The Mole bonus material—just for you!
Dear newsletter friends,
As you may have seen, yesterday I published my massive behind-the-scenes look at The Mole’s early seasons—especially season one, but also covering the other civilian seasons (2, 5) and Celebrity Mole:
But even though that story is more than 14,000 words—pack some snacks, drink some water!—there were still some fun quotes that, for whatever reason, just didn't fit in: maybe they repeated something, maybe they took too much of a tangent.
So, I wanted to share those with you here, just for you! They're in no particular order; just tidbits from some of the people I interviewed. Enjoy!
best,
Andy
The Mole outtakes
Clay Newbill: "There are people like you there that are still diehard fans and love the show. Even today, and it's been so many years since it's last been on the air, that when when they hear that I worked on the mall, they're like, Oh, I love that show."
John Saade: "There's still that debate over what a prize should be. Obviously, the contestants are playing for the prize, but people are getting the shit kicked out on Wipeout for potential $25,000. Survivor’s always been at a million, but I don't even know that that means anything anymore."
Susan Futterman: "It's a game of skill for money. In many ways, it's like Millionaire, which I also helped set up. I did all the reality shows for a long period of time."
John Saade: "Oh, we hated those disclaimers. The Shark Tank disclaimers [also] made us completely crazy."
John Saade: "I don't know that Survivor 100% dictated how we went with it. I think we were looking at it in a slightly different way. We were trying to find inspiration from things like almost like Clue and Murder on the Orient Express."
David Stanley: "The Mole was really a turning point in how we [Scott Stone and David Stanley] dealt with the division of labor. Because we had gotten extremely busy, and we were doing The Mole and Popstars at the same time, and I believe we also had Legends of the Hidden Temple and Shop Til You Drop."
Susan Futterman: "Really, it was a culture where broadcast standards really set the stage in a lot of ways. At the beginning of every show, besides the rules, you must decide your protocols. What's going to happen to these contestants?"
Clay Newbill: "[Anderson Cooper] fit perfectly because he wasn't your standard TV host that will do like a game show. Reality was new, and this was something really different."
David Stanley: "We started looking for someone that we thought would be able to play that role, and be a good traffic cop, and would have just the right attitude. We looked at a number of people. We had someone that we were enamored with, but Stu Bloomberg, who was running ABC programming ... said we really should look at this guy that's been working in their news department named Anderson Cooper."
Clay Newbill: "As somebody who was all about collecting stories—[Anderson Cooper] started as a reporter—he and I got to know each other very well during the two seasons that he was the host. He shared with me his stories of how he ended up being getting the notoriety that he did in the reporting field. He was really cut out for that."
Clay Newbill: "So we picked our favorites, slammed those [tests] into the first season—I think we just had one or two in the first season that were our design. Second season was different. I think we may have only used one from the Belgian company that created the series. The rest of them, we developed on our own. They were games that required further development."
Clay Newbill: "In The Celebrity Mole, those were pretty much our own missions that we came up with."
David Stanley: "But for all intents and purposes, [Scott Stone and I] were separated. That was when we decided that going forward-basis, there always had to be a senior-level producer or executive producer on every show, and Clay Newbill filled that role in a huge way on The Mole."
Susan Futterman: "The first two seasons, I hired outside people to go on The Mole. I went three and four, and five was done after I left the network, retired."
Susan Futterman: "It was decided after that I would go on location to the shows, which was sometimes fun, and sometimes a challenge. On I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, it rained for 30 days."
David Stanley: "Once you say go, there's no stepping in when things change. And the one thing that happens in all these shows is things change from moment to moment and you really don't have control over it. You put these people in a situation, and then hope for the best."
Scott Stone: "The mole can sabotage everything. And then everyone's acting like the mole, right? So they're all sabotaging. If you don't hold people back, you'll never put any money in the pot. The real goal is to figure out when the mole should sabotage or when they shouldn't, because they can't they have to not sabotage a lot of times, otherwise, literally, the pot would be zero."
Scott Stone: "Why can't the mole keep the money that they take out of the pot? Let's incentivize them to do that. Well, then the mole could do that on every single challenge, and make millions of dollars, and never put anything in the pot."
David Stanley: "We had a broadcast standards person checking us every step of the way to make sure it was done properly and there was no cheating and that everything was handled fairly and all the contestants had a fair opportunity and nobody had special treatment. It was very, very closely monitored and supervised to make sure that nothing was staged and nothing was fake."
Scott Stone: "The only part that the network really should care about is what happens on the quiz. The rest of it's about how much money they win."
John Saade: "In some of the hotels, they'd even black out the shades, in places when there's a chance that they might see some of the setup happening."
John Saade: "We had so much we had so much equipment on the high speed train in France that, at the stop, they couldn't get it off fast enough. All the French rail people were in a panic on their walkie-talkies, because what was supposed to be like a six-minute stop was turning into like this 20-minute stop."
Clay Newbill: "Heather was just at a weak point where she was worried, but she was convinced that Bill was The Mole, which was right. And she decided to bring in another player to form an alliance, and it ended up costing the game, because that person thought it was somebody else at that point—I think she thought it was actually Heather. So that person would have been out, Heather would have been up against Al."
David Michael Frank: "I knew David Stanley socially; we were neighbors, lived about a mile from each other. He said that they needed a big orchestral score, because the original one was done that way. The original one had a whole bunch of famous music they just used and apparently paid very little."
David Michael Frank: "I was [in Prague] either November or December of 2000. And I'd say I was there for maybe four days—maybe I had three days, three and a half days of recording.
David Michael Frank: "It was all done in L.A. They pretty just used those for the two Celebrity Mole seasons. Then, when they brought it back, out of the clear blue sky, in 2009 ... Stone was doing the show and wanted to use all new music that he would own himself, his company. I get a whole new orchestra score, but again in the same style, again with bringing in the electronic instruments here. This time I went to Moscow and recorded with the Moscow Symphony, and it turned out great."
David Michael Frank: "I was just really happy that they thought enough of the music that they gave me a budget so that I could hire a really big orchestra and still have money left over to hire some top musicians in L.A. and mix it properly, and do my best work."
Clay Newbill: "There was a time that [season five winner Mark] led a [revolt]—and it was just a brilliant move on his part. There was a game that they were going to be again, required to be dressed in wacky outfits. He was like, I'm not going to do it, and basically led a revolt. ... And the reason they were saying no is because it would make people think they were at The Mole if they throw this mutiny against production: it's embarrassing. It's ridiculous. I've had it, I'm tired. I'm done."
Clay Newbill: "We never had anything like that happen before. But the fallout after that: We put people in the vans and they start driving back to the hotel. Everybody was abuzz. For them, it was a turning point, because people who maybe were focusing on this person. Because Mark threw it out there, and then other people jumped in, and now all the sudden they had a lot of attention on them as being the potential Mole."
Mark Lambrecht: "The second season I thought was a little bit lighter. It was a little bit more like you said the people were you know, bonding making connections and things. So now that first season I just watched all lighting I really watched it more just being a fan and entertaining and thinking that if I had a chance to play I probably wouldn't do well. So so yeah. I don't know if that answers."
David Michael Frank: "It's very, very rare that a composer keeps the publishing on his music for network-type TV shows. If it's smaller stuff, and the budgets are bad, then you can negotiate. But historically, even the biggest composers—John Williams doesn't own his music to Star Wars. You can't get bigger than that. The first batch of music cues I wrote might be jointly owned by an ABC publishing company and a Stone/Stanley publishing company, and then the last batch, I believe, just Scott Stone's company owns that. When the first album came out, they negotiated with Stan Stanley or whatever and agreed to a royalty. I wonder if they received that as much as I received—I can't remember if I've ever seen received anything. I was just happy when the CD came out, and people would hear it and like it."
David Michael Frank: "Overall an espionage thriller, a la James Bond, a la the classic John Barry scores, with those kind of choral patterns and melodies. Then put my own touch to it, and add more contemporary instruments alongside it. There were so many different elements—like, I knew that there was a quiz every week that that people had to answer to eliminate, I knew there was clock-ticking time, so I had like a specific cue for those things. Then
David Michael Frank: "They did send me each episode, although I'd already written the music, in case there was something that was missing that I needed to add here. If I said oh, you really should use cue M32 here or whatever, it would work best here in this spot. So I would tell them which which music cues would work and the best way to do it. It was almost stupid because they would send it to me and not send me the ending, so I wouldn't know who was eliminated. Before it aired, they would send me the next episode—the same way—I'd see this person isn't in it anymore. Obviously they got eliminated in the show before. So it was kind of silly that they did that. Who was I going to tell?"
Mark Lambrecht: "You're seeing people and they're laughing, they're happy, they're winning money, and they're they're excited. I love that energy; so much of what's on TV very often is negative."
Clay Newbill: "I know that many people at the network were really proud of it. I know that the people that produced the show, we're very proud of it. And it was just a lot of fun."
Clay Newbill: "It's the most fun you can have producing television. Honestly."
Scott Stone: "I've never had more fun producing a show than I have that show. It's just because you're on the edge of your seat every day."