| Copyright The Washington Post Company Jan 4, 2004 On a brisk, sunny morning last April, Jay Cameron began the day like so many other harried parents in Washington, dropping his kids off at school and day care before racing back home and then on to work. That day, the a.m. frenzy was even more pressing than usual. As a part-time minister, he was expected in North Carolina in the afternoon to help lead a symposium for singles. When he turned into his cul-de-sac in Clinton, he was startled to find a huge green dumpster sitting in his driveway. He had been chatting on the cell phone to his wife, Latricia, as he made the discovery. "It's obviously a mistake," she said. "I'll take care of it. You go ahead and leave." "It's going to be hard for somebody to make this kind of mistake. They don't make this kind of mistake." "Jay," she said, "just go out of town. Is there a number on the side of the dumpster? I'll call." Although still mystified, obsessed even, he left the case of the dumpster in his wife's hands and headed south to Raleigh. Latricia Cameron was about to begin her own strange journey. Within a couple of hours she would return from her downtown office at the Justice Department, where she is a budget analyst, to find her home abuzz with strangers: guys with cameras; guys with sound equipment; trendy thirtysomethings milling around open boxes of doughnuts and bagels in the kitchen; a gaunt, bearded Englishman with a Panama hat and a clipboard. Oh, yes, and a couple of familiar faces -- Tommy Walsh and Charlie Dimmock, known to Latricia and millions of viewers from London to Sydney as the stars of the hit British-based TV show "Ground Force." Latricia Cameron had been chosen from among tens of thousands of applicants to be one of just eight American homeowners featured on the show's first American series. The format: One spouse sends the other out of the house on a ruse; the stars and crew work madly for two days to build a nice little garden for $3,000; the other spouse returns, and is floored by the makeover and the appearance of the show's stars. Cut. The Camerons' makeover will air this Tuesday in a segment of "Ground Force America" on the cable channel BBC America at 9 p.m. Don't worry if you miss it; it will be shown repeatedly, along with the raft of other makeover shows that now characterize the ever- expanding world of cable TV. Or is it ever-shrinking? America has gone makeover-mad. On broadcast networks and cable channels, especially cable channels, shows connect viewers to the lives of subjects whose homes, gardens, patios, faces, stations in life, relationships, self-esteem, you name it, are being altered for a voyeuristic nation. We sit transfixed by transformation. For TV executives, makeover shows are relatively cheap to produce -- an important consideration in an industry that gobbles up programming -- and the payoff for a hit can be golden. As a result, makeover shows have made over cable TV itself. Early viewers to the Bravo network, for example, will remember unabridged performances of four-act operas. Now Bravo offers up lighter fare, epitomized by that ultimate makeover show, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." TLC, formerly the Learning Channel, today defines itself with the motto "Life Unscripted." Its hottest show, "Trading Spaces" -- based on the British series "Changing Rooms" -- shows neighbors swapping homes for 48 hours to redo a room. The house and garden network HGTV, which started as archly practical, now dishes up all kinds of makeovers, from do-it-yourself weekend projects to major home renovations. The network this year is launching several new ones, including "Outer Spaces," where you can see a dull patio turned into "a fantasy outdoor living space"; "What Have I Done?!" in which professionals reverse do-it-yourself projects that went wrong; and "Designer Finals," where interior design students try out their skills on homeowners willing to take a chance. Even now, 31/2 years after the Camerons moved into their large brick colonial in Clinton, and several months after their yard was made over, there is no sign that they take gardening very seriously. Their lawn is expansive and weedy, the plantings basic and low- maintenance. In the fenced rear yard, the back of the house -- a big, unrelieved wall of siding -- dominates the lawn, and before the arrival of the "Ground Force" forces, a simple concrete pad was the only structural element. For the Camerons, with a growing family and busy lives, building a garden, becoming gardeners, would be as much a luxury as a toil at this point. Jay, 31, and Latricia, 34, have four children: Taylor, 9, Eric, 4, Jayson, 2, and Justin, born August 2, three months after the show was filmed. Jay has an unfulfilled interest in a vegetable garden; Latricia thinks it would draw critters and has vetoed it, for now at least. Instead, they live their gardening lives vicariously, through Walsh and Dimmock. In their precious quiet moments, the Cameron's gravitate to their well-cushioned, wall-to-walled suburban cocoon, and, like the rest of us, they rest brain, body and soul in front of the TV set. They're much more likely to watch cable than network TV. Jay is tall, athletic, comfortable lounging around in his sweats; he looks like a "Monday Night Football" kind of guy, but in fact he prefers medical shows with emergency room pathos or wildlife documentaries, on cable. Latricia, meanwhile, sits rapt through the domestic makeover shows. "She watches them all," he says. A year ago, Latricia was surfing the BBC America Web site and saw that her favorite show, "Ground Force," was coming to America and looking for willing owners to feature. Why not enter, she thought? She didn't expect to be chosen. But wouldn't getting a new yard and pulling it off without Jay's knowledge be a gas? She was one of 100,000 people who e-mailed or wrote in over an eight-week period. Haslam and her team knew they wanted one of the eight owners to be in the Washington area, and Latricia's entry caught a researcher's eye. An assistant producer arranged to come by and film her and the property while Jay was out. The subterfuge had begun. Back in London, Haslam liked what she saw. Latricia's yard, for all its plainness, or perhaps because of it, was a good candidate for a makeover. Latricia was strong on camera (in the show, she comes across as in life, serious but up for an adventure and genuinely thrilled by the whole experience). And Haslam wanted the eight to be distinct. "Different sites, different kinds of recipients, different kinds of gardens," she says. Latricia got the call at work. "I almost passed out," she says. Through the early spring the Cameron's followed their normal TV viewing regime, only now Latricia was quietly laboring under her own TV-induced drama. One night, when they were watching "Ground Force," Latricia teased: "You wouldn't know what to do if someone came home and transformed your yard." "I'd love it," said Jay. His wife just sat watching the show, a big grin on her face. But for Latricia, the elation of being selected soon was replaced with the sobering reality of having to get her husband out of town for two days without arousing suspicion. She had assumed, wrongly, that the filming would be over a weekend, when it would have been easier to do. She called Jerome Gay Jr. in Raleigh, one of Jay's best friends and a fellow preacher. Gay was staging a singles retreat in late April; Jay could come and help. Jay was ambivalent at first. He owns a power-washing company, and April is high season. But he agreed to go. One of the "Ground Force" gimmicks is that every garden renovation begins with an idea from the owner. As the day came and filming started, Latricia and Charlie Dimmock gathered over the detailed plan that Dimmock had come up with. The drawing Latricia had submitted earlier included a rough circular element. Now, off the sliding patio doors, where the plain concrete patio sat, Dimmock and her crew would put in an attractive cobblestone terrace consisting of two interlocking circles of granite blocks, the larger one being the new patio, the smaller a frame for a huge crape myrtle tree. The circles would be embraced by planting beds, and a blue sail-like awning would hang overhead. Wooden poles would create a gateway to a play area and small soccer field for the children. In some shows, the actual labor of making over a house or garden is carried out by unseen specialists working off-camera, but on "Ground Force" the work is done by the on-air talent: Dimmock; Walsh; Walsh's sidekick from his building days, a taciturn Irishman named Will Shanahan; and the show's project estimator, Kirsty King, a Scottish horticulturist. As King mowed the lawn with an old and temperamental mower, Dimmock wrestled with a machine that sliced sod, so that she might clear a space for the patio. It was vibrating wildly, and after a few minutes she stopped. She had cut through a buried wire. It would turn out to be a defunct telephone wire, but no one at this stage could say for sure that the garden goddess hadn't knocked out cable TV, electricity or telephone service to half of Prince George's County. It was the moment the director, John Thornicroft, had been waiting for. To him, making a makeover show calls on the same principles of drama prescribed by Aristotle all those centuries ago, and since perfected by Hollywood. You introduce the characters, including the person to be surprised. You spend the first act laying out the plot. "Four people battling against all odds to achieve a miracle," he says. "Will they make it?" Then you deconstruct the garden, removing junk, lifting turf, grading ground, delivering paving stones -- all under deadline pressure. Day 1 is peppered with setbacks, so that the tension begins to build. In the second act, Day 2, the tension builds again, only this time the spring is wound more tightly. The shots get tighter, the pacing faster, the scenes shorter. Every setback threatens to become a full-blown crisis. As a viewer, you know a garden is coming together, but you see only bits of it. It is not revealed fully until you see it through the eyes of the surprised spouse. At the show's dramatic climax, the spring unwinds, and there's a wash of emotions, happy faces and lovely shots of the new garden. The homeowners and the crew rejoice, toasting each other and the garden with glasses of champagne or lemonade. "It's a formula that's been proven since the days of Greek tragedy. We are applying it to a new program," Thornicroft says. And so the calamities are nothing but grist for his mill, whether it's Charlie Dimmock cutting through a wire or the emotional roller coaster of Latricia Cameron trying to keep her wary husband from figuring out the surprise and ruining everything. By now the show's creators have sold the format around the world. Haslam recalls the producers of the German version coming back to her, concerned that " 'some things go wrong and we have to stop and do it again, and it's taking too much time.'" She had to explain, "No, no, no, you're missing the point. You film when things go wrong, that's part of the story." Latricia Cameron watched from inside her home as the work progressed outside. The camera was not constantly trained on her, but if some drama occurred and the camera crew missed it, it would be hastily restaged for filming. Latricia was facing the stress of pregnancy and of finding her home transformed into not just a construction site but a film set, too. Midway through Day 1, she learned that Jay had failed to reschedule two business appointments, and she feared they would bring him back early from Raleigh. She was on the phone to one of his colleagues, trying to reschedule the appointments. "Listen," she said into the cell phone, "I don't care what you do, just cancel them. He just can't come back." The cameras were rolling. The success of the show was now on her shoulders, and the burdens were building. The crisis was averted, but the next morning another arose that threw the show into a panic. Jay was not supposed to get back until around 6 p.m., when the garden would be finished and the climactic discovery taped. But he had decided to leave Raleigh early, and was due in Washington around midday. At that point the burdens and, she says, the hormones of pregnancy did their work, and she was reduced to tears. She appeared on camera to announce Jay's early return, her teary eyes hidden by sunglasses. "It's all right," gushed Dimmock, giving her a hug. "It's only a garden." With several hours' work still left, they decided to abandon the planned children's play area and concentrate on the showy terrace. Jay's brother Andre bought them more time by stalling the surprisee. One of the reasons Jay was returning in the morning was to take back a trailer he had rented at a location in Northern Virginia. Andre told Jay he would return the equipment and then meet him for lunch. They rendezvoused at Mike's American Grill in Springfield off I-95. All this solicitude only raised Jay's suspicions -- especially when Andre picked up the tab for lunch. "This isn't normal at all," Jay recalls thinking at the time. By mid-afternoon, though, he was on his way home to Clinton. The "Ground Force" crew hurriedly cleaned up. The green dumpster, full of detritus, was towed away, and the crew replaced a section of fence that had been removed to make room for the delivery of a dogwood tree and the large crape myrtle. With cameras rolling furtively, and Dimmock and Walsh and the others in hiding, Jay was led through the house by his wife to the sliding glass doors. As he emerged to the finished garden, he was confronted by the shock of the makeover and then of the cast and crew emerging from their hideouts. He had the unsettling sensation that all these strangers were converging on him like ants, but then something odd happened: He figured out what was going on. He recognized the cast. He reminded himself that this was television that would be shown around the world. He expressed amazement, but he kept it all together. He is more media-savvy than most -- he hosted a show for five years on a Christian radio station and has been involved in producing religious videotapes. And yet, perhaps his comfort with the cameras was something else. He is steeped in the world of reality television, where the boundaries between our own lives and the lives of characters on the TV set are melting away. One minute Charlie Dimmock is bouncing and bubbly on TV, the next minute she's outside the patio door. And so John Thornicroft got his dramatic peak, Jay Cameron got his moment of fame, Latricia got her garden and the fun of schmoozing with personable and friendly people from the BBC, some of them actual celebrities. "As they were leaving and pulled off, I kind of missed them," she says. I returned to the Cameron's' made-over yard in the fall, when the garden had lost its spring lushness, and the red leaves of the crape myrtle clung to their mother before falling one by one in a cold, stiff wind. Around the beds, a thin layer of mulch was wearing away, and a few weeds were beginning to take hold. The interlocking circles of 1,649 granite blocks were different and exciting, but I wondered about some of the practical aspects. The single step down from the house to the garden felt awkwardly deep, the blue sails swooped too low to be comfortable to sit under, and the planting holes, not lovingly dug by hand in the English tradition but by Dimmock and King wrestling a motorized auger, seemed too skimpy for the plants' good. The Cameron's say they love the garden, and Latricia likes to watch the older kids playing there when she is inside with Justin. Dimmock, on the show, made the point that the garden represented just a first step toward transforming the yard. But it did seem a modest thing now in its forlorn autumn state. Unlike interiors, which can be transformed radically for the camera, gardens are hard to revamp overnight, because plants take time to fill in and grow up. Amazing, really, that you can build a global television enterprise on a foundation of 1,649 cobbles. John Brookes, a well-known English landscape designer, says programs like "Ground Force" are "to do with [making] a television program," not making great gardens. Why not do a show, he wonders, where you take a small urban space and invest the time and money to transform it with sublime design, good construction and nice detail? But then he reevaluates his opinion. Perhaps these quickie makeovers do help educate as well as entertain, if only to demonstrate that spaces can be altered. "They do have some ideas," he says. When will makeover shows go the way of Westerns and '70s detective shows? Not anytime soon, says Susie Coelho, host of HGTV's new "Outer Spaces." "I don't see any lightening up," she says. "In fact, I just see the trend starting." She jokes that "if these shows keep coming, we'll probably end up doing all the homes and gardens in the country." For now, Latricia and Jay Cameron's garden remains among the few. Jay is under orders to finish the children's play area, whose development was cut short by his early return. For Latricia, the view through the sliding glass doors is a reminder of two days in April that were thrilling, distressing and magical. For her husband, the memories include not only meeting the garden goddess but that bewildering drive to North Carolina, his head full of little green dumpsters. "He couldn't let the dumpster go," says his wife, chuckling. Adrian Higgins is the garden editor of The Post's Home section. |
Printer friendly version
