[quote name=\'cmjb13\' date=\'Jan 1 2004, 10:50 AM\']Were the contestants on the trading floor pre-screened?[/quote]
On all of Monty's episodes the contestants were all screened and preselected. Each seat on the trading floor had a number marked on the carpet/floor. Monty was given the seat numbers for each deal.
Monty hosted what is arguably the toughest game show format, and made it look so easy that I think he's sometimes underrated. Each show was different, and the script for each deal/game was pages long because of the various permutations on how the game could play out. If you never tried to read, digest, and become comfortably fluent with one of those games' scripts (there's one in the old Maxine Fabe book) you've really never had an Excedrin headache. It's full of "ifs" to cover all the possible scenarios of each contestant trading or keeping each prize/curtain/door/box.
There are no bells, buzers, lights, elaborate props, questions, puzzles or celebrities. The whole show is talk, and it flies or crashes and burns dependent upon the host's ability to elicit and then adlib off of the contestants' various spoken and non-verbal emotional responses... making real drama out of a simple "you want this or that"... and remaining likeable throughout the process of putting players on the spot and sometimes disappointing them.
Monty had to constantly steer that whole bus singlehandedly out of a million potential deadend streets (it's a metaphor). And it was all done without the safety net of the stop/start/retake style of production so damned prevalent these days.
Just my first thought of the new year. Feel free to disagree; I can later blame it all on the hangover ;-)
Randy
tvrandywest.com
