An Interview with Joe & Bill
“I Think We Know Each Other's Strengths”: An Interview with The Amazing Race's Joe & Bill by Teeuwynn Woodruff -- 04/03/2006 The Guidos were the team everyone loved to hate in Season One. They were also the first openly gay couple prominently featured on a prime time reality show. In All-Stars, the long-time couple proved once more that they were excellent competitors who gave it their all. What did they have to say about the race and what compliment do they pay Mirna? RealityNewsOnline: Hi Joe & Bill, and thank you for talking to RealityNewsOnline today! Joe & Bill: Hi! RNO: First off, how's Guido doing? Bill: Guido's just fine. He's right here at our feet. RNO: How old is he now? Bill: He's 7. RNO: He's not that old for a chihuahua. Joe: Kind of like us! Seven times seven is forty-nine, so he's younger than us! RNO: How did you feel when you found out you were going to be on All-Stars? Joe: We were thrilled! We had anticipated that there was going to be an All-Stars, and if there really was going to be one we thought our chances of getting on were a little better than 50-50. So, luckily, we actually called that one kind of right. They 24 possible candidates out of 120 -some odd teams. And then eventually settled on 11. The whole process took about one month, from the end of August to the end of September. RNO: So, they contacted the 24 teams at around the end of August? Joe: Yeah, the middle to the end of August. We were contacted on August 28th. I remember it very well. Bill: CBS had run it by us a year or so before, and then they ended up doing the Family Edition. We were very excited to be included. I mean, it's a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and then to get to do it twice is incredible! RNO: Did your experience from Season One cause you to do anything differently – packing, preparation, strategy? Joe: It caused us to be much nicer! Actually, someone else asked us almost that same exact question and we said “We're not going to be so nice this time!” {Both laugh.} Bill: But, you know what, because since the race has changed since Season One, we decided that we needed to change a few things about the way we played the game. The first season, obviously if you watched, we didn't care, you know, about what the other contestants thought of us because it just mattered who got to the mat first. This season, with the Intersection and the Yield you have to get along with other teams in the race or they could see that you were booted out if they got together with some other people and tried to work a deal to get you Yielded at the next opportune moment. Joe: Yeah. Bill: We really needed to be careful. Joe: Or if you got an Intersection and nobody would work with you. Bill: And, as far as packing, we did bring a lot less. Our packs were a third smaller than our original packs. Joe: Yes. RNO: So, you did pare down your packing. Did that help? Joe: I think it did. Bill: Yeah, a bit. And there's always things you take along the first time, because you don't know what's going to happen. Ours was the very first season, so you don't even know what the show's all about at that point in time. Joe: But we knew from the beginning that you had to have carry on and some of the people on that first leg during our first season actually checked bags! Bill: Believe it or not, there was somebody actually brought a frying pan! Somebody brought roller blades because they thought they would get ahead of everyone by roller skating to the Pit Stop. RNO: Roller Blades! Bill: Yeah, they brought roller blades and they dumped them in New York before we ever left. You'd be surprised, after the first Pit Stop in Paris – we had a 36-hour Pit stop in Paris for the second Pit Stop , you would be amazed at how much stuff everybody tossed. Joe: Yeah. I mean the garbage bins were just loaded with junk that people didn't want any more. RNO: Well, you have to run around with all your stuff on you! Joe & Bill: Yeah! yes no yes no yes no Bill: That's one of the tough parts is you go do something and you're never quite sure what to do with the packs. Because you don't know if you're going to come back to wherever you are now the pack later. If you just drop it some place, is somebody going to steal it? Nobody's going to watch it for you. Or, do you always have to run with it and take it everywhere you go. RNO: And slow yourself down. Joe: Right. Bill: So, that was a constant question. RNO: You guys were one of the oldest teams on All-Stars. Do you think this helped or hurt you in any way? Joe: Well, I – (laughs) Bill: There's no question it hurt us! Joe: This is the oldest person talking from All-Stars. It definitely hurt us somewhat. We had actually strained some muscles before we even started doing exercises in the hotel which forced me not to be able to run well. I had pulled a quad muscle in one leg and a calf muscle in the other leg. Neither leg worked very well. I didn't even realize it much until we had to run across the lawn in the very first episode for the first clue. So, that was really an eye-opener. Eventually, I was taking pain killers, they brought in medics, they gave me shots. “You just pulled a couple muscles. You'll be just fine. Stay off your feet for four days.” RNO: That's easy to do on the race! (Everyone laughs.) Joe: “You know what I'm doing tonight?” It never did clear up. I was in pain the whole time. And the funny thing about it was, I could run. I could outrun Eric & Danielle from time to time. It was just that, you know, everything always hurt. Afterwards. RNO: You really couldn't tell that you were in that much pain. It's not like with Kevin & Drew where it was pretty obvious Drew was in a lot of pain. Joe: There's some times when you can see me limping along or else I'm kind of lagging behind Bill for running or stuff like that. If you know what you're looking for you could tell that things weren't all that well. Bill: Yeah, you told me – actually it was right on camera – when you were headed to the Pit Stop in Ushuaia, and we just had finished reading the letter and were going over a little hill of steps and Joe says, “Slow down! I'm hurting!” Joe: There's nobody behind us! RNO: Well, you did a fantastic job – especially considering how much pain you were in. And in the last episode you had to put the armor on and you both finished before Eric & Danielle who were right there with you. Joe & Bill: Right. RNO: You guys have also been a couple for over 20 years. Do you think this affected you on The Amazing Race? Joe: Absolutely! I think we know each other's strengths pretty well and really, without much effort, each time we'd come up to a Roadblock, we do share them and want to make sure we do them equally, but we can tell pretty quickly who's best for which task. I think we can read each other's signals pretty well, too. So, when someone's hurting, or someone needs some attention or something needs to be done. I think that can definitely help you on the race. Bill: We don't compete with each other. Joe: Right. Bill: We're concentrating on competing with other people – not with each other, not for exposure and air time. RNO: Switching to this past couple of legs, how big an effect do you think missing the connection to Frankfurt had on your race? Bill: That was more mental than anything. We had just been through a really bad leg from Maputo to Dar Es Salaam and we'd spent a long time in the Johannesburg airport – 26 hours or so. To have that all happen and unfold in front of our faces again was just devastating mentally. We just weren't prepared for that to happen again. RNO: How far behind Eric & Danielle were you guys at the first Pit Stop in Poland – where you were marked for elimination? Bill: The first one we were probably about an hour and ten or fifteen minutes. Joe: Somewhere around there. I think they came in at 1:50 and we came in at 3:30-ish. Bill: Our cab driver kept getting lost. Joe: We had the world's worst cab driver. RNO: That has to be frustrating when that happens – it's a risk on The Amazing Race. Bill: It really is. It's no fault of your own if you're totally dependent on somebody who doesn't know where he's going. And you assume that he knows where he's going. He's the local! Joe: When it's like 1:00 in the morning it's not easy to change cabs because it's getting pretty late Bill: It's cold, it's raining, you've been at this for hours and hours, you've been traveling for days and, you know, it's not like you want it to be over, it's just that you just kind of hang out with it, hoping against hope that the guy is going to pull it together. There's not much more that we could do, other than just abandon him and get another cab driver. Which we should have done. yes no yes no yes no Joe: Yeah, we should have. Bill: But we just didn't. Certain things, you look back on them, and you just weren't thinking that way. RNO: Do you think if you had abandoned your cab you might have been able to come into the Pit Stop before Eric & Danielle? Bill: Yeah, there's always that possibility. If we had changed – We spent a lot of time looking for the Escada boutique. It turns out that there were three Escada boutiques in Warsaw. So, we wasted a lot of time there. Eric & Danielle were following us around in their cab, just like tailing us the whole time. We spent a lot of nervous energy trying to shake them and get them off our tails – to lose them. Had we just said, “Well, forget about this. Let's just go do the other thing with the piano tuning...” Joe: Again, that would have been an intelligent thing to do. Looking at the episode from last night. You just don't know that. It's like if you go back a couple of episodes, Bill and I chose to put the charcoal into bags and haul them, rather than paint ladies' fingernails in a Muslim country. Who in the world would have ever thought that that was a man's job ? Bill: We didn't know that until we saw the episode! RNO: It would have been perfect for you guys! Bill: Really! I mean, we paint our own nails, why not theirs? And then we could have stolen some of the nail polish! (laughs) Joe: So, you just don't think of those things, and actually when we were done loading the charcoal in the bags and we had to find the house to deliver it to, we tried to stop some women on the street to see if they would help us or take us to the house and they wouldn't even talk to us. We're not their husbands or their brothers or their family and women just don't talk to strange men on the street. It just doesn't happen. It kind of reinforced the whole idea of, “Boy, we really did the right thing by not doing the nails, huh?” As it turns out, that was totally wrong. No way that you would know that. RNO: You guys did fantastic at the Sausage eating Detour. Do you think you might still be in the race if you had the opportunity to pair with Dustin & Kandice at the Intersection? Joe & Bill: Absolutely. Yeah. Bill: I think if it was Charla & Mirna teamed up with Eric & Dani we could have had a fighting chance to beat them by 30 minutes. One of them would have been eliminated and we would have survived. Joe: Dustin & Kandice finished pretty quickly and we would have been out of there and gotten to the castle a lot faster. RNO: Dustin & Kandice wanted to pair up with you at the Intersection, but they just couldn't wait. Joe: Yeah, we'd worked with them before. Bill: We were pretty close to them and not very close to Eric & Danielle. RNO: Yes, I noticed that. {Everyone laughs.} Bill: As a result, we were kind of at their mercy . There was nothing we could do about it. RNO: And they knew you had the 30 minute penalty. When did you realize that your thirty minute penalty was probably insurmountable? Bill: By the time we got to the Scala castle. Dani & Eric were already there and Charla & Mirna. The one question was we weren't sure about the Beauty Queens. In my mind, I was sure they were already there and checked in. Joe wasn't sure. Joe: I didn't think so. We had gotten lost on the way. On the way to Scala, we actually started heading down the right road according to our map, and I didn't think it was correct. So, we backtracked and went on a different road, decided that was wrong, and backtracked to that same road again. That's where we wasted 15 to 20 minutes right there. Bill: And then when we got into town, we drove down, but we didn't drive far enough to get to the castle. Again, we saw Eric going in the opposite direction. He obviously did exactly the same thing – that he passed it. He turned around, went back to this little town of Scala. We did exactly the same thing. Decided that was wrong, so we drove out the same road again – farther, and found the castle. That probably wasted another 10 or 15 minutes. And then when we got there, we saw everybody's cars, but we didn't see the Beauty Queens’ car. So, we were thinking, well maybe they got lost. Maybe they're not here. Joe: I actually thought we still had a fighting chance and they were behind us. It turns out that they had already checked in and they had moved their car. We just didn't know that at the time. Bill: The stuff at the Intersection made it really hard. Joe: There were at least two different instances that probably wasted 30 to 45 minutes of our time, which would have been enough to beat somebody else. Bill: Theoretically, we could have had enough time to survive. yes no yes no yes no RNO: You had to struggle from way behind for two legs prior to your elimination. You got way behind at the end of Race 1 and never managed to catch up, did you ever feel hopeless in your quest to catch up this time? Bill: I think Season One was a good example of don't give up because you really don't know. Like, we didn't give up, even when we checked in at the Tiger Cave Temple. Joe: It sort of taught us, Season One, there are so many instances where racers can get sidetracked, lost, take the wrong bus, wrong taxi... So, you never, ever want to give up until Phil says you're out. Bill: Yeah. Joe: You just don't want to give up. You never know what's going to happen. RNO: Did visiting Auschwitz have more meaning for you knowing that many gay men and women were sent to their deaths there simply because they were gay? Bill: When we got out there it really, really was palpable. You could feel the weight of that powerful setting and what happened there. It was not just gays, not just Jews, it was Gypsies, people with no sight or handicapped. Joe: It was just a real unfortunate circumstance for people who were disenfranchised. It was very sad. Bill: We had said there that it was really awful. People are hated... it's bad enough that people are hated for what they do, but then when you have to compound that by going to such extremes as hating people for what they are – they haven't done anything. It really is absolutely incredible how awful people can be to one another. Joe: You kind of relate that now to the Sunnis and Shiites. From a Western mind, how can you people be hating one another and killing one another – you're all Muslims! What happened way back in 770 and who's cousin did this and who's cousin did that means so much that you're really going to kill each other 1300 years later. RNO: It is staggering, what people can do to each other. Bill: It's beyond comprehension how people can really treat one another. RNO: It was very moving last night. Bill: That's what's interesting about the race, you never know what's going to come next. That was a very, very interesting moment. Joe: On the way down there, on the bus, we couldn't imagine what we were going to be doing at Auschwitz. I was sitting there on the bus hoping we weren't going to be running around looking for clues or something. That would be hideous. RNO: Not very respectful. Bill: disrespectful. Joe: Even then, it was tough to go through something like that and then immediately go racing off in a cab and do an eating challenge. Bill: Yeah. Most of those people starved to death, too. Joe: It was a tough evening. RNO: And then getting eliminated at the end of that – it must have been quite the emotional day. Joe & Bill: Yes. RNO: How many days out of the past three legs did you spend stuck in airports or traveling on planes? Joe: There was a time, starting with sleeping on the floor in the Moputu airport, that we didn't sleep in a bed for four nights straight. Twenty-eight hours alone in the Johannesburg airport waiting to go someplace. And that doesn't include flying time. It was hideous. Bill: To say the least. RNO: How hard was that on your body, Joe, considering you were already injured? Joe: It was really tough. I mean I was having a hard time walking. I was having a hard time standing. At one point you see me sitting in a wheelchair. Not because I needed it, but there were a couple of wheelchairs free and we had been standing around so long, I just kind of sat down in a wheelchair and waited. There were other times when I would let Bill arrange for all the airplane tickets and stuff like that, and I would just sit down and guard the backpacks for a little while, you know? I just couldn't stand that long. It was really starting to wear me down. And just when your legs started to feel okay again, and you think that maybe you're actually going to recover, then you had to go off and run some place. Run like crazy, just so somebody else wouldn't outrun you at the end. I was determined not to let anybody beat me if I could help it. But then I really had to pay the price for it that night. It was a tough one. RNO: Was there a Roadblock in Poland that we didn't get to see? Bill: It was the rowing... Joe: Yeah, there was a rowing Roadblock, rowing a rowboat on a sort of reflecting pond in front of that little palace. Bill: In front of where Phil was. Joe: And I did that. Bill: About a five minute boat ride. RNO: What was your favorite task on this race? Joe: Well, just the dhow ride. It wasn't a task, but it was really one of the better moments of the race. Just eight hours of sheer bliss out on the Indian ocean with a full moon, 80 degrees, under sail on a dhow is just really a special experience. yes no yes no yes no Bill: Yeah. RNO: And you shared that with Teri & Ian. They enjoyed it as well. Bill: It was one of the best evenings we ever spent on The Amazing Race. Joe: And I loved our rat! Nelson, the rat. RNO: The rats were so cute! Joe: The rat was really cool. It gave me the sense of spending 5 or 10 minutes with Guido again. RNO: About the same size! Bill: Yeah, you're right, it was! RNO: How about your least favorite? Joe: Eating the sausages. Bill: Looking for Petrohue. We didn't even know what we were looking for . Joe: That whole afternoon of not reading the clue properly and then we were saved by Mirna. That was really a tough afternoon. Humiliating to think that I had actually left the flounders with only half the clue and not even knowing the name of the town we were going to and stuff. And that evening, my legs were operating so poorly, we had walk up and down three or four flights of stairs just to go to dinner at the Pit Stop – I could hardly climb up and down stairs. I literally had to hold on to the handrail in both directions. RNO: Have you recovered now? Joe: Well, actually I have recovered, but now I've hurt my knee skiing and I'm in recovery mode again. But it's something completely different. RNO: Now how about locations. Do you have a favorite or least favorite place you've been to on your races? Bill: Um... If I never see Mozambique again, it will be too soon! Joe: And the Johannesburg airport! Bill: I loved Ushuaia. Ushuaia was fabulous. Joe: And Punta Arenas. That was really cool too. RNO: Was there anything you saw watching the All-Stars episodes that surprised or shocked you? Joe: Just some of the comments, I guess. Bill: Yeah. Joe: It was kind of hurtful to hear Dani & Eric lashing out at us – really, we don't know why. Bill: We never really did anything to them other than what you saw on camera which really wasn't out of the ordinary. None of the arguments we had were anything more than minor disagreements. So, for them to lash out with the kind of stuff that they did was a little over the top. Bill: Calling us “psychos” and stuff like that was totally uncalled for. They were certainly not the kindest or easiest contestants to get along with. They probably had more trouble with other contestants then they ever had with us. Joe: Eric just likes to push buttons. Bill: Kind of like Rob. Joe: That was probably one of the more unpleasant aspects of the race for us. We didn't hear any of that stuff until we watched the show. Bill: Eric actually called us! And he was friendly! Joe: He was nice. Maybe he didn't even think they would use that stuff. Bill: Everybody always says something about everyone behind their backs when you're racing. You're anxious, you're angry, you don't want to be following people all of the time, and you're just kind of talking to your partner. You lose sense of all of this being recorded while you're saying it, so you're too loose with your tongue. RNO: Did Eric apologize to you on the phone? Joe: Yeah. Bill: Well, he might have said “don't take any of this stuff seriously,” but I don't really consider that an apology, because I had no idea what it was about. Joe: We think that most of those gay comments were probably more of an indication of where he's coming from, rather than ourselves. When you say stuff like that, generally you're trying to hide something. I used to say stuff like that too, when I was hiding things. RNO: That's interesting! Joe: I speak from experience. Bill: There's a lot worse things that have been said and done on the race. All in all, it's not a huge issue. yes no yes no yes no RNO: Charla & Mirna haven't come across really well this race. Can you share any positive stories about them or do you think what we're seeing on TV is pretty accurate? Bill: Well, we would have been out of the race had they not helped us in Petrohue. We would have been out that episode. Joe: We love Charla. Bill: Mirna is a nice, smart, tough woman. But you've got to take her in small doses sometimes. Charla is absolutely delightful. And the one thing I can say about Mirna is that nobody works an airport harder than she does. When everybody else is finally ready to take a break from looking for a seat on an airplane, there's Mirna up and down and up and down the ticket counters still doing it and doing it. And damn but won't she find seats! RNO: So, do you think that's the one reason Charla & Mirna got the flight out of Johannesburg and Maputo before everyone else? Joe: Absolutely! Bill: Oh, yes. She was working behind the counters. They were the only people not on our flight out of Maputo, and it's only because Mirna dragged Charla over to the first class line and convinced some guy to help them. He talked to the ticket agent and they all pulled some strings and they got on when nobody else even thought of that. Joe: They got the office manager or some such and got the manager to approve it because that plane was almost closed. Bill: That's a perfect example. In Johannesburg, when we were finally there, we were talking to South African Airways and we said we had friends who came in named Charla & Mirna – could they have got to Dar Es Salaam any faster than the other flight which we knew everyone else was on. That guy checked on his computer and he said there was no other faster flight that they could have gotten on – they had to be on that flight. And I'll be darned if Mirna didn't find another airplane that got them in earlier. She knew more about airplanes than the guy behind the South African ticket counter. RNO: Good for her. That seems like a strong skill on the race. Bill: She really deserves all the credit for that. RNO: What teams that weren't on the race were you hoping to race against in All-Stars? Joe: We had thought that maybe Colin & Christie would be – just because you're saying it's the best of the best and that they would include everyone who's the best. And that was one glaring absence. But it seems like it might have been their choice. I think someone said that Christie was pregnant or something. Bill: I was also expecting people like the Clowns and the Bowling Moms – more of the lovable teams. Joe: I think they concentrated on -- Bill: -- relationships Joe: Relationships and teams that had issues with other teams and put them on... where you kind of had a bit of a feud going on. RNO: So, do you keep in touch with any of the teams from your season or from All-Stars? & Bill: A lot of them! Joe: Dustin & Kandice, Ozzie – We watched the show last night with Ozzie. Margharetta, Rob & Brennan, Nancy & Emily. We kept in contact for a while with Paul & Amy. yes no yes no yes no Bill: We've talked to Charla on the phone. We talked to Teri & Ian a couple of times. In general, we do . The racers have their own website, proprietary, just for racers. We keep in touch that way also. RNO: Anything else you'd like to tell us about your race? Joe: We were so lucky to be cast the first season and then cast again on All-Stars. It was a wonderful experience of a lifetime to have that experience twice. And kudos to CBS for casting the first gay couple on national TV. I think that was a big turning point in the history of television to take that step, and they've done it many times since. It's really a wonderful thing that they did that. RNO: And you guys have been very entertaining for us to watch and I think you guys are a great couple. You can tell you love each other. Thank you for talking to me today! Joe & Bill: Oh, thank you!