The Road to Reality

by Dianne Burnett

  Let’s make 1994 our best year in all respects, and let’s be good to each other all the time. I love you, Di.

  Your loyal husband,

  Mark

  The year 1994 started with a bang, literally. In the wee hours of the morning on January 17, I was nursing James in his room. I’d just put him down in the crib, padded down the hallway to the master bedroom, and curled up next to my sleeping husband. And then—BOOM! We both shot up in bed.

  “What was that?!” yelled Mark. The clock on the nightstand was vibrating, chotchkies flew off shelves, and the bed starting shaking like a “Magic Fingers” automated-massage bed gone berserk.

  “Mark, it’s an earthquake!”

  We raced to the nursery, huddling with our baby under the door frame as paintings fell to the floor, walls cracked, and wine glasses crashed below. The house creaked and shuddered for 20 very long seconds during the temblor that measured 6.7 on the Richter scale and rattled the Los Angeles area with aftershocks for a week. Causing the strongest ground motions ever recorded in urban America—as we learned many hours later when TV stations were broadcasting again and electricity was restored—the 1994 Northridge earthquake killed 70 people and injured 8,000. It caused highway ramps to collapse, flattened apartment buildings, damaged hospitals, rearranged parking garages, and caused $20 billion in damage in the blink of an eye.

  I’d never felt so helpless and at the mercy of nature; I wished we could just hover in jet packs until the aftershocks subsided. The earthquake emotionally shook us up so badly that for the next week we slept downstairs in the den, mere inches from the front door, ready to bolt.

  Beyond that horrifying beginning, the year 1994 was earthshaking and groundbreaking in another way that entailed thrills, spills, tumbles, feelings of helplessness, faith, and sheer determination. We finally got our race—Eco-Challenge—off the ground.

  Mom and Dad when they were hot and happy.

  Sunday sing-alongs around the organ. “Vicki, play ‘Something Stupid’!” Mom, a Sinatra fan, requested every time. Here, Steve jams on the plastic ivories.

  At this costume party, Mom and Dad went as cop and hooker, handcuffed of course. Also pictured: my godparents, Carmen and Joe Loffredo, whose daughter Donna tipped me off about Faces.

  Mark and me in the early days of our zesty romance. Here we’re at Big Sur.

  Here I’m modeling haute 516 couture. One perk of working at Faces was that photographers offered me free photo shoots.

  The Englishman who rescued me from the 516 area code. What captured me isn’t captured in this photo: his adorable accent.

  My lord and his lady exploring romantic ruins in Wales.

  Together we thought we could climb every mountain. We started at Yosemite.

  Mark opened the world for me—starting with London

  Festively ringing in the new year, and my birthday, in Monaco with my love.

  In Monte Carlo. We did not hit the casinos, since we never gambled, except with things like our careers, savings, and lives.

  We wed on Hanalei Bay in Kaua’i, where we saw spectacular rainbows every day.

  Hiking in the enchanted Fern Grotto on Kaua’i.

  For my wedding, I did my own hair and makeup, and even designed my gown. I left the lingerie to the experts, though.

  Mark struts his stuff with the hula girls.

  I was elated in Paris, only days before learning our family would soon number three.

  Traveling abroad made me want to learn more about history. Here Mark and I are pictured at Cambridge.

  Sweet Baby James, my angel, was born in August 1993.

  A romantic celebration of Mark’s 30th birthday at San Ysidro Ranch.

  The opening leg of the Raid Gauloises in Oman in 1992. I was so proud of my husband barreling across the desert on a miniature horse.

  Eco-Challenge Australia. Cameron was only a few months old, but that didn’t stop us.

  We were the adventure family—hiking in rain forests, tackling mountains, camping in deserts, and frequently traveling to exotic locales.

  Cameron’s first birthday, celebrated in our Topanga house.

  The boys did not inherit their mother’s fear of choppers.

  The boys were always ready to go and eager for adventure

  Meeting Mark midway through the race in Morocco. The desert was hot and dusty, but it was quite amusing to watch the camels run!

  My happy family down under for Eco-Challenge Australia.

  Wait up, I have to tie my shoe before we get to the summit of the mountain in Argentina. (I thought we were riding horses to the top.)

  James “supervised” setting up the next grueling competition during the filming of the first season of Survivor, shot on a tiny isle off of Borneo.

  Richard Hatch, Rudy Boesch, and Kelly Wiglesworth had to hold that totem for hours to determine the winner of the competition.

  Here I’m with my buddy Richard Hatch, winner of the very first Survivor.

  In Kenya, we had local escorts whenever we left the camp.

  Behind the scenes at the taping of Survivor Borneo.

  Survivor Kenya introduced our boys to new cultures. Here James dances with the Maasai on his 8th birthday.

  Ethan Zohn, winner of Survivor Africa, volunteers at Eco-Challenge Fiji in 2002. Ethan used his $1 million prize to found nonprofit Grassroot Soccer in Africa

  James and Cameron handed out toys to the children in Africa

  Survivor gives back by delivering AIDS medication to a nearby hospital during taping in Africa. This was a very touching moment for me as a mom—teaching our kids about caring for people in need. Worth the trip!

  “Oh my! … DO NOT use those to fight with Cameron …”

  Home is where the heart is—we always kept the family together no matter where Mark was shooting across the globe.

  Back in L.A. with Jeff Probst, the popular host of Survivor. Yes, ladies, Jeff is irresistible in person as well!

  James and Jeff strike a “pose.”

  Surprise party for Mark’s 40th birthday.

  By autumn 2000, Mark was a blur, and often traveling. He stopped in town long enough to attend the Emmys, where we were interviewed by our old friend Mark Steines.

  A milestone. Beyond Therapy was my post-separation therapy.

  Back on my own road. James and Cameron are still my angels.

  Chapter Eight

  LIGHTS, CAMERON, ACTION

  You’re not a failure if you don’t make it. You’re a success because you tried.

  —Susan Jeffers

  “DI, IMAGINE US RAFTING down those,” Mark said, pointing at foaming, churning waters as the helicopter suddenly dipped lower. I looked down at the rushing Colorado River tipped with whitecaps. No, thanks. Just flying around in a helicopter was plenty daring for me. I pulled baby James tighter, and resumed my silent chanting of The Lord’s Prayer, my typical pastime when in whirlybirds.

  “And over there,” Mark said, pointing to looming cliffs, “they’ll rappel 1,000 feet down the sheer faces.” I imagined sliding down a rope that stretched the length of the Empire State Building, and shuddered. It was the spring of 1994, and James and I had flown to Utah to be with Mark on the latest phase of planning for our first Eco-Challenge—already being billed as “the toughest adventure race in the world.”

  I’d never seen such dramatic and varied landscape, and never knew that rocks could swirl, twist, and loop until we began touring Utah, where the sweeping landscape is dazzling. Once covered by ocean, the terrain was carved, chiseled, gouged, and uplifted—by crashing tectonic plates, howling winds, flash floods, and beating sands—to create a topography of flat-topped mesas peering over deserts, rushing rivers snaking through gorges, and rock forms that looked like skyscrapers set against snowcapped mountains dropping into canyons. An ideal setting, in other words, for Eco-Challenge.

  The project that had begun simply as an idea—with Mark, Brian Terkelsen, and I brainstorming about an event that co
mbined teamwork and daredevil feats—was finally in motion. We’d spent months researching and planning, ultimately deciding to set the ten-day race in Utah, the state most receptive to our innovative concept. The governor there was so excited about Eco-Challenge that he’d even loaned us his private plane to check out the terrain.

  Along with a trio of course designers, Mark and Brian scouted out Utah’s landscape on reconnaissance missions—studying aerial photos, marking up maps, and talking with everybody from mountain climbers and whitewater rafters to government agencies and environmental groups—then returning to California to share their findings.

  As our dream project turned into a reality, we transformed the guest room in our Topanga Canyon house into an office, but it looked more like a war room, plastered with maps and photographs alongside white boards listing sponsors (some of which I helped line up); we devised innovative sponsorship packages that included banners, signage, and clothing patches.

  People were always coming and going, all the more after we hired a dozen staff members to aid in planning, organizing, and designing the ultimate long-distance endurance course. Over breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I helped Mark hone his pitches to sponsors—in between working on logos, proofing brochures, lining up more potential sponsors, and taking care of James.

  Responses from the press and corporations were encouraging. The media played a crucial role in helping us pull in the sponsorship dollars needed to fund such an undertaking. We received funding from people who’d been fascinated after the Raid Gauloises was covered in the news, and who were inspired by Team American Pride’s performance.

  By mid-1994, we had Eco-Challenge’s 370-mile course roughed out. The endurance race would begin at Green River with competitors setting off on horseback. Then they would push through icy waters in canyons; trek 100 miles across desert; plunge down cliffs; raft the rapids of the Colorado River; and, finally, canoe across 50 miles of Lake Powell. All in all, the course would take at least ten days to finish, for those who were able; like the Raid Gauloises, teams that didn’t stay together would be disqualified. And we stressed the importance of being eco-friendly.

  “Mark,” I said from the start, “they can’t leave piles of poop all over the place like they did in Oman!” We adopted a “pack it in, pack it out” strategy for all equipment and waste, and for avoiding contact with wildlife, recognizing our responsibility to treat the land with respect. Competitors who disturbed anything would be disqualified and forfeit their $7,500 entry fee.

  Working with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, we vowed to be low impact: we brought in naturalists to advise us about how to avoid disturbing the nesting sites of rare peregrine falcons and the lambing grounds of endangered big-horn sheep. To prevent degradation, we tried to steer clear of the fragile “cryptobiotic crust” of the surrounding desert surface—the vital algae, lichens, mosses, and microorganisms that keep bare soil intact and protect from erosion. Even a toddler’s footstep could destroy it; the cryptobiotic crust would take decades to recover if harmed by trampling feet.

  Before each race, we also organized a service project to contribute to the local environment. For our first Eco-Challenge, we pledged to clean up 70 tons of recyclable metals in an illegal dumpsite. Everyone would come out on top, even the little critters nestled deep in Utah’s countryside.

  While in Utah, I realized that I had a serious competitor vying for Mark’s attention: the telephone. Whether we were camped out in the desert, or snuggled into a Moab hotel, or back home in California, the phone rang nonstop; it might as well have been permanently affixed to his ear. And from then on, the phone never stopped.

  “We got MTV!” Mark yelled out from the front office one afternoon. Signing on as a sponsor, the music-television network would also broadcast the event and produce a documentary. Other big-name sponsors followed suit—and by the fall, we’d raised nearly a million dollars. Twenty-five teams of five competitors from six countries had signed up and paid their hefty entry fees. We’d started a production company—DJB, Inc.—to tape the event, and I was made the company president. The pieces were all snapping together perfectly. And then the problems began.

  Mark had assumed, given the Utah governor’s enthusiasm about Eco-Challenge, that lining up the necessary permits would be a snap. However, the course ran across federal lands—and the project was soon ensnared in bureaucratic red tape. No sooner had Brian, who was handling the legal end as well as logistics, jumped through all the necessary hoops than several environmental groups voiced loud objections. Suddenly sponsorship money was diverted into hiring consulting firms to write environmental-impact statements, and public hearings were held across the state; it took months, but the Bureau of Land Management finally gave us the initial green light. The hardcore environmentalists put up even more of a fight, appealing the decision, even targeting sponsors; a few diehards called in death threats against us, vowing to blow up the course.

  Still lacking the needed permits, we proceeded with our plans, assuming it would all work out by April 25, 1995, the date the first Eco-Challenge was scheduled to begin. But as January became February became March and we still didn’t have the needed permits, we panicked. What if, after all our hard work planning, producing, and promoting the race, we were stymied at the last minute?

  Mark tried to put on a bright face, but with only five days left, he was at wits’ end. The media was already swooping in to conduct pre-event interviews, competitors were arriving, and it looked like we might have to slink off with egg on our faces.

  “Di, if we don’t get the permits,” Mark said in all seriousness, “we’ll just run off to England and change our names.”

  “We’ll get them,” I said. “Don’t worry, the permits will come.”

  On April 22, the permits arrived, and we all had a new spring in our step and lightness in our hearts as we performed final checks for the race.

  “6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 … go!” yelled Mark from atop a Land Cruiser, and competitors shot off on horseback, their forms disappearing in a cloud of kicked-up dust. America’s first long-distance endurance team event was carried live on Good Morning America, covered that night by Dateline NBC, and written up in hundreds of newspapers and magazines—from Outside to Newsweek. Eco-Challenge Utah was the pioneer event, the exciting beginning of our new lives together as a family, on our way to travel, adventure, TV and abundance. Six months later, we produced the second Eco-Challenge in Maine as part of ESPN Extreme Games. And from that point on, the pace of our life went from dizzying to head-spinning.

  As Eco-Challenge took off, we grew out of our guest-bedroom office and moved into Brian Terkelsen’s spacious apartment in Beverly Hills. Every morning, I dropped off James at preschool, and then drove to Brian’s apartment to work the phones and line up more sponsors. One day en route to the office, six fire trucks raced past me. They, too, were headed to Brian’s place, where flames were shooting out the windows. An electrical wire had shorted, and the entire apartment was ravaged by fire—all of our files and contracts along with it.

  While we were trying to recoup those losses, our luck took a turn for the better. Oddly enough, what really made Eco-Challenge blast off—the first giant step that launched Mark Burnett Productions—was little James. Rather, what shot the event into a higher orbit was the birthday party of one of his preschool friends.

  When James was three, I enrolled him in “Mommy & Me” in Santa Monica, and “Bright Child” in Beverly Hills. Designed to help with child development and create stimulating situations for mother/child bonding, these programs challenged kids with activities ranging from music to gymnastics. It was a great place for James, and an equally great venue for me to meet other parents.

  I particularly liked Suzy Sheinberg. Her husband, John, was a film producer whose father was Sid Sheinberg, who at the time headed Universal Pictures. Suzy and John invited James and me to their son’s birthday party, so I suggested to Mark that he come along. Upon learning about Eco-Challenge
, John called his father and set up a meeting for Mark.

  Sid Sheinberg at Universal, in turn, made a phone call, which ultimately led to Greg Moyer at Discovery Channel, which signed up as the flagship sponsor for the third Eco-Challenge in British Columbia, and then went on to produce a five-hour miniseries on the event. Discovery Channel’s involvement was key: the popular channel gave Eco-Challenge a much wider audience and higher visibility for sponsors, allowing us to capture both more dramatic footage and more sponsorship dollars.

  In The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell writes that certain personality types are “connectors”—putting together people who ordinarily wouldn’t meet. That was a role I excelled at: initially, at least, I was often Mark’s connector. I was the social butterfly who loved going out, meeting new people, and throwing dinner parties. In the early years, Mark was an introverted idea man, and back then at least, he sometimes came off as abrasive; his dry British humor was sometimes misunderstood. I helped him meet new people and tone down his sarcasm and aggressive side so he could shine.

  To prepare for the 1996 Eco-Challenge, the first that was sponsored by Discovery Channel, we moved to British Columbia three months before the event. The Pacific-hugging westernmost stretch of Canada, British Columbia was a nature-lover’s paradise with tumbling hills thick with groves of Douglas firs, alpine lakes, rushing rivers, and serrated, snow-sprinkled mountains. Intoxicated by the beauty, we wanted to make sure it stayed pristine. For the 1996 Discovery Channel Eco-Challenge British Columbia, our environmental contribution was cleaning a tributary that was vital for spawning salmon.