Never mind those stories of overnight success. For David Collins and Michael Williams, their breakout moment was twenty years in the making. The pair founded Scout Productions in Boston in 1994, and it wasn't until the early aughts that two very different projects — Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and The Fog of War — put the company on the map.
Queer Eye, a makeover series, premiered on Bravo in 2003 and became a pop-culture phenom. The Fog of War, an Errol Morris documentary produced by Williams, had a polarizing military figure — former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara — sharing observations on warfare. The Fog of War won an Oscar for best documentary in 2003. Queer Eye won an Emmy for outstanding reality show in 2004.
Williams recalls bouncing between the two productions. "I would go from Monday being on the set of Queer Eye to Tuesday, sitting down with Robert McNamara. Once, I was adjusting him for an interview with Errol. I said, 'Oh, let me zhuzh your sleeve,'" Williams says, using a term made famous on Queer Eye, "and he goes, 'What? You're going to zhuzh what?'"
Having moved to Los Angeles in 2003, Scout is now a major player in the unscripted realm, producing such projects as a reimagined Queer Eye for Netflix (now in its sixth season) and two HBO Max competition series — the ballroom extravaganza Legendary (entering its third season) and the streetwear design show The Hype (second season).
Scout also produced Equal, a four-part LGBTQ+ civil-rights docuseries for HBO Max, and is in production on a three-part documentary on Barney the Dinosaur for Peacock.
"Everyone wants you to stay in your lane: lifestyle or competition," Collins says. "We create the stories we want to tell — whatever the format."
Scout is also diving into immersive reality with The Quest, a reality competition for Disney+. Based on a 2014 ABC series, The Quest has teenagers discovering clues and solving puzzles in a fantastical world of mythical beings brought to life through technology, creature design and practical effects.
The idea is to have "the magic happen in front of them [using immersive technology]," says chief creative officer Rob Eric, a nineteen-year Scout veteran. "We joke when we talk about the show — we didn't want to just throw a tennis ball at somebody and say, 'That's a fireball.' We want to throw a fireball." New Media Collective (The Amazing Race) and Court Five (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) are also producing.
"If you are going to continue playing games in competition series, you're going to have to immerse people in these worlds," Eric says. "It's where reality [TV] is going to end up because of the advances in videogames and virtual reality."
This article originally appeared in emmy magazine issue #1, 2022, under the title, "On Their Honor."
