Certainly the bile and the vindictiveness came from Susan, but did the words? Two days before, all Susan can come up with to persuade Rudy from voting her off the island is a 10-second bunch of banalities, and in the final speech, she's appealing to the jury to honor the island spirits by upholding the natural order and letting the snake eat the rat? I smell a rat, and it doesn't smell like Kelly ... it smells like MB.

Two thoughts: 1. Does anyone remember any of the survivors (excluding Jeff Probst in his scripted speeches) actually referring to the island spirits for any reason at all?
2. Does anyone recall hearing Susan use another metaphor at any time during the first 12 episodes? In any interview since?

It's no big deal, because I'm sure the rant accurately reflected Susan's thoughts, but I would expect that MB had a writer or assistant producer work with Susan on it. If anyone sees anything that supports or rejects this theory, let me know. It would be interesting to know just how many ways MB interfered with "the natural order" himself.

• RE: Did Susan write her flame?,GangGreen, 09:04 AM, 08-28-00
  • RE: Did Susan write her flame?,AyatollahKhomeini, 12:12 PM, 08-28-00
    • RE: Did Susan write her flame?,Drive My Car, 06:33 PM, 08-28-00
      • RE: Did Susan write her flame?,AyatollahKhomeini, 06:52 PM, 08-28-00
        • AK, Wasn't alll that info from the E12 "I dunno" IC,BadAs, 06:58 PM, 08-28-00
          • RE: E12 "I dunno" IC (Tiga Witch),AyatollahKhomeini, 10:35 PM, 08-28-00

Sean was on WPLJ radio in NYC this morning and they asked him about Susan's speech. Sean said that Susan wrote the speech herself and memorized it. She asked Sean to read it to see if it made sense (he mentioned that he didn't bother to correct the grammar). He also said that everyone else had agreed not to make negative comments -- just to ask a question or comment on themselves, and that he told Sue that he thought the speech went too far. Interestingly, he did say that he somewhat agreed with Sue. According to Sean, Kelly was much more of a bitch than we were shown and Richard was made out to be more obnoxious than he really is.

Thanks for the info, GangGreen. Most of the speech was pure Susan: the damning faint praise to Richard, the rafting challenge flame, and the "if you were dying of thirst" and vultures bits all seemed like Susan. The only part that I was questioning was the metaphoric appeal to honor the island spirits by letting the snake eat the rat, which doesn't sound like Susan at all (at least to me). If it wasn't explicitly written for Susan, then I think it was at least hinted to her.

By the way, I agree that we were only shown a little piece of Kelly. If the show is really being re-edited (maybe to make the pieces fit in chronological order?), I'd love to see the showdown with the producers developing over the food supply, and I'd like to see how Kelly became the spokesperson for Rattana in this battle. I also would like to see the "negotiations" between Colleen and Kelly, when Colleen was trying to get Kelly to vote along with herself, Gervace and Sean against Richard, Susan and Rudy in E10. Nevertheless, the voting went exactly to form, with three Pagong for Kelly, three Tagi for Rich, and Greg as the swing vote, so the portrayal couldn't have been too far off the mark.

I saw one of the writers on MSNBC, the day after the final episode of Survivor. The writer said that it was all Sue, her very own words, and they couldn't have written stuff that good.

Well, if she actually did write it entirely herself, then I'm impressed by how she wove MB's "island spirits" into her last thoughts.

didn't Jeffy, talk up the whole Island Myth crap during the IC and the Maks with video's. Where the Rude_Man came up with the Classic "I Dunno".

Or I could be Mistaken.. I Dunno?

BA

BA, you're right that that IC was about the legend of the island. MB made a big deal about the spirits of the island in pre-Survivor interviews, and the whole ringing the gong ritual at TC was supposed to announce your presence to the spirits. Now, suddenly, at the very end of TC, we have a member of the jury making an appeal to the jury to honor the island spirits? And that member is ... Susan? Seems too pat to me.

The REST of Susan's speech was pure Susan, and I do not question its authenticity one bit. But I'm sorry. Hyperbole (for example, I'd let the vultures eat you without any regret) is clearly part of Susan's normal talking; we heard hyperbole from Susan lots of times on the show. Belittling (for example, you sucked in the rowing challenge against a guy who couldn't even swim) is another part. But, I never ONCE heard her utter a metaphor in the entire 13 weeks. AND a metaphor that invokes MB's beloved island spirits? At the penultimate moment of the last show?

People don't talk in a manner that is out of character in moments of pressure without help (think of George H.W. Bush's "thousand points of lights" speech in 1988). If Susan had left it at just letting the snake eat the rat, I wouldn't be so suspicious. But Susan asking the jury to honor the spirits by letting the natural order prevail sounds a whole lot like MB (have you ever heard this guy describe EcoChallenge?) and not at all like the Susan Hawk we know.