Reality TV That's a Cut Above

Six years after the debut of Survivor, 14 after the premiere of The Real World, reality TV has been around long enough for potential contestants to realize that appearing on a reality show is perhaps not the genius career move it seemed to be. If you're lucky, post--15 minutes, maybe you get to host a show on the TV Guide Channel. If you're less lucky, you get to co-host The View. Maybe you just swallow your pride and do the whole thing over again, as on the oxymoronically named Big Brother: All-Stars. But more likely, you eat a few bugs, you win a few bucks, you date Flavor Flav, and pretty soon you're back on the couch with the rest of us zeros, without a True Hollywood Story to your name. Is that all there is?

It is, except for the contestants in reality TV's unlikeliest but most satisfying genre: shows about people who actually know how to do something. This week the fashion showdown Project Runway (Bravo, Wednesdays, 10 p.m. E.T.) returns for its third season, having smashed Bravo's ratings records by proving that you can spin a good yarn from threads. Elsewhere, designers, chefs, moviemakers--even preachers--are turning to reality TV to show their stuff. Think of these series as American Idol goes to trade school competitions not for neophyte performers looking to get famous but for professionals to advance their careers long after the cameras shut off. In the summer of America's Got Talent--which might more aptly be called America Can Balance a Sword on Its Face--these shows are out to prove that America's also got creativity.

The godparents of this Geek Idol genre are Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz, a producing duo operating under the name Magical Elves, who created Runway and its culinary spin-off, Top Chef, and also produced Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's movie-director search Project Greenlight. The Elves' projects share one philosophy: "We feel that the creative process is inherently dramatic and interesting to watch," says Cutforth.

They feel that way now. At the start of Runway, Cutforth admits, "we were nervous that we could make people sewing into interesting television." Not only did they, but they did it without dumbing down the creative process. There's a scene in the first season in which eventual winner Jay McCarroll, stuck trying to draw up a design that is classic and tasteful while reflecting his flamboyant style, looks out the window and sees the burnished Art Deco crown of Manhattan's Chrysler Building, which he reinterprets as a dress. It's a better, more succinct illustration of creative inspiration than most novels and movies about artists manage. "That was a magic moment," says Lipsitz. "At best, we want to show that the way the individual characters see the world translates into their work."

Runway is far more successful than Greenlight was. Besides the fact that host-producer Heidi Klum looks better in a cocktail dress than movie producer Chris Moore would, Runway has the sizzle of a tense competition, while Greenlight picked its filmmakers right off the bat. (Perhaps learning from Greenlight, in Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett's On the Lot, for Fox next season, filmmakers will duke it out Runway-style.)