Globe Trekker

A Q&A with host Justine Shapiro

Justine Shapiro (pictured with an avian friend in Argentina) has hosted Globe Trekker episodes from more than 25 counties. She is also a producer and director. Her 2002 documentary Promises was nominated for an Academy Award and earned two Emmys. Here, Justine talks about memorable events and people who have enriched her travels.

Could you describe a Globe Trekker production shoot?

The Globe Trekker shoots are typically about 21 days. That's a really long shoot for a travel show. Most travel shows shoot under a week. They usually will shoot in a major city and then in an outlying area. We really cover a lot of ground. For example, Argentina is the ninth largest country in the world. I think we took 10 internal flights just to get from the high desert to the glaciers, across over to Bariloche and the mountains, then over to the other side to Buenos Aires.

And what's great about the shoots being long is so much is open to change. The director and producer will do a location scout for a week or two and then I arrive with the cameraperson and sound person. It's just a crew of five. Then we usually have somebody from the country, a fixer or a driver, who will be with us for most of the shoot. It's a very small team. So while the producer may have all these ideas about where we need to go and about what we need to do, the show is never set in stone.

I think a lot of what gives the show its strength is that there is so much spontaneity. There is no script. No one tells me what to say. No one tells me what to wear. Because they are long shoots and we are shooting on video, we really can be spontaneous.

I'd say most of the people whom we end up interviewing in the show are people we meet along the way. We'll have dinner and the person sitting next to us will be fantastic, and we'll say, "Well, why don't we meet you tomorrow morning." And then we'll meet them and interview them, and they end up being a more interesting, articulate person than the person who was originally set up.

What are the Globe Trekker crews like?

A very big part of the success of the shows, in my view, is the teamwork. For me, the experience of making Globe Trekker has so much to do with the experience of working with this team. Most of the time, but especially if I have a strong feeling about a story, we work it into the show and it's very gratifying to feel that there is so much room for collaboration.

Often, I'll be in a position where the director will say, "Justine, let's do a sequence on these dumplings in Poland." And this director will also say, "It's not fair for you to eat and not tell the viewer what it tastes like because they want to know." And that's a real challenge -- to express to the camera, to the audience, the sensual experience of traveling: What does this stuff taste like, what does this stuff smell like? It's a constant challenge, and one of the reasons that I like to do the show is because there are things that I keep learning how to do better.

And sometimes when I don't have the words for it, I'll say to the soundman, "Taste that dumpling. What do you think it feels like?" I'll have the cameraman taste it as well. This works great because I get all these fantastic adjectives because the crews are mostly British and they tend to be quite good with their words and very expressive. So, I get a lot of help from my friends.

Which trips surprised you -- for better or for worse?

The shoot in the eastern Caribbean. Everyone said, "You're so lucky. You're going to Trinidad, Tobago, Grenada, Dominica!" And I spent the entire time on Dramamine.

Let me say first that the crew that came together for the eastern Caribbean shoot was just fantastic, so it was still one of the most fun shoots I've ever had. But I'm terrified of flying, and what do you do when you're traveling around on islands? You're driving around windy roads; you're on boats from island to island; or you're on small planes. Honestly, I had sea bands on; I had ear patches on; I was just drowning in Dramamine. And, in fact, the director knows that I get really sick on boats. If I think about a boat, I get sick. And he said, "Justine, forgive me, but I have a great idea for a boat sequence. It's a boat that goes from Grenada to a little island just off of Grenada. And it travels over an underground volcano."

And they thought it would be more fun to go on a cargo boat, meaning all the floor space is covered up with trays of Coca-Cola bottles. There was nowhere to sit down except outside the doorway that goes into where they drive the boat. So, all of us are huddled in this one little area. The boat is traveling over an underground volcano, moving up and down and sideways. The water was sloshing over all the equipment and everything. There's the sequence with me with a towel over my head … and right now, I'm getting sick just thinking about it.

After traveling abroad to so many places, do you still find it interesting traveling within the United States? For example, to the Southwest?

Well, I learned how to ride a motorcycle for the "Southwest U.S.A." shoot. And when I was learning how to ride, the instructor said, "Listen, just don't let them put you on a Harley 'cause they're really heavy and you've got really skinny legs." Of course, they decided to put me on a Harley because it's such a telegenic machine.

It is really, truly fascinating to travel around the United States and I love it. My grandfather, who is from Europe and was 103 when he died, said "Europe is for the cities, the United States is for nature." And I really understood that when we did the "Southwest U.S.A." show. That landscape of mountains, just the natural beauty of this country is just extraordinary. You could really imagine a lot of our past history with the wide-open spaces and people traveling slowly through them.

You meet a lot of people on your travels. Are there any whom have stayed in your mind?

I always take photographs and send photographs back to people. For example, when we were in Egypt in the Sinai desert, we were with some Bedouin women and their children. When the men in the crew left, I spent some time with the women and they took off their veils. We couldn't communicate at all with language, but I had brought some postcards from home and photographs of my family. I find that a great way to connect with people is to bring something personal of myself to the relationship early on. People really love to see where you come from, because people want to share their lives. They want you to see their children. So we could communicate through photos. It's universal; everyone knows what a mommy and a daddy and children and grandparents look like. Everyone connects to that.

And with these women, there was a way that we looked at each other -- now it sounds really corny -- but there was a way that we looked at each other and it was like we both got that we are women and we come from such different worlds, but the same things matter to you as to me. There was something very heartfelt and when we said goodbye, I cried so much, not really with them but when we were away. My heart broke, because I felt a connection.

Have you always wanted to travel?

When I was growing up, public schools inspired me to travel because our education involved getting to know about other cultures. I was in a bilingual Spanish program; my sister was in a bilingual Chinese program. Native Americans came and took us to the beach. We baked salmon under the sand, under the ground in the traditional fashion. We learned to make tamales. I was exposed to all these cultures when I was young, so I became very keen to know more. I think there is so much traveling one can do in one's own neck of the woods, and the people who really need to do that traveling are young kids. Parents and teachers, I think, would do their kids a great favor by just taking them outside of their neighborhood. The United States is such a diverse world unto its own. There is such benefit in just realizing that people with such different ways of living live in your city.

What do you find most valuable about traveling?

A lot of people say that they travel because they want to get to know a new place or country or culture. But I think a lot of people who travel frequently would say that what you really get to know is yourself -- because you are far away from all of the familiar mirrors.

You are forced to see your cultural behaviors in the context of a very different culture, in a way that makes you look at yourself. You start to see that the things that you say, the things that you believe and the things that you think are actually cultural overlays. And it's very interesting to realize that people all over the world act, believe, think, behave in different ways that reflect their cultures. It's not a biological imperative. I think this is the most valuable lesson in traveling. You come home and you realize -- wow, there are so many different ways to live a life. I think travel is so important because it really helps people open their hearts and their minds to others and their points of view.