After the first Survivor, I came back and was doing a rewrite on Finder's Fee, and changed the ending after watching what happens to friendships when trust is destroyed.
Certain tenets are always going to hold true, but within that box anything goes. If there's one person that I want to highlight, I try to subtly draw them out. You're sort of directing, in a way.
Every day I get more and more honest.
Everybody loves the love, you want to feel the love, but that is what we were going to do. It's either do or die.
Everyone wants to talk, you've just got to find a way to get them to talk.
Fire represents life, that is part of our ritual.
From the beginning we wanted our show to feel like it had been going on for thousands of years.
I can tell you who the winner is right now and you wouldn't know whether to believe me or not.
I couldn't believe it when they said, We are going to do three in Africa. I thought, Who are you kidding? And now I think it's going to keep people really interested.
I did Access Hollywood when that launched. Then I did Rock 'n' Roll Jeopardy for VH1.
I didn't think it was going to be a hit, but from the very first hour of the show, when Richard Hatch was sitting up in a tree looking down at everyone, I thought, this is really going to be interesting.
I directed a movie called Finder's Fee.
I don't know how long Survivor will be on the air, but shows like Amazing Race-people just seem to really enjoy watching people in that situation.
I don't not wish that Richard won, because he was masterful, but the only time I was really pulling for someone to win was Rudy.
I don't think it is endless. I do think you will reach a point where you either say, This is the game as you know it and we are going to play it again, or you have to consider making some radical changes.
I feel good about the work I do on Survivor and am proud of my contribution.
I think most all women will probably root for the women, but I think the big question will be, who will the men root for?
I turned down nine jobs over 18 months, hoping for something better. Money was getting pretty low, I wondered whether I'd screwed up.
I was a studio boy. I thought, Kiss of death, I'm done. I didn't hear anything for three months, and then I got the job.
I was stung in the nether regions by a jellyfish. During Survivor 2, I peed on an electric fence and it sent a shock back to the point of origin.
I'll always go say the same thing at tribal council, I'll go tally the votes, the tribe has spoken, it's time for you to go.
I'm in love with her. I'm with her family, and there ain't no turning back.
I'm not one of these guys who says, Now I'm on a really hot show, better quit soon before I get labeled. That's the most ridiculous notion I'd ever heard.
I'm pretty involved in the day-to-day show. The challenge itself, when the Survivors are there, takes maybe an hour by the time they show up and we tell them the rules.
If people start developing shows based in one small part of your show, it makes it tougher to keep your show intact. We don't like to repeat.
If you are a lawyer and you come on Survivor, you can tell people you are a truck driver, or that you have been married 12 times. But no one has played a total lie. People give it up too soon.
If you pull Australia out, our numbers have been right around 21 million every season.
In a game that deals with social interaction, handicaps are really relative, and it's all based on perspective.
In New York nobody talks about how much money will it make, and who will be in it: You talk about theme and character and structure.
In spite of the first eight weeks, when every reviewer wanted to vote me off the island, I'm optimistic enough to believe that now people get that I understand that Survivor is tongue-in-cheek.
In Survivor and Finder's Fee, it is about what you would do if you could get away with it. Survivor is about your own integrity and where you draw your own ethical and moral lines. There are no rules.
In Thailand, we did the fake merge. The Survivors that were shooting the Amazon did not know that. They were already gone when that episode aired.
It was a big thing for me to hang on to directing at all, having no experience. And then when you tag it with. he's a television host, people do think you're an idiot.
It's an amazingly fast 39 days, because you are rarely sitting there surfing the Internet. You're usually working on the show because things are changing so fast.
It's extremely tough to keep your show fresh and keep it authentic and true to what it is. We were the first one; we laid a lot of groundwork that we stayed with, which is a lot of ritual.
Most of our conversations are about how will this affect the Survivors, and what will our audience think, because we feel really lucky that we have an incredibly loyal audience.
Most people I run into say, I haven't missed an episode. Either you like Survivor or you don't, but if you do, you're a loyal viewer.
My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.
Nothing is for certain. So and so said something to such and such and now they are mad at each other and they are going to switch tribes and the other guy doesn't know it.
Now you've got Star Search battling with American Idol. All these new shows that I find myself watching; hell, Bravo has reality shows on, and they are good.
Once the women figure out it's all women, this weird energy sort of shifts.
One day I heard Mark Burnett on the radio say, I'm going to put 16 people on a deserted island and force them to live together. I was the first person to meet with Mark.
One thing is for sure: there will never be another Survivor: All Stars. This was a beast. Bringing people back who already know the game is tough.
Our fear was, what will happen if the men just run crazy over the women? How will it end up playing out if we end up having eight guys left? We thought either way, it will be interesting.
Professionally it's given me huge awareness with the industry and the public, which translates into a longer career and more money if you don't screw it up.
Reality is a genre that seems to be here to stay. I don't know how many of the new shows will last, but the more competition you have, the harder that pie is to slice up.
Survivor is like rock 'n' roll - you can do what you want.
That's something we continue to try and figure out how to do: keep them off balance.
That's tough love, and that's Survivor. And that was the original plan.
The challenge for us is, how do we keep our show intact without stealing from other shows and without being influenced by other shows?
The guys are saying, This is ridiculous, we wanted some competition. So you have got heroes and villains right away and you have people to root for.
The thing that surprises me most is, you cannot change who you are.
There are guys out in the island right now in Marquesas that audience members hate because of the way they are playing. And we tell them that's OK.
There are many times when we will have an idea that's good, but then one of us will realize that another show has already done that, and we don't do it.
There are some people on the All-Stars show from the first season that probably didn't understand the marketability.
There was a lot of sexual tension, and it would come up at tribal council.
There was the I want to win element playing, and there was also the check her out, hey look at that cute guy over there. So it added a new dynamic.
There's a natural assumption that because I'm now the host of a popular show that I suddenly got this movie dropped in my lap. But I'd been writing since 1994.
There's something to be said for embracing who you are.
They all have their own distinct personalities.
They have now done six seasons at 70 challenges, so they have done 250-300 challenges. That's a lot.
Tribal Council is, Let's talk about trust tonight and see how it impacts the game. Then, it's like a journalist's or therapist's job: You just go exploring.
We have a full staff of locals that we hire whose job it is to try and find a way to cheat in the game.
We have so many lies going, and so much misinformation. There is usually a way to recover, though.
We spend a great deal of time just throwing out ideas. How can we make this challenge a little better? What's happening in reality?
We try to always involve some strength, balance, leadership, teamwork and maybe a puzzle as well. That's a big job.
We work hard at staying as original as we can.
We worked hard to create a world that was very specific. Now shows like Fear Factor have taken one element from our show and made a whole show out of it, and that is happening more and more.
We'll get to a point like we did in the Amazon: We had problems with the weather; we were flooded out. So now what do we do? You keep fairly busy with that stuff.
We've never been averse to casting someone with a physical limitation like hearing.
When we were casting, we were planning for it to be like it was before; men and women combined.
When you are one of two girls who have really big breasts and a great hot body with six other women who aren't, you can say that is a handicap.
Would we have other people with maybe the loss of a limb? Sure.
You can try to put on airs for five minutes, but go two days without water, and you kind of forget that persona you are trying to cultivate and go back to who you are.
You got a little movie, you're the host of a TV show, there's no way to blend those two worlds.
You never know where things are going to lead, but I definitely am in love. I'm not just dating Julie. I hope it lasts forever.
Jeff became an ordained minister so he could remarry his parents one year for their anniversary.
Jeff travelled more than 300,000 miles around the world as a correspondent for Access Hollywood. He was host of "Rock 'N' Roll Jeopardy" on VH-1 from 1998-2001.
On the Survivor: All Stars Reunion show, he offered to marry both Rob Mariano and Amber Brkich, claiming he was an ordained minister. Probst got himself ordained in 1999 so that he could preside at his parents 40th anniversary remarriage. He was ordained by the Universal Life Church of Modesto, California. He paid $25.00 for his ordination papers.
Jeff grew up mostly in Seattle, and attended Seattle Pacific University.
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