VH1 News Presents: Reality Secrets Revealed

Back to Sarah and Evan from Joe Millionaire… they play a clip of them kissing and she says it was a short kiss that they cut and repasted several times to make it look longer. She tells us even her mom pointed out how her hand kept moving to his shoulder over and over. Back to those two crazy kids in the bushes, because we can never see that often enough… the producers got creative as it was real video but the audio was added in later in the editing studio. The slurps and moans were from earlier in the day when her friend Melissa was giving her a back massage. She said that she and Evan were innocently kissing and the editing was, “beyond what is conscionable.” I agree, that really goes beyond editing to flesh out a story and just plain making stuff up.

But where does slurping happen during a platonic back massage? Never mind…

The spokesman for Rocket Science Laboratories declined comment. They are the fine folks who gave us not only Joe Millionaire but also Temptation Island and Married By America. Their parents must be so proud of the contributions they have made to society.

As we head off into the first commercial break we’re told that the legacy of Joe Millionaire is “the slurp heard ’round the world.”

I don’t make a habit of commenting on commercials but I have to put a question to the fates, the powers that be, whomever. Isn’t Justin Timberlake’s fifteen minutes up yet?

Okay we’re back. Reality television is trying to create something more interesting than real life. I think it would be a good drinking game if everyone did a shot each time they made that point in a slightly different way. We’d all be drunk by now. Gervase Peterson, Survivor 1, informs us that in shows of this ilk casting is key. Mikey Glazer, a producer on Fear Factor, says that he wants to make shows people will be talking about around the water cooler the next day. Shows in which there are people you love to hate and “you’re gonna sit and go, ‘That di*k!”” I am too big a coward to watch Fear Factor but this guy is cool… he has more on screen presence than most.

Jason Gay from GQ magazine states that they are looking for compelling, good looking people, heroes, villains, and those who create drama. Ben Pappas, US Weekly, compares and contrasts the first two seasons of Big Brother. Same house, same scenario, wildly different casts which explains why season two succeeded where the first failed. Mike “Boogie” Malin was one of the keys to the success of season two. We get to see part of his audition tape in which he does a freestyle rap: “Five girls in the house, Oh man I’ll entertain the entire nation. And what else? How about 12 cameras and my affinity for masturbation.”

That’s the sound of a million teenage boys snickering.

He said he created a character so he would be chosen. Various audition videos are spliced together and run at a frenzied pace across the screen and since I was embarrassed for these people (clearly they have no internal shame so they need someone to blush for them) I’m glad it’s over. More than one person thought being completely naked with their ‘tender parts’ (copyright Kathy Griffin) covered with shaving cream would be avant guard. Apparently it’s commonplace now. Who knew?

Every year thousands of people flock to the casting calls of various reality shows in search of their fifteen minutes of fame. That was the show’s phrasing, not mine, so it begs the question… did Andy Warhol really promise everyone those fifteen minutes? What was he thinking?

Oh good, Mikey Glazer is back. We see footage of him in Vegas screening applicants for Fear Factor. He is asking for a fifteen-second pitch from each of the wannabe stars. One woman could only do nine seconds and he tells her if she can’t even handle the fifteen seconds she can’t fill an hour. Coming from someone else that would sound mean but he was charming. I’m all warm and fuzzy witnessing his people skills. He is looking for archetypal personality traits: Outgoing, enthusiastic, charismatic, somewhat attractive, and articulate. The life of the party types. He draws the analogy to the remote control, how people flip it so quickly between channels so he flips the remote in his head when he’s meeting people and he knows within five seconds if someone is right or wrong for the show. That about three seconds longer than I give people to make a first impression before I judge them, so that’s quite fair, actually.

The real secret to impressing reality show producers is tears. People willing to bare their souls if not their bodies for millions of viewers. They are also looking for cast members that people can instantly relate to and for some inexplicable reason this was voiced over a shot of Kaia and Teck, Real World: Hawaii. That is sarcasm from the editing booth and made me laugh out loud. You’d be hard pressed to find two people less relatable to most humans. Most sea monkeys would feel superior to those two, and rightly so. So we are told the casts aren’t chosen as people but as stereotypes and there is a shot of Road Rules: SAS Veronica, which proves that the editor has a wicked sense of humor. The stereotypes they are looking for are: nerdy guy, cool guy, the jerk, the gay guy, the black guy, the hot girl, the bitch (shot of Flora, Real World: Miami… well, if the stereotype fits), and the slut.

Topher Goodman, The Restaurant, feels he was cast to be the wacky gay guy. I was just called a wacky heterosexual today. Seriously. What are the odds?

Matthew Felling said the show that took the fake reality to another level was High School Reunion. That WB show cast was labeled, literally, so you didn’t have to bother to assign your own stereotypes. Artie Shaw was an applicant for that show and says they had the story arc set up before it was even cast. They wanted to cast him as the nerd and it didn’t matter that real life didn’t bear that out. He was also a varsity athlete, had a lot of friends, was very social, and didn’t want to be narrowly defined by the term nerd. High School Reunion led the viewer to believe it was an actual reunion of the class of 1992. But Holly, the shy girl, was from the class of 1993 and the homecoming queen graduated in 1991. Some call it a random sampling and others flat out lying. Tim Gittings, the artist, was actually a member of the class of 1992 and feels that there is nothing wrong with bending it a little to help the story.

Then there is a flash over to Puck, Real World: San Francisco. Was that a quiet nod to those of us who think his storyline was helped along with some bending or was it an incongruous shot that meant nothing? Draw your own conclusions.