Find truth and tears at Terminal 3
Psychotherapist Dale Curd returns for Season 2 of his reality airport show Hello Goodbye on CBC
Hello Goodbye story producer Sara Basso describes her show like this: “Well, actually, it’s kind of like the first couple minutes of Love Actually and the last few minutes of Love Actually.”
Given that the airport scenes are the best parts of the mushy, multiple story-lined Hugh Grant romance, that’s not a bad analogy.
So when psychotherapist Dale Curd walks up to you, be prepared to blubber. A lot. For Curd, Toronto’s Pearson Airport just happens to be an extension of his examination room.
Love, loss and reunion are powerful themes exploited by every rom-com and it so happens there is no finer incubator than an airport terminal, amplifying the most base of emotions, which it turns out are perfect for reality television.
Curd, the host of the CBC series Hello Goodbye, has gained celebrity as fans increasingly want to tell their stories on the show. Season 2 begins Oct. 21.
“We were completely anonymous last year and now it’s really different with the attention we’re getting,” Curd says.
That includes fans disrupting filming and asking for selfies in the middle of interviews.
The deceptively simple concept has been a surprise hit for the CBC. A cynic might say it’s cheap television for a public broadcaster bankrupt of ideas. But it also turned out to be unexpectedly good TV, mainly because the stories are authentic in a world where much of “reality” television is staged or scripted.
Mind you, Curd and producers weren’t sure the format would work in staid, conservative Toronto.
“When we first started shooting, we were concerned about the reaction,” says Curd, sitting in a chair at Pearson’s Terminal 1 in the arrivals section. “Would Canadians, in a clichéd kind of way, be more closed off than, say, people in other parts of the world?”
It turns out they are. The rejection rate is about 85-per-cent from the field producers who approach people in the terminal. That compares to an 85-per-cent acceptance rate for the French-language version of the show that airs in Quebec.
But TV is a volume business. Curd will talk to hundreds of interviewees over a 13-week shoot at Pearson. That will be narrowed down to several dozen interviews for the TV show. Some of those interviews were originally anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half. They will be edited down to an emotionally crunchy four minutes.
This year, producers say, the themes are much more complex and coincide with the recent influx of refugees. Curd’s interviews have been getting longer as they move into the back story.
Much of the heavy lifting is up to the psychotherapist, who still sees patients in his Yonge St. office in Toronto.
His questions have brevity, a lightness and elegance that is never judgmental. They are always about the interviewee, not the interviewer, something that personality-driven American TV could benefit from. His signature pose, with arms folded in front, is almost priestly.
“Can I be honest? I can’t figure out what else to do with my arms, otherwise they’re just going to hang there,” confides Curd.
On this weekday, a producer has received permission from a subject to do an interview. All Curd knows is that the man, a musical theatre performer, happens to be waiting for his cousin from Greece.
Curd starts asking about the man’s connection to his cousin, whom he hasn’t seen in eight years.
But soon it becomes much more personal, as Curd veers into unexpected territory.
The man talks about coming out as a homosexual. Then he talks about his cousin’s homosexuality and the difficulty they had in having that conversation with their respective parents.
“I had a really difficult time. It wasn’t easy to put up with either. I made it difficult for my family. I was overweight; I was uncomfortable with my body,” the man says in one of many very personal revelations in the middle of an airport terminal.
Watching the interview live also makes you realize that an airport is not the best place to film what is essentially a talk show. People are walking in the shot. There are constant announcements that interfere with sound.
The subjects are distracted looking for their pickups. But, in time, thanks to Curd’s focus, that seems to melt away. Curd calls that “the bubble.”
“In a really good conversation, the cameras disappear and we’re just having a chat,” says Curd. “Sometimes we become so engrossed the subject completely misses the person they came to pick up. I imagine I’m at a dinner table and I put something on a table and they take a bite. And then they put some- thing on the table and I take a bite.”
The concept isn’t new. The CBC series is based on a Dutch show that has been licensed to other countries, including Britain and Italy.
Husband-and-wife showrunners Andrea and Mitchell Gabourie produced a similar themed show on the Oprah Winfrey Network: Life Story Project. Curd co-hosted, talking to Torontonians about their lives. But that was on a signature purple couch, not at an airport.
And it seems the environment makes a difference. Producers say they get more intimate, tear-jerking stories in the older, smaller confines of Terminal 3 than in the sterile, modern environment of Terminal 1.
“We can’t figure what it is exactly,” says Andrea Gabourie. “We just seem to cry a lot more in Terminal 3.”
Whatever terminal it happens to be in, viewers can expect to bring out the hankies.