It Takes Two

by Jonathan Scott

  This hardly even scratches the surface of why it became The Performance That We Will Never Speak of Again. My worst experience ever in front of a live—though only partially coherent—audience. If I had to do it all over again, of course I would. I did it for Brad.

  Brad’s biggest contribution to our crew was Jodi, a fellow archaeology major (or so I thought, until I found out he was a geography* major) who also didn’t use his degree to become the next Indiana Jones. Jodi has worn many hats and even worked with Drew and me as a flight attendant for a while—those were some hilarious flights.

  *Wait, I thought he was a geology major.

  Jodi is the guru of all things music. Knows every song, every melody, and every lyric from the Jazz Age forward. He can un-garble the Spanish words to La Bamba and the English ones to Blinded by the Light. He is fluent in Bob Dylan and can probably tell you the name of the guitar player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 1992 tour. His ridiculous ability to retain is not just limited to music though . . . he’s an all-around storehouse of useless information that has proven time and time again to be not-so-useless.

  Jodi is also a living, breathing copy of Lonely Planet. The dude researches everything about any place we go to. No need for Google or TripAdvisor*—Jodi’s reviews are ten times better. It’s always the perfect mix of party life, culture, and the bizarre. Usually if we were planning a trip, he was the first one we’d call. And before we knew it, everybody wanted to come along for the ride. This was what started our unofficial ritual of taking a couple of guys’ trips per year. It didn’t matter if we were in Munich for Oktoberfest or at some hole in the wall in Edmonton, Jodi would work out an incredible itinerary with ideal photographic backdrops and once-in-a-lifetime experiences.**

  *Are you sure it wasn’t geology he was taking?

  **We just won’t rely on Jodi to book the hotels after the Barcelona incident of 2006.

  Yeah,“roach motel in red-light district” is not my preferred home away from home.

  Over time as wives, babies, and demanding jobs came along, the trips dropped down to once a year, then every other year, then eventually to nothing more than a fond memory. Our last official one with the whole group was probably Europe around 2008, but I did travel to Munich with Jodi and a couple buddies in 2015 to soak up some beer, dance on some tables, and rock the lederhosen. As usual, Jodi figured out ways to keep us all entertained, and in return I covered as many bratwurst and sauerkraut dinners as he could consume. I’ve been fortunate enough to see more of Jodi in recent years than anyone else, mainly because of his flexible schedule, ability to still get cheap travel, and because I’m usually working in cities that he’s always wanted to visit. It’s really a perfect storm that has continued to keep us close after all these years.

  Simpson is our resident key grip (entry-level production position). He always sits quietly in the background, formulating his plan to take over the world—or at least take the rest of us down with him if he doesn’t. If anything embarrassing happens, though, Simpson is always the one who has somehow caught it on camera. For such a funny, caring guy, man, he has a dark sense of humor. If anybody could take us down with dirt, it would be Simpson. His photographic evidence* will put us all away.

  *You’d better hope none of those pics ever surface!

  Haha.Umm, there are WAY more compromising photos of you.

  Mike also joined the gang through Brad and the U Calgary archaeology program, but unlike the other guys, his degree did pay off. (Though not in a career, but by introducing him to his archeologist wife, Andrea.) Mike’s most recognizable trait is that he has the loudest laugh, and if it weren’t for his successful career in IT recruitment, he could easily do voice-over work for Fran Drescher. Anyway, like everyone else in the crew, he has a passion for travel. He just takes his a little farther than the rest of us. Mike owns more sets of lederhosen than the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Oh, and the tasseled knee socks to complete the look. Fortunately, he’s lived for many, many years just outside Amsterdam, which is no more than a quick day trip to prime yodeling spots in Bavaria or Switzerland.

  Mike was in his element when we decided to host one of our Usual Suspects reunions in Munich during Oktoberfest. Drew still has PTSD from that trip as he’s not much of a drinker to begin with, but beer he especially can’t stand—not the taste, not the smell, and not sitting in a beer tent packed stein-to-stein with loud, rowdy people whose sole purpose in being there is to consume as much beer as humanly possible. The more beer they drink, the more difficulty they have with their hand-eye-mouth-giant stein coordination, which means that beer inevitably gets sloshed, spilled, and sometimes intentionally poured on innocent bystanders—Drew being one of them. A bunch of our group were overzealously “cheersing” when one of the mugs broke, which dumped an entire beer in Drew’s lap. Drew looked so miserable. Sadder even than my Yorkie, Stewie, getting a bath. Quickly conjuring up pure genius, Jodi and I instantly executed a plan to make sure Drew wasn’t feeling left out: We each poured our own beers on our own crotches, and soon everybody else at the table followed suit. We may have stolen the idea from Billy Madison, but this was the kinda dedication we had to the group. In the end, we were successful in making ourselves reek of beer, but unfortunately we did not make Drew any happier. Meh, it was worth the try. All for one and one for all, or however that saying goes (Jodi would know). It was part of our Guy Code.

  The main tenet of our unwritten but unanimously embraced Guy Code is to humble humiliate ourselves before our fellow man. Guy Code demands that you immediately report any embarrassing thing that happens to or because of you, sparing no detail. We’ve been upholding* this for almost 20 years now.

  *You mean I have been upholding it. I think I’m the only one who does this?!

  Drew is the most entertaining player in this game, by far. But it’s only fitting. He’s the best at keeping in touch with everyone and bringing us all up to speed on who’s doing what. It’s not uncommon in those reports for Drew to include the embarrassing details of some brain fart moment that is still fresh in his mind. And being able to ridicule him is one of life’s greatest pleasures, made even better when he supplies the ammunition himself. It’s the next best thing to actually witnessing him trip over his suitcase getting off an airport shuttle and doing a face-plant into the bushes in front of LAX, for example.*

  *First of all, the wheel got caught, and secondly, the driver stopped like 2 feet from the curb!

  The friendship we all share isn’t just about fun vacations and reminiscing over good times. They’re a second family—the people you trust can see you at your worst and still love you, the ones who show up when you’re hurting without being sent for. We know they have our backs no matter what, and we have theirs.

  When one of the guys went through a very sad divorce, he was in such rough shape afterward that he wasn’t eating or sleeping, but would never ask for help. He fell into such a negative space for so long that everyone began getting compassion fatigue and distancing themselves rather than risk being dragged down with him. Not me. Not Drew.

  As the first Valentine’s Day since the divorce approached, Drew took him to the airport, stood in front of the departures board, and announced: “You pick anywhere on this board and we’re going away for a week. My treat. We’re going to relax, have some fun.” The friend chose Maui. When they got there, though, the friend seemed to get worse. At the beach one afternoon, Drew noticed an odd tattoo on our friend’s side.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “It’s the Hawai’ian islands,” the friend answered. “It’s where we got married.”

  Drew called him a jerk for not saying anything before, and they ended up laughing at the whole tragicomedy of the situation. Healing took time, but the friend did find his way back to happiness.

  What makes these friendships endure is our ability to always pick up right where we left off, whet
her it’s been days, or months, or even years. We give each other permission to just resume; we love letting the story continue to naturally unfold without demanding explanation.

  What these friendships have taught us about loyalty has helped shape our businesses and inspired us to keep pushing our creative boundaries further. Taking a cue from Adam Sandler, who often hires friends or people he would like as friends at his Happy Madison production company, we make a conscious effort to surround ourselves with people who feed our souls in our professional lives just as we do in our personal ones.

  It’s a no-brainer to recruit our friends to work for our company, since they are guaranteed to have the qualities we value most, or we wouldn’t have admired them in the first place. Linda and Jacinta both have talents that dovetailed with our creative needs, and we’re optimistic that over time we’ll be able to slowly pull in the expertise of all the Usual Suspects, too. Brad has already analyzed our investment portfolio, Jodi has shot a bunch of hilarious social pics for us, Mike has recruited technical positions for our businesses, Pedro has worked as general contractor on several of our real estate projects, and of course JD has worn many, many hats throughout the years. Team Scott is made up of people who are as passionate and unconventional as we are. Wherever we happen to be living at any given time, our house turns into Grand Central Station, and everyone makes themselves at home. Jacinta and I have jars of Swedish fish, Skittles, and other favorite candies always lining our snack counter, and over at Drew and Linda’s, if they start making crepes for breakfast, they know better than to assume that it’ll just be the two of them digging in. (Crepes are a favorite among everybody in our circle.) Colleagues are constantly picking up or dropping off something, and newfound friends from local trades we hire on the shows as well as peers in the industry quickly become part of the fold. Being open and flexible keeps the vibe fun. There are people in the industry notorious for issuing instructions that no one approach “the talent” without permission, but that’s not the kind of bubble we’d ever want to live in.

  One of the best parts of being a nomad is meeting so many people and making new friends wherever we set down for a few months. Doing Property Brothers and Buying and Selling this year in Nashville was especially fun since we’re huge country music fans and have managed to meet even more people on the country scene since recording a few songs of our own. Being on location in such a great city has its perks because more friends pay impromptu visits. Barb, one of my dearest friends from my old WestJet days, is a gifted photographer who’ll pop into town every so often with her cameras just to play. Spending a few hours with her is always unexpected, absolutely hilarious, and so fulfilling. We’ll snap just as many beautiful, professional nature pictures as we do ridiculous, embarrassing, immature ones of each other. It’s really the best way to recharge when my battery is down to a single bar in the middle of a month-long stretch without a day off. And when that month becomes two, I feel like I just won the lottery if a text appears from Brad or Jodi or any one of the Usual Suspects, who all know better than to ask what our schedule looks like.

  Instead, they tell us they’re on their way, and will be waiting wherever we are and whenever we’re ready.

  JD

  Anyone who has been an older sibling knows there are many different levels to that position. Sometimes you are a teacher, sometimes you are a friend, and other times your job is simply to give them a hard time. When we were young, I felt that need to protect my little brothers from whatever came at us, although there were times where the opposite was true, and that fearless duo came to my defense. Their growth over a lifetime has been something wondrous to behold. From awkward (and occasionally irritating) teens to brilliant titans of industry, they have proven that hard work and dedication to a dream can pave the way to success. It has been said that you can’t be yourself on television, which has been proven wrong in the case of our family. My brothers have created an empire based around their talent, genuine personalities, and commitment to fans. And here is a little gem of information not everyone knows: I was actually their first renovation/design client. In filming a sizzle video for a new show called Rock Your Garage, my brothers needed to make over a room in 24 hours to highlight their skills. They chose my living room for that project, which ultimately led to the shows you see today. Everything happened for a reason and when it was supposed to.

  I was in the kitchen of the Galveston home I was flipping for Brother vs. Brother when a loud crash upstairs interrupted a scene we were shooting about my alarming discovery that the tile I planned to use along an entire wall couldn’t be cut to fit without crumbling. “CUT!” the director ordered—meaning the scene, unfortunately, not my tile. No one bothered to go investigate the crash, because after years spent working on construction sites, you can generally tell the cause of random mishaps just by the noise. This was likely just a ladder getting knocked over.

  Once the commotion subsided, the cameras started rolling again, and I had to relive my tile trauma showing the same surprise, disappointment, and light-bulb moment of how to fix it that I’d had when I first learned about it.

  Was I acting? Yes, of course I was. Television is visual: at its best when it’s showing instead of telling. The goal is to engage and entertain an audience, not put them to sleep while we stand around and literally watch paint dry.

  Was the tile situation real? Yes, 100 percent. We don’t create problems—we fix them, whether the cameras are rolling or not.

  So where, then, is the line between truth and fiction in this genre called “reality” that didn’t even exist when we were growing up, but now accounts for 750 of the roughly 1,150 prime-time shows on cable television?

  At some point or another, most unscripted shows will come under attack as fake by viewers, tabloids, or Internet trolls, and there are without question cases where the suspicions are justified. Perhaps you’ve wondered if some cast members on your favorite soapy reality show genuinely do get into physical confrontations with their friends every time they go on vacation or host a dinner party. Or you question whether the aspiring chefs in a popular cooking competition are told before filming ever begins what the challenges will be and what dishes they should prepare. Maybe you’re one of the skeptics who assumes we stage the problems for Jonathan to fix in the rundown ramblers I negotiate down to a price our newlywed homebuyers can afford.

  No offense taken!

  The truth is, anyone who suggests that reality TV doesn’t sometimes require readjustments isn’t living in the real world—where real weather, real noise, real accidents, and real-life screwups affect what would otherwise have been our perfect, authentic, real-time shot. Out of those three desirables, real-time is the only one we can’t recover once it’s lost.

  With our shows, the stories are authentic, the homeowners are real, and when the sh*t hits the fan . . . we actually need a cleanup on aisle 3. The big difference is that we’re only looking to recapture actual events, not create them out of thin air. In the home-improvement and design subcategory of reality TV, we have a fan base that’s interested in learning from the experts as well as watching just for entertainment. Sometimes it’s necessary to highlight a particular trouble spot and show how the issue was resolved.*

  *Like when you split the seat of your pants yet again and have to change?

  Jonathan and I are executive producers for all our shows. We review every cut and give notes for editing. Sometimes we might find a scene was cut halfway through Jonathan talking about a technical issue, and it comes out meaning the opposite of what he intended. The last thing we want is to send some DIY viewer deep into the remodeling weeds because we left some key step in creating a tray ceiling on the cutting-room floor.

  That said, there are big lines that we never cross: Producers don’t come to us with a phony “story line” they want us to follow, or dialogue they want the homeowners to memorize. Likewise, if a pipe bursts and floods the bas
ement Jonathan is converting into the cozy in-law suite on the homeowners’ wish list, it’s not because we sabotaged the plumbing for dramatic effect, LOL. (Pranking Jonathan falls under my personal Brother Exemption, and any damage is strictly psychological, not structural.)

  This was our profession long before we had hair-and-makeup calls prior to demolishing an outdated kitchen. Our integrity matters to us not merely for the sake of our TV shows, but for the integrity of who we are as human beings. We truly care about the quality of our work and always put the clients’ needs first.

  Knowing that we are legitimately helping families get into homes they thought they could never own means a lot to us. There’s no way the budgets our families have could translate into the finished dream homes we give them if it weren’t for the advantages they score by being cast for Property Brothers or Buying & Selling. For starters, I don’t charge a real estate commission, and they get a free general contractor—Jonathan isn’t charging for his time or labor, and if the homeowner’s budget suffers unforeseen hits that seriously impact the reno, Jonathan will jump in and take on even more of the labor himself to shave some costs. Another reason why the money our show clients shell out for a reno stretches farther than it would in the non-TV world is because anytime we get wholesale pricing from a vendor, we pass that savings along to the homeowner without markup. Nobody can stretch a budget* like we can.

  *We even pimp ourselves out to get the homeowners as much free stuff as we can.

  When we do flips, like on Brother vs. Brother, we are investing our own money, so we’re not necessarily working with homeowners, but we are indeed letting the buyers decide our fate. Because of that, the stress really falls on our shoulders as we try to get these projects done. Some are easier than others, and we’ve learned the hard way that in this biz you just have to accept the unexpected. Here are some of my “favorite” do-overs, thanks to the gods of Reality Interruptus: