“A film preservationist, originally from Anchorage, Alaska…”

April 20th, 2011 · No Comments

I’m going to be on Jeopardy! tomorrow night. This is the story of how that happened.

I wasn’t a huge Jeopardy! watcher as a kid, and watched even less of it as an adult, but I’ve always enjoyed playing along at home, and it’s hard not to be amazed at the show’s longevity. At various points in its life, the show has spilled over into the wider world of popular culture; Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek on SNL and Ken Jennings’ winning streak helped raise my awareness of the show occasionally over the years, but it had still been awhile since I’d seen it when we moved to Los Angeles in 2006. Once we got here, we started playing pub trivia on a regular basis, I met someone who had been on the show, and I worked with someone else who had recently tried out. It seemed like a fun thing to do, so in January of 2009, I took the online test. I didn’t feel like I did particularly well; somewhere in the 70-80% range, but a few months later, in July, I got an email informing me I’d qualified for an in-person appointment in September.

I was all set to try out at the end of the summer when I got selected to sit on a jury in Santa Monica, an experience which lasted the entire month of September. I postponed the Jeopardy! interview, and was told I’d hear back at the next opportunity. In December, I was invited back for an interview in January 2010; a full year had now elapsed since I’d taken the online test. On January 27, I headed to the Radisson Culver City, met the contestant coordinators and dozens of other hopefuls, had my Polaroid taken, and took another test. I felt OK about it, and had a good time working the mock buzzer and talking about myself in a dry run for the “meet the contestant” segment of the show. It wasn’t quite clear if some of us had passed and others hadn’t, but at the end of the day, they told us we were in the “pool” and could be called upon any time in the next 18 months to be on the show. I filed it away in the back of my mind and didn’t think much about it.

In March of 2010, I got the call to come to a taping as an alternate; they need local folks to come to the show ready to fill in for someone who might be sick or couldn’t make it. I dutifully submitted my anecdotes—”My brother and I went on a camping trip and woke up at 3 a.m. thinking it was 3 p.m. and ran all the way home!”; “I proposed to my wife in a photobooth!”; “I’ve visited all 50 states!”; and so on—packed a few changes of TV-ready clothes, and headed to the Sony Studio in Culver City on a Saturday in March. A few days before, I had gotten a call asking if I wanted to go on the show for real, guaranteed—someone had dropped out—but I declined, preferring to take my opportunity as an alternate to see how it went.

I was met at the parking garage, driven on a golf cart to the sound stage, and deposited in the green room, which was home to a few tables, a couch, a couple of makeup stations and two bathrooms. It was a foregone conclusion that I wouldn’t be on that day, so I just observed as much as I could, tried to make the most of the opportunity to play a few rounds on the stage in a rehearsal, and enjoyed watching a young, underpaid community organizer win more than $100,000 in the course of an afternoon. The process of playing the game had a real excitement to it as I watched from the audience, but what made it even more intoxicating was the way the games came one after the other, as the winner rushed back to the green room to change into another outfit to tape the show for the “next day.” You’re on a roll, you’re choosing another dress shirt you haven’t worn in months from your garment bag, you’re getting your makeup (?!) touched up, you’re getting outfitted with another wireless mic… I was happy to watch, and held out hope that one day, I’d be back.

Spring turned to summer, Grace arrived, and I forgot about the show, only reminded of it when friends would ask “Weren’t you going to be on Jeopardy!?” I’d tell them that it could be any time within a year of my day as an alternate, so we were still within the window.

Then, in the first week of December, as we were returning from our early Christmas in Anchorage, I had a voicemail from the contestant coordinator (actually a voicemail at work, a voicemail on my cell, and two emails) saying they were ready to have me on the show. It would tape January 21, two years after trying out online, one year after trying out in person. That left about six weeks to start TiVoing the show, watching it every night, and studying. I always felt that studying for the show wouldn’t really do me much good; if I knew something, I knew it, and no amount of cramming was going to make me an expert in French literature or medical terms. I had my weak categories—the Bible, planets (or as my nephew Jack heard it, “plants,” which I’m also not very good at), keeping Shakespeare characters straight, and a number of others—but I felt like I had a pretty good awareness of a fairly broad, if shallow, range of information, which is really what Jeopardy! requires. You don’t have to have read The Decameron, which I haven’t; you just have to know that “Bocaccio” goes with it. Of course, there’s more to it than that, but a lot of the questions are of that associative, rather than analytical, nature.

We started watching the show every night, and I marveled at Tom Nissley’s marvelous eight-day run, a model of restraint and smart wagering, as well as a very lucrative few days of taping. I wanted to model myself on his performance, from the relaxed look of the unbuttoned dress shirt without a tie to his lack of wrong answers, his success with Daily Doubles, and of course, the wins after wins after wins. Watching the show had a combination of effects, making me excited to go on—”No one got that right?! I know that answer!”—and apprehensive at the same time, because there’s no way to predict what categories you’ll get, how well others will perform on the buzzer, and the all-important Final Jeopardy category. We also started studying every night by playing old games on J! Archive, an invaluable site that catalogs every clue and response from thousands of games over the last 20+ years.

January 21 rolled around before long, and with Aimee at home with Grace, I invited our friend Keith to be my cheering section in the studio audience and took a personal day from work. I’ve only told family and a few friends the results of the game, so I’ll keep it mum here and return tomorrow to talk about it once it’s over.

Tags: Los Angeles · Noted