I started cheating about a year into our marriage. The first time was with this Asian girl who worked in the office. I don’t even remember her name. It happened on the spur of the moment: We had drinks after work, and then we went back to her apartment. It was a one-off thing, and I felt awful about it, so I put it aside and tried to pretend it hadn’t happened. But a voice inside me was telling me that I’d opened a door that should have stayed closed and locked.
As MTV became more popular, all these girls started approaching me—girls who, under normal circumstances, I never would have been able to talk to. I would have been too afraid or shy. It happened the most when I was traveling. Whether we were in a club or a backstage party, there would inevitably be some hot girl who was friends with the promoter. I would always have to get hammered if I wanted to hook up with somebody. I felt bad about it while I was doing it—but it took me years to realize that what I was doing to make myself feel better was actually making me feel much worse.
One time, I went to Pittsburgh for a segment. I met someone after the event—we went back to the hotel bar, and she stayed with me that night. We slept in a little late the next morning, so we both came out of the hotel at the same time. All the marketing people from MTV were waiting for me in the lobby so we could get the car to the airport, and they saw me come out with this girl. They laughed about it a little, but one of them, this girl Karen, said to me, “What are you doing? I understand the position you’re in, but that’s not really cool, is it?”
I made light of it, and everybody dropped it. Cheating became known as what happened when Mark went on the road, just the thing I did. So in addition to the fact that I was being unfaithful, I made it even more messy and stupid by involving these third parties. When Carol came to MTV events, it was unfair to my coworkers that I put them in that position, and unfair to her that I put her in that light.
I don’t have an addictive personality, and yet this was unstoppable for me. It fed the love me, love me, love me part of my personality and helped me get through the parts of my marriage that felt empty and fake. When I was having sex, I went somewhere else in my mind—that was a relief from the problems that I felt like I was facing every day.
I looked forward to my infidelities; I craved them. They were all wrapped up with my whole MTV experience. I’d fly first class, stay in beautiful hotels, and meet gorgeous women whose lives were far more mundane than mine. I would be their momentary escape. They didn’t realize (and to a great extent, neither did I) that they were my escape too.
After a while, it started to happen in New York. I had an ongoing thing with an intern: I would get us a hotel room for two hours or so. The taboo attracted me and just fucked up my opinion of myself even more. That was when I started to be more conscious of how much I hated myself for doing this. I realized I was not able to maintain a real adult relationship.
I also had a long affair with somebody I met at the gym. This was the Vertical Club—at the time, the coolest gym to go to. It was a lot of money—to join was five or six hundred dollars, and then a huge monthly thing. But they had state-of-the-art machines and lots of trainers around who really worked with you. I’d work out so hard, I’d go into the bathroom and throw up. There were lots of soap actors and models—a never-ending parade of gorgeous women. I’d be on the StairMaster next to Brooke Shields, chatting her up. It was a social scene as well, which was new in gyms.
One night I met Melanie at the free weights. She was in perfect shape, with a stunning body. Full lips, long straight blond hair, a huge toothy smile, and a laugh that was loud but not at all obnoxious. She seemed to know exactly who she was, and what she looked like, and was not shy about it. She was smart, aware, and young—about twenty-three. I felt amazed, and then lucky, that she dug me. I started hanging around with her way too much. We’d go out to dinner sometimes—I don’t think anybody ever spotted us, but it was so cavalier to risk hurting Carol, just for my own need to boost my ego.
Melanie was basically living with her boyfriend, but she still had her own apartment, so we went there pretty regularly in the afternoons, or after the gym. There was a song on ’Til Tuesday’s second record, “Coming Up Close,” that I used to play like crazy at her place. It was never a hit, but it really articulated how I was feeling in that moment with her: “Everything feels like welcome home.” In my own apartment, I was feeling so not at home.
I knew it wasn’t just fucking, so I felt even worse about it. It went on for over a year—then one day, out of the blue, Melanie called me crying. She got caught by her boyfriend. I was really bummed out, and we agreed to meet at a restaurant. Melanie was a completely different person that night: She was crying, and she felt terrible that she had hurt this guy so bad. That meal was much shorter than I imagined it would be. I thought I could change her mind, but at the end, I stood on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, watching her walk away. I couldn’t believe she didn’t even turn to look back at me. I was really self-centered about it: I was just thinking about how the relationship was my safe harbor, and I was upset that I was losing that. I didn’t even consider how it would have worked out if Carol had found out and the situation was reversed.
As the years pass, I’ve come to understand how I wound up being that guy, but I’m not sure I’ve forgiven myself for the damage I did. That aspect of my time at MTV is something I think about often, and regret totally. I can only hope that I will be forgiven by the people involved. It’s hard for people to understand: If you are deeply insecure and then you end up, by luck, doing what I do and having some success at it, it really requires a lot of strength to fight that insecurity. I didn’t have what it took to stay in my marriage.
31
My Beacon’s Been Moved Under Moon and Star
MTV Heads Uptown
Alan:
After a couple of years, they finally got rid of the coed dressing room—they built out this space upstairs in the Teletronics building into two dressing rooms, one for the guys and one for the girls. Robin Williams came by—he was promoting Moscow on the Hudson, starring him and Maria Conchita Alonso, who, coincidentally, was dating Les Garland around that time. Robin was really coked up. He came upstairs and saw our grungy little attic dressing rooms. I thought it was a little embarrassing, but he didn’t seem to mind—you don’t when your top priority is a glass table to do another line.
By 1984, MTV was a pretty big deal, and we were still working out of this shithole in Hell’s Kitchen. It was becoming incongruent. So we were euphoric when they told us that we were moving to a new studio. An executive came down to Teletronics and showed us the architectural drawings. It was an indication that MTV was here to stay.
The day we moved studios, from Teletronics at Thirty-third Street and Tenth Avenue to Unitel at Fifty-second Street and Sixth Avenue, I got tapped to visit the set of the video for the Cars’ “Hello Again.” It was at the Bebop Café and it was directed by Andy Warhol.
Andy Warhol on the cameo he made in the “Hello Again” video, in his Diaries, the entry for Thursday, March 29, 1984:
“I had to be a bartender and wear a tux. The crowd of extras looked like the old Factory days—Benjamin in drag, and a bald-headed mime in a Pierrot outfit, and John Sex with his snake. And then there was Dianne Brill with her big tits and hourglass figure. The Cars were cute. They finally got to my part at 8:00 and I had to sing a song but I couldn’t remember the words. And I had to mix a drink while I was doing it, and with my contacts on I couldn’t see the Coke button on the soda dispenser. And that meant being face to face with the Cars for a while, and it was hard to talk to them. I didn’t know what to say.”
Alan:
I had met Andy Warhol before—the first time was when Duran Duran made an appearance on MTV and brought him along to the studio. They did the same thing with Keith Haring. But Andy was at the center of pop culture. Once I was walking down the street in SoHo with some friends, and Andy was walking in the other direction; he recognized me and
said hello. We started yapping, and he pulled out a little Kodak Instamatic camera, and took a picture of me while we were talking. Apparently, he did this to everybody.
I said, “Should I smile?”
He said, “No, no, it’s good.” And he just kept talking, keeping the eye contact.
At the Cars video shoot, I interviewed the guys in the band, and then Andy. During a break, the tape kept rolling, and I said, “By the way, I got one of your prints the other day at a flea market. I paid ten bucks for it, but if I could get your autograph, maybe it would be worth a hundred.” I laughed, and he giggled.
Andy signed it, saying, “That’s great, that’s great.” He was weird, but fun. Everything was “great” with him.
Martha:
That night, we had a party at a bar in Hell’s Kitchen. We were saying goodbye to the crew. We couldn’t bring those people with us, and that was so wrenching—they were an essential part of what we had created together.
Alan:
They were all working for Teletronics, not us. Also, they were union—we were never allowed to move chairs and props at Teletronics—and Unitel wasn’t. After working together so long, the Teletronics crew felt like family. So we all went out drinking at a bar in Hell’s Kitchen. I sat on a stool while everybody in the crew rotated around me, offering me shots of tequila. The only thing I had eaten all day was a doughnut, and I got totally plowed. Everybody was asking what was wrong—I never got drunk in public.
I wandered outside into the snow, and Jan had to follow me out. I walked down this deserted street, in a snowstorm, with no clue where I was. She snatched me up, put me in a cab to take me home, and I puked all over the cab. At home, I sat in the bathtub, trying to sober up. Even feeling like death, I thought that I had a pretty charmed life. But I didn’t drink tequila for a long time after that.
Mark:
The studio at Unitel was much bigger. At Teletronics, there were only four or five spots that were prelit for us to go to, but the new one had tons—suddenly, there were fifty places we could shoot. We had a diner booth with one of those mini-jukeboxes, which is where I interviewed Madonna. On the other side of the diner, there was a counter with stools—I interviewed Brian De Palma there. We could walk through a door into another room, where I interviewed Frankie Goes to Hollywood. We could start on a metal balcony and walk down the staircase. It was a big change.
Alan:
It was an amazing 360-degree playground of a set—at the time, it was unlike any other set on TV. I was like a monkey on a jungle gym: “Oh boy, I can jump off that platform and slide down that pole.”
Mark:
Once again, we had a bay window looking out into nothing. I don’t know why they didn’t put a skyline out there, like on Letterman’s set, or some twinkling lights at nighttime. Something!
Alan:
The camera guys at Unitel were younger, not as experienced as the crew we had been working with. They were thrilled to be working for MTV, and they were very reverent, saying things like “Whatever you want, Mr. Hunter.” I was confused by that—I was used to being slapped around verbally by the stagehands.
Martha:
We all got separate dressing rooms, and that was the beginning of the end for us as a VJ family. We were still close to each other, but proximity equals intimacy.
Alan:
There were four small dressing rooms and one big one. We drew straws to see who would get the big one, and Quinski got it. The smallest one of us got the biggest room. At the time, she was certainly the most popular of the VJs—it seemed like a karmic coincidence.
Nina:
We were all allowed to decorate our own dressing rooms. I got my inspiration from my trips to San Francisco and did my room in the Victorian “painted lady” style. I had white wicker furniture and a white Victorian rocking chair. The color scheme was white, but I had some pastels and a Monet print—one of his “Water Lilies” series. I loved my dressing room: I could just close my door and feel at home. I probably spent more time in that dressing room than in my apartment.
Mark’s dressing room looked like a frat. J. J.’s was like Mark’s: utilitarian. Alan’s was painted all in primary colors, and it looked like the clothes he wore. And Martha’s was a disaster. It looked like a tornado had hit it. I can’t say what style it was, but I think she had a couch in there somewhere. It was funny, because her on-air persona seemed so together—you’d think everything would be in its place, in a notebook or a Trapper Keeper. I’m the one who looked like she should be passed out off camera after shooting heroin.
Martha:
We broadcast seven days a week but shot only five, so we always had two days where we did double shifts—we called them “forty-eights.” But not until we got to Unitel did they finally ask, “Why are we recording Mark, Nina, J. J., Al, Martha, Mark, Nina, J. J. Al, Martha?” After three years, they figured out it made more sense to do Mark, Mark, Nina, Nina, J. J., J. J., Al, Al, Martha, Martha.
Mark:
Pretty much everything in television and radio was shot out of order—I don’t know why we didn’t do it that way earlier. Maybe it was the radio sensibility, or wanting us around to do the throw to the next person. After a while, it became clear that it didn’t matter that much if we did that or not.
Poor J. J.—somehow, he invariably ended up first. And he was the one who was out all night at clubs.
Alan:
We were right across the street from the CBS headquarters, where Dan Rather did the evening news. We had literally moved uptown. Going to Unitel was the end of just fucking around for our own amusement. There was a lot more corporate oversight, and a lot more management by memo. You could tell the network was starting to generate money—they were moving into corporate lockdown mode.
About a week after we moved to Unitel, I got called into the office of John Sykes. He put in the tape of me interviewing Andy Warhol, and played the part where I told him that I bought a picture of his for ten dollars, and if he signed it, then it would be worth a hundred.
John said, “Alan, we can’t be offending major celebrities and stars like this.”
I said, “Dude, that was funny. He thought it was funny.”
He said, “Well, I don’t think it was funny. You’ve got to watch that.”
It seemed arbitrary and overblown. He didn’t ever call me up for other stuff, or to tell me I did a good job on something—but out of nowhere, I got called up for this picayune thing. It was a weird, but telling, slap on the wrist.
Nina:
When we moved to the new studio, they wanted to polish us. They hired a communications coach for the five of us, Lillian Wilder. She was a professional—she had taught big network guys like Dan Rather. I don’t like people giving notes on my air checks—my confidence isn’t really an oak tree, and I get flustered. But I liked going to Lillian. She critiqued me, but she would also point out my strengths, and she was always teaching me something.
Alan:
Lillian’s job was to make us better communicators. As much as I bitched and moaned about having to go to school for a job I’d been doing for three years, she helped me and the others a lot. If nothing else, I got my shit together on the air to avoid her brutal critiques. Things were getting more professional—we had a front desk, real dressing rooms, and a wardrobe area, but we still had to press our own clothes and do our own makeup. Sometimes I wouldn’t bother with makeup, especially if I had just been on vacation and had a little bit of a tan. That was just me saying, “Fuck it—I don’t need makeup. It’s MTV.”
Mark:
I pushed for them to send copies of the videos to the stage. Often, we’d be doing segments with new videos, and not only would we not have seen the video, we wouldn’t know the song, and wouldn’t even have any idea whether it was happy or sad. We had to react as though we had just watched the video, and it was nuts. So I came up with the genius idea of actually getting to see the videos in advance. They started sending down three-quarter-i
nch tapes every week with the new videos in the rotation. I created a library in our greenroom, with a card file, so we could jot down some notes about the video, especially the intro images and the final frames, so we’d have something to play off when we were on camera, either throwing to the video or coming out of it. It was just an alphabetical card file—no Dewey decimal system.
Alan:
We started to lead our separate lives in Manhattan. We didn’t see as much of each other, and we didn’t hang around waiting for the next shift—we’d just come in ten minutes before our shift started, which meant minimal crossover. Occasionally we’d ask, “So what’d you do this weekend?” In the old days, we would have known. We still ran into each other at clubs, but we didn’t travel in a VJ pack anymore.
I had a better handle on the VJ job, and was more comfortable on the air. What I wanted from the producer was shorthand factual info: Prep me briefly me on the segment, and I was good to go. By this point, I was living the life I was talking to the audience about: “I went to see Tina Turner at the Ritz the other night, and you can catch her in your town. . . .” It usually took me an hour to prep, but depending on the previous night’s escapades, there were times when I went in cold and took my chances with the teleprompter. I was good at cold reads.
VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave Page 19