December 10–17, 1998

book quarterly

Jack in the Book

Let's say you're the creators of the wildly popular, interactive Web and CD-ROM trivia game show "where high culture and pop culture collide," You Don't Know Jack. The show is propelled by irreverent question categories such as "Hung Like a Trojan Horse." (Contestants must choose which masturbation euphemism Odysseus would think was named in his honor: "choking the chicken," "rubbing the magic lamp," "battling the cyclops," or "tuning the trouser trombone." Answer: "battling the cyclops.")

Turning this high-tech game into a book might seem a bit risky, even backwards. Yet the Chicago-based company that created Jack, Jellyvision, is testing the trivia-book waters with You Don't Know Jack: The Book and You Don't Know Jack: The TV Book, (both from Running Press, 128 p., $7.95).

"You can't reach everyone with a CD-ROM," explains David Nathanielsz, 25, an editor at Jellyvision.

Jellyvision's scribes consider themselves comedy writers first, trivia writers second.

"It's a great group of really funny people who have worked at Second City and the Improv Olympics," says Nathanielsz.

About half of the proposed material doesn't make the grade.

"A lot of stuff doesn't work. We have categories [for rejected questions] like 'grafted,' where a writer will try to wedge a fact into a question that doesn't connect. And 'who-cares-ish'—as in 'I don't care how much money Cannonball 3 made in the theaters.'"

The question that remains is whether the books will allow Jellyvision to milk as much money out of the public cash cow as the CD-ROM and the advertisements on the net show have.

"My guess is no," jokes Nathanielsz. "But it's not about money. It's about giving the masses what they want."

-Brian Howard