When Mexican TV celebrity Aquiles Chávez opened a seafood restaurant in Houston’s West End earlier this year, local English-language media may not have given it the attention a culinary star might expect. But his efforts to open La Fisheria were all the while being filmed by a crew from Colombia. Now Fox-owned Utilisima is planning to air Chávez’s northern saga as a 13-episode reality TV series, Aquiles en Houston, beginning June 10th. (The slower paced video above isn’t from the series, but contains more footage of the restaurant at 4705 Inker than the series trailer put out by the network.) [29-95; Utilisima] Video: FUHA
How’d the Cricket Trailer do in its national teevee debut last night on Extreme RV, the Travel Channel’s new show? Former furnituremaker-to-the-astronauts Garrett Finney didn’t get top billing in the episode for the second version of his unique 2-wheeler pop-top vehicle, painstakingly crafted in his Woodland Heights workshop — that prize went to Simon Cowell’s behemoth 45-footer motor home. Still, the Cricket website attracted enough attention from the RV early adopter crowd to knock it off its server. From the Cricket’s Facebook page, Finney promises it’ll be back online soon.Update, 1/31: It’s back in business. [Previously on Swamplot]
“I’d be surprised if the chamber of commerce didn’t pay for this kind of publicity on a regular basis. . . . it seems like Houston missed an opportunity to get some national visibility via this very popular show. I agree with the concern that there would have been no editorial rights for the city – but then I’d have to ask if you’re so worried about our city looking bad on a TV show, how ’bout improving the city?” [Karen, commenting on Why There’s No Top Chef in Houston]
Wondering why the upcoming season of Bravo’s Top Chef: Texas won’t feature scenes of Houston in any of its 14 episodes — even though state officials gave the production company $400,000 to film the season in Texas? Well, here’s a possible answer: Houston officials refused to fork over an additional $120,000 to the production company, Magical Elves, in return for a single episode to be filmed in Houston. ”They were not going to give us any editorial influence for what was shot,” Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau marketing director Lindsey Brown tells the San Antonio Express News. “We just felt it wasn’t worth what they were asking. They could go out to Beaumont and film oil [derricks] for all we know.”
Instead of Houston restaurants and grub, the series will feature 8 full episodes shot in San Antonio, including a faked farmers market at the La Villita village downtown and the highly anticipated return of Pee-Wee Herman to the Alamobasement. Why the San Antonio focus?
What can HBJ reporter Jennifer Dawson tell you about the filming she attended over the weekend of 2 Meritage model homes in Fall Creek, for a new HGTV show called Showhouse Showdown? Not a whole lot. Five rooms in each of the 3,000-sq.-ft. houses on Robbie Creek Ln. had been decked out over a period of 3 days by a different interior designer, each wielding a $50,000 budget. The first 150 attendees got to vote on a winner: “I was game for standing outside in the heat, because I was eager to see who won the competition. But, no such luck. HGTV shot the reveal segment twice. Once as if the decorator of House A won. And once as if House B’s designer won. That’s a sure-fire way of making sure the cat doesn’t get out of the bag before the show airs. The producers also didn’t want the designers’ names revealed before the show airs, terms I agreed to. We also weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the houses.” [BizBlog] Photo of “Windrose” model used in competition: Meritage Homes
The producers of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition are already looking to return to Houston for another frenetic rebuild — less than a year after volunteers here put up a brand new house (complete with upstairs fashion runway) for the Johnson family in South Union, and showed it off before a national audience. Know a family whose home is “making it difficult, or even impossible, to cope with challenges that face them”? The show’s casting director wants your nominations “for the deserving people and inspiring families that America can really root for.” [abc13; signup; previously on Swamplot] Photos: ABC
Oily 3-time Survivor loser Russell Hantz (pictured above in the shark-wrestling competition from Survivor: Samoa) tells Entertainment Weekly he’s come to town “to bring Houston’s economy back on its feet.” How’s he gonna get the market back from its tippy-toes? By flipping houses — then bragging about it on-camera. Apparently, a gig like that pays pretty well.
Hantz’s reputation as a tell-’em-straight kinda guy was sealed in January when the Daily Beast revealed him as the mysterious source of persistent leaks about the reality show’s top-secret storylines. In his contracts, Hantz had agreed to pay “liquidated damages” of $5 million if he revealed which contestants had been eliminated before episode air dates. CBS responded to the breach by suing the message-board commenter who posted the tips — and featuring Hantz in Survivor: Redemption Island, which began airing in February. (The suit against Survivor Sucks website poster Jim Early was dismissed.)
Stick ’Em Up! filmmaker Alex Luster tells the Houston Press’s John Nova Lomax a few of the things he learned from mentor and former KTRK reporter Carlos Aguilar in the mid-1990s, when they both worked at Spanish-language news station Noticiero 48: “‘He said, “Most of your news stories are gonna be in the Inner Loop.” I asked why and he told me it was easier for a TV station to get [those stories], and also the ones in Southwest Houston. Most of the stations didn’t want to waste the gas or time to cover things outside the loop,’ Luster remembers. ‘And he taught me how not to get lost without reading a map or pulling over to get your bearings — to just head for the buildings. He said to learn downtown and then everything else I could figure out from there. That’s another reason I’ve come to love the Inner Loop — the buildings signified home and safety.’” [Houston Press; previously on Swamplot]
Last night’s postponed airing on ABC of the first Extreme Makeover: Home Edition filmed in Houston proper made no mention of the mud-inducing and deadline-destroying downpours, the organizers’ multiple pleas for Gatorade, patio furniture, trim carpenters, siding installers, and plumbers — or the mad (and ultimately futile) rush for an on-time finish that was a major source of drama at the South Union site. But it did feature a brief pre-demolition “roast” of the Johnson family’s dilapidated original home on Goodhope St. by comedians Tommy Davidson, Ralphie May, and Paul Rodriguez, as well as a later appearance by supermodel Brooklyn Decker, (wife of tennis star Andy Roddick), flown in to design the 5 Johnson girls’ elaborate pink closet. Plus: plenty of those fawning building-product-delivery placement shots. On what looked like it could have been the limo ride back from IAH after the family’s Paris vacation, Cedric the Entertainer briefly “joked” to the girls that they wouldn’t get to see their new house right then. But viewers’ only delay was a commercial break.
The efforts of all those local volunteers rushing madly to finish a new home for the Johnson family in South Union were supposed to be featured in last night’s season premiere of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. At least that’s what ABC was saying up until the middle of this month. C’mon, you say that to all your markets, don’t you? But — surprise! — a Baltimore build completed just a couple of weeks ago was featured in the 2-hour special instead. The Houston show, featuring construction work coordinated by HHN Homes and featuring a select group of comedians, has been rescheduled for October 10th. Photo: Candace Garcia
“Remember the show “Houston Knights”? I loved watching that for [its] single season. My favorite part was the [scenic] hills off in the distance, and the heroes speeding to downtown from NASA via the Galleria. The scenes were always the same loops that they filmed here at one point put into different orders and called by different landmark names. The Astrodome was usually consistant but that was the only landmark they got right. I can’t wait to see all of the Dallas/FW landmarks called by Houston names. Sounds like a drinking game to me.” [SCD, commenting on Jerry Bruckheimer Knows All the Hottest Houston Cop Action Is in Dallas]
Helicopter flyover alert: NBC’s new police action series, “Chase,” which debuts next week, is a show about the federal fugitive-apprehension team in Houston. The show’s lead character — a role notable for having been turned down by Maria Bello, Tea Leoni, and Christina Applegate — is U.S. Marshal Annie Frost (played by former All My Children star Kelli Giddish), who leads her law-enforcement team chasing criminals all over South Texas. So it was really important that the cast and crew find a way to get plenty of that Texas flavor on the show.
No-brainer, then: Under the guidance of executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer, the production team moved to uh, Dallas to film the pilot. And that’s where they’ll film later episodes too. Hey, it puts them right in the action to do all of those good 10-gallon-hat and runaway cattle scenes. Sure, but what are they gonna do when they’ve got a scene set in the Galleria, or Highland Village, or West VillageAve? What about then?
Over the weekend we finally got the big reveal from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, featuring the 15-member Beach Family in Kemah. Pictured above: the new Therapy Room, modeled after “the carnival in Kemah.”
Next from the Beaches’ new 6,340-sq.-ft. home: magical mushrooms in the “Trees and Tea Parties Room.”
As all of Kemah knows by now, the latest beneficiaries of one of those “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” weeklong volunteer-fueled whirlwinds is the 15-member Beach family: “After Hurricane Ike, the Beaches moved from their damaged home at 1013 Delesandri Lane into two FEMA trailers, parked in front of their house. Last fall, they moved to the backyard, into an 18-foot travel trailer with one toilet. The hot water tank held just 6 gallons, and they had to make frequent visits to the laundromat and cook on a gas grill. . . . The Beaches knew they were one of five local families nominated for the show, but Thursday’s ‘door knock’ made it official. The ‘reveal’ is scheduled for next Thursday, when they’ll come home to a 6,340-square-foot, two-story house with eight bedrooms and 4½ bathrooms. The episode is scheduled to air in March. Plans for the home include an elevator, therapy room and rooftop solar panels. The house will be built to meet standards set by the Americans with Disabilities Act, with wide doorways and bathrooms spacious enough for a wheelchair.” [Houston Chronicle]
Swamplot covers real estate, home design and renovation, architecture, and the landscape of Houston, Texas. Swamplot did not flood during Allison — or Ike! Honest! Read more
How’d the Cricket Trailer do in its national teevee debut last night on Extreme RV, the Travel Channel’s new show? Former furnituremaker-to-the-astronauts Garrett Finney didn’t get top billing in the episode for the second version of his unique 2-wheeler pop-top vehicle, painstakingly crafted in his Woodland Heights workshop — that prize went to Simon Cowell’s behemoth 45-footer motor home. Still, the Cricket website attracted enough attention from the RV early adopter crowd to knock it off its server. From 
What can HBJ reporter Jennifer Dawson tell you about the filming she attended over the weekend of 2 Meritage model homes in Fall Creek, for a new HGTV show called Showhouse Showdown? Not a whole lot. Five rooms in each of the 3,000-sq.-ft. houses on Robbie Creek Ln. had been decked out over a period of 3 days by a different interior designer, each wielding a $50,000 budget. The first 150 attendees got to vote on a winner: “I was game for standing outside in the heat, because I was eager to see who won the competition. But, no such luck. HGTV shot the reveal segment twice. Once as if the decorator of House A won. And once as if House B’s designer won. That’s a sure-fire way of making sure the cat doesn’t get out of the bag before the show airs. 
The producers of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition are already looking to return to Houston for another frenetic rebuild — less than a year after volunteers here put up a brand new house (complete with upstairs fashion runway) for the Johnson family in South Union, and showed it off before a national audience. 
All-things-automotive blog Jalopnik takes uh, credit for the continuing wave of streetside zombie warnings gracing local newscasts nationwide, two-and-a-half years after the publication of their original how-to: “[There's] no reason to demonize us here at Jalopnik. . . . 
The efforts of all those local volunteers rushing madly to finish a new home for the Johnson family in South Union were supposed to be featured in last night’s season premiere of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. At least that’s what ABC was saying up until the middle of this month. C’mon, you say that to all your markets, don’t you? But — surprise! — a Baltimore build completed just a couple of weeks ago was featured in the 2-hour special instead. The Houston show, featuring construction work coordinated by HHN Homes and featuring a select group of comedians, has been 
Comment of the Day: Get Me Rewrite!
“I’d be surprised if the chamber of commerce didn’t pay for this kind of publicity on a regular basis. . . . it seems like Houston missed an opportunity to get some national visibility via this very popular show. I agree with the concern that there would have been no editorial rights for the city – but then I’d have to ask if you’re so worried about our city looking bad on a TV show, how ’bout improving the city?” [Karen, commenting on Why There’s No Top Chef in Houston]