by Amy Kaufman
Tierney, a twenty-eight-year-old TV news editor, also felt like she was typically the more thoughtful one in her relationships, but she quickly countered: “I think it’s unrealistic to expect that of someone else. I care a lot more than I thought I ever would about doing special things. And I don’t think it’s fair to put that same standard on someone else if that’s not in their nature.”
Still, when pushed, many in my Bach Discush crew admitted they harbored pretty extravagant fantasies about their love lives. Allison, who works at a talent agency, was surprised that others at the table weren’t copping to that “under-the-stars thing we all have in our heads.”
“You know, where you’re in this beautiful, exotic location and you have a hotel suite to yourselves?” the twenty-eight-year-old continued. “It’s got this nice patio and there’s a private pool or hot tub and you look up at all the stars.”
It quickly became evident we all had somewhat of an “under-the-stars thing” when Sasha and Meredith, the only two married women in the group, relayed their proposal stories to us. As they spoke about the elaborate lengths their spouses had gone to surprise them, we all became silent. Some eyes got googly, while others started to tear.
“See, this is like when I get caught up in the romance of the show,” said Katie, a thirty-four-year-old film critic. (Yes, we live in L.A. Can you tell?) “I’m so conflicted about marriage. I do want it, but I’m, like, being told to want it by society. I hate when politicians say ‘Mothers and wives and daughters.’ If you’re not a mother or a wife, you can still be a person. I don’t like that having worth as a person means being chosen by someone else.”
“We shouldn’t all be sent off to an island if we don’t get married,” Meredith chimed in. “On the show, when they leave and don’t get a proposal, it’s like it’s the end of their life.”
I think this is the aspect of the show we all, collectively, had the most trouble relating to. We’re all young working women who grew up aspiring to have both careers and families. The idea of meeting a guy, giving up your job for him, and moving to his hometown to support his dreams while living off his salary? It wasn’t something we connected with.
“Do you think that’s part of the golden ticket that they’re selling at The Bachelor?” Meredith asked. “Not only do you get a husband, you get luxury. You get a life, and you don’t have to worry about it.”
“But the guys don’t even have aspirational jobs anymore!” Tierney pointed out. “You’re gonna get to go on Marriage Boot Camp or have Instagram endorsements.”
Sure, we’d all thought about how nice it would be to go to yoga in the middle of the day. But after a while, would you start to lose your own identity as a woman? Especially if you devoted your life to raising your kids, and then they ventured off at eighteen to embark on their own journeys?
“I’m empathetic towards the women on the show who think they can’t provide for themselves,” said Molly, a thirty-three-year-old podcaster. “When I think about a guy going, ‘I’ll pay for your life, you’ve done enough,’ it’s like, ‘Do you know what kind of life I think I deserve?’ I’ll just earn that.”
Of course, the Bach Discush gang was coming from a pretty distinct vantage point. We’re coastal liberals, most of whom work in the media, and are straight and pretty white. In no way are we an accurate representation of all women in the United States—or even the women who watch The Bachelor.
But even the voices in this small sample group made me realize that the way young women think about love, marriage, feminism, and identity in this country is shifting. We’re living in an era where Kim Kardashian’s nude selfies open up discussions about slut shaming, Lena Dunham refuses to be Photoshopped on magazine covers, and Reese Witherspoon demands reporters #AskHerMore on the red carpet—and yet many of us are still clinging to the traditional notions that we grew up hearing about in Disney fairy tales or sappy romantic comedies.
It’s all part of what makes the cultural fascination with The Bachelor so interesting, and it’s a big reason why I wanted to write this book. How does a reality show filled with Champagne and tea lights hold such power over us, and how has it affected our expectations of romance?
(Though, let’s be real: I also wanted to get to the bottom of what actually goes down in the Fantasy Suite. And we’ll get to that. I promise.)
This is not a book, meanwhile, that the people at The Bachelor want published. In June 2016, I received a letter from a vice president of legal affairs at Warner Bros. Television, which produces The Bachelor. The email said that the company was aware I was “actively soliciting” employees and show participants to speak with me for this book, and wanted to put me on notice that the show’s contracts with cast and crew contain a “very clear and unambiguous confidentiality provision” that inhibits them from “disclosing unpublished information acquired in the course of their engagement or participation on the shows.” If I engaged in any “conduct intended to induce a former participant to breach this provision,” the letter said, I would face liability.
Months later, one of my sources was contacted by a member of the Warner Bros. legal team and asked if he/she had done an interview with me. “We can’t stop Amy from asking questions, but we want to know if she is putting anyone in violation of their contract,” is essentially what WB told my source. He/she declined to give the show’s legal team any information.
As you’ll see, plenty of former contestants were willing to speak with me on the record about their experiences on the show. There were, however, a few past participants who asked that I pay them in exchange for an interview—requests I immediately declined. Andrew Baldwin, the naval officer and doctor who served as the Bachelor in 2007, said if I gave him “a percentage of the book sales,” he would “dish all.” He then asked me if I was aware of how much money the show had made off him and said he no longer wanted to be a part of such practices. Matt Grant, the Brit who was the Bachelor the year after Baldwin, replied to my inquiry in a similar fashion: “I’m sorry to be blunt,” he wrote, “but unless your business opportunity can help my daughter’s university fund then I have little interest in getting involved.”
And yet, when I reached out to the top brass at The Bachelor—including creator Mike Fleiss and executive producer Elan Gale—I received no response. I’m not sure what the folks at The Bachelor have to hide. But I’m not here to make friends. I’m here for the right reasons: to tell you how this show is really made and explore why we keep tuning in, season after season.
CHAPTER 1
A Budding Idea
At his family reunions, there was always one person Mike Fleiss gravitated toward: his second cousin Heidi. As teenagers, the two would meet up at the gatherings and hide out behind the garage, sneaking beers and sharing a joint.
Heidi Fleiss, of course, would go on to become known as the notorious “Hollywood Madam,” running an illegal prostitution ring that catered to wealthy celebrities like Charlie Sheen—a crime that eventually landed her in prison in her early thirties.
Mike Fleiss, meanwhile, hasn’t ended up behind bars. But as the creator of The Bachelor, the long-running reality television series on which more than two dozen singles compete for an eligible suitor, he’s displayed an understanding of the human desire for love that his cousin was also able to tap into.
Growing up in Fullerton, California, where his mother was a nurse and his father owned a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream shop in nearby La Habra, Fleiss never felt like the guy who could get the girl. The young ladies at Sunny Hills High School were “unbelievably hot,” he once told Vanity Fair, but he had a reputation as “the alienated, parking-lot stoner” who had long hair and rode a moped.
Still, he managed to land the interest of class president Alexandra Vorbeck, his high school sweetheart, who would travel with him to study at the University of California–Berkeley. They wed in August 1987 and stayed married for twenty-four y
ears before divorcing in 2012.
At Berkeley, he studied journalism and became the executive editor of the college paper, The Daily Cal. His first job out of school was at the now-defunct Sacramento Union, where he was paid $323 a week to write about sports. “I thought it was the dream job,” he said years later in an interview with the Contra Costa Times. “I got tears in my eyes the first time I walked into Arco Arena.”
He got laid off in 1989 but quickly found work at the nearby Santa Rosa Press Democrat. The job, however, was temporary: The reporter who covered the San Francisco 49ers was out on medical leave, so Fleiss could have the gig for only nine months. It was a prime beat, and he was tasked with writing features and game previews about the team that could stand up against the other Bay Area newspapers.
“He was a very, very good writer,” recalled Glen Crevier, the Democrat’s executive sports editor and Fleiss’s boss at the time. “He definitely improved the quality of writing in the sports section. He found good stories and told them in a way that was entertaining.”
So when the 49ers reporter returned from leave, Crevier tried to find a way to keep Fleiss on staff. The only job available in the newsroom, however, was an opening on the copy desk, where the shift ran from four p.m. to midnight.
“That didn’t go well for him,” Crevier said with a laugh. The job didn’t allow for much creativity and required a lot of structure, which Fleiss struggled with. Soon, his colleagues noticed him watching Married . . . with Children on the overhead TV when he should have been editing NBA roundups, and Crevier was called in to reprimand him.
“These were professional copyeditors who took pride in what they were doing, and they saw Mike just sort of blowing off the assignments,” said the editor. “So I had to take him in a room one day and give him a warning, like, ‘Hey, you’ve got to care more about this job. You’ve got to really engage in it.’”
But Fleiss only grew more frustrated at the paper. One night after he got home, he turned on the syndicated Howard Stern Show and found himself envious of the “complete creative freedom” the program’s employees seemed to have. “I was being restricted by the facts all the time!” he said in that 2003 Vanity Fair interview. “I felt like I couldn’t really do anything creative, because I was always running down what Jose Canseco said.”
As Fleiss’s behavior in the newsroom continued to deteriorate, Crevier decided he’d have to let Fleiss go. The young sports editor had no writing positions available, and so—for the first time in his career—he fired someone. Fleiss was mad, but it also seemed as if he was resigned to his fate.
“He said, ‘You know, that’s all right,’” remembered Crevier. “‘I had some other things I wanted to do anyway. I want to get involved in the television industry. I’m going to move to L.A.’”
True to his word, Fleiss retreated to the Northern California apartment he shared with his then-pregnant wife, churning out one spec script after another. But no one was biting. After being unemployed, he heard about a low-paying gig at Totally Hidden Video, a Fox hidden-camera series where actors pulled pranks on unsuspecting victims. In order to get the job, Fleiss was asked by the show’s producers to write five sample stunts; instead, he came up with forty. He found out he’d landed the position just as his wife was going into labor with the couple’s first of two children, Aaron, named after TV impresario Aaron Spelling and baseball legend Hank Aaron.
Fleiss was so thrilled that he agreed to take the job, even though it paid $400 a week—less than half of what he’d been making at the Democrat. Soon, the family piled into their Jetta and decamped to Los Angeles.
A year later, however, Fleiss was out of another job when Totally Hidden Video was canceled in 1992. Fortunately, he now had become acquainted with Bruce Nash, a producer best known for making TV specials filled with outrageous clips. While working for Nash, Fleiss helped put together World’s Deadliest Volcanoes, World’s Scariest Police Shootouts, and Greatest Sports Moments of All Time.
The biggest hit, though, was 1997’s Breaking the Magician’s Code: Magic’s Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed.
Mike Darnell—who served as the president of alternative entertainment at Fox for nineteen years, overseeing hits like American Idol and Family Guy—decided to buy the magic special after meeting Fleiss. They shared the same vision for the show: an irreverent approach that poked fun at the magicians.
A friendship was born between the two Mikes, and so was a ratings boom. Despite being sued multiple times over exposing trade secrets and for copyright infringement, Fox would go on to air five more of the magic specials.
Darnell proceeded to purchase Fleiss’s next big pitch—an idea he was calling The World’s Meanest People Caught on Tape. The show, Fleiss explained, would feature people doing despicable things—and he already had secured a clip of a bartender stirring a martini with his penis.
“Mike Darnell made that happen for me,” he told Vanity Fair about the special, which was eventually renamed Shocking Behavior Caught on Tape. “Even though it was a sleazy, disgusting little show, with a bartender stirring a drink with his penis, I was proud!”
Clearly, Fleiss excelled at pushing the envelope. He and Darnell almost pulled off crashing a plane in the desert on a special aptly named Jumbo Jet Crash: The Ultimate Safety Test, but Fox blinked as production was about to get under way. While many television producers were fixated on creating prestige programming bound for awards glory, Fleiss wasn’t ashamed of the fact that many critics considered his shows trashy. On the contrary, he got off on making headlines—and getting ratings—as a result of tapping into a viewer’s basest nature.
Darnell, meanwhile, was itching for Fox’s next big hit, seething over the success of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on ABC. While at a wedding in the summer of 1999, he found himself checking the Millionaire ratings nonstop. The romantic environment and his jealousy over the ABC hit led him to his next outlandish TV idea: Why not find a single millionaire, introduce him to fifty women, and have him propose to one of them at the end of a two-hour special?
Darnell brought the idea to Dick Clark. But the veteran producer and game-show host was worried the project might tarnish his wholesome reputation.
“Dick said, ‘Look, I’ve been married three times. This is a show that’s condemning the institution of marriage, and I don’t want to be the guy to do that,’” said John Ferriter, a William Morris agent who represented Clark and Fleiss.
But when it was Fleiss’s turn to meet with Darnell, he won over the Fox executive after he said he envisioned the special as a version of a Miss America pageant. He was given ten weeks to put the special together before it aired in February 2000.
In December 1999, the announcement went out wide: “Calling All Brides . . . a Nationwide Search Begins for Potential Brides Willing to Marry a Millionaire Live from Las Vegas on Network Television.”
“Are you looking for the man of your dreams?” the press release asked. “Is he tall, is he dark, and is he handsome? Most importantly, is he RICH? . . . During the next month, the search is on for any and all women (over the age of 18) who would be willing to marry a rich man on live television and become ‘Mrs. Multi-Millionaire.’ A minimum of 50 daring candidates will be selected and flown to Las Vegas for an all-expenses-paid trip to compete for the opportunity to marry Mr. Moneybags during the two-hour television special.”
Mr. Moneybags, Fleiss had decided, would be none other than Rick Rockwell, a forty-three-year-old writer and comedian who’d invested the money he made performing in real estate.
“Well, I’m worth about $1.5 . . . [million],” Rockwell said, responding to a November 1999 email from Fleiss.
“It’s quite possible he was the only person on the planet who was willing to do it,” Fleiss later admitted to Vanity Fair. “Our backup millionaire basically wanted me to buy him a Mercedes 500E free and clear.”
On television
, however, Rockwell delivered. He got down on his knee and proposed to a stranger with a three-carat, $35,000 wedding ring the network had supplied. His new bride was Darva Conger, an emergency room nurse who’d served in the air force for five years. According to their prenuptial agreement, she’d also walk away with an Isuzu Trooper, a pair of diamond earrings, and a $2,500 jewelry spending spree.
Viewers were stunned.
Ferriter, who was in Nashville on business when Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? aired, stopped into a steakhouse that night to get a sense of the local reaction.
“I walk in and everyone’s packed around the bar,” he told me when I went to visit him at his office in L. A. “I couldn’t get to the maître d’ to go grab my table because nobody was working. They were all around the bar. I said, ‘What’s going on?’ And everyone was like, ‘These people are getting married on TV and they’ve never met each other!’ So I sidle up to the side of the bar and guys are watching, shaking their heads. Women watching, nodding their heads. I went, ‘Oh my God, this is going to be a hit. This is going to be a big hit.’”
Indeed, a whopping 23 million people tuned in to watch Conger and Rockwell get married on TV. To give you a sense of how big of an audience that is, during the 2016–17 television season, the most-watched program was NBC’s Sunday Night Football, which attracted 19.6 million viewers. On network television, hit shows like NCIS and The Big Bang Theory average around 14 million viewers these days.
Despite its popularity, however, Multi-Millionaire drew harsh reviews from critics. The president of Viewers for Quality Television called the special an “all-time low” in the American public’s viewing taste. Salon’s Carina Chocano argued it put “moral bankruptcy on parade. And if you’re going to put it on parade, put it on parade, enough with the muted grays and wholesome questions. Include a talent show. Have the girls perform a song-and-dance number. Hold a pie-baking race. Make them blow a banana. But try to dress it all up in the cloak of respectability and the air goes out of the balloon and distracts us from what’s really important—gawking at people who are very, very ill.”