, then that’s fine – that’s your line. It doesn’t give you the right to complain when you don’t get a role because it requires nudity. You drew your line and acted accordingly. You’ll never stop people from crossing that same line themselves, but you can always stick to your principles.
One of the common places where aspiring actors turn up is on game shows. It’s a quick, easy way to get on television, get experience talking in front of a camera, and experiment with both humor and building tension. As far as game show go, I confess that I’ve never defined a line. “Jeopardy?” “Wheel of Fortune?” Pfft. Kid’s play. “Deal Or No Deal?” Sure, I can do that.
“Fear Factor?” Bring it on. It’s stupid, childish, and grotesque, but it’s somewhat safe.
No, I’ve never defined a line. Until today, that is. I would never be able to bring myself to go on G4’s new show. (link via Some Guy With A Website)
“Hurl!,” which debuted last night on the G4 cable channel, is the first half-hour series that combines physical rigor with eating disorders and gastric distress. Contestants consume massive quantities of sure-to-bloat foods—chicken pot pie, franks ‘n’ beans, New England clam chowder—then engage in such activities as riding an amusement park Tilt-A-Whirl. The “winner” is the contestant who doesn’t lose his lunch. Or to be technical about it, who holds out the longest before he releases the hounds. Call it a pas de spew.“Hurl!,” in other words, is for people who found “Fear Factor” much too nuanced and intellectually complex.
Yes, I know I said I’d go on “Fear Factor.” But “Fear Factor” is merely bread and circuses. Grotesque, overblown, sure – but not ultimately destructive to the human soul.
“Hurl,” meanwhile, is a concept that I find completely obscene. At a time when people in my own country – let alone the rest of the world – can’t afford three square meals a day, we’re actually doing a show where the object is to stuff your face beyond your capacity and then be the last one to vomit? Not only is it grotesque, it’s greedy, boorish, and insulting. It is, at long last, a line that I just wouldn’t be able to cross.
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:07 pm
[...] Glen calls the new G4 show Hurl a program “for people who found ‘Fear Factor’ much too nuanced and intellectually complex” — just because the object of the game is to speed-eat, compete in intense physical activity, and be the last to throw up. My first thought was to wonder if this maybe signaled a final decline of the American empire, and if vomitoriums couldn’t be too far behind. But then I was disillusioned to learn from Wikipedia that “A commonly held, but false, belief is that Ancient Romans designated spaces called vomitoria for the purpose of actual vomiting, as part of a binge and purge cycle.” If you can’t believe in ancient Roman vomit, what can you believe in? [...]