(Not That You Asked) (21 page)

I know you think I’m making this shit up, which, actually, I am. But those guys did use every single word in the above dialogue. It was part of their film production slang, a way of aggrandizing what would otherwise be grindingly dull work. They had a special term for everything. A clothespin was a
C-47,
or a
bullet
(a backward clothespin, naturally, was a
C-74
). The sandbags used to secure equipment were called
beach,
unless they were over thirty-five pounds, in which case they became
ballbusters.
One did not take a bathroom break but called for a
10-100
or, in more extreme need, a
10-200.
(It will go without saying that I later forced Andy to make me a glossary of terms, which now hangs on my wall.)

I found the whole experience hopelessly cool—for about six hours. When it was time for lunch, Charlie went out in the van and returned with enough deli to feed the Red Army. He’d already gone to the market and brought back copious amounts of fruit, vegetables, nuts, chips, beef jerky, energy bars, soda, water, beer, and, of course, Red Bull. (The production team drank tremendous amounts of Red Bull. I’m not sure I can overstate the amount of Red Bull they drank. Over a two-day period, I would estimate a million cans.) There was about the scene something endearingly profligate.

Between shots I would wander into my kitchen and stare at all the food on my counters, the donuts, the Pringles, the soup and sandwiches, the coolers brimming with Cokes, and I would think:
This is free! VH1 paid for this!
I wanted to grab someone off the street and hold up each item for him and shout:
They bought this! VH1 bought this for me! I am not being had for cheap!

Act Six

Waiter, There’s a Sound Guy in My Shower

 

Because my bathroom was too small to accommodate more than two people, particularly if one of those people (Jay) was toting a camera the size of a small atomic bomb, Derek had climbed into my tiny shower. He stood under the spigot gamely, trying to ignore the nest of hairs clogging the drain at his feet. His fuzzy boom mic was poking over my white plastic shower curtain, which has been described by more than one friend (in fact, by every single one of my friends) as the ugliest in the short human history of shower curtains.

Let me say: I was embarrassed.

The bathroom was not somewhere I wanted to be filmed. I was concerned that my mother would see the segment and catch sight of the rust-stained toilet bowl and the somewhat bacterial sinktop and that she would weep.

But Simbi had insisted that I give a full tour of the apartment, and this included the bathroom. In my capacity as Candy Monkey, I had stashed some taffy in the medicine cabinet, along with a confection called Lobster Poo, which seemed, at the time, to make sense thematically. Jay called out “Speed” and I began holding forth on the need to “fortify nontraditional candy venues,” a sermon which culminated with my recitation of the couplet on the bag of Lobster Poo:

I went to the Cape and here’s the Scoop!

I came back home with Lobster poop!

It was at this point that the bloom came off the rose. Some more serious version of myself (standing behind the actual, blathering version of myself) whispered into my ear:
What in God’s name are you doing?

To which I responded:
I am lifting American minds from the muck of ignorance.

Act Seven

My Student, Under Interrogation

 

I put in eight hours as the Candy Monkey that first day, explaining why I kept candy in my laundry room and demonstrating how I ate M&M’s, while Simbi barked out helpful instructions such as “Can you open your mouth a little wider?”

Again: American minds, lifting, muck of ignorance.

Late in the afternoon, I went to do some errands, and the crew set up to interview a few of my friends. I can remember returning home at dusk and catching sight of a disquieting tableau through my bay window. My former student, a shy, brilliant kid named Simon, was sitting under a harsh bank of lights. The boom mic hovered over him. His pale forehead shone like the surface of an egg. He was sweating and blinking. I wanted, right then, to walk into my house and tell the crew to turn off the lights, let the poor guy go. But I waited until the interview was over and ushered him into my bedroom, which was the only place that wasn’t overrun with equipment.

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