The CultureMap Interview

Tilman on TV: Houston Rockets owner on new season of his reality show

Houston mogul Tilman Fertitta mentors, and hires, hopefuls on his show, Billion Dollar Buyer.

Courtesy photo

You’d be hard-pressed to find a Houstonian who’s had a more high-profile year than Tilman Fertitta. The Landry’s, Inc. CEO has long been a household name as the owner of 600 properties — including high-end restaurants such as Mastro’s and Morton’s The Steakhouse; mainstream destinations such as Rainforest Café, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Saltgrass Steak House; and five Golden Nugget Casinos.

But it’s his recent acquisition of the Houston Rockets, paired with his alpha presence as the star of the reality show Billion Dollar Buyer, that has rocketed Fertitta into the national spotlight. In its third season, which premieres tonight at 9 pm on CNBC, Billion Dollar Buyer pairs Fertitta with two small businesses in each episode; he samples their goods, gets to know the owners, and assesses their compatibility with Landry’s, Inc. The Houston native points out flaws in products and operations, shares his expertise, and pushes for improvements. In the end, he decides whether to place a transformative purchase order with one of the companies, both, or neither.

This season, five Houston business — BellaBreeze, Eat Drink Host, K&N Custom Granite, Mar-tea-na Tea Company, and Texas Mattress Makers — are among the 12 jockeying for Fertitta’s mentorship — and money. We caught up with Fertitta to talk reality TV, and tonight’s premiere:

CultureMap: You’re an NBA owner, you rub elbows with celebrities in sports, business and entertainment, and your businesses are nationwide. Could you be the next great brand ambassador for Houston to the rest of the country?

Tilman Fertitta: You know, I’ve never thought of that. I think it’s just the nature of Houston. When you take out your athletes — take out J.J. Watt, James Harden, Deshaun Watson — if you went around the country, and asked people to name someone from Houston who isn’t an athlete, it would probably be hard for them. That’s just the way it is right now.

CM: Which puts you in a unique position.

TF: Yes. Look, there are a lot of great business people in Houston, but for me, I think it’s because I have businesses that are across the country, and they’re high-visibility businesses. And now I own the Rockets, and have a TV show. I certainly didn’t position myself this way; it just kind of happened.

CM: Have you tried to create a Houston “feel” on the show?

TF: I think people see the Houston charm and hospitality. I’d like to think wherever I go, I’m an ambassador for Houston.

CM: Your trajectory is very similar to another reality star: Mark Cuban. You were both billionaires in your own right, you bought NBA teams based in Texas, and now are both on reality television.

TF: Wow, you know, that hasn’t occurred to me. No one’s ever told me that. I have a lot of respect for Mark, and it sure doesn't hurt my feelings to be compared to him.

CM: There are five Houston businesses on the show this season. Do you find yourself subconsciously favoring them?

TF: Maybe so. You probably look at a local company a little harder — you want to do deals with the locals. I know mentally I’m probably in that state. I will say: all the companies I meet with are good people, and they’ve been cast because they’re people who want to learn. It’s been a great pleasure for me to get out and meet new people and see these products.

CM: There must be a kinship between host and hopefuls, being that you were once in their shoes?

TF: One hundred percent. I like relating things that happened in my past with them. We’re not perfect — we make mistakes every year. I’ve just been fortunate to make more good decisions than bad.The show is just as much about mentoring as it is about me buying their product. So even if I don’t buy their product, I’m trying to help them as a company.

CM: Do you wish there had been a Tilman for you?

TF: I never had a mentor, but I had people I watched and wanted to emulate their success. I was always intrigued by Vincent Kickerillo. And I’ve been going to Vegas since I was in my teens, so I’ve always been intrigued by people like Steve Wynn. I can remember going to The Golden Nugget downtown and realizing that Steve Wynn’s vision was so far ahead of everyone else’s.

It’s interesting because later in life, I’ve become very good friends with Vincent Kickerillo and Steve Wynn. So I’ve been very fortunate that people I’ve looked up to, I’ve ended up becoming good friends with.

CM: Do you see yourself staying in TV, as a star, and maybe as an executive producer?

TF: Shooting the show takes a lot of time, but I can see it. I can see myself staying in the business.

They had been talking to me about doing a show forever. But I told them that I’m viewed on Wall Street as a serious businessman. So I’m not gonna do a show that has a lot of drama; it has to be more of a teaching show. And it’s on CNBC, which is a business channel. That’s important.

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Billion Dollar Buyer airs at 9 pm Wednesdays on CNBC.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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