All-Star Hawaii Author Notes - Episode 4 (Aloha Means Goodbye)

by Mario Lanza

First off, I have to tell you that a good portion of this episode was actually written in Hawaii. And I don't know about you, but I happen to think that is pretty cool. After all, how many times in your life do you get to write about an exotic place while you're actually sitting there? How many times do you get to talk about "the sound of Hawaii at night" while you're actually sitting IN Hawaii at night, listening to frogs and insects chirping all around you?

Luckily for me, my 2007 vacation to Hawaii just happened to coincide with my 2007 rewrite of All-Star Survivor: Hawaii. And this was a total coincidence. It wasn't planned or supposed to happen that way. After all, I had never been to Hawaii before. And it's possible I'll never be back in Hawaii again. But for two weeks in the summer of 2007, I was lucky enough to get some first-hand knowledge of a place I was actually writing about. So if you're wondering why this episode has so much more "Hawaii stuff", and was a little more nature-oriented than the first three, well, now you'll understand why.

Note: For the record, most of episode four was written in Hilo, on the eastern shore of the big island of Hawaii. We rented a beach condo for four nights in Hilo, and every night around 10:00 I'd go outside in a lawn chair and write on my laptop. Well, that was the plan anyway. I intended to write outside every night. But after about ten minutes of dealing with the brutal little bastard mosquito colonies on Hilo, I quickly decided that it would be much better to write the story inside. Those were some of the nastiest, meanest little insects I've ever seen. So most of episode four was written inside, behind a screen door, while I listened to the frogs and other animals croaking around me for most of the night. It was pretty cool.

Note #2: Like I said, I had never been to Hawaii before writing All-Star Survivor: Hawaii, so a lot of the details about the island were just stuff I researched on the internet. I really had no idea what Hawaii was like in real life. I was just guessing on most of it. And I'm proud to say that most of the details through the first three episodes ended up being pretty accurate. The only detail that I got wrong (and one I will fix throughout the rest of the story) is the fact that I originally described the Hawaiian beaches as "sandy." Well let me tell you right now that most beaches in Hawaii aren't "sandy". In fact most of them aren't that pleasant to walk around at all. The one thing I learned in Hawaii last week was that most Hawaiian beaches are rocky and sharp and made up of dried lava, and if you try walking barefoot on them you'll rip the hell out of the soles of your feet. So starting in episode four, the beaches on Ni'ihau are going to be a lot less pristine. Trust me, I've walked on lava rock and lava rock SUCKS. And if you think that every beach in Hawaii looks like the perfect sandy shore of Waikiki, you are sadly mistaken.

Note #3: Even though this was the first time I'd ever written a Survivor story IN the location I was writing about, it actually came close to happening with one of my other stories as well. I actually wrote the finale episode of All-Star Greece while on a cruise ship in Alaska. It's too bad I didn't get to write All-Star Alaska in Alaska. But I actually came pretty darn close since Greece was the next story!

So anyway, on to episode four.

This was a big episode in the story for many reasons, but mostly because we had to bid adieu to the big star of the story, the one and only Stingray, the big man himself, Richard Hatch.

By the way, if you're wondering why I always refer to Richard as "The Stingray" in the story, well that's just an old nickname he had around 2001. A journalist named Peter Lance wrote a book that year called "Stingray: Lethal Tactics of the Sole Survivor", which was an expose detailing all sorts of inner workings about the first season. Lance wrote about how what we saw on TV was different than what happened on the island, and he also wrote about how CBS held all the castaways "hostage" afterwards, by not letting any of them cash in on their post-Survivor fame because CBS owned the rights to all of them (thanks to contracts) for the next five years.

"Stingray" is one of the best books ever written about Survivor, and if you've never read it, you should go dig up a copy. It's really interesting. And of course "The Stingray" in the title refers to Richard Hatch, who is the main subject of the book. Lance also gives a step-by-step analysis of how Richard, The Stingray, outwitted the other fifteen players in Borneo every step of the way.

So anyway, back to the story.

Yes, episode four was the point in the story where we lost Richard, and I have to say it was a little sad when I originally wrote it. You see, like I said in my episode one notes, there just weren't many Survivor fan fictions back in the summer of 2002. Hardly anybody was writing stories like this. In fact, most of the Survivor fan fiction between 2000 and 2002 was usually porn. I'd tell you to go google and look it up for yourself, but for legal reasons, I can't. Just take my word for it that there weren't very many fictional seasons written prior to the original All-Star Survivor: Hawaii.

Special Note: I don't want to name names or anything, but one of the original writers on the writing team (who was a female) was CONSTANTLY begging me to write some sort of gay scene between the male characters in Hawaii. I swear, we couldn't go a week in the story without her asking me what I thought a steamy love scene between John and Boston Rob would be like. And I'd just be sitting there, thinking, um I'm not sure that would really fit the rest of the story. I kind of think I'd get in a little bit of trouble if Boston Rob was all of a sudden gay in All-Star Hawaii. But yeah, my co-writer had some sort of weird fetish that all the male characters should be gay, and she was constantly bombarding me to write her a scene, just so she could see what it was like. It was weird. She was a really good writer aside from the fact that she felt like every scene should be a reenactment of the bathhouse scene from Spartacus. Remember when I said that most of the early Survivor fan fiction was porn? Well there's exhibit A.

Special Note #2: Okay I've never admitted this before, but since it's funny you'll probably enjoy it. Since my fellow writer was always begging me to put a gay scene in the story, one day I figured, okay what the hell? Who not? I figured I'd write a really nasty and unsexy prison scene, just to shut her up and get her to stop asking me. So I whipped up a little ten page encounter between Big Tom and Ethan. I don't really remember what happened, specifically, but it ended up being very much like the hillbilly rape scene in Deliverance, and poor Ethan didn't stand much of a chance. The only thing I remember is that Tom screamed "Yee Hah!" a lot and was tremendously sweaty and oily. Needless to say, she never asked me to write another sexy gay scene again. And no, that scene didn't make the final cut of the story. Sorry. It's a DVD extra, at best. :)

Okay, that was a fun diversion. Sorry. I've never told that story before. Hope you enjoyed it.

So anyway, like I said, there weren't many fan fiction stories out there in 2002, so I really had no idea how I was going to vote out Richard. After all, how do you vote out a guy who's considered the King of Survivor? How is a guy like that going to go out? Is he going to get blindsided? Is he going to bring it upon himself?

And, more importantly, how is Richard going to react? Because I knew that was all you would remember from the story. The only thing you'd care about is what happened after Richard got his torch snuffed, and how he reacted. Is he going to get upset? Is he going to laugh? Is he going to make a joke?

All of these were big questions for me back in 2002. And I thought long and hard about how I wanted to handle this. Because I knew that there would be two very distinct parts of All-Star Hawaii. There would be the Richard episodes, and there would be the non-Richard episodes. Because the story would never truly begin until Richard was gone. Every episode that he remained in the game, it would forever and always be his story.

Note: Yes, I said "until Richard was gone." Because I always knew he'd be gone in the first six episodes. There was no way Richard would ever be allowed to make the merge in All-Star Survivor, and I knew that as well as I knew my first and last name. So keep that in mind any time you hear a Richard critic say that he "should have done more in the real All-Star season." There was no way Richard was going anywhere in All-Stars. I knew that, he knew that, and every single other player in the game knew that. The only reason Richard existed in All-Stars (both in the real one and in Hawaii) was as an exciting boot in the first six episodes. That's it. In other words, in both cases, he was simply just stunt casting. He was bigger than everything. The story would never truly begin until he was gone.

So Richard was dead meat from the very first minute of the story. I knew he wouldn't go in the first episode, because that would be way too obvious. And also, because he was practically invaluable with his ability to catch fish right off the bat. Remember, Richard Hatch gets a lot of credit for a lot of things he did in Survivor, but one thing people never give him credit for is the fact that he was valuable. Richard wasn't just some lucky strategist who made an alliance and coasted to the end. Richard was one of the only winners in Survivor history who had a VALUABLE SKILL, and no smart tribe would ever want to lose him at the start of the game.

Think about it. Do you think Tina had a valuable camp skill that nobody else could do? Or Ethan? Or Brian? Or Vecepia? Or Jenna Morasca? Or Sandra??? Hell, no! They were all great players in their own way, but NONE of them could single-handedly feed a tribe like fishing god Richard. So right from the start I knew he'd never be the first boot of the game (either in my story or in the real All-Stars.) He's the only winner in Survivor history who I felt would have a bye for the first two or three episodes.

I knew Richard would be safe at the start of the game (thanks, Gretchen) but I also knew he had to go before the merge. There was just no way any tribe would let him get to the merge. So I penciled in Richard's exit for somewhere in the episode 3, 4, or 5 range. I wanted him to go someplace innocuous. Somewhere in the middle of the pre-jury episodes, when the story is traditionally dull, and would need a big moment.

So that's what I did.

Richard was safe in episodes 1 and 2 because I knew the Kekos needed him. But then after that, I figured it was fair game for him at the next Tribal Council. The next time the Kekos went to a vote, I knew that Kathy would turn on him, and Colby would blindside him, and it would be a very fun episode.

Of course, Keko won the coin flip in episode three (to determine immunity), so that was the episode that Sue went home instead of Richard. And I figured that Richard would be next. In fact, I even put in a nice spoiler in Sue's final words, where she says "See you soon, Rich." I figured that would get a laugh if you ever went back and caught it. Talk about foreshadowing!

And then we came to episode four.

I flipped a coin at the start of the fourth episode, as always, to see who would win immunity. And it came up "Ahi." Ah, so finally, here we were. This was going to be the big Richard Hatch boot episode.

Right off the bat, I came up with about ten important "things" that I wanted to happen in this episode. In fact, this is traditionally how I write ALL my episodes. I come up with a short outline of the big moments that will be important ("high spots" in professional wrestling-speak) and then the entire episode is just a slow meandering from one big moment to the next.

In my original outline for episode four, these were the ten bulletpoints I wanted to hit:


* Lex owes Tina for saving his butt.
* Rob and Colleen expect Lex to be furious, but he's not. Lex has grown and matured.
* Colleen is furious with Rob for ditching her. But Rob, ever the optimist, "has a plan."
* Gretchen suddenly starts dropping comments that she's ready to play ball with the girls.
* Richard turns to Colby and starts warning him it's now or never. Either join me or die.
* Colby agrees. He's in. This is supposed to elicit a gasp from the readers.
* The John and Lex rift starts up on Ahi. They're too similar.
* Kathy-Gretchen-Alicia forms on Keko
* Colby leads Richard along to think he's with him right up to the end.
* Richard is blindsided at TC. It turns out that Colby was setting him up for a fall all along.


Of course there was lots of other stuff going on in this episode, but those were the main ten "plot points" I wanted to hit. Everything else, in the words of Kate Winslet, was just dessert.

There were a few details I changed a little bit in the rewrite. Not a lot. This episode is pretty darn similar to the version I wrote in 2002. But some of these alterations make significant changes to the storyline this time around. So just be warned if you know the original.


1. In the original, the rift between Lex and John was caused by Rob, who publicly "accused" John of scheming against Lex prior to the last vote. It was a pretty good storyline, and it added some spice to the Ahi camp drama, but it just happened way too fast and Lex believed Rob waaaaaay too easily. It had always stuck in my craw that I needed to be a little more subtle, so I decided to change it in the rewrite. Instead of Rob starting a fight between John and Lex, this time around, John gets a little paranoid because Tina's slowly but surely taking his place at Lex's right hand. I never thought John was quite paranoid enough in the original story. Sure, I made him power-hungry and a little sinister, but it was too flat and one dimensional. This time around, I wanted him to seem like more of a real three-dimensional person. And being snubbed by Lex? Well that's a good impetus for someone like John to get a little worried and scared.


2. Of course, taking "Rob" out of the Lex and John equation meant that, all of a sudden, Rob was a whole lot less proactive when it came to stirring up trouble. All of a sudden, Rob had no character in episode four! So I came up with the second go-around (the "take two", if you will) of the "Puff up the Leader" game. All of a sudden, Rob gets to be a part of the shenanigans again, and, even better, he's led into this decision by the deliciously sneaky Vecepia! All of that storyline is entirely new in the rewritten version, and I loved it. Vecepia is easily my favorite character at this point in the story. And since you're going to ask, either Mike or Alicia is probably my second.


3. In the original episode, Colby never flat out told us that he was deceiving Richard and leading him on. In fact, in the original, we don't find out that Colby is going to backstab Richard until the minute he walks up and casts his vote. And as fun as that would have been on TV (because you know they would have kept Colby's motives ambiguous just to make "fake suspense"), I've never liked hiding things from the audience. I love full disclosure, and I love to let you in on everything that is about to happen. So I tipped Colby's hand way earlier in the rewrite, just so that you could watch Richard squirm the last few sections, and you'd know it was going to be fruitless. Also, I never really felt that most readers would "buy" that Colby would make a deal with Richard. I thought a lot of them would just read that section and scream, "No! That's wrong!" at their computer screens. So I made sure to point out very quickly that what Colby says isn't always what he's going to do. I wanted to defuse any reader anger that would inevitably arise.


4. I gave away the Gretchen-Alicia-Kathy alliance much earlier in the rewrite. I don't think it actually shows up until the start of episode five in the original. But I was talking about it as far back as episode three this time around! I wanted that alliance to be well documented and explained. I didn't want you think that Alicia flipped on the Australians at the drop of a hat.


5. I added a LOT more small talk and banter this time around. There are a lot more scenes with people just sitting around and talking, and it has nothing to do with the game. Why? Well, like I said in my notes last episode. ANYBODY can write strategy. There isn't a Survivor story on the internet that doesn't have people talking strategy. But how many have scenes have you ever read like the one where Frank comes out and offers Lex half a mango from Tina? Or Richard talking about Greg flirting and then falling asleep at his feet? Or Colleen tearfully going to "surrogate mommy" Tina and asking for help and protection from "dad"? I've always said that little scenes like that are the bread and butter of my stories, and what help set them apart from the rest. Remember, the strategy of your story isn't important. It's the character scenes that make these characters sound like actual people. Otherwise, you're just writing about robots.


6. You know what? I hate to admit it, but I DID change one little detail about Richard's exit at the end. I hate that I did, but it was inevitable.

In the original story, yes Richard got blindsided, but I made him a little bit angry afterwards that he was gone. Instead of taking it in good humor (like he did in the real All-Stars, as well as in the rewrite), I actually had him a little bit pissed.

My original train of thought (back in 2002) was that Richard was going to change a lot through the first four episodes of the story. I figured, in episode one he wouldn't care. In episode two, he still wouldn't care, but he'd be amused that people (Kathy and Ethan) needed him for help. In episode three, he'd start getting cocky that Keko couldn't get rid of him. And then in episode four, he'd finally start playing the game hardcore, and then... BAM... Keko would blindside him and he'd be a little bit pissed.

In my opinion, Richard wouldn't be mad about the fact that he'd been voted off. No, he'd be mad that he had finally invested some emotion and some energy into this thing, and THEN he'd been voted off. I figured, if anything, Richard would just be pissed at himself for wasting his time. So that was why I made Richard a little upset in the original. It wasn't at the other players. It was at himself. For wasting so much energy and actually trying.

As you can see, I changed Richard's reaction a little bit in the rewrite. Because this time around, he isn't mad. This time he just thinks it is funny.

Why did I change it?

Well I know the obvious answer is "Because that's what happened in real life! Mario just wanted to make Hawaii more like the actual All-Stars!" But that's not true. I go out of my way NOT to have my story rip off the actual show. One of my goals in this rewrite is that I never want someone to be able to say that it sounds like I ripped off "Survivor: All-Stars." I want to explain why I changed everything I did from the original episodes.

I made Richard laugh at his exit this time around because that's just much more realistic for his character in the story! I don't care that it happened on the real All-Stars. I don't care that it sounds like I ripped off the actual moment. All I care about is that the funny, happy-go-lucky, "I don't give a shit" Richard from episodes 1 and 2 of Hawaii would find it funny as hell that these dingleberries finally teamed up and decided to get rid of him. Richard would laugh, he'd live up the moment, and he'd go out the star that he was all along. Because that's Richard! He HAD to go out that way! In the immortal words of Ghandia Johnson, that's how Richard do!

And of course there still is ONE major difference between my ending and Richard's ouster in the real All-Stars. So it's not a total rip off.

In the real All-Stars, Richard was proud of his teammates when they voted him out. It was like, "Awwww, they finally put their heads together and outwitted the master. Nice job!" It seemed like he was actually a little bit proud. But in MY ending, Richard isn't proud of his teammates at all. In fact, he's exactly the opposite. Sure, he still thinks it is funny that he actually got blindsided. But the next thing that comes out of his head is "Nice work, Colby and Mike. Dumbasses. You just signed your own death warrants, you short-sighted morons." Richard's laughter now is more at Colby and Mike. Because I don't know about you, but that sounds a lot like the real Richard.

So in summary, yes I changed the ending to episode four a little bit, but only because the new one sounds more like his character. Richard wouldn't be mad that he got voted out. He'd be delighted. Because, as we learned from Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, you'll never become a truly powerful Jedi until you die. The minute your enemies strike you down, you become more powerful than anyone ever could possibly imagined.

Fare thee well, Master Richard. R.I.P.

Hopefully by killing you, I granted you some sort of immortality.

Okay, I saved this section for the end. Why? You'll see. There's a reason I've never told this story to a single soul before in my life.

Back in 2003-2004, I used to be pretty good friends with Rob Cesternino. He was a big fan of my columns and my stories, and I was a big fan of his from the Amazon. In fact, Rob seemed a lot like as if I had a younger brother. We thought very similarly about almost every subject.

So Rob and I got to writing each other quite a bit, and a lot of the time we talked about my stories. You see, Rob really wanted to be a character in one of my stories one day. He so loved my All-Star stories, and he was so enthusiastic about them, that I very nearly came out of retirement just to write a story with him as one of the characters.

I knew Rob could never win a story that I wrote (people would accuse me of cheating), but I also knew he would provide me with a flood of the behind-the-scenes character details about him and the other Survivors. So even though I was technically "retired" as a fiction author in 2004, I have to tell you that Rob very nearly got me out of retirement. He very much wanted to be a character in "All-Star Survivor #4", and he was so enthusiastic about it that I actually sketched a rough outline of a cast list for "All-Star Survivor: Egypt." That's right, at one time I actually planned to do a fourth All-Star story. Now it can be told! There was supposed to have been a fourth!

Unfortunately, towards the end of 2003, Rob suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. He suddenly stopped returning all emails, and when he would write back, it was very short and curt. And right away I knew why. Rob was trying to get cast on All-Stars. He knew that having any ties to the internet fan base would be seen as a negative by SEG casting (SEG always hated the internet people). So Rob basically cut all ties with the online fans (as far as I could tell), so as not to hurt his chances of being cast on All-Stars. He didn't want to be seen as a person who would leak spoilers to those jackals on the internet.

The only communication I had with Rob during this time was a strange request he made one day. He asked if I could send him paper copies of Hawaii, Alaska, and Greece. He said that reading them on the computer hurt his eyes, and it would be easier if he could just read them in print. It sounded like a reasonable request to me, so I did it. I sent him paper copies of all three stories in the mail.

What I didn't know at the time was that Rob was using my stories as preparation for his time in All-Stars. I had always told him that I felt Hawaii was a pretty good representation of how a "real" All-Stars would go. I said I had done a lot of research for Hawaii beforehand, and had done a lot of brainstorming of how I thought it would go. So I had said in the past that if he ever went in All-Stars, he should study Hawaii. And since we thought very much alike, he agreed. Rob specifically requested copies of all three stories (especially Hawaii) so he could get a pretty good picture of how All-Star Survivor would probably play out.

Note: Of course I had also mentioned to Rob that I thought he'd be dead meat in All-Stars, and that he'd be pretty in the same boat as Richard. In fact I thought Rob was in MORE danger than Richard because Rob didn't have the ability to catch fish. So it was no surprise to me that Rob was nailed at the end of the third episode. He probably would have gone first in All-Star Egypt. But Rob seemed genuinely surprised by his blindsiding and I felt bad for him. Poor guy. But at the same time, I couldn't believe he didn't expect something like that.

So anyway, here's the juicy part of the story.

Rob went and studied all my stories to get a good idea of how All-Stars might go. And then he went off and played the game. And then he came back. And then one day I got a mysterious email from him. It didn't say anything about what happened in All-Stars (obviously he couldn't say anything, and I didn't want to know anyway) but he did mention that Hawaii had been "good research". He specifically mentioned how canny I had been in casting Colby, Richard, and Kathy on the same tribe.

Well I didn't find this out until much later, but what Rob was dying to tell me (but obviously couldn't) was that my Richard boot episode (episode 4 in Hawaii) was almost a direct clone of the real Richard boot episode (episode 5) of the real All-Stars! In fact I had only been off by one episode!

I had written my episode two years before, but almost the exact same storyline ended up taking place in 2004. Richard teamed up with Kathy, he teamed up with Colby, and then they both had the time of their lives blindsiding his cocky ass at Tribal Council. In fact when I saw that episode, it was like actually seeing an episode of All-Star Hawaii.

The grins on Kathy's and Colby's faces, and Richard clapping Colby on the back afterwards, those were all in my story two years before! IT WAS EXACTLY LIKE THAT IN HAWAII! AND ALMOST IN THE EXACT SAME EPISODE! And Rob knew this too. In fact he admitted to me later that when he heard the details of Richard's boot in Panama, the first thing he thought of was my Hawaii story, and how close I had been. And that was one of the main things on his mind when he came back home. He wanted to see the Richard boot episode on TV, and he wanted to get my reaction to it immediately afterwards. Because he knew as well as I did that I had come very close to predicting the future!

-Mario 8/30/07

Back to All-Star Hawaii, Episode Four (Aloha Means Goodbye)