TVO kid travels the world in search of like teens
Joe Motiki spent four years cooped up in TVO's Crawlspace. It was enough to make a guy want to stretch his legs and see the world.
That's exactly what Motiki is doing these days as the host of Get Outta Town!, premiering Saturday April 2 at 12:30 p.m. on TVO
The 13-part travel series explores what it's like for youths to live in others parts of the world. It's aimed at teens who were toddlers back in the mid-'90s when Motiki and his old pal Patty Sullivan were a popular Crawlspace couple.
"I go to clubs now and run into people in
the bar," says Motiki. "And they'll say,
'You're Joe from TVO Kids! You raised me!' and they'll be half drunk."
He says kids weren't the only ones watching all those daily Crawlspace segments. University students used to tune in to catch the short animated series Pingu. "It was a little out there," he says.
Parents also caught his act, including one or two police officers. Motiki was once pulled over for a busted headlight. When one of the two officers approached him, they said, "Oh, I can't give you a ticket, my kid's going to kill me." Motiki promised to fix the headlight and wound up signing autographs for their kids. "They seemed pretty jazzed about that."
While Crawlspace brought a level of fame and attention (Motiki recalls one public appearance with Bill Nye The Science Guy that drew 10,000 people), the daily kids gig also made travel impossible. He's making up for lost time with Get Outta Town!, which took him to five exciting cities this season, including Sydney, Australia; Madrid, Spain; Rome, Italy; Shanghai, China, and Athens, Greece. Young traveller Barbara Mamabolo hosted eight other episodes.
Executive producer Debbie Nightingale says Motiki brought exactly what they were looking for to the series. "He's got a natural curiosity about the world and that's what's so delicious about him," says Nightingale. "Plus it turns out that all the kids know him. They think he's cool and interesting and fun. We got real lucky."
Motiki thinks he got lucky, too. Since checking out of the Crawlspace in 1999, he spent a year as a feature host on EZRock 97.3 FM in Toronto. He also became involved as a voice actor in several animated projects, including 7th Portal, Medabots and Rescue Heroes.
He branched out into sports, hosting Kidzone on Leafs TV as well as POV Sports on CBC. He also hosted the classic school quiz series Reach For The Top. He even got a little face time on Degrassi this season.
Still, his buddies thought he hit the jackpot with the travel gig. "I didn't know hosting a travel show was everybody's dream 'til I got this job," he says. "I thought everybody wanted to be an actor or an astronaut."
Motiki says the producers were very mysterious at first when he got the call about Get Outta Town! "All they wanted to know at first is 'does he have a record and does he have a passport,' " he says. "I thought, oh, this must be a pretty interesting gig."
In each city, he's paired with a young local host who shows him the town. In Madrid he was paired with a 17-year-old Flamenco dancer who took him to her dance class. "She was an old soul, really into her craft," says Motiki, who was surprised at how serious everyone was in Spain. "For me it was a real curve ball. I was expecting a party. There was a much different energy there than what I would have thought."
Shanghai, he says, was "another planet." Motiki expected to see some Cold War capital -- "guys with red stars on their hats like in that Boy In The Box Corey Hart video." Instead he found a booming metropolis with construction everywhere. "Half the world's cranes are in China," says Motiki, who was dazzled by the bright lights of Shanghai. "At night it is lit up right off the page," he says. "I bet this place makes Vegas look like Lite Brite."
Motiki says he especially enjoyed visiting the hot spots. "I'm a big whore for the sun," he says. Sydney, where he had been before (relatives from his mother's side live there) was "awesome. The women are all so healthy and bronzed and beautiful."
He was less taken by Sydney's customs agents, who he diplomatically describes as "a little quirky."
One guy there told him he didn't like Canadians. "Usually Canadians are No. 1 with a bullet," he says about our rep as welcome world travellers. "That Tim Hortons ad is a lie. Wear a Maple Leaf on your knapsack and you could get knocked out."
Get Outta Town! is already a hit on U.S. cable's WAM network. Things look good for another season on TVO, and Motiki already has his wish list of places to visit, including Cairo, Egypt and Brazil. "I'm a big soccer fan," he says. "I can hardly wait to start adding some more aeroplan miles."
SUN TV MAGAZINE Television Bill Brioux March 27, 2005
