ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER (Santa Ana, California) 31 July 06 Reality reptiles - Yorba Linda pet store owner rents out his creepy, slimy creatures to the TV show 'Fear Factor.' (Sushma Subramanian)
You could bury him in a tank with 1,000 snakes, or shower him with 3,000 scorpions, or trap him in a globe filled with moray eels.
None of those things would make Chris Giacoletti's skin crawl.
"Bury me in crickets, snakes, none of that stuff is going to worry me," he says.
So that's what he subjects contestants to on the television show "Fear Factor." He supplies the show with most of its insects and reptiles.
Giacoletti, 31, owns pet store Reptile Island in Yorba Linda.
"Fear Factor" episodes are just a fraction of the 50 jobs a year Giacoletti gets supplying creatures to movies, shows and commercials through his second company, Action Reptiles.
Episode after episode, he comes up with schemes for the program's stunts, and his ickiness threshold is based on one thing – would he do that?
So far, there's just one thing he makes the show's contestants do that he wouldn't.
In Giacoletti's business, if you let an actor get bitten, you might as well kiss your career goodbye.
That's why he dove into a tunnel behind "American Idol" singer Carmen Rasmusen during the filming of a special reality TV stars episode.
Rasmusen's task was to crawl through a tunnel to grab a plastic skull. The catch: An alligator was sitting next to it.
Two reality TV stars had already completed the task, with the skull placed next to the alligator's hind legs. The alligator was positioned in the tunnel so it couldn't move, although they didn't know that.
But in the middle of Rasmusen's turn, the alligator kicked the skull up to its front leg, closer to its razor teeth.
Giacoletti was watching from about 30 feet away on a point-of-view camera on set. The actress was halfway through the tunnel when he noticed the change.
He yelled for the crew to cut the scene, sprinted to the tunnel, tore off its lid and screamed to Rasmusen: "Stop right there!"
She froze.
Giacoletti squeezed past her. He secured the alligator's mouth with his hands, and moved the skull back next to its hind leg.
"You try to design something that will scare the crap out of somebody but not hurt them," Giacoletti says.
Giacoletti has had only one venomous bite.
A photographer was trying to pose a Gila monster he was shooting for a book cover, when Giacoletti stepped in to block him.
The reptile sunk its teeth into his right hand, leaving it paralyzed for six weeks.
Giacoletti has been chasing snakes since he was in diapers.
When he was 2 or 3 years old, his father, a certified herpetologist, or reptile specialist, took him on weekend trips to collect snakes, back when it was legal to sell the native species to zoos and museums.
They went cruising at night in the Mojave Desert or in San Diego to look for them. In the springtime, they flipped rocks and logs to unearth them.
Giacoletti was surrounded by unusual pets – an 18-foot python, alligators, rattlesnakes.
You can't train a reptile, he says. They don't fetch balls or follow directions. Still, Giacoletti was fascinated by just handling them, observing them. Besides, he is allergic to cats and dogs.
His father, also named Chris, owned Cal Herp and visited classrooms to teach kids about reptiles. He trained police officers to distinguish between venomous and non-venomous snakes.
Giacoletti opened his reptile business with his father when he graduated from high school.
He has owned a pet store in Rancho Cucamonga for 13 years and another in Yorba Linda for nine years.
He also worked as a reptile handler on several film and TV sets, which led to his first job supplying reptiles – to an MTV spring-break special in Cancun, filmed six years ago.
Teenagers in bikinis bobbed for apples in a tank full of ribbon snakes and corn snakes.
Since then, he has rented out a 16-foot Burmese python to wrap around a nude woman for a Playboy shoot. He supplied a rattlesnake to shake its rattle for a Kelly Clarkson music video. On the Comedy Central show "Distraction," his assistants shoved corn snakes down contestants' pants as they tried to answer trivia questions. He supplied the first real gecko for a Geico insurance commercial.
He makes $500 to $15,000 per job, depending on the number of animals and their rarity.
About 60 animal suppliers serve Hollywood, he says. He's one of three who specialize in reptiles.
"Chris is great at what he does and has proved invaluable to the show and often helps create ideas for stunts," said "Fear Factor" producer Scott Larsen.
Giacoletti's most elaborate stunt, his equivalent of Harry Houdini's escape from a water-filled case, is too dangerous to air on the show.
He pictured 20 boxes placed upside down in an arena about 20 feet in diameter – each with a cobra inside. The contestants would have to flip over each box and uncover the cobras to find a key. Only one of the boxes would have a key.
He and his father came up with the idea while drinking beers in Giacoletti's back yard.
They couldn't figure out a way to ensure that a contestant wouldn't get bitten.
Giacoletti's taste in creatures for "Fear Factor" has gone from tame to exotic.
"It's like collecting cars and the difference between having a Volkswagen compared to a Corvette," he says.
The stunts have gone from feeding people banana slugs and maggots to serving them cave-dwelling spiders – prehistoric-looking arachnids with thick antennas and spikes on their claws.
Would Giacoletti do that?
No.
Eating the creatures is the one thing he would never do, especially dead ones, which Giacoletti said are coated with a sauce that makes them taste even worse than they would normally. He wouldn't divulge the secret ingredients.
"I know what we put into it to make people gag," Giacoletti says.
Reality reptiles