Billy Garcia Talks About “Gimmick Infringement” [Guest Post]
I first met Billy Garcia from Survivor: Cook Islands at last year’s Reality TV Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. Instantly, it was obvious that this New Yorker is warm, friendly and has a fantastic sense of humor. I enjoyed talking with him several times at that event, at the Survivor Dodgeball event last year, online and through emails ever since. He’s a great guy and has a big heart. He plays guitars in a heavy metal rock band called Forsakken and a MySpace site.
I was fortunate enough to watch the Survivor: Micronesia finale at the CBS building in New York City. I hadn’t been there in a long while and I had never watched an episode of Survivor with my good friend Denise of Survivor: China.
I had been hanging out all day with Betsy, a Reality Exploits correspondent for this event. She invited me to join her in watching the Survivor Finale at the CBS building and I jumped at it. I was expecting this to be a memorable night and it was, just not like how I had hoped.
The final episode was moving along nicely until they hit the last tribal council. Then to my shock Ozzy, The guy who threw the challenge on Survivor: Cook Islands to eliminate me and scoffed at my “declaration of love” was now making a declaration of love of his own.
I literally yelled at the TV screen. I was so upset. I could not help but yell “Gimmick Infringement!” Hey, I came up with that! I’m the originator of the Survivor love controversy. What Ozzy did was rip off my original idea of the “declaration of love” at tribal council that I created as part of a bigger idea of subsidizing lost revenue from my in-game failure with fame via controversy that would equal after-game revenue. I created the tribal council “declaration of love” gimmick to be this vehicle that would be completely harmless and yet would be talked about on the global scale in the Reality TV community for years thus making me very marketable to potential sponsors.
The result is that I am the most successful early boot in Reality TV history. I get booked for everything from newspaper ads and radio spots to pro-wrestling and convention appearances. Hell, I even got a t-shirt sponsorship from my ingenious, Will Ferrell in the movie Old School-like comedy.
Of course I was very upset to see Ozzy blatantly rip my idea off. He wasn’t even funny. He butchered my gimmick. He tried to do it in a safe, nice way. It was poorly executed and weak. It is supposed to be edgy and controversial. Most importantly it is supposed to be funny.
Instead, it was obviously too fake looking. Reality TV gimmicks can never look fake even though they are staged. It says “Reality” TV on the Marquee not “Staged” TV.
I’m not sure what I’m more upset about. That Ozzy ripped off my idea or that he butchered it. Listen, I sincerely think Ozzy’s got talent and much more after-game potential than we’ve seen. He had his own gimmick with the whole “my dad left me and never came back” thing. Though it was an obvious gimmick to a trained eye, it was still a good one.
The whole “declaration of love” at tribal council is my brain child, my intellectual property, and thus my gimmick. So copying me was a blatant act of gimmick infringement and anyone in my position would be as ticked off about it as I am. To see it mangled on world wide TV just ticked me off all the worse.
When you sign up for Survivor, being a Survivor is your job for the duration of the show. Though it’s what pays our bill, we don’t get paid set wages. We Survivor contestants get paid by order of finish. Thus, when the challenge was thrown on Survivor: Cook Islands it was more than just a lost dream, my tribe mates took food off my family’s table and the gimmick I created was to make up for that.
Now, Ozzy’s trying to take that for himself. So I’ve got to put my foot down. If he wants to make a buck off having been on Survivor, that’s fine. By all means, please do. But don’t take anything away from me. I will take it personally. That’s no gimmick. That’s real life.
Lastly, during the reunion show Ozzy said that he lost his job as a waiter and is now forced to scrub toilets. Denise and I just looked at each other and she was so upset she left the room. This is obviously a half-assed effort at going after Denise’s “gimmick” even though that was not a gimmick; this is Denise’s real life.
When she came back into the room, I voiced my friendship to Denise and told her that I’m on her side and that I’ll keep her in the loop for events and opportunities. That calmed her down some but she was still upset and rightfully so.
Ozzy needs to be original. He needs to come up with his own ideas. Only then will he stop stepping on toes within the industry that made him. We rely heavily on each other to make the most of having been on a reality show. To step on toes within the industry is to make finding these unique and rare opportunities that exist only for a select few of us twice as hard to find. Ozzy has a lot of potential but on this night he was his own worst enemy.
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POSTED IN: Charity Blog-Off, EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE!, Reality Fun, Reality Stars, Survivor: Cook Islands
1 opinion for Billy Garcia Talks About “Gimmick Infringement” [Guest Post]
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Aug 14, 2008 at 3:36 pm
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