Westonite Richard Wiese, creator and host of ABC TV’s Born To Explore (Channel 7, Saturday, 11 a.m.), talked to Westport Sunrise Rotary about his show and his travels on Friday, though Wiese the show host is far more than what club members saw.
The “world class explorer who travels across continents in search of experiences you can’t find in the guidebooks,” a travel book writer, and mountaineer has set foot on all seven continents as explorer, researcher, and tour guide. He is a Huffington Post blogger. He was the youngest president of the prestigious Explorers Club, an occasional Saturday Night Live guest, and is an Emmy Award winner. And, as a college student, he did a scene with Brooke Shields in Endless Love.
The son of an airline pilot who was the first to “solo the Pacific Ocean in an airplane” started his adventures early, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro with his father when Richard was 11. He has subsequently led more than a dozen trips up the mountain.
Born To Explore
Wiese’s TV show presents the “explorer as storyteller.” He emphasizes people over place, and “uses the guise of adventure to show off cultures.”
ABC is his domestic distributor, and he owns the show, reaching nearly 1.5 million viewers every week, skewing to women between 30 and 50 years of age – perhaps because he highlights cultural elements including food, music, and dance.
One mark of his show’s focus and impact is that many episodes arise from national tourism office invitations. His goal is to “show sensitivity to the people and place,” calling his show the antithesis of the “the old school” man vs. wild shows, in which the host seeks to demonstrate his “toughness.”
Highlighting a Few Shows
This week’s show was about Hawaii. Wiese and his crew visited with a group committed to saving beached seals, talked with a native Hawaiian about what makes the state unique, then watched him shinny up a palm tree to “shop for coconuts,” and he heard a third generation ukulele maker talk about his craft. Scenes of the islands’ natural beauty (and they were magnificent!) provided the segues.
At the same time he told the group that these Inuits have problems with obesity, alcohol abuse, and teen pregnancy. But they did not become a part of the story.
He did three shows about Morocco, a country he called “interesting as all hell.”
“You forget it’s an Islamic country, it’s exotic, it has interesting people,” he explained.”
He met Berbers who live in the Atlas Mountains in summer and migrate to the desert for the winter. One man he talked with in the mountains told Wiese he was the first non-Moroccan to set foot in his village. He also learned that these people have “no need for money,” then got into a discussion the benefits of life without it.
Video in hand, Wiese returns to Westport to edit and craft his story. He began the series using off site editors and writers but found that sitting across the table simplifies and expedites the creation of his stories.
To learn more about this master of all trades, visit Wiese’s website: http://www.richardwiese.com/, look him up on http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0927597/bio, http://www.huffingtonpost.com and wikipedia – or just google him. He’s eve