To ‘Die’ for - Deconstructing the innermost workings of the TV industry

If Mark Burnett is the grandfather of reality TV because he created Survivor, Thom Beers has got to be the grandfather of documentary television.

His stable of TV shows — Monster Garage, Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers and Ax Men — have made household names out of Jesse James, crab fishermen, guys driving rigs in the extreme north and dudes who fell mammoth trees for a living.

But one should not forget one of Beers’ most unique and humorous series, 1000 Ways to Die, which returns for Season 2 with a sneak peek on Dec. 5 just after the live finale of The Ultimate Fighter 10 comes to a close.

1000 Ways to Die showcases — and in some ways, celebrates — the truly stupid, outrageous and sometimes sad conclusions to people’s lives. Based on true stories, past deaths include two chefs who threw so much cocoa powder at each other that their lungs clogged and they died of asphyxiation, and a guy with anger issues who grappled with his boss and fell into a vat of acid.

It’s a unique and ghastly series that presents these deaths not only with tongue firmly planted in cheek, but with CSI-style CGI to illustrate why these people perished.

When Spike TV offered Beers up for a phoner interview, we scrambled to say yes. We caught up with the Buffalo, N.Y., native at the airport where he was heading to Mexico for work, but also to possibly buy a house.

TVGuide.ca: I know that dying isn’t funny, but a lot of these people sure die in ludicrous ways. It’s a lot like the Darwin Awards, isn’t it?

Thom Beers: Yeah it is, but I just look at it as stupid deaths. I’ve had a couple of these moments. I was on this ultra-light airplane flying over the Zambezi river [in Zambia] 20 years ago, and I was flying maybe 50 miles an hour over the river. The sun is just setting — it’s the golden hour — and I’m getting these beautiful, soft aerial shots over the river.

Little do I know that a hippopotamus would come up out of the water, and I hit it on the back of the head at 50 miles an hour. Boom! It was like a Tarzan movie, man! There was blood in the water, and crocs were coming off the shore … and I’m thinking, “Man, this is stupid.” That’s the kind of stuff that inspires me to make a show like this.

TVG: Where do you get the stories for the show from?

TB: If you just Google “stupid deaths,” you will come up with a million stories. It’s incredible the amount of material that is out there. In this show, we take the science of the death [and explore it]. We don’t use real names and real dates because there is still family around, and we don’t want to shock them again and we want to avoid litigation.

TVG: How did you come up with the idea for 1000 Ways to Die?

TB: It’s been in the back of my mind for a long, long time. I was trying to figure out how to tell the stories. I’m always thinking, “I’d love to do that show, I’d love to do that show,” and “what’s the angle?” Coming up with ideas is easy for me, but it’s the execution that is the key to making it work. My partner, Tom McMahon, and I just have this warped sense of humour, and that’s what makes this work.

TVG: What are some of the highlights of this season?

TB: [Laughs] Man … the one they’re showing in the promo is this knucklehead who is preaching his own form of religion in a public place and he gets whacked by a meteorite that goes right through him. It’s a little, tiny meteor that takes him right out. It’s like, “Oh, yeah, that’s a good one!” It’s visually fun.

This year we got to play with special effects a lot more, which has allowed us to really stretch it and put more visually outrageous stuff in the show. I love working in TV because you learn all this vernacular that you didn’t know. Like, we had a guy get cut in half, and you use a green screen for that, you know?

TVG: Right …

TB: But then take this thing called a meat skirt, which is just sausages and bits of meat and stuff that is attached to a belt that you wear around your waist, so that it looks like your entrails have fallen out. It’s called a meat skirt. That’s pretty cool!

TVG: What’s the status of both Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers?

TB: We actually just shot the king crab season of Catch, and are getting ready to head back to shoot opilio crab season. And as for Ice Road Truckers, we’re heading back to Alaska this time around.