A lot of TAR fans have been emailing asking if we made it onto the show. The answer is: No, we were never contacted by CBS or their casting agents, despite widespread interest and support for our efforts. We're both still fans of The Amazing Race and would still consider being contestants for TAR 13, which just ended its open casting calls. Thanks for all your emails.
August 10, 2005
Casting Directors and Blogs
The good news is casting directors are starting to pay attention to blogs. Check out this post over at BoingBoing about a casting person at ABC's "Wife Swap" show looking for a tech-savvy family.
I also received an email last week from Tanya Ryno, who with her husband, are using a blog to get the attention of the casting people at Fear Factor, a reality TV show on FOX NBC. We wish the them luck.
Lastly, BloggerTwins.com was featured on the AOL.com home page for most of yesterday afternoon. Within that post I learned about a web site for the casting of the next great Elvis impersonator. I kid you not.
Posted by Cameron at 03:05 PM | Comments (4)
August 06, 2005
New FAQ section of the site
We've gotten a lot of questions from readers about this site, blogging, and the complications that being selected might pose. So we've put together a FAQ to answer some of them; it'll be periodically updated as more questions arrive.
Posted by Damien at 07:20 PM
August 05, 2005
Support & Testimonials
Damien and I have been posting testimonials from people around the Internet. The percentage of people who think this is a great idea is running around 95%. Feel free to read what people have written about us, or leave your own testimonial by filling out this contact form or leaving a comment on this post.
Posted by Cameron at 06:42 PM | Comments (2)
Reasons CBS Should Cast the BloggerTwins
08. We're bloggers. Casting us will give them an immediate fan-base of millions of bloggers.
07. Give two nice boys from the Midwest a chance to win a million dollars so they can build their disabled mother a wheelchair-accessible house.
06. Casting bloggers on a reality TV show is a fantastic idea.
05. We're not semi-professional actors or models.
04. Everyone likes twins.
03. We're huge online geeks who both met our girlfriends online.
02. Bald is Beautiful.
01. "Bloggertwin Powers...Activate!"
Posted by Cameron at 01:34 PM | Comments (9)
Motivations For Being on The Amazing Race
We've been receiving a lot of email from people who think this is a silly idea and chastise us because they think we want to be famous by being on a reality TV show. Clearly, these people did not watch our video or read much of what we've written.
The primary reason for wanting to be on the show is to win the money, and the primary motivation for winning the money is so we can afford to build our mother a wheelchair-accessible house. About ten years ago she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and her condition has deteriorated to the point where she can no longer walk. She went broke raising five kids after our father died when we were 12 years old and had to give up her home to the bank. She deserves to spend the rest of her life in a more comfortable home. Our dream is to win the money doing something we love (travel) for someone we love (our mom).
Damien and I have no interest at all in being famous or making a career out of it (we both already have solid, respectable careers). Being on a reality TV game show is simply an opportunity for us to make our mom's life better.
Posted by Cameron at 02:19 AM | Comments (3)
August 03, 2005
Help Us Get Cast on The Amazing Race
Hello and thanks for checking out our site. We both thought it would be a cool idea to build a web site to support our efforts to be cast on The Amazing Race, an Emmy-winning reality TV show on CBS. We've both been fans of the show since Season 1 way back on 2001 and our dream is to be cast on the 9th season (filming in November 2005) or the 10th season (if there is one, filming in Spring of 2006).
You can help us catch the eye of the casting directors by linking to this site from yours, emailing anyone and everyone you know in the television industry, and following our progress as we find out whether we are or are not going to be cast.
This site, therefore, is a grand experiement. How much influence can we generate from the blogosphere and fans of the show? Will we succeed in getting the casting directors to take a second look at our audition tape? (Some estimates put the number of tapes they receive each season is upwards of 20,000 to 30,000.) Do we have any natural advantage because we are identical twins and long-time bloggers?
We are excited about the possibility of being cast, though we realize the odds are very low that we'll even get a callback for second round of interviews. The goal of this site is to find new ways to get our audition tape seen by the casting directors, in addition to the standard tape submission process (which we have already participated in). We are also excited about the possibilities of CBS using us as a way to market the show to a new audience (did I mention, we are huge fans?). I don't think any reality TV show has had contestants that were bloggers, and should we be cast we'd be the first.
Posted by Cameron at 12:32 PM | Comments (7)
August 02, 2005
Why I Want to be on TAR9
What's interesting to me is that there are quite a number of former TAR contestents who've tried to make a career out of being a "reality tv" star. Take Jonathan and Victoria from Season 6. I can't say I blame them for trying to make a buck out of their experience with the show, but that's not why I'm applying for The Amazing Race 9.
Being on TAR would be an experience I could share and write about for years to come. Cam and I had a pretty interesting childhood and racing around the world on a game show seems to be a natural extension of that. I'm willing to sacrifice a little bit of anonymity for such an experience. I'm guessing a lot of people wouldn't.
Posted by Damien at 06:34 PM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2005
Season 6 and the Mactors
One of the criticisms of Season 6 of The Amazing Race was that the cast was almost entirely made up of models/actors (often called "mactors"). Now, I understand that all reality TV shows are never 100% reality, but the backlash from the fans about a show full of pretty (and often dumb) models is fully deserved. This is why I think that the casting calls for TAR9 were in rural areas, where the turn-out would be a lot more real, normal people rather than the part-time actor and model who is already comfortable in front of a television camera.
This shift in casting logic appears to benefit our efforts in being cast, as while we're not "normal" in the sense of most Americans (e.g we're twins) we are from the Midwest and have called NYC our home for tha past five years.
We also think we have a good shot at getting a callback, since we fit one of the "slots" that casting directors are often trying to fill. The TV-watching public likes to watch interesting and different people, and twins are a natural choice for this. The fact that we are also bloggers only helps them, as the marketing possibilities increase exponentially.
More about casting slots: Casting directors know what kinds of people they are looking for. For The Amazing Race, they are looking for teams of two people who form a dynamic and interesting relationship together on-screeen. Again, a natural choice is to choose twins, who have spent their entire lives together, are best friends, brothers and think so much alike they finish each other's sentences. Other slots that might be filled are The Grandparents, the Married Couple, the Gay Couple, the Frat Brothers, the Firemen, the Sisters, the Childhood Friends, etc. All of these teams possess characteristics that make them a natural fit for casting a show that is all about human relationships, communication and thinking fast under pressure and sleep deprivation.
Posted by Cameron at 08:30 PM | Comments (0)
July 14, 2005
Driving to the Casting Call
Well, Cam and I spent all yesterday driving to Michigan for the casting call. It took longer than I thought it would've but that's ok because it gave us plenty of time to discuss what we were going to say during the taping. You can see one representation in our video.
Ultimately, our taping didn't go quite as planned. We had prepared for a 3 minute taping but learned while standing in line that we'd only be given 2 minutes. We very quickly decided to cut out a few parts of our schtick. But I'm still happy with the end-result. We made the camera guy laugh twice and we practiced a lot, so I'm sure we came off looking pretty comfortable, if a bit scripted.
Posted by Damien at 02:28 PM | Comments (0)
June 29, 2005
Rental Cars and Crazy Fees
There's a reason I only rent from National Car and Alamo (now the same company), and avoid most of the other national rental car chains. National seems to be the only car rental company that doesn't care where you take their cars. You can drive them one way or round-trip and the price does not change. Just about every other company charges you crazy additional fees if you tell them you're leaving the state or need a one-way rental. One company I got a quote from even added fees for just driving from Newark Airport over to Manhattan, and even more if you planned on leaving New Jersey.
I once got stuck in Austin, TX during the SXSW Festival and could not get a flight back to NYC for several days as everything was sold out. Realizing this, I walked from the ticket counters at the airport over to National's counter and proceeded to rent a car one-way to NYC. Thirty minutes later I was headed north, back to NYC. It took me almost two days to drive back (crazy hitchhiker stories) but it was better trying to stick around Austin until the next flight several days later. I considrered flying stand-by but the sheer number of people in Austin, TX led me to believe that it would have a long few days at the airport waiting for an open seat.
Anyway, our rental car for getting back to Michigan has been reserved and we're getting excited about attending the casting call on July 14.
Posted by Cameron at 12:33 PM | Comments (2)
June 28, 2005
Amazing Race Casting Call
Tonight I saw on CBS a blurb saying they are looking for teams to try out for The Amazing Race, my favorite reality television show. I immediately emailed my twin brother Damien and told him we'd be crazy not to try out for it, slim chances of getting cast or not.
On CBS's web site for The Amazing Race, they listed all of the upcoming casting calls around the country. I was surprised to see a casting call in Traverse City, MI, only 20 miles from our mother's house. We decided that this was a sign that we needed to make the trip home and see mom, and attend a casting calls in one of the more rural areas of this great country.
Posted by Cameron at 06:23 PM
