The real workers of Harris County

New reality TV show highlights and helps Houston's blue collar heroes: Trick MyWhat?

A new reality series filmed in and around the Houston area will be premiering Friday at 9 p.m. on CMT. It's not Houston Texans Cheerleaders — in fact, it's a stark departure from the glitz and glamor of your regular reality series.

Trick My What? is hosted by John Schneider (The Dukes of Hazard, Smallville) and follows him as he learns the ins and outs of working alongside some of the most dedicated blue-collar heroes in the country. In exchange, Schneider and his expert crew — the guys of Lone Star Speed Shop in Richmond, Texas — revamp the star vehicle that helps these heroes put food on the table for their families in order to make their workdays a little easier.

The series puts a well-deserved spotlight on the dedicated blue-collar families that work the jobs that many people rely on every day. In the first episode, we meet logger Paul Palmer, a hardworking single father to three boys whose tree skidder is so torn up that it won’t work without three people assisting. The bad economy is bringing his logging business down, and he can’t afford to fix the skidder.

That’s where Schneider and his crew come in — Palmer gives Schneider a lesson on logging, and in turn, Schneider and his guys “trick” out Palmer’s broken tree skidder.

Trick My What? comes from the same producers of another CMT series, Trick My Truck, which tricks out the 18-wheelers of deserving truck drivers and premiered in 2006. CultureMap spoke with VP of Development at CMT, Melanie Moreau, about how the idea for Trick My What? came about:

CultureMap: What was the inspiration behind this show, and why premiere it now?

Melanie Moreau: Trick My Truck was a huge hit for CMT, and we believe this show takes it to the next level. It allows us to highlight America’s other blue collar heroes. The addition of John Schneider enabled us to not just make over these vehicles, but really take a look at how they keep America going and put food on the table for their families.

These people need a helping hand more than ever given the current state of our economy, and we hope these makeovers restore some pride back into what they do every day.

CM: What was it about Texas that drew the show here?

MM: Texas had everything we needed to make this show a success. Lone Star Speed Shop is a state-of-the-art fabricator team based in Richmond. We also found so many well-deserving heroes, so shooting there was an easy decision.

CM: Who is the intended audience for the show?

MM: Our intended audience is American families. We expect Trick My What? to appeal to both our core viewers who are already familiar with this format, and hope to bring in some new viewers as well.

Trick My What? will feature an array of workers from the Houston and Dallas areas that include a produce farmer, a bricklayer, a shrimper, and a sanitation serviceman, among others. The series has a bit of everything — it features an in-depth look at jobs you normally wouldn’t be exposed, to à la Deadliest Catch or American Loggers, and then mixes it up with warm fuzzy feelings, à la Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

So if you’re a fan of John Schneider, like seeing things being remodeled, or have always wondered what it was like to work in these kinds of industries, check out Trick My What? If anything, it’ll make you appreciate your job — and the people that do these jobs — even more.

Watch the season preview below:

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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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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess