Captain Keith Colburn of the Wizard by Todd Stanley/Discovery Channel
The Season 4 premiere of Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch may have sought to reel in viewers by creating the illusion that the fishing boat The Wizard was being flooded in real time, but reality suggests otherwise. Yes, the boat was assaulted by waves last October. And yes, the boat was flooded... a week prior. According to a production outline obtained by the Hollywood Reporter, extra footage may have been shot to pastiche the two events into one — especially when you factor in that there are exterior shots (shot by a second craft) of The Wizard being "flooded," though the boat was in fact alone at the time of the actual incident. ( Watch video of the sequence here.)
The doc cited by the trade specifically says, "Combine Wizard leak story on Sept. 26 with The Wizard being hit by a big wave on Oct. 1 and Oct. 2. The fiction we are constructing is that the big wave hit The Wizard on their steam up to Dutch, caused a leak in Lenny's stateroom. In reality these were two separate events."
Er, someone needs a lesson in tracks-covering 101.
Execs at Discovery — where Catch is considered a documentary — dismiss the outline as a never-approved "early draft," and deny that reenactment footage is used by the series. That said, they acknowledge that film footage from separate days was combined to produce the harrowing sequence. — MWM
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