by Steve Almond
I kept asking him if he was okay and he kept saying yeah, he was okay, but in a dazed manner, like a boxer taking a standing eight count. We spent a few minutes talking about his writing, his plans after graduation. But the noise from the other rooms was distracting. The crew was breaking down the set, swilling Red Bull, discussing how hammered they hoped to get.
“I should probably go,” Simon said.
“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for coming by and doing this.”
“No problem. It was fun.”
“It didn’t look like too much fun,” I said.
“I don’t think I was what they were really looking for,” he said. “I probably should have made you sound a little crazier.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said.
A whoop went up from the next room. Simon glanced at me and grinned sheepishly. He was an exceptional young writer, a maker of stories with real human depth. And I could see now that he actually felt guilty. Reality TV had made him feel guilty for failing to be disingenuous enough.
Contemplative Interlude II
On the Nature of Power in Hollywood
It was a given, among the crew, that working for VH1 was strictly a money gig. They all harbored bigger dreams. Simbi had a short film making the rounds at festivals. She was working on a screenplay. So was Derek. So was the rest of Los Angeles County. They talked about all this over lunch, their projects, their writing partners, the nervous chatter of who knew whom.
They knew the fundamental truth of Hollywood: that the big money is made by films and TV shows that are patently stupid, though these products are made by people like Simbi and Derek, who are not patently stupid, and who must therefore exist in a state of creative and moral limbo, justifying their hackwork by perpetually citing higher artistic ambitions.
I came to like Charlie best because he just didn’t give a fuck. He had no grand yearnings, no life plan. He was thirty-five and looked like a cross between a young Martin Sheen and The Dude from The Big Lebowski. He liked to party. He liked to get naked. He liked to spend The Man’s money. He was probably clinically hyperactive. And yet there was this fetchingly maternal aspect to him. Here was a guy who, while the other guys struck the set, cheerfully scrubbed the soy sauce off my kitchen counters and carefully affixed a white plastic garbage bag to my oven door. I thought: This man is going to make someone a hell of a wife someday.
Act Eight
Andy Is in Play
Day Two began with a scene in which I went candy shopping at my local Brooks pharmacy. I had already explained to Simbi a few dozen times that I didn’t shop for candy at my local Brooks, that I didn’t shop for candy at all, really, but that was beside the point. She had a very clear idea of what she needed, and I, your humble Candy Monkey, did my best to oblige her. This meant walking down the candy aisle while Simbi issued directives such as “Fondle the candy like you’re choosing a melon!”
It was, however, genuinely fascinating to see the way the world interacted with Reality TV. They were in awe. Little kids would wander up to the crew and stare at them in wonder. The braver ones would mug for the camera. My haircutter, Linda, whose shop is next to Brooks, came by to watch. Best of all, Andy, the gaffer, when he wasn’t squeezing the poop, went over to ply his charms on the Brooks cashiers.
In contrast to Jay, who was tall, sloe-eyed, undeniably hunky, Andy was ill-kempt and stubby. He looked like a Metallica roadie. But he knew he had the Hollywood mojo on his side, and this, along with being a stranger in a strange town, endowed him with swagger. His rap and the attendant giggling from the heavily mascaraed clerks were far more interesting than anything I was doing. I wanted to turn to Simbi and say, “Listen, you’re missing the action! Andy’s showing that girl his tattoo!”
In watching this drama unfold, I could see precisely how those Girls Gone Wild videos came into being, because everyone in this country shares the same not-very-hidden desire: to be the star, the one who becomes known under the lights. There was no real reason for Reality TV to contrive elaborate plot lines. All they had to do was to head out into public with a camera crew. Was this not the transcendent lesson of Cops? That Americans were so desperate for fame they’d agree to be arrested on TV?
And here it seems worth mentioning an incident that had taken place on Day One. During my initial interview, the woman who lives next door began to scream at her grandkids. This was not unusual. It was, in fact, their central daily activity. The problem was this woman’s voice, which might be compared, favorably in terms of decibel output, to heavy munitions. What struck me was the alacrity with which my landlord, Stephen, who’d been watching my interview, marched outside onto the porch.
“Quiet down!” he bellowed. “We’re trying to film a TV show over here!”
Act Nine
In Which I Am Afforded a Brilliant Opportunity to Forfeit Any and All Legitimacy I Might Ever Earn as an Artist
Now it was late in the afternoon and I was hunched in my bedroom closet where, in my capacity as Candy Monkey, I had stashed candy. We had filmed, to this point, some nine hours of me yakking about candy, fondling candy, gobbling candy on demand. Simbi had one more request. She asked that I seat myself on the bed. The crew fell silent.
“We need to talk about something,” she said quietly. “I didn’t tell you this before, but every segment of Totally Obsessed has what we call the reveal. That’s the part of the show that we tease at the beginning and then, at the end of the show, we do the reveal, okay? So what we need for your segment is to get you on your bed, rolling in candy.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“We need you to roll around in candy on your bed.”
“On my bed?”
“Right.”
“Roll around on my bed?”
“Right.”
“In candy?”
Simbi nodded.
“I don’t really feel comfortable with that,” I said.
“But you told me you rolled around in candy!” Simbi said. “I remember, because that was the exact moment that I said to myself, ‘This guy really is totally obsessed.’”
I should confess that I had told Simbi I rolled around in candy, because when I was a little kid I used to roll around in candy. And she very well may have asked if I still rolled around in candy as an adult, and I very well may have told her yes. If I did so, let that stand as a precise measure of my shamelessness.
But the issue now was whether I was willing to roll around in candy on camera, and my answer was a polite no. It was impossible to fully explain my reluctance to Simbi, but it went something like this: I had written a book, which I believed in, but also feared was gimmicky. Rolling in candy for a national TV audience was only going to reinforce this latter notion, and also, in truth, I already had done my duty as the Candy Monkey, attempting to persuade people to buy this book by flying around the country handing out free candy bars, and I was distressed, in some more fundamental way, at the notion that writers should have to do this sort of shilling at all, particularly on TV, the medium that had done more than anything to kill reading in this country.
Simbi looked at me with real hurt in her eyes. Or maybe the word I want is betrayal. She looked at me like I’d betrayed her. Then she began to argue with me. She argued that I had promised her this, that I would be letting her down if I refused to roll in candy, breaking a personal covenant, and also that I shouldn’t be self-conscious, I should just “let myself go” and have a sense of humor about the whole thing. “That’s what we’re really looking for,” Simbi said, “people who aren’t afraid to just be themselves.” Her voodoo was very powerful.
And because, in my own Vichy way, I was still hoping to collaborate with her in construction of my own supposed fame, I began to waver. Maybe I could do this, lighten up, play along. Then I would conjure an image of myself actually rolling around in candy and think: No fucking way.
Act Ten
In Which Simbi Does Not Accept No for an Answer
“All
right,” Simbi said. “Hold on. I need to make a call.” She went outside to contact the Executive Producer. The crew and I could see Simbi marching back and forth in my driveway, speaking urgently into her cell phone. We couldn’t hear her, but I imagine the conversation ran something like this:
“Hi, it’s Simbi. We’re here with the candy guy. Yeah, well, there’s a problem: He won’t roll in candy.”
“What?”
“He says he doesn’t feel comfortable rolling in candy.”
“But he told you he rolled in candy.”
“I know, I told him that. But he got cold feet. He says he’s afraid it will make him look like a fool.”
“So what, he thinks he’s an artist now? He’s too good to roll around in candy?” [Sound of fist smacking desk.] You get in there and convince him! Capiche? I didn’t send you three thousand miles just to film some jackass talking about candy.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Simbi, what’s the name of the show you’re working on?”
“Totally Obsessed.”
“Which of those words don’t you understand? Now you go talk to this punk and get me that reveal!”
Simbi came back inside and announced that she had a plan. I didn’t have to roll my whole body in candy. But maybe I could just show her the kind of candy I liked to roll in; I could roll my arm in candy. So I got a bunch of different kinds of candy and put them on the bed and I offered a brief lecture on candy rolling. Simbi kept saying things like, “Now, doesn’t that just make you want to roll your whole body in that candy? Come on! It’ll be fun!” This went on for an hour.
Eventually, Simbi gave up on the candy rolling thing. But she still needed a reveal, so I agreed to lie on my bed while Jay filmed a close-up of my face as I delivered an earnest monologue, ostensibly to a lover just off camera. “You know how I feel about you,” I said. “You’re special to me, and together, we’re really kind of magic. But I have to tell you, the time has come for us to take this relationship to the next level. I have certain needs, like any man.”
At this point, the shot widened and it became clear that I was addressing a piece of candy, specifically the Valomilk, a chocolate cup with runny marshmallow filling, which I bit into. As the white filling ran down my chin, I grinned and said, “You only eat the ones you love.”
I had hoped this super-quasar of glibness might be enough, but Simbi demanded a second reveal, which consisted of me dispensing pillow talk to an invisible lover—again a Valomilk, this time set atop the pillow next to mine.
Act Eleven
Chicks Dig Scars, They Don’t Dig Grafts
By early evening, the crew had run out of rooms in my apartment, but they needed to film a few more of my friends, so they had taken over my landlord’s place upstairs. They now controlled the entire house. I watched them ferrying equipment up and down the stairs and decided that the most effective way to take over a country was not to bomb them at all, but to send Reality TV crews.
It was close to midnight before the interviews were done. This is when the serious drinking started. Charlie had made a liquor run and come back with enough beer for homecoming at Mississippi State. Jay began mixing Red Bull and Absolut. I kicked in some decent-grade mota and started cranking the tunes. Pretty soon, we were into the chocolate, the good stuff, and things got very sloppy.
Andy pulled a slip of paper out of his back pocket and showed it to me. There, in loopy script, was the name Cristal, and a local phone number.
“Scored it at Brooks,” he said.
“Fuck yes!” Charlie said. “Call her, dude!”
“I already did,” Andy said.
“Well, call her again! Come on, get her over here. You can do her first and I’ll take sloppy seconds.”
“Fuck no,” Andy said. “I got the number. Anyway, I already called her. She was making all these excuses. I’m not calling her again.”
He went to call her again.
Jay began to tell a funny story about Charlie’s last Christmas party, during which Charlie had fed his cats an entire baked ham.
“You know what my favorite thing is?” Charlie asked me. “Jehovah’s Witnesses. This kid came by my house a few weeks ago and he started talking about how Jesus Christ was my only hope of salvation. I said to him, ‘Do you get to have sex as a Jehovah’s Witness?’ He said, ‘Only for the purposes of procreation.’ I said, ‘Dude, they’ve got you brainwashed. You’re a young guy. You should be out there fucking.’ He was trying to get away from me, but I wouldn’t let him go. That’s what I love. I love when phone solicitors call me. They say, ‘Do you have a minute to talk?’ and I say, ‘Oh, listen, I’ve got all day to talk.’”
In the other room, Simbi was crashed out on my couch, listening to Etta James at maximum volume. My pals Boris and Austin were doing shots with Derek and Andy and talking about what guys so often talk about: slang terms for degrading sexual acts.
Charlie began telling me about a motorcycle accident he’d gotten into and pulled up his pants to show me the damage. He grinned down at his leg, which was the color and texture of corned beef hash.
I told him it looked pretty bad.
“Let me tell you something,” he said. “Chicks dig scars. They don’t dig grafts.”
Then we all gathered around my coffee table and I cut up a bunch of Lake Champlain Five Star Bars.
The party went on and on, more booze, more chocolate, more pot, more music. Toward the end of the night (which is to say, toward dawn) we all started getting a little sentimental. We took pictures. We vowed to stay in touch. I felt like I’d become an honorary member of the crew. I knew this was mostly bullshit. But there was something real in it, too, the drunken riffs, the music, the fine chocolate on our tongues. It felt wonderful to be a part of such a spontaneous gathering, as if I had finally managed to show them the true dimensions of my life, which would never appear on TV, to be aired and commemorated in syndication, but would live in our collective memory as a wondrous and fleeting human communion.
Act Twelve
The Ax Falls
It began with Dana. It began with Dana and her insufferably frantic phone calls, which beset my life a month later. She wanted to know if I had any more footage of myself. I emailed her back a message that said, in essence: What in God’s name are you talking about? I and my friends had already provided some fifteen hours of footage, for a segment that Simbi eventually informed me would run four and one half minutes.
Dana kept calling, demanding “more footage,” so I called Simbi.
“We need shots of you eating candy,” Simbi explained. “What we got is great. Everyone here loves it. But the Executive Producer wants more shots of you actually eating candy.”
“Didn’t we do a lot of that already?”
“Yeah,” Simbi said. “But she wants more.”
“If I say no, does this mean they cut the segment?”
“No, not at all. It would just make what we have stronger. And no one is going to ask you to roll in candy. I promise.”
I had that same bad feeling, like I was Montezuma being asked to invite Cortés back for a nightcap. But I also felt that my publicist and my friends were counting on me. And, of course, some of that same fame panic set in, the dumbshit hunch that I would be perceived as a failure if this fell through. So I told her okay.
Simbi followed up with an e-mail in which she noted, matter-of-factly, that a new crew would arrive in three days, and that they needed to reshoot all of the scenes in my house, along with the scene at Brooks.
In great confusion, I called her.
Simbi explained that the Executive Producer wanted more of a feeling of “us just being a fly on the wall.” She went on for several minutes, until it became clear that she had no idea what the Executive Producer wanted. I told her I’d be available from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. on Sunday, and happy to reshoot anything inside my apartment, but that was all.
Simbi called the next day to tell me the segment had been cut. I
had expected she might be apologetic, but she sounded more self-pitying than anything. I don’t suppose I blame her. She was the one, after all, who had to wake up each morning and go to work at Totally Obsessed.
So I was pissed off. But that actually lasted only a minute or two. After that, I was merely relieved. I was so tired of dealing with Reality TV, tired of their tireless manipulation, tired of my own willingness to go along with what had clearly become a bad charade, just plain tired.
Contemplative Interlude III
The central illusion of Reality TV, the notion that the viewer is merely “a fly on the wall” watching life unfold, is, as you have seen, bogus on virtually every level. The people who appear on Reality TV are carefully vetted. The producers put them in artificial situations and goad them to behave in ways they wouldn’t normally. Indeed, the main criterion for those who want to appear on Reality TV is the extent to which they will allow themselves to be humiliated—the Shameless Quotient.
I hadn’t realized it at the time, but throughout the filming of the segment I (and my friends) had been engaged in an unstated power struggle. We hoped to represent my obsession with candy not as a pathology, but as an exaggerated—or perhaps liberated—version of the obsessions that live within all of us. All that is fine and well, but it’s not what Reality TV is about.
So what is Reality TV about? It’s about the careful construction of two central narratives: false actualization and authentic shame. The nubile bachelorette on the brink of true love with one of several men she has known for seven hours. The brazen cad who manipulates his beloved on cue. They need actors who can ignore the contrivances, who can put their tears and howls on public display, who will roll in candy when asked to do so.
The success of the genre is certainly a measure of Hollywood’s imaginative failures. Even more, it reflects our unrequited yearning for the authentic. Americans are drowning in a cesspool of fake emotion, nearly all of it aimed at getting us to buy junk. But we really do want to feel, even if that means indulging in the jury-rigged joy and woe of others. It’s quite a racket, actually, to feel so truly moved, even as we fall farther and farther away from the truth.