Interview with “Silent Library” Executive Producer Adam Dolgins

Talk about an accidentally overlooked interview. I’m really sorry about this. It somehow got lost in the shuffle of technical problems, a long vacation, and other things.  MTV has been airing a new comedy game show called Silent Library weekdays at 5:30PM ET. Basically a team of friends have to compete in challenges in a library while not making noise to win money. It’s a pretty funny show if you watch it for the right reasons. It’s not supposed to be taken seriously; it’s a comedy. It does what it’s supposed to. Now that we got that out of the way, before I left for vacation I got to do an interview with executive producer Adam Dolgins about the show.

Silent Library has roots in Asian television, much like the FOX game show Hole in the Wall. If you’ve searchd for game shows on YouTube, most likely you’ve seen a clip of Silent Library around. As Adam Dolgins said said, “It was a big cult hit for a couple of years, then the prod. company in Japan started to shop it around the world.”

However, the tough part about adapting the show was because, again like Hole in the Wall, it really wasn’t a game show in Japan. It was just for comedy. He told us, “What was challenging about this is that in Japan the show is not a game show. It’s a segment on a long running comedy/variety show. The contestants…are all comedic actors. Everything they do… they really try to make each other laugh. It almost seemed like a game show, so we just added money and essentially made it a game show. In their version there’s no money awarded…they are just trying to remain silent. We just took it to the next logical step.”

As we see from many comedy game shows recently, the issue is blending both elements of the comedy and the game show and not drown out other segments. Executive producer Adam Dolgins said designing the show had the same issues. “The thing about the show is the hybrid. It’s a game show and a comedy. A lot of the comedy comes from the guys trying not to laugh and keep it inside. To me that’s the funniest bit. Also when the guys tried…as we designed the challenges, they couldn’t be too Fear Factor, and they couldn’t be too Double Dare.  They had to be somewhere in the middle for the MTV audience. Couldn’t be too gross and couldn’t be too silly.”

One part I always find interesting is how the producers and writers come up with these challenges, and how long it actually takes to find what works. Adam discussed this a bit with me, saying, “We had a staff of great writers who sat around brainstorming for weeks and weeks. They went through literally hundreds of ideas that has to pass through a variety of people. At some point we just figured it out. If it made everyone laugh and didn’t push the envelope in totally different directions. It took a while to figure out the sweet spot. Some of the challenges are simple…some of them are elaborate. We had an incredible spot team that worked around the clock building and stuff, building contraptions. It was a mix of high production value and low tech and simple. We tried to balance it.”

If you’ve watched the show at all like me, it’s really easy to tell that Silent Library is an easy fit for MTV. Really, can you see this on any other network? With the network trying to get more young males watching, the show works well for them. Adam said, “I think that’s why the channel is excited about it. The network is primarily male and most teams are men, we have one female team and they had a blast. But this is towards younger guys. I also produced Boiling Point, and that was a big hit for the channel…so this is sort of in the same vein. It’s a game show but also comedy. It goes into that kind of guy humor.”

I know it’s not for everyone, but take a chance to watch it if you get a chance. It’s funny and that’s all I ask for with something like this. Silent Library airs weekdays at 5:30PM ET on MTV. 20 episodes were ordered, so it’ll be on until next Friday.