Tyler MacNiven
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Tyler Kingsley MacNiven is an American filmmaker and reality television contestant.


Stanford University admission campaign

MacNiven first received attention in 1998 when, while a senior at the Woodside High School in Woodside,
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
, he launched a political-style campaign to supplement his application to
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, where he had wanted to go since the seventh grade.Stanford says no to Tyler MacNiven, but he's upbeat, may reapply later
" ''The Almanac'', December 23, 1998.
After turning in his early admission application, MacNiven held a press conference in front of Stanford's Bowman Alumni House. For the rest of the week, MacNiven and his volunteer staff of friends and family wore sandwich boards and passed out "Tyler MacNiven for Stanford Student" leaflets after school, among other traditional campaign activities.Oxfeld, Jesse.
They'll Try Anything
" ''Stanford Magazine'', April/May 1999.
MacNiven said, "There's so many outstanding people applying to Stanford these days that I actually want to be `out standing' in front of them, to show them that he really did have a passion to go there.Delevett, Peter.

" ''Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal'', November 13, 1998.
MacNiven was rejected. He said, "My goal was to make every possible effort, leaving no options untested. That's what the campaign was really about." He was told by the admissions officer that he was noticed and that his campaign was not detrimental, despite seeming foolish to many citizens. MacNiven graduated from
UC Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...
with a BA in politics, completing semesters abroad in
Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
and on a
Semester at Sea Semester at Sea (SaS) is a study-abroad program which was founded in 1963 and managed by the Institute for Shipboard Education (ISE) in Fort Collins, Colorado. Colorado State University is the current academic sponsor and the program is condu ...
, which has featured such great minds as
Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 200 ...
among others.BJ & Tyler
" CBS.com.
He claims to have been the last student of
Tom Lehrer Thomas Andrew Lehrer (; born April 9, 1928) is an American former musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician, having lectured on mathematics and musical theater. He is best known for the pithy and humorous songs that he recorded in ...
.


''Kintaro Walks Japan''

In 2004, MacNiven walked the length of
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
over 145 days. He created a one-hour documentary of the trek, titled '' Kintaro Walks Japan''. MacNiven cited three reasons for the journey. On his first trip to the country in 2002, he fell in love with the country and had to return. It was on this trip that a friend nicknamed him the "
Kintarō is a folk hero from Japanese folklore. A child of superhuman strength, he was raised by a yama-uba ("mountain witch") on Mount Ashigara. He became friendly with the animals of the mountain, and later, after catching Shuten-dōji, the terror of ...
," which means "Golden Boy," because of his blond hair. MacNiven hoped to win a girl over, but he ultimately went home without doing so. Unable to find a distributor for the documentary of the trek, MacNiven burned 1,000
DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
s and began hawking copies of the film on the streets of San Francisco and at a restaurant his father owns. One day, George Strompolos, an executive from the nearby
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
campus, dropped by. "Dad showed the movie to him," MacNiven said. "He watched it and said, 'This is exactly what we need.'" Upon release, the film was averaging approximately 500 views a day at
Google Video Google Video was a free video hosting service launched by the multinational technology company Google on January 25, 2005. Similar to YouTube, this platform allowed video clips to be hosted on Google servers and embedded on to other websites ...
.White, Patrick.
Online filmmaking has arrived
." ''Columbia News Service'', February 14, 2006.
''Kintaro Walks Japan'' premiered at the Santa Cruz Film Festival in 2006 and was voted by the audience as "Best of Fest" and it received the highest winning vote in the 5-year history of the festival.


''The Amazing Race''

In 2006, MacNiven appeared as a contestant on the ninth edition of the American
television series A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite television, satellite, or cable television, cable, excluding breaking news, television adverti ...
''
The Amazing Race ''The Amazing Race'' is an adventure reality game show franchise in which teams of two people race around the world in competition with other teams. The ''Race'' is split into legs, with teams tasked to deduce clues, navigate themselves in forei ...
''. He and his teammate, B.J. Averell, who MacNiven met on the study abroad program Semester at Sea four years earlier, beat out ten other teams to win the show's $1 million prize over Eric & Jeremy. BJ & Tyler, as they were identified on the program, were nicknamed "the
hippies A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...
" by the other teams. BJ & Tyler came in last in two legs of the season, but both the legs were non-elimination legs.Bayne, Richard J.
'Hippies' win 'Amazing Race'
" ''Times Herald-Record'', May 18, 2006.
Host
Phil Keoghan Philip John Keoghan ( ; born 31 May 1967) is a New Zealand television personality, best known for hosting the American version of ''The Amazing Race'' on CBS, since its 2001 debut. He is the creator and host of ''No Opportunity Wasted'', whic ...
said, "They enjoyed every single moment they were on this race, whether they were in first or in last. They kept their spirit all the way to the end."CBS.
'Team Hippie' Takes 'Amazing Race 9'
" ''CBS News'', May 18, 2006.
"If it's this successful to be hippies, we might as well stay hippies," Tyler said at the finish line in
Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...
.A frosty finish for 'The Amazing Race'
" ''Chicago Tribune'', May 17, 2006.
He also added, "BJ and I approached each country with wide eyes and enthusiasm and joy and a huge spirit of adventure and willing to share that with everybody we met. There's so much in this world. We might as well just take advantage of as much as we can and give back as much as we can and that's important. 'Cause that's how it all works."BJ & Tyler Win Million Dollar Prize
" ''WISH-TV'', May 18, 2006.


The Amazing Race 9 finishes

*An placement with a double-dagger () indicates that BJ and Tyler were the last to arrive at a pit stop in a non-elimination leg. *A indicates that BJ and Tyler won the Fast Forward. ''Roadblocks performed by MacNiven are bolded '' ;Notes


References


External links

*
Kintaro Walks Japan
{{DEFAULTSORT:Macniven, Tyler Reality show winners The Amazing Race (American TV series) contestants Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people) American documentary filmmakers University of California, Santa Cruz alumni Living people