"The question was to put these four television kids in order they first appeared on the screen, and the only two I can remember are Beaver Cleaver and Malcolm.
But I got it right and in the fastest time, so tonight I'll be watching to see what the other two choices were," said Harn Monday from his home in Cullowhee.
He did remember one of the "Fastest Finger" questions he got wrong, and that was putting four Anthony Hopkins' movies in order they were filmed. On another qualifying question he put four countries in the order of their size correctly, but his fingers weren't the fastest that go-around.
On tonight's episode, Harn is the last qualifying contestant and only has time to answer two questions before the program ends.
But, like Arnold Swartzenegger, he'll be back. Next week is the show's tournament of champions, where contestants who won $250,000 or more come back to compete. They keep half of their wins, with the other half going to charity. Harn will be back to finish up his round Sunday, May 28.
Then the audience will be able to watch as Harn calls his phone-a-friend Robin Dinnes, a WCU graduate student, to ask, "The line 'You had me from hello' comes from what movie?" Choices were "When Harry Meets Sally," "Top Gun," "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Jerry McGuire."
Dinnes, who was on Harn's list for help with questions concerning Shakespeare and cooking, said she wasn't really up on movies. But it just so happens when Philbon called her at Maple Tree Gallery in Dillsboro, a person there in the shop knew the answer.
"I asked her how sure she was, 'cause they coach us to do that," Harn said, "and Robin replied 75 percent. So I went with her answer, and it was right. That took me up to $8,000 at that point."
Until the show airs, Harn can't reveal how much he won on the program.
"They treat you like royalty," Harn said of the show and its producers. "They fly you up to New York, pick you up in a limousine, put you up at a grand hotel, cater your meals and then give you $50 a day spending money. They paid for my son Andy, who's 21 and lives in Texas, to fly up and be with me.
"It was the first time in the Big Apple for both of us, so we had a wonderful time visiting the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, Carnegie Hall and Central Park," he said.
Ironically, tonight's show is the 100th episode of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"
"They've had 240 contestants so far," Harn said. "At the end of the show they wheel out this big cake - you'll probably see that on television- then we all got to have a piece."
Also on tonight's show, contestants tied for first place in a "Fastest Finger" question, right down to 100th of a second.
"Towards the end of the show, I was beginning to sweat because I hadn't qualified for the hot seat. I knew I had just one more chance to qualify, so I took out this worry stone Robin gave me. She told me when I got worried, to just rub it. I rubbed it and next thing I knew, I had qualified for the hot seat!"
A native of the small central Illinois town of Forrest, Harn said a group of his high school classmates are getting together tonight back home in Illinois to watch the show together.
"Everybody's so excited for me, including my parents back home in Illinois. It didn't sink in just how hot this show is until I was buying clothes to wear on the show and just happened to tell the sales clerk. She got so excited she couldn't even ring up my sales," he said.
Now, Harn said, he can identify with all the excitement. Staying focused can be difficult when all the lights, music and crowd noise happen all at once. "I found it very overwhelming and hard to concentrate," said Harn, who is completing his fourth year of service at Western. "It was especially nerve-wracking when I did the phone-a-friend."
Harn, who studied Trivia Pursuit in preparation for the show, said "Millionaire" covers a broad range of topics - a mix of pop culture, sports, books, and geography, especially. "In retrospect, what's more important than studying is being familiar with the game and its strategy - especially in how to answer the questions you don't know."
From his appearance on the show, Harn learned that each night there are six stacks of questions. "They don't slip in questions depending on who is the contestant. The questions stay the same regardless.
"And on the 50-50, no matter what choices you are thinking, the 50-50 is already established. What they give you is the right answer and a wrong answer that seems right. Like one of them I remember is 'What are the last words in the King James version of the Bible?' and the 50-50 is 'and it was good' or 'with a curse.' In coaching for the show, they tell you to try and save the 50-50."
A good plan is to "ask the audience" early on, Harn said of the New York audience, which is pretty savvy and only been wrong four times.
Contestants get to choose five people as possible "phone-a-friend lifelines." In addition to Dinnes, Harn's lifelines were his daughter, Carrie Harn, who is finishing her junior year as a nursing major at WCU; his brother, Dennis Harn, a chemist in Peoria, Ill.; Dale Carpenter, associate dean of Western's College of Education and Allied Professions; and John Burmeister, a friend who lives in Chicago.
Luck plays a big part, Harn said, in qualifying for the show. "When you are trying to qualify, just think 250,000 other people are also calling in that evening. Only 6 percent answer the three questions correctly. Then one out of 40 is randomly selected. A week later you have a 15-minute time frame to call in and qualify on five more questions." From the group that answers those questions correctly, 10 people are chosen at random to appear on a program taping.
Harn said he was invited to appear on the show only after more than 50 attempts at the qualifying process. "So I feel qualified to tell people if they enjoy the show, they should make every effort to get on."
"Before we flew to New York, I did a 40-minute phone interview. When I got in the hot seat, Regis had a blue card with all my information on it. He was really a lot of fun. He came backstage and greeted each of us by name."
The actual taping for the hourlong show is much longer, taking well over two hours to film, revealed this professor who earned his doctoral degree at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and taught at Texas Technical University for nine years before joining the faculty at WCU. "So backstage during the breaks and when things are being set up, Regis entertains all the while. He's a real riot."
Head of WCU's department of human services, Harn said he had formulated some plans, just in case he won the big money.
"I would take a trip to Europe because I have never been there. I also have four kids, of which three are college-bound. If I were to win high amounts of money, there are some charities I would like to share it with, also," Harn said. His strategy, he said, was to play it conservatively and not risk losing money by making guesses.
Whether he becomes a millionaire or not, Harn still plans to take on new duties July 1 as associate dean of WCU's Office of Research and Graduate Studies.
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