AE: Speaking of Eric, you guys seemed to develop something of a rivalry with him. He repeated called you guys names, among them freaks, queens, old ladies, and nervous Nellies.
Bill: I don't know. It's kind of hard coming from him. It was just kind of weird. I don't know where he's coming from. I think he's got some issues of his own that he has to deal with. In general, people who try to camouflage their own issues usually take attitudes like that.
Joe: Honestly, everything you saw on TV was our interaction with them. Back in Chile, when we were down in the desert, we made a verbal agreement between three teams, Uchenna and Joyce, Eric and Danielle, and Joe and I, because it was so late at night and dark, to head towards our next clue box together, and once we got to that clue box, everyone was on their own again. Because I spoke a little Spanish, I was going to help us get there quicker. They didn't get out of the car and sort of took advantage of the situation, and sped out in front of us. That kind of pissed me off. We had a little bit of a gentleman's agreement and they didn't honor it. So from that point on, we just thought, well, we're not going to count on them for anything.
Bill: Everybody along the way, ourselves included, took an attitude that Eric's strategy of racing was to let everybody else do all the thinking, and he'll follow along, coast along, then when it comes time, they'll turn it into a foot race. They're 28 and 23 years old and they can pretty much outrun anybody. They're fit and they can run fast. They really don't have to put a whole lot of effort into figuring out what they had to do. I don't think Danni has a strategy. She's just tagging along.
Joe: To sum it up, I don't think we hold anything against Eric for his youth and inexperience. It's just like, "Come on. Grow up, and maybe it'll all make sense to you later."
AE: What did you think about the other gay team on TAR - Danny and Oswald?
Bill: Oh they're great!
Joe: We love 'em!
Bill: We watched the show last night with Oswald.
Joe: He came over to our hotel room and watched the show with us. We've known them for years, since they were on. We've gone out to dinner with them from time to time, and stuff like that. They're really nice people.
Bill: We enjoy their company and they're very fair racers and they play the game really well.
AE: You both are very competitive, and would sometimes try to slow down other teams. You've been vilified a bit because of those tactics. Do you feel that in situations like TAR, actions like that are warranted?
Joe: People have to understand that this isn't real life. It's a game. It's just like going out and playing poker or Parcheesi or anything else. We all want to win. There's a lot riding on whether you come in first or second place, or any place else. We're all type A personalities. It's definitely unfair for the audience to believe that they actually know us, or that they understand how we really are. They're just watching 11 hours of video tape on 13 episodes. We know for the fact from TAR1 that they had over a thousand hours of tape on 11 teams, which was edited down to 11 hours, 13 episodes, 44 minutes each. There was actually one man, one editor, who actually watched and catalogued all one thousand hours, so we know this for a fact. You can make anybody look like anything when you're only showing them 1% of what they do. From our TAR1 experience, the lovable grandmother wasn't always so lovable, the mother-daughter weren't always so kind, they weren't so sweet all the time. My famous quote, if I can remember it, is, "The camera never lies, but editing tells its own story."
Bill: Basically, everything you see on television happened, of course, but editing tells its own story. You can believe what you see because it did happen, but the way it's put together might change the tune of it a little.
Joe: On The Amazing Race: All Stars, both Bill and myself, and I think a lot of other teams are very conscious of the cameras. We're all pretty conscious that we're being filmed all the time and we know how it will be used. It's probably been used against all of us at one time or another, us probably a little bit more than some of the others. I think we've all toned it down and become a little bit more quiet and reserved about what we say on camera. I don't think Eric has learned that yet. [laughs] Or maybe he has and he knows it gives him more airtime, you know?
Bill: If those are his true feelings, that's fine. It is a free speech forum. Everyone has a right to their opinion. It's unfortunate, but that's what he chose to say. If you want to use those words, that's perfectly fine.
Joe: There are a whole lot of words we don't use.
Bill: Joe and I have been together 20 years, and we came out in a time in our lives and a time in our country where what we're doing and saying today on a national televised show is amazing. We're just happy to be there. If the real world comes into it because it's reality TV, we have to take the good with the bad. We feel very good about our portrayal and what we did on the show, and we're very happy that, maybe not everyone accepts us for who we are, but at least they're exposed to another version of life. I mean, we're real, we're here everyday around everybody.
Joe: And we survived the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and it was a whole lot different coming out in the 70s.
