This is me on the "Millionaire" set. The show was taped on Wednesday, February 25, 2004, and shown on TV the next evening.
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Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? I Do! by David Fleitz I became a fan of the prime-time game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” when it began four years ago. Last month I heard that the show was seeking new contestants via a phone quiz. I called one Thursday evening and answered the questions correctly. The show’s web site explained that 10 contestants per show were needed for five new “Super Millionaire” shows, and the producers expected more than 250,000 people per day to call the phone quiz during the nine days that the lines were open. Approximately 4% of those callers qualified, as did I, which placed me in a pool with at least 90,000 others vying for 50 available slots on the program. On the following Monday morning I took my car to the shop for repairs, and when the phone rang in my office at 9 a.m., I assumed the auto repairman was on the line. To my surprise, it was “Super Millionaire” instead, and a production assistant informed me that they wanted to fly me to New York, all expenses paid, the next morning for a taping on Wednesday. I was so stunned that I thought for a moment about turning down the offer. I had recently started a new job and had no vacation days accrued, but after I pondered the matter, I decided to accept. I did not know how my company would react to the news, but my immediate boss was excited and cleared the way for me to take three days off. I then called my wife Deborah at work, which is something I only do in the case of an emergency. She was so thrilled with the news that she immediately started planning my Phone-a-Friend lifelines. Each contestant on the show is allowed to designate up to five people as Phone-a-Friends, available to help answer a question by phone from the set. We spent the evening packing and calling experts that we knew among our friends, family, and colleagues, lining up the Phone-a-Friends. At
6:30 the next morning, I boarded a plane to New York. A
car picked me up at LaGuardia and deposited me at the Lucerne Hotel at
79th and Amsterdam, only three blocks from where Deborah
lived in Manhattan for nearly 20 years.
It was 9 a.m., and I was free until 8 p.m., when all ten
contestants would meet for instructions.
I don’t know why I had to be there so early, but they probably
wanted to leave extra time in case of missed flights, heavy traffic, and
the like. The desk clerk
delivered a packet of forms from the show, which I read, and I signed
all the releases. However,
I faced the problem of filling 11 hours alone in New
York. I walked up and down
Broadway, ate lunch at the pizza place in Deborah’s old neighborhood,
and read both the Post and the
Times. In the afternoon
I visited the local branch library and made notes on the human skeleton,
Shakespeare’s plays, and Greek mythology, but it was a pointless
exercise; if I wasn’t up to speed on these topics by now, no amount of
unfocused cramming could help. I
called home, where Deborah had firmed up my Phone-a-Friend lifelines and
obtained the required phone numbers.
I was the only contestant without a friend or spouse present, but
Deborah was far more valuable at home as a lifeline for music and art
questions. I ate dinner at
a Cuban restaurant with our friend Julio, my jazz music and computer
lifeline, and afterwards I returned to the hotel to read the World
Almanac and wait for the meeting. That
evening the 10 contestants met with the production staff, who told us
where we would go and what was expected of us the following day.
We displayed two changes of clothes to the staff, and they
selected what we would wear on the show.
No vertical stripes, all-black ensembles, or commercial logos
were permitted. They
checked driver’s licenses, Social Security cards, and passports for
identification purposes, and instructed us to be in the lobby of the
hotel at noon the next day, when a bus would take us to the studio for
the 10-hour preparation and filming of the show.
We signed a few more forms and received our $150 spending money,
$50 per day for three days in New York. The
bus arrived promptly at noon on Wednesday, and as we drove through the
streets of Manhattan, staffers informed us that we were now in
“contestant isolation.” We
could not communicate with the outside world.
No cell phones, computers, pagers, or the like.
“If you see a long-lost friend coming down the street as we
walk into the building, don’t say hello to him,” the staff told us.
So, when the bus parked at the ABC studios, I couldn’t resist,
and called out, “Hey, look! There’s
an old friend of mine!” We
were assigned dressing rooms, three contestants per space.
There were seven female and three male contestants, and I could
tell that it was a formidable group.
Two of the women were married to men who had appeared on the show
and won money; one husband won $125,000 and the other $64,000 in earlier
shows, so they were already familiar with the process.
Another woman was a near-professional game show contestant who
had been on three other shows in the previous few years.
The smartest and most poised contestant was Michael Koehn, a
lawyer from Wisconsin, and I hoped he would win the Fastest Finger round
quickly and clear the field for me. The
studio put out a great spread, with wrapped sandwiches, mounds of fruit
and cheeses, and a refrigerator full of soda and bottled water.
There were cups of yogurt, trays of cookies, candy bars, and
cereal and milk. We ate,
had a preliminary makeup job, and gathered for a legal briefing.
The lawyer walked us through the agreements that we had signed,
explaining how the prize money would be paid. We
also agreed, under penalty of losing our winnings, to keep silent about
the outcome of the show in the 24 hours between the taping and the
broadcast. If I won a lot
of money, I couldn’t even tell my wife for one day.
Your winnings are held for 30 days after the broadcast, so the
rules must be followed. When
the attorney left, a member of the production staff pre-interviewed each
contestant. They identified
four “talking points” for the host, Regis Philbin, to discuss with
anyone who gets into the hot seat.
I told them that I had seen the French version of the show, that
my wife would get half of my winnings, that we had met while doing
community theater, and a few other tidbits that I hoped would be
interesting. Regis keeps
all 10 cards with him during the broadcast, along with a pre-printed $10
million check for each contestant. Michael
Davies, the British producer of the show, then talked to us for the next 45
minutes about what he expected. He
wanted us to be outgoing, but not in a negative way, and cautioned us
against swearing, losing our tempers, and any type of misbehavior on the
set. The contracts that we
signed stipulated that anyone could be expelled from the game for rude
behavior, though the show has never taken that drastic step. He
discussed the strategy involved in playing the game. For instance, the Audience Poll lifeline was best used early
on for pop-culture or general knowledge questions, while the 50-50
(which eliminates two of the four possible answers) should be kept as
long as possible. If you
keep the 50-50 until the “Next Dimension” round that kicks in when
the contestant reaches $100,000, you can always get the next question
with no effort (by using the 50-50 and then the Double Dip, which allows
you to make two guesses). He sounded like he wanted someone to win big money.
I have often wondered if game show producers try to make things
difficult so they don’t have to pay out lots of winnings, but that
didn’t seem to be the case here.
The staff of “Super Millionaire” acted like they would be
thrilled if somebody won the top prize.
Some
followers of the show believe that the producers instruct the
contestants to talk out loud and stretch the process out while they
consider an answer. Mr.
Davies never said that, but he told us that many people miss questions
because they hurry and don’t take enough time to ponder them.
However, he warned us not to take too much time, because one
early contestant wasted 45 minutes on a single question.
After five minutes, he said, he would give a signal to move
along, and would, if necessary, stop the tape and tell the contestant
directly to speed it up. The
producer furnished us with a signal to use in the hot seat if we were
confused about anything. If
we did not understand a question, or could not figure out how a lifeline
worked, we were instructed to look up and say, “I am confused.” The word “confused” was the key to stop the tape and deal
with the problem. He told
us that, if we want to use a Phone a Friend lifeline, to say “I want
to call my sister Cheryl,” and not “I want to call my sister Cheryl
N----- who lives in Maumee, Ohio,” because we don’t want our friends
and family to get calls from wackos and stalkers. We
were told to go by the information on the screen, not by what host Regis
Philbin says, as Regis has never seen the question and he may
mispronounce words. Regis
has not been given the answers and has no input into the selection of
questions. It is the
host’s job to make entertaining banter, but it is the contestant’s
responsibility to say “Final answer” or merely “Final” to lock
in an answer. Mr.
Davies then escorted us to the set, where we practiced the Fastest
Finger round five times. The
console has a screen and four square buttons, labeled A, B, C, and D. A question appears on the screen, you press the four buttons
in the right order, and then hit a small green button to send the answer
to the computer. Some of
the other contestants, more familiar than I with the apparatus, had been
practicing for months, and looked like they could play those five
buttons like the keys of a piano. I
got the practice questions right, but my times were in the five to seven
second range. I realized
that I had to discern the right answer and enter it in less than four
seconds if possible. By
now it was 4:30, so we went to the cafeteria to eat dinner and meet the
holdover contestant, Clinton Smith, a young man from Cincinnati.
After dinner, we changed clothes, received our final makeup job,
and filmed promos for our local stations. I
looked at the camera and said, “I’m David Fleitz.
Watch me on ‘Super Millionaire’ tonight at 10 on 13-ABC.”
I also answered a question about what I would do with 10 million
dollars. I told the camera
that we would go to Europe and Deborah and I would get a dog, not
necessarily in that order. Both
of those promos were shown Thursday night on the Toledo ABC affiliate. At
6:40 we returned to the set, took our seats for the taping, and saw
Regis for the first time. He’s
a few inches shorter than me, and very fit and thin for a man of 70 or
so.
He went around the circle and greeted us all, wished us luck, and
complimented me because everyone else called him “Reege” and I
addressed him as “Mr. Philbin.”
“You’re a very polite young man, aren’t you?” he said. I
sat in seat number 8, in the middle of the group on Regis’ side of the
set. The spotlights race
around everywhere, but there is no music, because the sound is dubbed in
later. There are two
strategically placed prompter screens for Regis, and everything he says,
except for his friendly chatter with the contestant in the hot seat, is
scripted and appears on the prompter.
To ensure that each Fastest Finger round is played fairly, a
producer goes down the line afterward and asks each player if they
accept the result. If your
screen does not work, or your enter key does not record your answer,
this is the time to say so. The
audience was already in place, and a comedian pumped up the crowd by
telling jokes, tossing T-shirts and hats into the stands, and passing
out candy. Finally, the
show began as Regis stood at a tape mark on the floor, looked directly
into one of the two prompter screens, and introduced Clinton Smith. Clinton
folded at $50,000, and it was time for the first Fastest Finger
question. I answered it
correctly, but it didn’t count, because a computer glitch prevented
three of the ten consoles from recording the answers.
After a 15-minute break, they asked another question, and
Jonathan Criswell, an investment banker from Newark, Delaware, won his
way into the hot seat. There
is a 20-minute delay after someone wins the Fastest Finger round,
because the staff calls all of the Phone-a-Friend lifelines to make sure
that they are available, and briefs Regis about the contestant’s
background and the pronunciation of his or her name and hometown.
Teams of makeup artists scurry around the set and touch up
everyone’s face at every break in the taping. One
of Jonathan’s questions concerned the final three words of Martin
Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
He used the 50-50 to leave two answers, and then had to decide
between “Let freedom ring” and “Free at last.” He said he
thought it was “Let freedom ring” but the audience gasped, and he
quickly changed it to “Free at last” and said “Final answer.”
He was right, but at the next break the producer came onto the
set and ordered the audience not to audibly influence the contestants. The
next Fastest Finger concerned Academy Award-winning actresses, which I
got right, but Jessica McCartney, a 21-year-old from Dallas, answered it
in less than four seconds and earned the hot seat.
She left with $5,000 after blowing a $30,000 question about what
makes a Mexican jumping bean jump (it was a moth, not a flea).
Then came the fourth Fastest Finger, which required that we put
four magazines (Wired, Sassy, Self, and Teen People) in order of their
market introduction. No one
answered correctly, and that failure was edited out of the show.
Regis, for some reason, looked at me and said, “I thought you
would get that right!” Now
came my last chance, because only five Fastest Finger questions are
prepared per show. The
question was, “Put these world leaders in order of their birth,
starting with the most recent.” The
leaders were Tony Blair, Vladimir Lenin, Golda Meir, and Nelson Mandela. I
got it right in 4.75 seconds. Michael
Koehn, the lawyer, got it in 4.69.
He beat me out of the hot seat by six one-hundredths of a second.
I knew he was the sharpest one there. I
watched Michael get to the Next Dimension round, and his $500,000
question concerned the age of life on earth.
He asked the Three Wise Men, a panel of experts, for their help,
and they told him that life on earth began 500 million years ago. I knew they were wrong, but Michael accepted their answer and
lost, though he left the show with $100,000.
I
wanted them to ask another Fastest Finger question, but it would have
been rushed, and all five of the prepared questions had been used.
The show ended at that point, and after 3 hours and 10 minutes in
the chair, the game was over. We stayed for a few more minutes as Regis re-recorded two
pieces of dialogue with Jonathan and Michael, and then the taping ended. Regis
was a gentleman throughout the taping.
The evening was full of technical glitches, computer problems,
and other annoyances, but he never complained or acted like a prima
donna. He spoke to the
audience, joked with the staff, and generally made the evening a
pleasant one for all concerned. He
apologized to the seven of us who missed the hot seat, and I thanked him
for having me on the show. Backstage,
the production people gave us our $10 million checks as souvenirs. The
staff provided a ride back to the hotel, and I called Deborah to tell
her the outcome. My flight
was not due to leave LaGuardia until 8 p.m. the next evening, so I spent
another day in New York. I
window-shopped along Seventh Avenue, wandered through Central Park, and
generally stewed about that .06 seconds that came between me and the hot
seat. It was an
unforgettable experience, however, and when I returned home I framed
that souvenir check and hung it on the wall in my office. When “Super Millionaire” returns to ABC in May, I’ll give
it my best shot to get on the show again. |