When the Amazing Race Reality Show Called and Invited Us to Audition

We’re used to strange phone calls. So when a woman called a few months ago, claiming to be a casting directory for the Amazing Race reality show and asked us to audition, we were polite, hung up, then looked at each other and said, “Crank call.”

Although why someone would go to all the trouble to introduce herself as the casting director of Amazing Race, explain how she found us (from the July 2011 interview with us at Westword magazine: For These Married Denver Detectives, Truth Is More Fun Than Fiction), how the show was seeking a married-PI team to participate in the next Amazing Race show, and how they’d love for us to send them an audition tape, like yesterday, as this was a last-minute casting idea…well, it seemed like a lot of trouble to pretext all that into one crank call.

So we did what any private investigator would do: We did a background check on the caller.  Guess what? She really was a casting director in L.A.

We Took the Bait

We called her back. She did the spiel again (how she found us, how this was a last-minute casting idea, the show was wrapping up its casting but one of the producers got a last-minute idea that a PI-married-team would be a great addition, and would we create an audition tape ASAP? Like maybe even that very day?).

We said we’d think about it. She said she’d send us an application, and oh-by-the-way, we should think about all the cool prizes participants on the show can win…like cars and vacations.

Cool Prizes, But Dumb Idea?

We hung up and talked. We’d never seen the Amazing Race show so we researched it on the Internet.  Wow, she was right…people won cool prizes…and they trekked all over the world doing ridiculous things and getting into conflicts with each other that millions of people witnessed.

We told each other it’d be dumb to do the show. We couldn’t afford to take off for an entire month, could we? But then…wouldn’t it be nice to win a new car. No, no, dumb idea to do the show. But what if we won the million-dollar grand prize?

We’re Ready for Our Close-Ups, Mr. DeMille

We packed up our video equipment and headed out to shoot our audition tape. It took us HOURS to do one 10-minute tape. Why? Because we kept laughing and had to stop shooting. The casting director had emailed us things they’d like to see in the video, and we were doing our darndest to accommodate their requests, but we kept forgetting what it was we were supposed to say, or we said it wrong, or we looked at each other and thought we looked pretty silly. But finally, we finished the audition tape.

We Bared Our Souls in Writing

Then we had to each fill out a 14-page application. Jeez, this was becoming a full day of being Hollywood hopefuls, but we dutifully answered reams of questions such as:

What famous person reminds you of your teammate?

Colleen’s answer: Russell Brand

Shaun’s answer: Katy Perry

What famous person reminds you of yourself?

Colleen’s answer: Meryl Streep

Shaun’s answer: Moses.

What is your biggest pet peeve about your partner?

Colleen’s answer: Mott the Hoople.

Shaun’s answer: She doesn’t like to listen to loud ’70s rock and roll all the time.

Do you speak or read any foreign languages?

Colleen’s answer: A little French.

Shaun’s answer: Barely speak bar-room Spanish.

And the Winner Is…

Within 24 hours, the Amazing Race casting director had our tape, our signed waivers, and 28 pages worth of answers.

And we never heard from her again. Couldn’t believe they didn’t snap us up after those insightful, intriguing answers on those questionnaires.

However, the reporter who did the Westword article loved that we’d been invited to audition by Amazing Race. She talked to her editor, who asked if we’d forward them our audition tape so they could post it along with our interview.

Uh, no thanks. A tape of us running around in fedoras (yes, we wore fedoras in our audition tape), saying all kinds of Amazing Race things about ourselves (yes, we’d love to trek all over the world and eat bugs), and barely suppressing laughter is not what we wanted on the Internet.

Although we sometimes look at that audition tape and laugh at one of the silliest, and fun-est, days we ever spent together.

And no, we’re not going to post that video tape — like ever — here on Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes.

Have a great weekend, Writing PI

Related articles

• Two Huge Surprises For The Last Team To Arrive On ‘The Amazing Race’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• ‘The Amazing Race 20′ video: Brandon & Rachel say they’re ‘done’ (examiner.com)
• Top 5 most useful languages to know…..for the Amazing Race (want2speakspanish.wordpress.com)
• ‘The Amazing Race’ comes in Vietnam (lookatvietnam.com)

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