“ 'Part of our reason for the alliance, ultimately, was so that we could see up close how they reacted to things and how they dealt with just playing the game.' ”
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[When we left our story, the Guidos had just finished the story of their fateful eleven-hour cab ride to Krabi, Thailand. Now, back to our scheduled snarkfest.]
Miss Alli: Jumping back a little bit, I wanted to ask you, you didn't -- obviously you didn't stay very long in that alliance at the beginning. Did you leave just because it didn't seem strategically advantageous, or did you have a sense that it was going to get nasty between those other teams?
Bill: Actually, it was a little bit of both.
Joe: There were many different reasons why we left the alliance. One of the biggest is leaving South Africa, going to France, we're suddenly not traveling in a family of four, the two of us, our cameraman, and a sound man. We're traveling in a family of twelve. And that's the way Brenda and Pat actually got to Paris ahead of us, is because they only needed tickets for four. We needed tickets for twelve, and Bill and I were the ones that were negotiating it at the ticket counter. So as a result, the first thing here is, man, this doesn't work. We're going to be in airports all the time, running up to ticket counters, buying coach seats at the last minute. The chances that there's going to be twelve seats is ridiculous. Another thing is that Rob and Brennan, who put the alliance together when they were number one back in Songwe Village, forced the agreement that when we arrive at all these various places, we're always going to maintain the same order. So [Rob and Brennan] are always first, Joe and Bill are always second, Frank and Margarita are always third. And that sounded okay in the very beginning, but once we saw how everybody operated, we decided, why should we always be second?
Miss Alli: What does that mean, "see how everybody operated"?
Bill: Well, it's, uh, we kind of knew from the whole interview process who the final three teams were going to be. We knew that Frank and Margarita and Rob and Brennan were very strong teams, very intelligent, and physically strong as well. And so we knew they were our competition. And part of our reason for the alliance, ultimately, was so that we could see up close how they reacted to things and how they dealt with just playing the game.
Miss Alli: What does that mean?
Bill: After one night with them, we just felt like -- as well as the airport idea -- I mean, this isn't Survivor, and an alliance of this sort just isn't going to work. The three strongest teams being together just doesnt make any sense at all if you want to win the thing. You have to really strike out on your own and help a weak team.
“ 'I mean, you know, we knew from the very beginning that it wasn't going to work to be friends, 'cause, you know, it's a game. It's a million-dollar game.' ”
Joe: Back when we were in New York, we selected Frank and Margarita and Rob and Brennan and ourselves as "we are going to be the last three teams, we just know it, these are the real competition." So as a result, why do you want to be in an alliance with these people that were always going to be up front. What you want to do is hope for some mishap, that they fall down and get eliminated.
Miss Alli: Did you get a feeling that -- did you have any idea that they were all going to wind up hating each other?
Joe: Yeah.
Bill: Oh, you mean -- what happened in Paris, and stuff.
Miss Alli: Uh, just generally.
Bill: Oh, yeah. That's -- I mean, you know, we knew from the very beginning that it wasn't going to work to be friends, 'cause, you know, it's a game. It's a million-dollar game.
Joe: The best analogy is, consider yourself going to Atlantic City or Las Vegas, and you're playing blackjack around a table with four other strangers, and the pot's a million dollars. How helpful are you going to be to the stranger door saying, "Oh, I think the -- the black ace has already been played here, you should have doubled down here, do something else, let me help you." [laughs] And then somebody walks away with your million bucks.
Bill: And in fact I think the Guidos were the only ones that were -- if anything, we were honest about that, was the fact that how we were playing the game. This is a race to us, folks, we're not going to be nicey-nice.
Joe: And when somebody gets eliminated, they're gone. You never see them again. They don't come back and vote for number one.
Bill: There was a lot of tension between the other teams, but you didn't really see it on camera. They played that down, because everyone had a, you know, as you've mentioned, a story arc. The Guidos got all the bad press, because that was our storyline.
Joe: We were the team that everybody was going to have to beat to win.
Miss Alli: So you're saying they didn't show when other teams had conflict.
The Guido Interview, Part Two
“ 'It got very, very tense. And we were on the roof watching the whole thing, and it was funny to watch, because you could see the beginnings of things starting to implode.' ”
Bill: Oh, not as much as there was.
Joe: They didn't show the tension between other teams, because they were probably trying to fit it into the tension between us and somebody else.
Bill: I mean, as -- for instance, would have been like, leaving the Laxmi Niwas palace, there was a little bit of an altercation over cabs, a little screaming-yelling match, and that didn't make it on the air.
Joe: What happened was that Drew and Kevin, Rob and Brennan, and Frank and Margarita were all leaving pretty early, and Nancy, Emily, and us were way behind.
Bill: Three hours behind, or something.
Joe: And they all arranged for cabs. Only two cabs showed up, not three. And there was almost a big fistfight --
Bill: There wasn't a fistfight, there was a --
Joe: There was ALMOST a fistfight --
Bill: You don't know that, but it was definitely raised voices. It wasn't this "friends" that you see, you know, arms around the shoulders and
Joe: And rubbing each other's heads. For good luck.
Bill: It got very, very tense. And we were on the roof watching the whole thing, and it was funny to watch, because you could see the beginnings of things starting to implode.
Joe: We were hiding up in the latticework of the palace up on the roof looking down on this, and I thought it was going to end up in fists being thrown.
Miss Alli: Interesting.
Joe: They didn't show any of that, naturally.
Miss Alli: No, they certainly didn't. Now, you guys had a strategy of trying to intimidate the other teams.
Bill: Mm-hmm.
The Guido Interview, Part Two
“ 'I think we totally intimidated everybody in the beginning, though. I mean, everybody highlighted us as the team to beat.' ”
Miss Alli: And being fairly blunt and a little bit arrogant, sort of as an explicit, overt strategy, is that right?
Joe: Yeah, I think so, I mean why not, it's a game, so
Bill: We're confident. It's like poker, you know, we're bluffing. Just like Drew was bluffing me with the "break your legs," I mean, that was a bluff, it wasn't real.
Miss Alli: Sure. And I guess what I wanted to ask you about it is how well you think it worked.
Bill: [laughing] We didn't win!
Joe: I think we totally intimidated everybody in the beginning, though. I mean, everybody highlighted us as the team to beat.
Miss Alli: Yes, and where I'm going with this is partly that I think it worked on some teams and not other teams. In fact, I think it worked pretty well on Nancy and Emily in a sense, because that's sort of how they got kind of distracted and unhappy on that last day -- they sort of didn't think it was possible for you to screw up.
Bill: Yeah, you're right.
Miss Alli: But then with some of the other teams, it seemed to almost drive them.
Bill: Yeah, you're right.
Joe: It would sort of motivate them to beat us.
Bill: And I think that was very true with Rob and Brennan and Frank and Margarita.
Miss Alli: Now I wanted to ask about -- this is a very small kind of oddball thing. When you guys went walking up to everybody at the Pantheon, and you were sort of saying, "Don't tell them what we were doing, don't tell them we were out drinking coffee" What was the point of that?