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Jimmy S.
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Date Posted: 02:23:39 01/14/07 Sun
Be beautiful, and open a briefcase
The hit show Deal or No Deal starts next month in Canada. An observation on the often cruel process of selecting the models
IAN BROWN
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Model Search hopeful and first round pick, Jackie Nugent of Mississauga gets her bust measured after being chosen to move on, following her audition for one of five exclusive positions on the Canadian roster of the television show Deal or No Deal on Friday morning at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto. (Deborah Baic /The Globe and Mail)
TORONTO — You know what? A lot of girls say you know what. Anna Aragona says it whenever she looks around at the 700 women behind her, all as eager as she is to be cast as a bombshell briefcase babe on the TV game show Deal or No Deal.
It's so cold and damp outside the Royal York Fairmont Hotel where the auditions are taking place in downtown Toronto, women like Anna, who wore their strappy high heels, are rubbing their toes up and down their calves fast enough to start a fire.
Anna's third in line. She's been here since 5:30 a.m. She's right behind Nicole and Danielle Newman, sisters who flew in from Scotch Lake, N.B., which is somewhere near Fredericton. Anna's a knockout too, but she has two problems: She's 35 years old, and she's 5 foot 1. Casting managers from the show have been patrolling the line for an hour, bellowing “If you're under 5 foot 7 in your bare feet, you are wasting your time.”
“In all honesty,” Anna is saying, “I think my chances are slim. I mean, they're choosing one girl from all these that are here. But you know what? I came, I've been here since five o'clock this morning, so I'm not leaving.”
Related to this article
Model Search hopeful and first round pick, Jackie Nugent of Mississauga gets her bust measured after being chosen to move on, following her audition for one of five exclusive positions on the Canadian roster of the television show Deal or No Deal on Friday morning at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto.
The Globe and Mail
Seldom have so many hoped so hard for something so unlikely — the definition of the modern longing to be famous on TV. Today is the last day of the five-city Deal or No Deal Model Search. One woman will be selected for a handful of episodes to be broadcast exclusively in Canada next month.
The girls are auditioning to be “case babes.” They have to be “physically able to walk up and down stairs in time to music and carry a briefcase.” Beyond that, “hopefuls planning to audition should possess a winning combination of natural charisma, wit, warmth and enthusiasm” — what John Brunton, the executive producer of Insight Production, the company that's putting the Canadian Deal or No Deal shows together for Global Television, calls “sparkle.”
Sparkle is hard to define, but “you know it when you see it.” Mr. Brunton also produces Canadian Idol and the surprise hit Falcon Beach. He knows what works on TV. But he also knows it's a mystery.
Deal or No Deal, as anyone who has been semiconscious for the past year knows, is the hit game show hosted by Howie Mandel, the germophobic Canadian comedian. (He never shakes a contestant's hand.) The game has brought Mr. Mandel's career back from the dead (he was Dr. Wayne Fiscus on St. Elsewhere in the eighties), and is NBC's No. 1 show. It seduces 15 to 18 million viewers a week in the United States and about another 1.7 million in Canada.
The girls are finally let into the hotel at 8 a.m. Its grand ballroom is instantly transformed into a gigantic women's changing room. Everywhere you look there are billowing breasts and boffo bouffants and eyelashes like fences and two-yard-long legs and winking rhinestones and tottering heels and cutouts and hip wraps and bra straps and bursts of colour and tans as deep as some of the cleavage.
A man could hurt himself in here. There are women from Toronto and Sudbury and Ottawa and Windsor and Scarborough and Grimsby and Winona and everywhere else — students and dental technicians and hairdressers and comptrollers and schoolteachers and receptionists. What there isn't, anywhere, is any visible shame, even though, with all the flesh and skimpy dresses on display, this could easily be a convention of high-end hookers.
“What percentage of these women are strippers?” someone asks the height-chart girls. The height-chart girls ignore the question. They're too busy making sure the girls are 5 foot 7. A gorgeous girl named Sahar Biniaz, a Vancouverite who flew to Toronto from Rome just for this audition, is trying not to look like she's standing on her toes. She tries three times.
“No,” says a manager from Global. “She's five-six.”
“Let her in, let her in,” says a TV cameraman who has been following Sahar's story. He doesn't want to waste his footage.
“She's the prettiest girl here,” says someone else.
It's almost true: Sahar is fresh and pert and thin and busty in a sporty green smock from Milan, exotically dark and gorgeous, 50,000-watt smile, the daughter of Iranians.
The manager studies Sahar. The manager knows TV, too. She knows an Iranian might work in the show's ethnic mix. “Hey, you know what?” the manager says. “You're in.”
Deal or No Deal is a simple concept. It requires no skill. A contestant picks silver briefcases held by 26 bombshell models in skyscraper heels and dresses smaller than an afterthought.
Each briefcase contains a sum of money between one cent and a million smackers. The drama occurs when contestants turn down small fortunes on microscopic odds that they will win more. Watching Deal or No Deal is like watching people make terrible, terrible life decisions over and over again, even though they are surrounded by babelicious dames. It doesn't seem fair.
A big part of the show's success, Mr. Brunton feels, is Mr. Mandel, who seems uncannily suited to his Mephistophelean role as chief tempter and chider of the greedy. But an equally important feature is the case girls and their full-on brassy shamelessness, which give the show an oddly dynamic wow.
“I don't know if you're into big college marching bands, but I am,” Mr. Brunton says. “And the first time I saw the Musical Ride, the Mountie ride on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, I had the same feeling. There's something like that about these girls.”
At the moment Mr. Brunton is sipping a coffee, watching girls strut by to see if he can spot the mysterious “it.” He's waiting for the auditions to begin. “We had a transvestite in Montreal,” he says. “And it looked like his breasts were made of aluminum. You could see his package. He didn't make it — unfortunately, he was too short.”
Equally surprising was the discovery that “the women have been very different from region to region. This sounds crazy, but in Calgary we had a lot of girls who were ranchers' daughters. There was a whole girl-next-door thing, outdoor girls.” In Montreal, on the other hand, they were indoor types — women so urbane and sophisticated, it was as if “their exposure to sensuality and sexuality was passed down through generations.”
And Winnipeg? In Winnipeg they were hood-of-the-car girls. “There's an interesting thing in Winnipeg: It's got a muscle-car culture. California is the centre of hotrod culture, and Winnipeg is one of the centres of muscle-car culture. You obviously have to be careful not to stereotype people anywhere. But there was a kind of car-culture girl, the at-the-hockey-rink girl, in Winnipeg.” Needless to say, Winnipeg's girl is “absolutely gorgeous.”
But some women badly misjudge TV's demanding requirements. “We've had some women who come out who've seen a bit of road,” Mr. Brunton admits. “We've had some models, it's like — ‘Mom! How come you came out? You should be at home playing bridge.' ”
Many of those women get “pre-interviewed” by crew members from Global in a small room across from the main audition hall. They're essentially culling the herd of contestants such as Daina Barbeau.
Daina works at “massage and aesthetics” for a living. She left Sudbury at midnight and drove all night to get to the hotel by 6 this morning. She grabbed a shower at a truck stop on the way.
“I'm asking the girl in Tim Hortons to do the back of my dress up!” She came because she had a dream about the contest. “In the dream I was on Global TV, and doing very well, and also flying.”
She's fit, toned, attractive, with lots of blond hair. But she looks older than her 27 years, and her features are a bit blunt for perfect TV babedom. The cullers have spotted her. “Showing up is 90 per cent,” she insists. Ten minutes later, she's on her way home, a long, fast fall.
“You know what?” a girl named Jeanette says. “When it comes down to it, you either have it or you don't. They want you or they don't.”
When the auditions finally start, they're music-video quick. In the judging room, six girls at a time are put through a three-part audition.
They have to say who they are and why they want the job.
They have to mount three steps, briefcase in hand, strike a pose, and walk down three more steps.
They have to play “the case game,” in which they open their case, peek at the number, and express Sadness or Glee.
“Big smiles, ladies,” Mr. Brunton says, just before the Deal or No Deal music beeps out of a portable boombox. “And remember, you're also kind of grooving to our music. So you need charisma.”
The girls do the walk, then they do it again. The most excruciating part is the case bit: They fumble the locks but try to look natural. There's so much ham in the room someone could have a picnic.
In the course of nearly 50 auditions, precisely three women have what Mr. Brunton is looking for. You can see the quality the moment Alice Panikian appears — six feet tall in her bare feet, magnetic beauty, a huge head on a body that could cause global warming all on its own.
And who is Alice? She was Canada's entry in last year's Miss Universe pageant. She is not a conversationalist. If you ask her why she's here, she says, “I really don't know anything. They just told me to come see the casting director.”
But when the camera clicks on, Alice pops. She displays the mysterious thing — the injustice of the physical, the unfairness that keeps us in thrall.
“Alice can move,” Mr. Brunton says after Alice leaves the room. “She has a great reaction as well. I liked the way the girl at the other end moved, but I don't think she's quite cute enough. She had some idiosyncrasies.”
What was it Anna said, out on the cold street? You know what? You never know. Except, of course, when you do.
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Will the Miss Universe 2007 be aired live here in toronto? if yes what channel?
Who won?
Here's handsome Jason:
WHO DOES WWW.MISSCANADA2007.COM THINK THEY ARE????
A NEW FACE A NEW YEAR
