Get It On!
The Oral History of MXC: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge
Television was forever changed in 2003. A show unlike any other seen before premiered that year. It had the visual of a crazy Japanese Game Show. But the commentary and tone were purely American. This show was called Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. Later the title would be shortened to the iconic MXC to market more easily. Taking footage from the late 1980s Japanese Game Show, roughly translated as Operation! Takeshi’s Castle, a new show was born completely divorced from the storyline of this Japanese show. The footage re-edited, the soundtrack completely replaced and the storyline changed from that of a game show about a mock army of 100 soldiers competing in challenges in attempt to storm a castle. Now, two teams who often had nothing in common would compete against each other in the most dangerous games on television. Meat Workers would hope to defeat the Cartoon Voiceover Artists, the world of Organized Crime would compete against the Weight loss industry and the people who brought the world Baked Goods would lose to America’s Malcontents. Competing in some of the most varied, bizarre and dangerous games seen in competitive sports. Games like Dash to Death, Log Drop, Boulder Dash, Rotating Surfboard of Death, Mud Butlers and Big Brass Balls to name a few. Hoping to avoid falling into that day’s Mystery Fluid (often provided by friend of the show, Hot Carl). Towel Squeezing’s from Air Force One, Food Court Runoff from the Mall of Calcutta and Liposuction drippings comprised what contestants could fall into. The whole time, viewers heard the voices of two very American commentators giving play by play action. Vic Romano, a once venerated news journalist whose addictions to cheap booze, painkillers and prostitutes ended his career, would try to rebuild his image through MXC. He would be joined by Kenny Blankenship, an idiot slacker who got his job not because of any sort of skill or intellect, but only because someone owed someone a favor. The two would provide commentary that was merely a succession of rapid-fire jokes over events like Sinkers and Floaters. A set of stones in a pond that contestants would run over in the hopes of reaching the other side. Some floated and some sank. Watching the games would be field marshal, Captain Tennille. A right-wing bully who made Pat Buchannan look like Bernie Sanders; The Captain would begin each show by asking the contestants a loaded question. When the crowd gave their affirmative answer, The Captain would always tell them “Well, you’re wrong!” and then explain why his view was superior. Onsite to interview contestants after each game was French field reporter, Guy LeDouche. Guy was the sexual deviant to end all deviancy. A man who could be aroused by anything, and that means anything. No one on the show was meant to be emulated or admired. The humor pulled punches and took no sides. No race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, social status or political leanings were free from the show’s comedy. MXC was the gold standard for Blue Humor. For five years, the show would air on a cable television network known as Spike TV. Billing itself as “The First Network for Men”, the network geared its programming to the demographic of males ages 18-35. Programs that aired consisted of TNA Wrestling, An adult reboot of Ren and Stimpy and a litany of reruns of everything from MacGyver to Star Trek. But no show on the network ever reached the popularity of MXC. Often airing more than 20 times in a single week, MXC was the network’s signature show. But the network was only the conduit for the show. MXC was created by a talented group of comedic actors, writers and producers of varied backgrounds. Told by those same people, this is the story of how an 80s Japanese game show was turned into a truly American show. And how that show changed television. These quotes were exerted from interviews conducted between author Joshua Murphy and the MXC cast from February of 2015-2019, over 8 years after the show’s last episode had aired. All quotes are taken from these interviews except where noted. Completed versions of these interviews can be viewed at request to the author.
PART ONE:
FINDING THE RIGHT CAST AND THE RIGHT JAPANESE SHOW
Paul Abeyta (MXC Co-Creator and Executive Producer): At the time my partner Peter Kaikko and I were bouncing around ideas because we were always trying to develop new shows. And comedy was something I really, really enjoyed. Something just hit me; maybe it was based on a throw-back to What’s Up Tiger Lily. Also Iron Chef was big at the time and I was a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. But I thought, “what can I do?” Because I was really looking for ideas.
Larry Strawther (MXC Co-Creator and Executive Producer): Paul Abeyta, Peter Kaikko and I had worked together at Merv Griffin Productions. I was mainly in the game show side, and had worked on the development of the 2nd incarnation of Jeopardy! (with Art Fleming, again for NBC) and the pilot for Dance Fever. After we sold both, I went over as the head writer on Jeopardy! And Paul came over from the Griffin Show itself and became the producer on Dance Fever! Pete worked for 20th-Fox and watched over the show for them. He and Paul became long time partners after that. And I went into sitcoms, but we stayed in contact over the years. Around 1994 or 95 we did a pretty funny show called Night Stand. I only worked on the first season for that. Around 2001 we had a lunch and Paul asked if I ever watched Iron Chef which at that time was showing only a dubbed American version, making it kind of campy. Paul said “Instead of a cooking show, what if we dubbed in a game show?” I thought the dubbed game show idea would work as a scripted show – if you could find the right show.
Paul Abeyta: I have a friend, Paul Gilbert, who works in international syndication. So, he had a vault of tapes from all over the world. He said “sure come on down to the vault and see if there’s something you like”.
Larry Strawther: He supplied us with a bunch of Asian game shows – well over 100 of them. We split them up to view.
Paul Abeyta: So I started looking at all of these different foreign shows from East Germany to Colombia, Taiwan, Japan, Russia and I came back with 3-4 different shows that I liked.
Larry Strawther: Most of them were the crazy in-the-studio kind of shows, and I think we could have made it work, but then Paul said we have to look at this one. It was Takeshi’s Castle and when we saw it we all said – yep, this is the one.
Paul Abeyta: Takeshi’s Castle really stood out because it had continuing characters and the stunts were really outrageous. It was almost like a human video game.
Larry Strawther: It was just so surreal. We had no idea what they were saying. The one we saw wasn’t dubbed or subtitled. But somehow we didn’t need to understand it to make it funny, and that’s why it was perfect for our purposes.
Paul Abeyta: I honed in on (Takeshi’s Castle) because I thought it was funnier than a show from say Eastern Europe. Because everyone from there looks very much like us. Whereas Japanese shows are very Asian and if you give an Asian guy a name like “Murray Schwartz” or “Juan Valdez” it’s a lot funnier because clearly, he is not a Juan Valdez or a Murray Schwartz. So, it helped with our storytelling and made it inherently funnier as opposed to giving them Asian names which really would not be funny and would represent one joke.
Larry Strawther: It was so visual. So over-the-top. It would still work even if we couldn’t take the time and spend the money to make a perfect lip synch on the dub.
Paul Abeyta: We brought in Mary Scheer, Victor Wilson, John Cervenka, Christopher Darga and we sat around for a few weeks just trying to define (MXC’s) characters and give them backstories.
Mary Scheer (Supervising Producer, Writer and voice of “Every Girl”): I had known Paul Abeyta for years. I was a staff writer on his show, Night Stand. He said he had this really great footage from this Japanese game show from the 80s. Paul's just one of those guys who knows a lot unusual stuff. I was brought in by Paul and his partner Peter Kaikko. He was looking for comedy people, and went to The Groundlings. That's how John Cervenka, Chris Darga, Vic Wilson and Myself all knew each other. Because we had worked at that theater.
John Cervenka (Producer, Writer and voice of Captain Tenneal, Guy LeDouche and various other characters): Myself and some of the other cast members knew Paul Abeyta and Peter Kaikko, who later introduced us to Larry Strawther. They had found this footage and saw the potential in it. They got us together and we just started talking about it. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but in that room with all those funny people, we looked at that footage and just started throwing things in and next thing you know, this concept has lot of potential.
Christopher Darga (Producer, Writer and voice of Kenny Blankenship and various other characters): I knew Paul Abeyta and Peter Kaikko from doing a show called Nightstand with Dick Deitrick. Paul got a hold of this footage from Takeshi’s Castle and said “This would be fun to voiceover”. He called me along with Mary Scheer, John Cervenka and Vic Wilson to see if we were interested in voicing the footage.
Victor Wilson (Supervising Producer, Writer and voice of Vic Romano and various other characters): Larry Strawther called me up and said “Hey we’re working on this thing. Do you want to come take a look at it?” Paul had, I guess licensed the footage from Takeshi’s Castle. It was so bizarre, because it’s kind of a complicated show structure. They would literally have one hundred people who had to make it to the end to participate in some weird, fabricated laser battle. It was like “Wow”. It was great how it fell out. You couldn’t believe it. That show was from like the late 80s. So, we just went in there and sort of played with it for a long time.
PART TWO:
CREATING THE WORLD OF MXC
Paul Abeyta: (W)e sat around for a few weeks just trying to define the characters and give them backstories before we came up with games or storylines so we could write the show around them.
John Cervenka: The characters came together and started to take shape (Captain, Kenny, Guy, Etc.). It was a very interesting dynamic because you had the vision of Paul, Peter and Larry, and then you had all of us coming in and adding our two cents, and it just started to snowball. It made us all laugh pretty quickly, which was a good sign. Chris and Vic were real naturals at the Vic (Romano) and Kenny (Blankenship) dynamic.
Victor Wilson: Vic Romano was in the same league as Tom Brokaw at one point. But Vic Romano liked to drink too many cocktails and accidentally threw up on George Bush Sr. And that was the end of his career. The MXC show being his attempted comeback as it were.
Christopher Darga: Vic Romano was like a consummate professional who fell hard into alcohol and tanked his career who’s now stuck doing this show. Kenny became this sort of idiot party goer. He was interested in chicks and beer, and he only got the job because his uncle owned the network. Kenny does all these Jerky motions and that had to be filled. That’s where his stupid “Ha” laugh came from. That’s how he turned into a frat boy basically. It’s weird, Kenny kind of evolved. With the first few episodes we played it with straight broadcaster type voices. As it progressed, we found the characters.
John Cervenka: What happens…is you can write out a story for a character. But it’s not until you start playing with that character’s voice and start writing for the character that it really comes alive.
Christopher Darga: My favorite character is Guy LeDouche. He was just such a perv. The Japanese guy was so funny and animated.
John Cervenka: With Guy I was doing this really, really bad French accent. Part of the fun was the fact that his accent was so bad. But he’s this French guy who became turned on by everything. It was comical. I don’t remember the steps of how it happened.
Mary Scheer: I actually pitched that Guy's last name be “LeDouche”. Because I was the only one who spoke French, I knew “La Douche” meant “Shower”. They all loved it because we could say “douche” on the air.
John Cervenka: Things evolve. You can keep coming back to all these points of view. That’s what we did with Guy. We also knew that Guy had a certain role in the show as a field reporter. So when we saw other people in that role, wearing pith helmets we would be like “Oh this is Guy’s relative.” It just made sense to us and it worked.
Victor Wilson: Guy LeDouche was just a sexual deviant. A gust of wind could turn him on. John Cervenka played the Captain (Tenneal) who was this hardcore conservative man about town. A real ladies’ man who had no tolerance for idiots or liberals.
John Cervenka: Because we’re all together for hours at a time, everyone’s personality comes out in the room. So, if someone is politically bent then it will come out in a very friendly way. A few of us are on the conservative side and some of us aren’t, which is why we decided to make Captain this sort of right-wing bully who screams at people but has a great time doing it. We knew what we needed and added the layers as we went.
Victor Wilson: I think we all, especially Chris and John, did a great job investing in their characters. They made them real. It sounds very David Mamet but our characters had histories. Mary Sheerer is very… Well first of all she’s hot. Second of all she’s incredibly talented. She was “Every Girl”. It was amazing the voices that would come out of her. We could write anything and she could do it.
Mary Scheer: You're usually the only female comedy writer in a room. I think they always hire one token female writer. Every staff I was on I was the only female writer. There were other women given vocal credit on the show but I was the only female writer in the writer’s room. It didn't bug me though because when I was in the Groundlings Theater, it was very diplomatic. Those guys especially, were used to Groundlings where if you wrote a funny thing it went in. You'd write for everybody or cast for everybody. Occasionally jokes would go too far, but I would pitch things that went too far as well depending on someone’s point of view.
Larry Strawther: I still have a sheet that Paul made soon after we chose Takeshi’s Castle. His suggested name at the time was “Read My Lips.” He then came with “Most Extreme Elimination Challenge” which I liked more.
Paul Abeyta: Mary came up with that title. The show we had was “Most Extreme Elimination Challenge” which was kind of a joke because it sounds like a literal translation.
Mary Scheer (2006 MXC DVD Commentary): I was trying to (make it) as if it was translated. Because I had done so much translating, what it would actually be called in English.
Paul Abeyta: Spike Tv made us shorten it for TV guide which is how it became “MXC”.
PART THREE:
SELLING THE SHOW
Paul Abeyta: So, I found the distributer (of Takeshi’s Castle), a guy by the name of Greg Bellon who was the agent for Tokyo Broadcasting System.
Larry Strawther: The show was owned by TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System), and licensed to an American distributor, Bellon Entertainment, so that complicated discussions. Paul and Peter’s company – RC Entertainment – did not have a real strong track record in comedy. However, my track record in comedy (I had worked on and/or run three top ten sitcoms by that point and had network development deals) helped overcome some of those problems.
Paul Abeyta: It took us forever to license the show to just do a presentation. We took that 8-minute presentation to 5 different networks and got 5 different offers, which really doesn’t happen in show business.
Victor Wilson: Spike TV, which previously had been known as “The Nashville Network”, had been taken over by Albie Hecht and decided to change the name of the network to Spike TV; which we all thought was the Douchiest name.
Larry Strawther: TBS and Bellon were very tough negotiators and had some deep pockets, so all that Spike could do – especially for the puny amount they paid us – was license the shows for a specific number of episodes within a specific period of time. If they were willing to put up some real cash, I’m sure they could have gained more rights.
Paul Abeyta: Kevin Kay at Spike Tv really understood the show, probably more than we did. We had no idea how successful the show would be. I give Kevin and Spike TV a lot of credit for giving us the creative freedom to come up with the show.
Victor Wilson: We got in at the right time because they didn’t jack with us. They had all this animated stuff, Stipperella with Pamela Anderson and a show with Kelsey Grammer. Because of that we were left to our own devices.
PART FOUR:
WRITING THE PROGRAM
Christopher Darga: We were the original cast and writers. Herb Goss, Roy Jenkins and Kevin Schini came on staff later.
Kevin Schini (Script Coordinator): I was working in development at Sony Pictures Television when a co-worker of mine showed up with a VHS tape (yup, we were still recording things off TV using video tape at that time) and asked me to come check out this outrageous new show on Spike TV called MXC.
After we watched the tape a few times (at least 20) that morning, I went back to my office and called a friend of mine to tell him about the show. For some reason, the show made me think of this friend’s sense of humor. I had this weird feeling that he’d love it. “You’ve gotta see this new show called MXC. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.” And then my friend on the other end says, “Know it? I’m working on it!” I couldn’t believe it. That person, of course, is Herb Goss.
Herb Goss (Script Coordinator/Producer/Writer): I was a young writer at Warner Bros. working for a Miller/Boyett Show. My writing partner and I got hired to be script coordinators for Nightstand, which Paul Abeyta created. That was the beginning of our professional relationship. Then after he created the pilot for MXC, he invited me to come on the writing staff to help him on the first episode. At the time I was already a full-time writer and he didn’t have the budget to give me the writing title. So, he made me a deal that I would take the lower script coordinator title and he would try to bump me up as soon as the network would allow it.
Kevin Schini: If you’re a true MXC fan, you’ll know that they named a character on the show after Herb. But I’ll let Herb tell you all about how that came to be.
Herb(y the Steamy Pile): I am the voice of Herby the Steamy Pile: The big tree that we turned into a joke about a big steaming pile of crap. In every comedy room you have to have a thick skin. The minute you leave the room, you’re going to be made fun of. That’s just the nature of the room. So, they were writing for the game “Buck Off” which was where Herby first appeared and I had gone out of the room and when I came back, he was Herby the Steamy Pile. I’m thinking “Oh Great, I leave the room for a second and now I’m a big fat pile of S***. Thanks guys I really appreciate it.”
Kip Madsen (Season 4 Writer/Producer): My agent at the time was friends with a guy who worked on the show. I interviewed with Paul and a couple of people from the staff and they were great. I also loved the show "Night Stand" which a few of them had worked on prior to MXC. I was only there for one season, but loved it.
Patrick O’Riley (Production Assistant) At the time, I was actually working as a videogame tester for the now defunct game publisher THQ and I got a call from my friend Kelsey (Smith) who worked as a producer on RC's reality side. Kelsey had produced my senior project film at Cal State Northridge's film program. She said their comedy half was hiring a production assistant and she wanted to give them my resume. I think my interview may have been on the CBS Radford lot or somewhere thereabouts, but they moved offices between my interview and starting the job. I don't think I did well in the interview, but Kelsey pushed for me and producer Mickey Ramos hired me against her better judgement. My duties were largely food based. I would get lunch and coffee for the writers' room and production-side
PART FIVE:
THE HUMOR
Paul Abeyta: The one major rule we had was to never make any Asian references, which we never did.
Herb Goss: In our minds they weren’t Asian. But we made fun of everyone else as much as humanly possible.
Paul Abeyta: There was never a literal Translation. We have no Idea what they’re saying on the original show, nor did we want to know. Occasionally someone outside the show would say “Why don’t we bring in some Japanese people to find out what they’re saying and we could just take it from there”. We would say “No-No we want to create our own world”. So, we created our own world and Takeshi’s Castle was gone. The second thing we did was we never took the direct joke; we would always try to take it from a different angle. This made the comedy incidental because we wanted it to play real. The more real we played it the funnier it would be.
Patrick O’Riley: As another of my duties, I was tasked with maintaining the database of which clips from Takeshi's Castle had already been used to avoid re-airing the same contests multiple times. We had about 130 BetaSPs of the original show. I would scan through them and keep track of what games appear in what episodes.
Kip Madsen: We would watch episodes of Takeshi's Castle, usually with the sound off, and try to figure out what we thought everybody was saying, and then give every single person a name and an occupation. In the original show, it was every man/woman for themselves, but in the MXC version, we'd split them up into two teams, who would battle each other for the ultimate prize.
Paul Abeyta: We would labor to come up with the Matchups. You know, Country Music vs Fitness, ect. It was hard.
Christopher Darga: We would try to layer in jokes. So if you were laughing at one thing you would miss five (other) things. That’s one of the reasons why the show had so much replay-ability. It was so silly. We tried to make it clever, funny, and smart, with innuendo. It wasn’t subtle, but there was some subtlety like the shout-outs. They were just random things like, “I like mayonnaise”.
Mary Scheer: Once I was on a beach in Hawaii and I yelled something at my kids. Someone yelled back across the beach to me, “Oh My God, I recognize your voice! You do the shout outs on MXC.” I don't know if that's good or bad.
Paul Abeyta: Shoutouts were essential. We all came up with various shout outs. But again, the way we would write the show, we read (Takeshi’s Castle Contestants) lips as though they were speaking English. We saw one guy and looked like he shouted out “Drink Bleach”. So we dubbed him saying “Drink Bleach”.
Herb Goss: We had one shoutout where someone said “Milk, Milk, Lemonade, around the corner fudge is made.” We all laughed at it because it fit the mouth movement perfectly. We made a lot of obscure references like that because we had no caveats about what we could and couldn’t do, except the rule that we wouldn’t make fun of Asian culture.
John Cervenka: A lot of shows have an agenda where they’re only going to bash this group of people be it conservatives, liberals, it goes on and on. Other than Asian Jokes… we made jokes about everything. If someone said, “Hey that joke was offensive”. Our response is “Well, we’re going after everyone and just having fun with it”. We’re certainly not approaching it that we’re better than anyone.
Paul Abeyta: Our attitude was nobody was safe and we never looked over our shoulder. Our show became a great guilty pleasure that no one would ever admit to watching. because it was this dirty little show that made fart jokes and penis and vagina Jokes
Christopher Darga: We also did a lot of gay Jokes yet we still had a huge gay following.
Herb Goss: I remember one day were eating lunch somewhere and our waiter outed himself as gay and we thought “Okay… I don’t know why you’re telling us that, but okay” and he said, “I’m telling you because I know you work on MXC and I just want to say it’s the funniest show on TV and It’s great that someone is making fun of gay people in the way it should be done. As opposed to directing jokes at gay people, you’re making jokes we all love.” That was a realization where we knew we wanted to make fun of white people, black people, straight people, gay people, everyone. We want to make fun of everyone but not in a racist way. We want to make fun of them in a way that is crude, silly and dumb but makes you laugh.
Mary Scheer: Not to give ourselves too much credit but I think we were the first to do cleverly written gross jokes.
Larry Strawther: I remember a horse race game – at least I think it was the horse races, I did always like those -- where the winner of the first race was something like “Dewey”, and the second was “Ben Dover”, and the winner of the third race was some guy named “Howe”. Nothing special by itself, but at the end Vic said something like “Just to recap for our audience, the winners in this round are “Dewy Bendover and Howe?” I’m sure I’ve blown the details but I always liked long payoffs like that.
Victor Wilson: Sometimes I would run into people and they would they would say, “I can watch the show with my kids because they don’t get the jokes.” The kids liked watching the stunts while the parents liked the double entendres which I apologize for because they were pretty tawdry.
John Cervenka: Occasionally (Spike) would suggest things, but they knew that we had a grasp on the show. It wasn’t like an episode of a normal sitcom where an executive would come in and say, “Well what if you had this character do this”. We had so many jokes per show that I think they just didn’t want to take it apart when they knew it would work.
Herb Goss: Honestly, I don’t think we were ever told “no” (By Spike TV) on a joke save for one time. We were doing porn titles and someone pitched “Sophie’s Moist” and we all went “Oh no that’s never gonna fly.” We put it in and the network said, “Guys, your making fun of a movie about a mother who has to choose which of her children will be murdered by Nazi’s. We’re not going to let you make fun of that.” It was like “finally a note saying we’d gone too far!”
Mary Scheer: If the Network had a problem with Sophie's Choice it was because they wanted references within the last year. We were always fighting for references to be timeless. They wanted references that only a 20-year-old would understand at that moment. Those battles were boring. My favorite Network quote we got was “If I tell you to paint the wall blue, you paint the wall blue!” Not that my idea or the network's idea was better just a “Do What We Say” attitude. We were on speaker phone when they said that and we had to turn the speaker phone off because we were laughing so hard. Because in their minds we were idiots when it comes to comedy. So Yeah, I loved em all.
NOTE: The author of this piece reached out to several former Spike TV executives who were on staff during MXC’s run on the network. All either did not respond to Emails or LinkedIn Messages or declined to participate.
PART SIX:
THE REACTION
Victor Wilson: Because Spike TV wasn’t really on anyone’s radar at that point, we didn’t have many mainstream reviewers.
Mary Scheer: We had no idea how successful it was until a writer from the New York Times named Jeff Klein. (He) had a son who was a huge fan of the show. He said, “I had to fly out to do a story on the show because my son and I love watching the show together.” It was like, “Oh My gosh, people watch this show?!?”. We're just trying to make each other laugh but people outside our writing room found it funny as well.
Victor Wilson: We were popular in colleges. A lot of Drinking Games came out of the show, which I feel very bad about. But every time I said “Right you are Ken” or “Indeed” someone would have to take a shot. I’m sure we’re responsible for some alcohol poisonings.
Mary Scheer: I would also run into people who would say, “You did MXC? I loved that show. I watched it all the time”.
Christopher Darga: Someone told us that Bill and Hilary Clinton were fans of the show. We thought about getting celebrity guests at one point but I think we realized that it would ruin the integrity of the show. It helped to have the same four people do all the voices. Look at something like The Simpsons. Imagine if someone else came in and did Homer Simpsons. It wouldn’t be the same, like when Mel Blanc’s son did all his voices; it’s just not the same.
Larry Strawther: We heard that Beat Takeshi (the star and producer of Operation! Takeshi’s Castle) started listing (MXC) on his resume.
Paul: And of course, Beat (Takeshi) went on to become the Clint Eastwood of Japanese Cinema.
Larry Strawther: BTW, you may already know this but the original Japanese actor who played our Kenny was elected as a Japanese legislator. I’m sure his pension has to be pretty good. At least, better than if he was working for us.
Paul Abeyta: One of the funniest things for me was going to see a Bruce Brown surf film and while were waiting, there was a preview for a shogun film starring Beat Takeshi. He has gray hair and is acting very serious and stern and in the back of the Theater I hear someone say “Woah, It’s a Vic Romano!” That was a great moment. I loved that so much.
Larry Strawther: And I spoke via email with Brad Lesley, the American baseball player who appeared during two or three later seasons (Of Takeshi’s Castle).
Paul Abeyta: We basically made him a big dumb guy on MXC
Larry Strawther: I was friends with a former teammate of his from his American baseball days. He had been outspoken that we were crap compared to the original show. I tried to convince him that you can’t compare apples and oranges. His beloved version of Takeshi’s Castle wouldn’t get a .2 rating in America. No dubbed show 15-year-old foreign show would. We got very good cable ratings plus we introduced many people to the original. I don’t think he bought it.
Victor Wilson: I wish we had had more support. A lot of our fans found the show on accident. If there had been more promotion, I can’t imagine how much more successful we could have been. It’s a bit frustrating.
PART SEVEN:
THE END OF MXC
Larry Strawther: It was obvious after Season 3 that it was on the cusp.
Paul Abeyta: (In 2006) a lot of new people came in (as executives at Spike TV) and a lot of the people who championed our show had moved on. This is my understanding. I think they were trying to rebrand the network and were trying to bring in shows that had their thumbprint on it. Even though the old shows were successful they wanted to leave their stamp. So, they moved MXC (from 9:00 PM Thursday to 12:00 AM Saturday) and we still killed the competition. Everywhere they moved us we still got great ratings. Our reruns would get numbers like 0.9 which most cable shows would kill for in their first run. Then they moved the show after midnight to 1 or 2 AM and then their argument became, “Well no one is watching the show, Paul” to which I would say “Yeah, It’s on at 3 o’clock in the morning, what do you expect?”. It was a futile argument because I could kind of tell they were ready to move on to new stuff. They really wanted to do just Reality shows like all of the other networks. One of their orders at the time was: We don’t to do any more comedy. I thought that wasn’t wise but understood that they had a different direction in mind. But that was the moment that killed the momentum and ultimately killed our show.
Victor Wilson: Spike didn’t own the show. So, I think they always had a hard-on against it. They were basically just licensing it. There was no real financial windfall for them with the show. I’m not a business person, but that’s just my opinion. We never got promoted. We had to make our own promotions. We were the highest rated show on their network, but I don’t think they wanted to admit that because they didn’t come up with it.
Herb Goss: Spike didn’t want us to begin with. We were this weird little show that caught on. They had Stipperella with Pam Anderson and Gary the Rat with Kelsey Grammer both of whom were big stars. Spike put all this money into a bunch of shows and the only one that printed them cash was our show.
John Cervenka: It was a really interesting one because when we started there was a regime change going on at Spike. It was a little tricky because some (Executives) were leaving the network and new ones were coming on. If MXC failed, then the new group would get the blame even though they weren’t the ones who bought it. If it succeeded then the credit would go to the previous group of executives. We lucked out that it was bought and the network still stayed behind it long enough for the show to get some positive response.
Herb Goss: They wanted to be known as “The Men’s Network”. They wound up going with Boxing and UFC. MXC I think annoyed them but also made them incredibly rich. We would get huge numbers on our reruns. They would have MXC marathons to the point where they played the show to death. But once the show was over, they just sort of let us go. We were like “wait, you guys were a small, almost broke network when got here. Don’t we all deserve a production deal or something?” I always felt they were unappreciative and threw away the baby with the bathwater.
PART EIGHT:
THE (W)RIPOFF
Mary Scheer: But I think one of the most heartbreaking things about MXC is that Wipeout just ripped off everything from Takeshi's Castle.
Paul Abeyta: I got a phone call from someone who said “Hey, did you hear about this new show?” “No, what is it?” Then someone sent me a clip. I said, “That’s MXC.” They said, “No, this is a new thing that ABC and Endemol are doing.” It’s a direct rip-off.
Larry Strawther: (Wipeout) was such a blatant rip-off. Style, verbal tone, so many other things. Their producer claimed otherwise, but that was so much BS. I never saw the original Wipeout pilot, but I am told that it was very different. They get some network notes and the next version looks almost identical to our show. Obviously there are some differences they can point out, but the overall style, the verbal style, the editing pace, even the "color commentary" were total rip-offs of what and how we did. I did a video comparing the two show's hits and elements side by side.
Paul Abeyta: Larry then sent me a side-by side of the two shows. Showed their games and our games simultaneously. It was just like they were the same show.
Larry Strawther: I placed (the comparison video) on YouTube -- within a day or so it was the highest ranked video when you typed in the letters “MXC”. Two days later Google/YouTube pulled it when ABC claimed copyright infringement. Not only that if you typed in MXC, you no longer went to anything related to our show -- all the top listings were now bike-related MX things. I filed a protest pointing out that commentary and satire fell under fair use.
Paul Abeyta: All the sudden I’m getting phone calls from reporters from all over the country. And I’m saying, “Yeah, they ripped us off. It appears to me that that’s our show.”
Larry Strawther: I also got some publicity in the Hollywood Report, Variety and a number of national newspapers. So, after a few weeks, YouTube re-instated the video. It was online for four maybe five years and somebody filed a copyright complaint against it again and now it's off again.
Paul Abeyta: In the end it was a multi-million-dollar lawsuit. TBS (and ABC) settled. Myself, Peter (Kaikko) and Larry Strawther got zero dollars, which really pisses me off. That was really disappointing.
Larry Strawther: The biggest disappointment is that the Wipeout-MXC lawsuit threw a wrench into a long long friendship. But more importantly, it screwed us out of our chance to sell our own live version -- which I know we could have done so much better.
Christopher Darga: We should have done an American version of that show like what Wipeout ended up doing. Now Wipeout made millions of dollars off the concept. We had one writer who worked on both MXC and Wipeout, but it was mostly just our core group of writers.
Victor Wilson: I think there was something elegant with using the old footage. Maybe the show wouldn’t have survived. But at the same time, when you see Wipeout or American Ninja Warrior it’s like, “we had that, we could have done that and made it funny.”
John Cervenka: There was an article where they said something to the effect of “Wipeout is MXC, but without the funny”. I think that was the biggest compliment we could get. They’re doing the same games, same impacts but it’s not as good as MXC. I always thought that if we wrote for Wipeout, with all due respect to the talented people who write for that show, we could have taken that show to a whole other level. I get that they were a network show so they couldn’t do a lot of the jokes we did. But I saw Wipeout and they do a phenomenal job of doing that show.
Herb Goss: Wipeout shouldn’t have had to rip us off. We should have gone to a reality show, we shouldn’t have had to go to G4. We should have had a night on Spike and let Paul Abeyta and our team create an Adult Swim type of programming block. We all had a track record of success not unlike Judd Apatow. He had some failures before his major success, but we never had failures. But for reasons unknown to me, no network wanted to take us on. Which always made me upset because you would think that success would breed success. It wasn’t a fluke, we worked tirelessly to bring you the viewer the most poop jokes you could ever hear.
Note: The author of this piece was unable to get a hold of anyone associated with either Wipeout staff or its owner, Endemol Shine North America.
PART NINE:
THE LEGACY
Larry Strawther: We were funny and we certainly had our fifteen minutes of college cult fame. But I think most of the positive legacy is on the technical side. We broke ground in selling our show via a home-edited sales presentation. (Remember, Mac G3 computers and the Final Cut Pro editing system had just come out and we were among the very first to use it for comedy presentations). We set up a very cost-efficient and still funny workflow that has certainly influenced later shows. That was probably the most rewarding thing for me. But the extremely tight production schedules and constant looming deadlines on small staffs does wear on you. Fortunately, we had a very funny group of people working with us.
Herb Goss: I never laughed so hard in all my life. The thing is you would think with all that joke writing that when we took a break we would stop joking, but we didn’t. It took me 6 months to come down from that when it was all over. It’s hard to come down from intense laughter every day for 5 years. It was almost like coming off drugs.
Kip Madsen: I just feel like I was very lucky to be a part of it, even in a small way. I see these other copycat versions of the show now, and I feel like they're missing some of that Paul Abeyta magic.
Paul Abeyta: I think MXC had everything to do with (Japanese Game Shows) coming to America. We knew for years that a lot of Japanese shows were outrageous but we sort of just left it there. Well then here comes MXC with outrageous games and suddenly the audience is laughing. People realized “Hey maybe there’s something here.” So they started paying closer attention to Japanese formats.
Christopher Darga: It’s too bad, it had a really big cult following. It never had the following of other shows, but that cult following was big.
Mary Scheer: I think if people are honest to themselves, which in Hollywood they never are, they’ll realize. People still quote Kenny with “Indeed”. Right after we became big, the film Dodgeball came out. In the movie they basically borrowed the sports pattern that Vic and Kenny had.
Victor Wilson: I do creative consulting for companies. I was on a speakerphone interview for a real estate company wanting me to help with promotion. We’re sitting there having this conversation and in the background I hear someone say, “Holy F***, that’s Vic Romano.” He was a young guy and I hear other people on the call saying, “No it’s not, that’s Victor Wilson.” I can hear him getting reprimanded as the interview keeps going. Apparently, this kid was the nephew of the owner of the company and they made him call me back to apologize. He says “I’m sorry Mr. Wilson that was inappropriate.” I say “What are you talking about?” He says “I shouldn’t have said ‘that’s Vic Romano’ during our discussion.” I said, “I think that’s badass”. So, there you go.
Paul Abeyta: My son went to university of Honolulu and while he was there, he and some friends went to a strip club. So, they’re having a great time drinking and looking at the dancers when he hears the MXC theme. Suddenly all the TVs in this place start showing MXC and the room comes to a standstill. Everyone starts cheering and all he said he could remember was looking in the distance at MXC while a pair of breasts comes into his view. It brought a tear to his eye and he said “I am so proud of my dad”. Okay, I’ll take that.
PART TEN:
Where are “Kenny Blankenship, Vic Romano, Captain Tenneal and Guy LeDouche” Now?
Christopher Darga: Kenny probably runs a chicken ranch out near Reno. He probably just sits in his office and watches porn all day. Or he manages a 99-cent store somewhere. He probably weighs 300lbs. Actually, he always fell into some luck so he probably had some idea for a sports drink and made millions of dollars. Vic Romano Is probably the one who’s living in his car.
Victor Wilson: I think Kenny probably usurped him in terms of fame. Vic Romano probably had to take a day job. Even though he worked hard to come back. I loved Vic Romano, he was a cool guy. He drove around in the Matador.
John Cervenka: I think The Captain is probably living in a really high-end retirement village surrounded by other incredibly wealthy people. He’s like a local celebrity. People see him around and it’s a big deal. He presented himself like a movie star. He is probably single, dating all the women there. He probably looks spectacular. Guy is a celebrity too. I imagine Guy owns a really successful restaurant in New York. People come into the restaurant hoping to see him. He is single and manages to hook up with all the customers. He genuinely loves people and, in his own way, is so non-threatening. He was creepy but in a harmless way.
Larry Strawther: Maybe Vic would have woken up from a dream in bed with a one-armed man with a voice-over saying “And that’s how I Met Your Brother” and as we go to black, we hear a gunshot. and hopefully, we wouldn’t have needed a graphic of an asterisk and at the bottom the text “homages to “The Bob Newhart Show”, “The Fugitive”, “How I Met Your Mother” and ”The Sopranos.”
The Final episode of MXC (College Sports vs The Mall of Baghdad) originally aired on February 9th 2007 without promotion or pomp. Its undeservedly fell out of public view and never got a proper finale. But MXC’s legacy still lives on. Without MXC, there would be no Ninja Warrior. Without MXC there would be no Hole in the Wall. Without MXC, THERE WOULD BE NO WIPEOUT. The concept of extreme physical action game show would not exist. The physical action of MXC paved the way, but without the writing from MXC, it wouldn’t have succeeded. Some (including the writer of this piece) say the humor of MXC was brilliant. And some have said the humor doesn’t age well. That’s ultimately up to the viewer to decide. If you wish to make that decision for yourself, MXC: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge is currently available for streaming on Amazon Prime and TUBI TV for free. In the near future, a newly produced version of Takeshi’s Castle, the show from which MXC took its footage, will also be available on Amazon Prime. Will it get the MXC treatment? One can certainly hope.
The author of this piece wishes to thank the following individuals and entities: Paul Abeyta, Larry Strawther, Mary Scheer, Christopher Darga, (The late) Victor Wilson, John Cervenka, Herb Goss, Kevin Schini, Kip Madsen, Patrick O’Riley, Jennifer Wilson, Mickey Ramos, Makito Sugiyama and the entire staff of Tokyo Broadcasting System, Latedep, Michelle Bergeron, Hannah Sedgwick, Brandy Michelle, Luki Bateman, “ObjectionOveruled” (General) Jonnie Griffiths, and Michael Murphy. Thank you for introducing me to one of the greatest television shows of all time (and also, thank you for ruining my life 😊 )
And what do we always say?
DON’T GET ELIMINATED!
Joshua Murphy is a film and television historian/expert whose focus is on live action game shows and non-traditional comedy. He currently resides in Kansas City, Kansas. Joshua has interviewed over 100 writers/producers/actors/distributors/contestants since he was 16. He is the owner and proprietor of The JM Archives which features some of these interviews. He has been a coinsurer of Japanese Television since 2007, a lover of comedy since 2004 and a Game Show addict since birth.