Screenwriter Mike White and his father, gay rights activist Mel White, recently danced, ran and even bobsledded around the globe as a team on the CBS reality series The Amazing Race.
The show features pairs of contestants who travel from country to country completing challenges and collecting clues about future destinations. Each episode, the last team to arrive at a destination is eliminated.
A fan of the show, Mike White originally applied to be on The Amazing Race with another screenwriter. But when his partner dropped out, Mike decided to team up with his father, Mel.
Mel White is a gay rights activist and writer. Before coming out, Mel was a leader in the evangelical Christian community and served as a ghost-writer for Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. For decades, Mel struggled with his sexual orientation, undergoing a range of "therapies" that included prayer, fasting, exorcism and even electric shock. In 1994 he published his book Stranger At The Gate: To Be Gay And Christian In America.
Mike is an actor, writer producer and director. He was a writer on the critically acclaimed series Freaks and Geeks, and he has written the screenplays for popular comedies like School of Rock and Nacho Libre.
The father-son duo agrees that their participation provided a priceless bonding experience. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Mel said, "I couldn't pay for what The Amazing Race did for me, to have this time with my son."
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