Reality TV School Getting Reality TV Deal. Meta!

Robert Galinsky founded the New York Reality TV School to help wannabe stars get onto their favorite shows. He may be his own best student.

Galinsky is in advanced talks with Roy Bank at Merv Griffin Entertainment to develop a reality show centered on his three-month-old academy. Bank joined Merv Griffin in February after creating Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader? for Mark Burnett Productions. Assuming a deal is finalized, shooting at New York City locations will begin within two months.

Galinsky, who was a founding producer of late-'90s phenomenon Pseudo.com, calls the show "an uber-meta-circular-clusterfuck of camera seducing camera seducing cast seducing viewer." He says the series will begin by following him as he works to expand the school from the fly-by-night operation it now is into an internationally-franchised operation. "We are going to move from a mom and pop shop to a full-blown business," he says.

Like many reality series, it will have an elimination-style format, although Galinsky says he would like to have multiple winners to encourage the formation of alliances. The prizes, he says, will include "both first-look auditions on current shows and a full pilot production produced by Merv Griffin."

In his classes, Galinsky teaches principles such as "Let your story live right on the surface" and "Thou shalt never say 'I am an actor.'"

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