The cast of The Buried Life has cured a girl of her fear of heights, sneaked into the Playboy Mansion and walked the red carpet as women, but they said their greatest challenge has been the production of the show.
“You could have made a show about producing the [The Buried Life],” cast member Duncan Penn said.
The most recent venture for the cast was to Carleton as they talked to frosh students during a meet-and-greet and behind-the-scenes look at their show Sept. 7 in the Fieldhouse.
Duncan, his brother Jonnie Penn, Ben Nemtin and Dave Lingwood travel across the U.S. checking things off of their bucket list while helping people along the way in their show The Buried Life.
“Most of the battle was filming. We had to hide cameras everywhere,” Jonnie said.
“We wouldn’t tell people what we were doing, because we wanted to do things the way we usually do them which is on the go, real, and not produced,” he said. “We wouldn’t clear it beforehand because we didn’t want to tip them off as to what we were doing. Then we would have to get clearance from the afterwards, which a lot of times they didn’t want to do.”
In one case, this nearly cost them their footage.
“We snuck into the playboy mansion, they had no idea we were there. We had to go back to Playboy and ask if we could use the footage and they said ‘No’,” Nemtin said.
The cast ended up having to write a letter to Hugh Hefner who eventually gave them permission, Nemtin said.
Nemtin said the production process was a lot different for a show than in the initial project, an independent documentary.
The four decided to embark on a two-week journey across North America after graduating from high school to check 100 things off of their list of things to do before they die.
“The Buried Life: What Do You Want To Do Before You Die?” was the independent documentary which eventually led to their show on MTV, The Buried Life.
They had received another show offer but turned it down because it wouldn’t give them complete creative control, Nemtin said. They accepted MTV’s offer on the condition of being made executive producers, Nemtin said.
As for future endeavours, the cast said they would like to start making more films and master the craft. For the time being, Nemtin alluded to new material and an enthusiastic desire to continue the production.
“We’re going to do it as long as we are having fun with it. We’re reinventing it right now . . . we’re going to be putting something out that is fresh,” Nemtin said.
As far as new material, Nemtin’s only revelation came to light when asked about the chipped, red nail polish he was sporting. “We dressed as women to walk the carpets of the VMA’s this year to get ‘Best Dressed.’ “
