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Escaping reality television
By Tim Stoddard
Marooned on a remote island in Scotland's Outer Hebrides last July, David
Osborne and three teammates raced to build an escape craft. They had a
freight barge, 20 feet long and 8 feet wide, and a tiny two-door Citroën
2CV, the French answer to the Volkswagen Beetle. A BBC film crew hovered
nearby, cameras rolling. The task: use the little car to power the barge
off the island.
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| An adroit leader in the CAS physics assembly shop, David Osborne was one of 48 contestants using their ingenuity and mechanical dexterity to Escape from Experiment Island. Photo by Vernon Doucette | |
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Osborne, director of the CAS physics assembly shop, was one of 48 contestants
selected for Escape from Experiment Island, a new reality-TV show that
airs on the Learning Channel early in 2003. In the show, billed as Castaway
meets Junkyard Wars, with a dash of MacGyver, two teams of strangers are
dropped off on the Isle of Rhum. Using their ingenuity, each must overcome
a series of challenges to build an escape craft that will carry one team
off the island.
In their search for contestants, the casting directors screened nearly
900 Americans in five cities. In June, one of their scouts wandered into
the CAS physics department inquiring about possible candidates. "I
told him, if there's one person who's the clear front-runner for a position
like this, it's Dave Osborne," says David Perlman, director of the
department. "The guy is an incredible problem-solver who knows how
to get people to work together on projects. He can build just about anything
from scratch, and he's got a knack for improvising."
Osborne is more modest about his skills. "I've never really done
that much," he says. "I've worked with physicists most of my
life." Translation: before taking charge of BU's assembly shop 13
years ago, Osborne designed and built the tools and machinery for high-energy
physics experiments at MIT for three decades. In his tenure there, he
worked closely with Nobel physicist Samuel Ting.
Raised on a farm in Norwell, Mass., Osborne has been an outdoorsman from
early on. A former bow hunter, he's wandered for weeks through Alaska's
wilderness. He's got the complexion of a sailor who's crossed the Atlantic
several times. As a Coast Guard sailor, he once spent 18 months on a remote
Aleutian island.
Nearly 200 people showed up for the show's Boston auditions. A few hours
after his interview, Osborne received a call from a BBC producer asking
where he might get ahold of some zinc. "I told him that all the marine
supply stores were closed for sure, but that I had some zinc in the shop,"
Osborne says. The producer wouldn't disclose his plans, but he didn't
need to. "I knew exactly what he was going to do with the stuff,"
Osborne says. "I asked him, would these be about as big as my little
finger, maybe four inches long?" He pauses and shrugs, as if to say,
end of story, problem solved. "They wanted to make the ol' fruit
battery for the next phase of testing."
Osborne and a dozen others converged on Boston Common for the second stage
of tryouts. He was teamed with three strangers and given a box of items
to complete five tasks. They sailed through the build-a-battery challenge,
although their bulb didn't light up. "I complained bitterly about
that," he says, "because I figured they gave us a bad bulb.
But they didn't care. They were just watching us to see if we could organize
ourselves, and if we knew what we were doing."
Osborne apparently met both criteria. On July 20, he met up with seven
fellow escapees and their BBC handlers in the Glasgow airport. They boarded
a ferry in the town of Malaig, and an hour later came ashore on the Isle
of Rhum, home to about 20 families. Despite the mist and rain, the heather-clad
hills and rolling grasslands were strikingly beautiful, Osborne says.
"I've never seen so many shades of green in my life."
The contestants were divided into two teams, Red and Blue, and their first
challenge was navigational. With compass and azimuth, they set out to
locate a series of clues that led to a key hidden somewhere on the island.
From the start, Osborne's Team Blue was beset with cooperation issues.
"It took us two days just to get organized," he says. "One
person thought this was Survivor. By the third day everybody had figured
out that it was about teamwork, not about what each of us knows individually.
The other team got that the first day."
Meanwhile, the producers tried to cultivate conflict. Each person was
paired up with a tent-mate from the opposing team. "I think the producers
wanted us to fight at night," Osborne says, "but it didn't work.
We got on really well." While the BBC cooks provided good fare -
no one dined on rats or grubs - the living conditions were rustic at best.
Bathing amenities included a wash bucket and a cold stream. "I think
they wanted to make the experience a little like boot camp," he says.
"But if you've been to boot camp, this wasn't even close."
At times the producers' scheme even backfired, and the contestants rebelled
against their handlers. It started with the dramatic arrival scene. They
were directed to leap from an amphibious vehicle into the shallow water
and slog up onto the beach. "It was cold that day, and we ended up
doing that scene five times because the hosts couldn't get their lines
right," Osborne says.
"We decided to play a joke on the crew to get back at them."
Osborne procured sewing needles and alligator clamps from some locals,
and early one morning the two automotive experts in the cast rewired the
producer's Land Rover so the horn blew every time she stepped on the brakes.
By the last day, the teams had given up the devilry to focus on their
escape crafts. They now had extra car parts, welding torches, and a complete
metal shop at their disposal. As the leader, Team Red got the preferred
kit, which included a tugboat propeller. Team Blue received an industrial
wooden spool for coiling heavy cable. "As soon as I saw the spool,
I knew what we'd have to do," Osborne says. "I could see it
in my mind. If you didn't get the propeller, you were going to have to
build a paddlewheel."
The showdown lead to a dramatic finish, Osborne says, and viewers will
have to stay tuned to see which team prevailed in the end.
27 September 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations