Los Angeles, CA — A former Sheldon resident is going to be one of the contestants in a race across the United States — on a lawnmower.
It’s a new reality show called The Great Grass Race. Katie Knight, who now lives in Sioux Falls, tells us she will be one member of a two-person team. There are six teams.
Knight tells us about her background.
But, she says, the flexibility in her new position has allowed her to take advantage of this several-month opportunity. She tells us how she got involved.
Knight tells us that the contestants will not even have so much as a tent, and will need to depend on the kindness of strangers for nearly everything.
The contest starts this Friday morning, July 10th.
She says the reality show will launch a new streaming site called Menace Vision. The show will be available on a growing number of platforms including Amazon Fire TV, the Apple App Store, and Google Play, and will generate revenue for charity.
Find more information at watch.menacevision.com.
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Original story posted Jul 7, 2020 at 3:47 p.m.:
LOS ANGELES, CA– Katie Knight, of Sioux Falls, SD, (formerly of Sheldon), is a competitor on a new reality show named The Great Grass Race where two-person teams try to be the first to cross the continent on a lawnmower. Contestants will get no gas, food or shelter and must rely on the kindness of strangers by trading or persuading people they meet along the way to help them win. The race starts July 10 in Los Angeles and is expected to end in New York in early October — (the lawnmower’s top speed is 5.5 mph.)
A six-team, cross-country race on 5.5 mph Craftsman T110 lawnmowers might not be the kind of heart-in-your-throat reality show you’d expect to launch a new streaming site called Menace Vision.
But in a summer where a crippling pandemic has slowed down everything exponentially, this might just be the bonding experience everyone needs, says show creator/executive producer Denis Oliver, a native of Neuville-les-Dames in France, who will host a launch party with the contestants July 9 in Tarzana. “I wanted a show that everyone could relate to while also forcing people, including strangers, to work together toward a common objective,” said Oliver. “This long lawnmower ride is a metaphor for our longing to bridge the tremendous distance we feel between each other right now.”
Oliver says he got the inspiration for the three-month race — which starts at 9 a.m. July 10 in Moorpark — while watching “The Straight Story,” a David Lynch-directed drama about Alvin Straight, a World War II veteran who travels by lawnmower across Iowa and Wisconsin to visit his dying, estranged brother. “Mr. Straight can’t qualify for a driver’s license, so he does the trip however he can — like the Argentine man who circumvented a coronavirus quarantine by sailing for 85 days to visit his dying father,” said Oliver. “We have super-fast cars slumbering in the garage with dying batteries as we lament that we can’t visit our loved ones. But the human spirit can triumph over all things.”
And that’s a good thing, because the diverse contestants — who include a hairstylist/pre-law student from Newark, a martial artist from San Francisco and a mom of three boys from Oklahoma — will choose their own courses across the country while wheeling and dealing for food, shelter and even gas.
Check out Katie Knight’s Profile Below:
