Part II: Travel Channel’s Don Wildman on his most memorable adventure
Don Wildman knows how to live up to his last name. The “everyman expert” not only enjoys traveling around the world, scoping out mysterious stories and historical artifacts, but he also brings along a camera. His fascination with all things cultural and bizarre makes for invigorating television, which is probably the reason he has not one but two reality series on the Travel Channel.
Mysteries at the Museum dives deep into America’s archives, inspecting forgotten artifacts with engaging background stories. It’s a new way at looking at old places. Off Limits takes an inquisitive look at all things hidden and unseen across the United States, places and people who normally evade the scrutiny of a TV camera. From the hallways of a regional museum to the rafters of a new football stadium, Wildman can travel miles within the span of one hour and the confines of our living rooms.
Recently, Hollywood Soapbox talked with the TV host about both of his shows. Here’s Part II of that discussion (click here for Part I). Questions and answers have been slightly edited.
On Off Limits, do you ever get people who would rather not be featured because the experience is truly off limits?
A lot of military secrets can’t be shown. There’s a whole lot of, ‘Don’t point the camera that direction.’ You see it on the show often, and we generally make a point of showing the audience when we’re not allowed to shoot something, because it enhances the experience. It shows that indeed we are going somewhere the public can’t go, which is really the point of the show. So that’s not something we hide.
When we did a blastoff of a Delta IV rocket last week on the show, on Off Limits, and you can only imagine, that’s a billion dollar rocket being shot off. There’s a huge amount of security involved. So, all day long, we’re getting told not to point the camera this way or that way. Those people wrote us this week and sent the most gracious thank you for putting them on TV. Because most of these people who are doing restricted or security work are doing cool stuff, and it kills them that they can’t talk about it. So to do a show that gives them at least some glimpse as to how interesting their careers are, they are always very grateful.
Have you heard whether there will be upcoming seasons for both shows?
I’m the last guy that knows. So I’m not sure at this point. That’s the TV business. You never know. All I can tell you is I will keep going. The beauty of these shows it that they’ve given me an outlet for what I do ordinarily in my life.
It’s a real passion of mine to explore and understand places geographically. So, all that goes on for me. We’re going to shut down shooting for a couple of months right now, but I’m going to keep doing it. It’s really fun for me.
Do you have a love for one country over another?
I like eastern Europe myself. The really exciting thing is the show has some kind of tone that allows people to feel like they’re part of it. There’s a vicarious aspect to it, for whatever reason. So I get a lot of e-mail and a lot of Facebooks and so forth from people around the world, saying, ‘Oh man, you got to come. I got this tunnel in my backyard you got to see.’
I am actually going to follow-up on these now. And there’s a guy in Poland who has been writing to me about this really cool part of Poland, and this summer I’m going to climb around in this man’s cave and follow-up on this. It’s really the beauty of the show for me is that people don’t feel like, oh, I’m this guy who is doing something they can never do. They really feel a part of it. So I’m going to make a practice of it.
But as far as the domestic versus international thing, when I heard that we were only doing domestic stuff for Off Limits, I was at first disappointed. I had done a lot of international stuff in previous shows. I couldn’t be more wrong. The excitement of the show became, ‘Geez, I don’t know anything about the United States, or I knew very little.’ And I certainly didn’t know, because I’ve been raised on the East Coast, a huge amount about the Midwest and the American story as it unfolds through the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s really interesting when you start tracking it in that way and learning how engineering evolved and how American communities were built and so forth. It’s really a big story and we’ve only scratched the surface.
It’s not just the artifacts, it seems, but those personal connections that matter.
Totally. I really have amazing friendships. One man jumps to mind in the Netherlands. A lot of these guys are super passionate about these specific locations. When they’re on the biggest scale, they’re trying to make them into World Heritage sites.
So to get the attention of an American television station is really helpful for them because they could point to that and say, ‘See, that’s how interesting this really is and important to preserve it.’ And if I can be a part of that, and help them, it’s really exciting to me.
So this guy over in the Netherlands is trying to get this quarry system in the southern most part of the Netherlands preserved as a World Heritage site, and it truly deservers to be. It goes back to the Romans in terms of the quarry. … And I have a dozen people like that right now in my life, who I didn’t know before I featured them on TV.
Looking back, is there a most memorable episode or artifact? Something that has a special place in your heart.
I can honestly answer 20 different ways. There have been that many extraordinary experiences, but I’ll say one … that jumps to mind. I interviewed a survivor who was 76 years old at the time, this beautiful, lovely, petite woman who survived the Hiroshima bomb, the atomic bomb. And she had been working in a bunker in the middle of Hiroshima, and for whatever reason, and there are very specific ones, survived the blast that happened I think 1,500 feet away from her. I mean it was an extraordinary story that she lived through this.
To interview that woman who has lived a full life in the space that she was in when she was 14 years old, about an iconic historical event that I was on the other side of as an American growing up, just expanded my mind immeasurably. … Those are the moments that I think I have been given the greatest gift one can get in life, to learn and experience places like no one could possibly see unless you were doing what I was doing. So that would rank in the top five for sure. I could go on for an hour and a half about places. I bore my friends constantly with these stories.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
