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Jewish World Review July 25, 2005 / 18 Tammuz, 5765 Real hunks don't date smooth-headed ladies By Joel Stein
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
I turned on the new season of "The Real World," in Austin, and I wondered, yet again, who these freaks are who want to be on reality shows.
Then I remembered that it was me.
In 1995, two years out of college, I auditioned to be on "Real World: London." I waited in line for two hours at Manhattan's Paramount Theater with three friends, one who was writing an article about it for TV Guide and another who was really good-looking. I went because I had deduced that this was a really good place to meet people with jobs and good skin.
I was interviewed for 30 seconds by a woman with a video camera. I said my name and age so impressively that I got a call asking me to fill out a 10-page questionnaire and to videotape myself. So did my roommate. We pretended to help each other, but I white-balanced the loser out of Round 3.
MTV put me through seven rounds of interviews over three months, including one in which a cameraman followed me to work to document my fact-checking at Readers Digest Books. That's footage too boring for anyone, no matter how many brothers Ken Burns has.
The "Real World" casting director also set me up on a blind date. With a woman who turned out to be bald. Whom I dated for a few months. I wasn't in a position to be turning down women provided by MTV, regardless of their follicle situation.
When producer Jonathan Murray asked me to come for interviews, along with the 12 other remaining contestants, I did a lot of self-examination. Why did I want to do this? What could I possibly gain? How come MTV flew in all the other contestants from across the country and put them up at a hotel and couldn't even get me a woman with hair?
I knew I could not control how I was presented and would risk embarrassing moments captured for the rest of my life. There was absolutely no upside. I didn't want an acting career, or a career speaking at bad state schools and traveling to small cities to open local bars. I considered bailing. But I didn't.
Murray called me a few days later and told me I didn't make the cut. Years later I asked MTV to send me my tapes and application under the guise of journalistic research, and within days they dug my stuff up from a vault in Hollywood where they have files on thousands of people under 40. I honestly think we should put MTV in charge of our nation's intelligence operations. Give them a few weeks, I'm pretty sure Osama gets majorly "Punk'd."
Murray said he rejected me because my dating life was abysmal. "It seemed pretty dormant," he said. "You definitely weren't going to be the hunk in the show." As cruel as that sounds, it's much worse when you realize that instead of me, he picked a 19-year-old straight playwright with braces.
But finally, a decade later, I'm not embarrassed about wanting to be a reality star. Those vaults are full of people who are famous today, including the author Dave Eggers, who tried out for the San Francisco season and lost out to Puck. This somehow makes me feel superior.
The impetus we mock for going on reality shows is the same one we celebrate in other public figures. It's the need to be seen, to be appreciated in the purest way: not for creating a great painting or curing a disease, but the perfect kind of fame, the Paris Hilton kind, the one you get for simply being yourself. And though it's ugly and weak-egoed to want that, it's also what drives people to the kind of success our culture celebrates.
Ten years later, people have figured out that unhindered public self-expression is the upside of being a reality TV star, and everyone wants in. Without six-pack abs and the moves to hook up with at least two of my roommates, I wouldn't even make the second round. Jon Murray was right after all.
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Joel Stein is a Los Angeles Times columnist. Comment by clicking here.
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Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate
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