Stephen Fishbach’s Game Within a Game

When Stephen Fishbach announced he was publishing a novel about an island-based competition reality show, I thought I knew what I was in for. Appearing on the 2008 season of Survivor, which took place in the Brazilian state of Tocantins, Fishbach introduced himself as the “anxious New York Jew” and lasted to the finale, coming in second. He returned in the all-star cast of Survivor: Cambodia (2015), an intense strategic season where he placed ninth. These were both experiences I was sure he’d draw on for the book, but Escape! goes far beyond Survivor, offering a distorted look at the dangerous—physically and mentally—circumstances that can arise when a group of fame-hungry, identity-obsessed people come together to make a life-changing show.

In the inaugural season of Escape! (which is both the title of Fishbach’s first foray into fiction and the name of the fictional reality show depicted therein), the goal is to remain stranded or to make a dash to win a chest of prize money. The show casts anxious newcomers—nerdy Miriam, villainous Ruddy—alongside reality TV all-stars looking to redeem their image. Kent, known for slaughtering a pig and winning a different reality show, wants to convince himself he’s not just a washed-up former hero. And controlling all of their fates is Beck, a producer whose last television gig ended badly when she stepped back and let danger take hold of a situation in the pursuit of ratings.

All of the beats and stories of competition-based reality shows are here in the novel—the backstabbing, manipulation and romance—but Escape! is more psychologically perverse. Fishbach takes us into the minds of both producers and contestants to examine the sort of people who would either sign up to play the game or take part in shaping it. When trying to make an entertaining product, he seems to be asking, is there a line one shouldn’t cross? When does it start becoming fake if the end result will be what makes up viewers’ perceptions?

Though Fishbach stresses that his Survivor experiences were safely run and nothing like Escape!, he says it was fun to visualize the worst-case scenario and let his mind roam from there. His fictional producers constantly prod each other, wrestling over storylines and pushing each other to go rogue and let the show get precarious. It’s all to impress its host, the enigmatic Jacob Malibu, who wants more drama, more fighting, more everything…even if people are pushed to their absolute limit.

I met up with Fishbach in Washington, DC, to learn more about the novel and understand him as the writer and not, as he puts it, the “2x Survivor loser.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

 

Tell me a little bit about how you started writing fiction.

I’ve always wanted to be a fiction writer. My whole career’s been writing; I’ve written speeches for Stevie Wonder, I’ve written ad copy, I’d written everything except an actual novel. Before I went on Survivor, I was worried if anybody would take me seriously. I had this epiphany moment on Cambodia in a torrential downpour. Everybody was absolutely miserable, weeping, having the worst night of their lives. I was leaving the shelter to be violently ill in the middle of this storm. I thought, if I’m willing to do all of this for reality television, how can I not have the courage to write a book?

And now it’s open to reader responses. You work years on something, and people are going to have a variety of opinions. They’re not gonna like it and they’re gonna tell you. You start to question your self-worth—what have I spent my life doing? I told my mom, “I don’t even want to know what you think about this book. Like, even if you’re giving me praise, I’m gonna hear some criticism in it. Or it’s not gonna be the right praise, or it’s not gonna be enough praise.” 

That’s like Survivor, too—you’ve probably had people comment on how you played the game. 

Sure, and it’s hard. I actually feel a lot like I did before Cambodia, where I knew there were going to be scenes I’d be deeply embarrassed about. And there’s millions of people watching, telling you what a loser you are. It’s challenging! 

Let’s talk about the book. If I were cynical, and unable to separate fact from fiction, I would think that your experience on Survivor was manipulated. Are you worried that people who read Escape! will think so?

I did try to capture the essence of things that happened on Survivor but then took it to

the worst-case scenario, because that’s what you’re supposed to do in fiction, seeing what can go wrong and then extrapolating from that. A lot of it is from contestants I’ve talked to on other shows, through my life on the TV and network side of it. If people read Escape! and assume this kind of thing happens on Survivor, that’s just not something I can control. 

There’s some really bad behavior on the set of Escape! as producers manipulate scenes for a more entertaining product. Do you think there’s a world in which this is reasonable?

Hopefully what I’m showing is that there’s a player’s perspective and a producer’s perspective. The novel started as being entirely from the producer’s perspective because I was so curious about these people who are creating a three-act structure out of real people living in this chaotic environment. It’s natural that a shaping impulse comes into play. That’s literally their job, to shape what’s happening around them into structured scenes. It has to play as a satisfying drama. That’s what is so interesting about reality TV—where is the line between what’s acceptable manipulation versus what’s prodding towards a nice story?

Everything is edited and packaged anyway, and these people have to make a good show as well as a game.

Exactly. And I think one of the criticisms of new era Survivor [seasons 41-49] is all the twists and turns, but when you see how the programming landscape has changed, you can’t just have 16 people on a beach anymore. I’d like more of that, but you also need that explosive content.

The jungle subgenre of reality TV competitions, though, is a little more thoughtful. It allows for a contemplative vibe. If you watch Naked and Afraid or Alone, some of the drama is amped up, but there’s also downtime. You have a guy just sitting, watching the rain and talking about it for the whole scene. It has space for that, and the audience goes with it to some of these more philosophical places.

Beck is an interesting character because she’s encouraged to influence things, yet still runs into pushback from her co-producers. It’s almost as if they want her to be more real by indulging in these fake scenarios.

I think that’s the tension too, on set among the producers. “On the one hand, we want to be true to what’s happening in front of us. And then on the other, we want a story. If we want this show to be picked up for season two, there has to be a narrative arc.” And so I think they do prod each other. That was one of the things I was trying to capture—the texture of those arguments, which I think really happens on these shows. Inherently, you’re putting your thumb on the scale. It’s a fascinating type of manipulation—that the questions you ask [to the contestants] end up guiding the way people perceive themselves or the way that relationships develop.

Another character, Kent, says, “There are always two games. The one you’re playing against the other contestants, and the one the producers are playing against you.” Tell me more.

There’s just that sense of uncertainty. For any show, and certainly a new one, you always have the sense—“I’m not in control here. I am a character in a huge production edifice that’s happening around me.” They could do anything! You don’t even necessarily know what country you’re flying to when you get on the plane. With Tocantins, we had to get four different visas. You’re putting yourself in the hands of these people, and you’re trusting that they know what they’re doing. With Survivor, they do, but I’ve heard tons of horror stories from contestants on other shows, where the challenge producers have no clue what they’re doing. With the buried alive challenge [in Escape!], how do you know that the air hose isn’t going to get kinked? No one has a PhD in burying people alive.

You take great pains to depict how identity can be malleable within the confines of the game. Beck and Kent both feel like they can use the show to evolve as people. Do you think if they weren’t given this opportunity, they would have remained stagnant?

In a way, I think stagnation is what Kent really needs. One of the themes of the book is that the lure of momentary greatness you get from something like reality TV is a false promise. And that, ultimately, reconciling yourself to your real life, as flawed as it might be, is what maturity is all about. Kent’s fundamental challenge is that he keeps on pursuing his fantasy self, one out of touch with who he is, his age, the era we’re living in—his ideas of masculinity are really outmoded. The worst thing for him is this desperate, fantasy version of himself that he’s chasing. For Beck, it’s a good point. Beck needs to be confronted with the full moral scope of what she’s doing, and that does give her an opportunity to change. 

The show gets deep into the weeds, as far as reality television can go (and maybe further). Were you ever apprehensive about how intense you wanted to take things?

I wanted Escape! to be a combination of a literary satire and a jungle thriller—how to get to dark places while also feeling grounded was always the challenge. It had to have a dark-hearted center, because I was dealing with what I think are complex moral issues. I wanted to explore some of the gray areas that are all a part of this disposable entertainment, like the way that people are pushed and the way that it affects people’s psyches. 

The contestants on Escape! are prescripted with a plot, personality and motivation, and we see them try to break out of these and craft a new story. Do you think that’s possible?

That really is the heart of the book. How do I break out of a version of myself that other people have? We’re all put into boxes more and more these days. That desire is so powerful for so many people. Is it possible on reality TV? That’s a good question. I think that the answer is yes, but you really have to push it, craft it yourself. 

Did you ever think that way on Tocantins?

When you’re first out there, you do play into what your story is. It kind of colonizes your thinking: “This is who I am.” Of course, everybody wants their growth arc, everybody wants to change. So I was definitely trying to do that, trying to be the guy who made fire, the guy who came from behind. I really found that if you believe in it you can make it happen. But it’s hard to believe enough in yourself to actually change.

What’s next for you? Are you working on any other writing?

Now I’m working on a book of short stories. In my MFA program, I was writing short stories as practice. It was a great place to experiment. You could do wild things that you couldn’t sustain in a book, but certainly over 20 pages. One of the things that reality television has given me is access to this community of fascinating people. Right now, each of those stories is based on the real life of a contestant I’ve known, or at least, their profession. I have one story about a whale trainer based on Morgan Ricke of Survivor: Ghost Island, who told me about it. Another is based on a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. 

I have to ask—who are you rooting for on Survivor 50?

I have some real friends out there! Rick Devens is like one of my closest friends; Christian Hubicki and Emily Flippen are friends. Obviously, I want to see Coach do well. I really feel like he’s going to bring all the Coach energy. We’re going to get a lot of references. We’re gonna get quotes from books we’ve never heard of. 

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Escape! is available now. 

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(Top image credit: Julia Lemle/Penguin Random House)