MONDO EXTRAS

[laughs] Summer and I called the ocean "the office," and we'd talk there a lot. Yeah, now Summer and I -- when I saw her show up, I thought, "Okay, there's a point to all this." We really did have some bad blood and some stuff we wanted to reconcile. We both were pretty into that idea. We hung out all the time, and we were kind of each other's touchstone. Especially by the middle of it all, when it started getting really weird.

How was that?

It was crazy -- there was a period during the middle of the whole stretch where nobody was sure what was going on. You'd completely lost touch. Because [the producers] did such a good job of pressure cooking -- of keeping you in this insulated little world -- and everything started to get turned around, like things you knew really wouldn't be important in the outside world started to become paramount.

Was that about the time things like the cocktail party started happening?

Yeah, there was all this sort of crazy shit going on. But then everybody kind of lightened up a little bit more, and it was back to good fun.

Did you guys have to hang around with Mike Richards?

He was hardly ever around. Pretty much all he'd do is wake us up with the gong. Yeah, that doesn't endear you.

Yeah, well, he didn't want your love.

Tough job. You know, I think they should hire Jeff to be the host of the next one.

That would be great. They need someone who doesn't have so much of that guidance-counselor vibe.

Yeah.

How do you feel the show as a whole turned out -- in terms of the whole high school reunion concept?

Overall, I was pretty happy with the way everything turned out. They kept saying, "Look, we're not trying to make you look bad; we think there's an interesting story here," and we actually doubted them a lot. But in the end -- I think they were very honest. I think a couple times they might have spliced a couple things together, but it was so minor that it wasn't a big deal.

Do you think they should do anything different next time?

I think they could make it a lot better by not dumbing it down so much. Not focusing so much on people hooking up and drinking. There was a lot more going on besides that.