The New American Dream -- or, Get Me on a Reality Show!

By Barry Dutter

For about 200 years, the American Dream remained the same: master a skill and become wealthy and successful through long hours of hard work and dedication.
Somewhere around the turn of the century, the American Dream evolved to become: get on a TV reality show, and become rich and famous for doing absolutely nothing!

By the year 2000 it seemed like everyone in America was going to have the opportunity to be on a reality show and become semi-famous, at least for a few minutes.
All my life, I wanted to become famous for being a great writer or a funny comedian. But when I saw so many nobodies become somebodies, I decided that I liked the idea of becoming a reality TV star. I wanteda  camera crew following me around 24 hours a day. I, too, wanted to be paid $50,000 just for showing up at night clubs!
Thus began my blatant attempt to find fame and fortune comparable to that of a real celebrity, without actually having to do anything. My ultimate dream: to get paid to live in a house for a few weeks, and have all my exploits broadcast on national television.
The first thing I did when I began my quest for insta-fame was to rule out the shows I did not want to be on. Number one on my list of shows I would never go on is SURVIVOR. Live on an island for two months, catching and growing my own food? Screw that. To me, the million dollar prize isn’t worth it if I have to work that hard for it.
My plan is all about doing things the easy way, not having to suffer to win big money. For that same reason, I ruled out shows like FEAR FACTOR and WIPEOUT. It looks to me like people actually get hurt on those shows. You can’t pay me enough money for me to get hurt.
I’ve always had this fantasy of going on MTV’S THE REAL WORLD and being the anti-social guy who stays in his room and reads comic books all the time. But I’m way too old for that show -- and let’s face, “Anti-Social Comic-Book Guy” wouldn’t exactly make for great TV.
Likewise, I’m way too old to ever be on JERSEY SHORE. (I am from New Jersey, but I moved out of the Garbage State to get away from obnoxious Guidos like the ones on that show!)
THE APPRENTICE was out, because on that show, they don't give you a prize -- they give you a  job. Honestly, I would rather just have the money! Doesn't having to work for the money kind of defeat the whole purpose of going on a reality show? 
But what about BIG BROTHER? A show where people of all ages get paid to live in a house for six weeks and potentially walk out with a million bucks! That show was right up my alley.

I tried out for BIG BROTHER, but I didn’t get very far in the audition process. The casting people kept asking me questions about how I would react if someone in the house got in my face. I’m a very non-confrontational guy, so I kept saying I would be totally cool and walk away from any fight.
That was not what they wanted to hear. I think they wanted me to say that I would go ballistic if anyone ever got up in my grill! But that’s not who I am. I’m a pretty mellow guy. I’m not going to change my personality just to get on TV.
Reality TV producers really want people with the most dynamic and explosive personalities. Someone who is going to just “chill out” isn’t going to make for gripping TV.
So BIG BROTHER was not for me. But what about one of those dating shows, where they put 20 guys in a house with a hot girl and one by one the guys get eliminated?
I could do one of those shows in my sleep! (Literally!) Best of all, on any show where you are sequestered for weeks at a time, they always pay you a day rate to be there, whether you win or lose!
I almost made it on to one of those shows in 2007, when I was in the casting pool for a show starring model Cindy Margolis, formerly know as “the most downloaded woman on the Internet.”
Her show was originally going to be called SEX AND THE CINDY, which was a clever title, until they realized no one on the show was actually going to be having sex with her. The title was changed to the equally misleading SEDUCING CINDY.
Out of hundreds (thousands?) of guys who tried out, I made it to the final 40. I was told to keep the last two weeks of August free, because if I was picked, I would be living in a reality TV house for a few weeks. It seemed like my scaled-down version of the American Dream was finally coming true!
I almost went so far as to tell my boss at my day job that I couldn’t work the last two weeks of August. Fortunately I didn’t do that, because I never got called. Alas, I would not be seducing Cindy.
But a year or two later, another opportunity came up. Omarosa, the woman who became famous in the first season of Donald Trump’s THE APPRENTICE, was launching a dating show of her own, called THE ULTIMATE MERGER.
   I was contacted by a casting director and asked if I wanted to try out for the show. I’m not a big fan of Omarosa, but I figured, what they hey, it kind of tied in with my whole “new American Dream“ thing.
What the casting director had not told me was that they were looking for super-successful businessmen. I don’t know why they contacted me. I’ve always been more the “creative/artistic” type than the “power-hungry executive” type.
At the audition, each man was asked to talk about his successful business ventures. Most of the guys were entrepreneurs who had started their own companies and gone on to become fairly wealthy.
As I listened to each guy make their pitch as to why he should be on the show, I realized that I did not belong in that room. This was not the show for me.
When asked by the casting director what my personal net worth was, I meekly answered, “Under one million dollars” and left it at that.
I hated to disappoint Omarosa, but I would not be merging with her any time soon.
And so my quest for reality a TV semi-fame continues. I realize that this type of fame is fleeting, but is a method to the madness. When you do one of these dating shows, there is always the chance you could be spun off into your own show if you are popular enough with the viewers. (Hey, it worked for Daisy, New York, Real and Chance, Frank the Entertainer, and Domenico!)
And if you have to ask who any of those people are, clearly you haven't been watching enough reality TV! Someday, my name could be right up there with those reality superstars!
And when people ask me how I got there, I'll say, "I did it the American way --- by sitting around on my ass and doing absolutely nothing! "
God bless America! Is this a great country or what?

The Total Hollywood Experience, or, How I Spent Two Days Backstage at the TONIGHT SHOW and found out that Tom Hanks is a Jerk!

By Barry Dutter

Everyone should get to have the “Total Hollywood Experience” at least once in their lives.
By that, I mean, you get flown to L.A., chauffeured around in a limo, mix and mingle with some of the biggest celebrities in Hollywood -- and generally get treated like you are some kind of superstar!
I had my own Total Hollywood Experience a few years back when I was asked to fly to L.A. to be on a new TV pilot. I was living in South Florida at the time, celebrating the release of my book, THE SHY GUY’S GUIIDE TO DATING.
The TV pilot was called THE HOW TO GUIDE TO LIFE -- kind of an awkward title, but a fun idea for a show. The premise was that on each episode, the host of the show would try out the advice in a self-help book to see if it worked in real life.
When I got the call to go to L.A., I was told up front that the pilot might never air, but I didn’t care. All I knew was I getting an all-expenses-paid trip to Hollywood!
I had been living in Florida for several years at that point, and I was eager to get a taste of the truly shallow and superficial life, the kind that puts Miami to shame.
My plane landed at about 3:00 in the afternoon. A limo was waiting for me to take me straight to my hotel. The next two days would be spent taping the show, but for this first night, I was on my own.
One thing I had forgotten about California is that the temperature can drop thirty degrees from day to night. November is typically a hot month in Florida. Naturally, it never occurred to me to bring a jacket or a sweater out to Cali for my three-day trip.

I checked into my hotel, and decided to take a walk up Sunset Blvd. I saw famous Hollywood nightclubs like the Whiskey A-Go-Go (where the Doors had gotten their start) and the Viper Room (where River Phoenix had died).
While on my walk, I discovered two things: 1) Nobody walks in L.A. (I swear I was the only person there who wasn’t driving a car), and 2) L.A. gets COLD at night! Once darkness fell, I soon found myself shivering as I walked up the strip. What had started out as a fun stroll turned into a rather unpleasant walk as I froze my butt off!
Lesson learned. Next time, I would remember the secret to hanging out in L.A. is to always give yourself the ability to add more layers of clothing.

I got to bed early, in order to be fresh for my TV gig. The next morning, I got showered and ready and found the limo waiting outside to take me to the studio. (A quick side note here: when a company is paying for your limo, are you supposed to tip the driver? I always assume he’s being tipped by the company paying for the limo, but then, I’m a cheap bastard so what do I know?)

I arrived on the set and met the crew of the show. An Assistnmat Director came along and took me to my dressing room. I had never had my own dressing room before.
The first thing I noticed about having your own dressing room is that it’s kind of boring if you’re in there by yourself. There was a TV, but I felt like it was a waste of time to fly 3,000 miles to L.A. to spend my day sitting around watching TV.
It occurred to me that it might be more interesting to leave the confines of my dressing room and go wandering around the studio. So I ventured out, and discovered that another TV show was filming across the hall from the one I was working on. It was THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO.

Among the guests scheduled for that week were P. Diddy, Tom Hanks, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Whenever I wasn’t needed on the set of my show that much, I would hang right outside the Green Room for the TONIGHT SHOW, wghere guests waited to go on. I got to catch the celebrities coming and going as they appeared one by one on the show.
I didn’t get to have a lot of interaction with any of them, because they were all surrounded by lots of people wherever they went, but still, it was pretty neat just to have that kind of access to huge celebrities.
After a few hours of goofing off, it was time for me to get to work on THE HOW TO GUIDE TO LIFE. The host of the show was an actress I had not heard of. I believe she was a regular on a 90s sitcom, I think it was CYBILL.
To start the show, I was to be brought out on stage to meet the host. I’ll call her Beverly. Beverly explained to the audience how I was the guy who was really shy and wrote a book to help other shy guys get out there and meet girls.
I bounded out onto the stage, saw Beverly, embraced her, and started dry-humping her just for laughs. Everyone thought it was pretty funny, There I was, the king of the shy guys, marching out there like I was cock of the walk.
Lucky thing for me Beverly had a good sense of humor. The first rule of show business is still true: always make a good entrance!
After that, Beverly introduced a timid guy who would be going out and trying out my techniques on random girls in a book store. The gimmick was that the guy would be wearing an earpiece, and Beverly would be secretly instructing him what to do and say, based on the advice on my book.
Turns out, they had pre-taped the bit with the guy at the bookstore. He had approached a couple of different girls with different results, and both girls were there in the studio that day, too. One of the girls was a pretty blonde named Kelly who really caught my eye.
I stated talking to the blonde. Turned out she was originally from Pennsylvania. I was born in New Jersey, so we both bonded over our East Coast roots.
I asked Kelly how she had gotten picked to be on the show. She said she had just gotten a call from the casting director, who was a friend of hers. I thought about all the people who live in L.A. who go on hundreds of auditions to try to get acting jobs. Seems all you have to do is have a friend who is a casting director! Nice!

Kelly told me she really wasn’t interested in being an actress, she just did the occasional job when her friend called her. I thought it was interesting to meet a beautiful blonde who lived in L.A. but had no real interest in being in show business. Kelly actually had a day job working as the Personal Assistant to Suzanne Somers, which I thought was a pretty cool gig.
Kelly told me that although her segment was not scripted, she had been told to reject the guy when he tried to pick her up at the book store. This was the first time I had ever been confronted with the notion that reality TV was not all “real.”
It made a certain kind of sense. In the taped segments, the timid guy gets rejected by Kelly, and then puts the moves on another girl, also an actress. This time, his pick-up lines work and the girl agrees to join him for a cup of coffee.
Although no actual dialogue had been written in advance, the outcomes had been predetermined. In this way, the producers were guaranteed to get a good segment for the show. The good news for me was that they were “proving” that the advice in my book really worked. If they had tried to just wing it, they might have gotten the opposite results, and that would not have been good for my sales!
I did a short interview with the host of the show. After that, I didn’t have a lot to do, so I went backstage and found Kelly. She and I spent a lot of time together on that first day.
I took Kelly over to the Green Room of THE TONIGHT SHOW, and although she was not as star struck as I was, she still thought it was pretty cool. Kelly and I seemed to be hitting it off pretty well. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it seemed to me that she actually liked me!
I asked her if she wanted to ride with me in the limo, and she said no thanks, she would take her own car and meet me at my hotel. I was kind of bummed that she didn’t want to ride with me -- what’s the fun of having a limo if you can’t have a hot babe riding with you?
That would have really made my Total Hollywood Experience complete, but I guess you can’t have everything! Kelly was a very practical girl. She knew she wasn’t planning on spending the night with me, so she chose to drive her own car, thus giving herself the freedom to leave whenever she wanted to.
Basically, she liked me, but she didn’t “like me like me!”
Kelly and I had a nice dinner, followed by a brief smooching session back at my room. I tried to get her to stay, but she politely declined. We both had to be on set early the next day, so by midnight, she was on her way home.
The next morning, the limo took me back to the studio for one more day of shooting. This was a very light day for me. They had shot all of my scenes the day before. All they needed from me was a quick pick-up shot recreating my entrance on stage.
Since I had so much free time, I figured I would spend the day making out with Kelly in my dressing room. We did stop by my dressing room briefly, but she wasn’t interested in staying long. (So much for my Hollywood fantasy!)
Instead, she and I spent most of the day hanging outside the TONIGHT SHOW green room. We saw big celebs coming and going all day long.
Jay Leno was there for a while before the show and a little while after. At any time, I could have walked over and gotten a picture taken with him. But to be honest, in a hallway where superstars like Schwarzenegger and Tom Hanks were walking by, Jay Leno really didn’t seem like that big of a deal.
Schwarzenegger seemed liked the nicest of all the superstars that we saw. His movie END OF DAYS was about to come out. As he finished taping his segment and was walking out, I wished him good luck on the movie and he said thanks. (Actually, there were about 20 other people in that hallway also wishing him luck, and like a true politician he would soon become, he graciously smiled and thanked everyone.)
The one celeb who struck me as the biggest jerk? Tom Hanks. Yes, believe it or not -- Tom Hanks Mr. Nicest Guy in Showbiz. Mr. “Modern Jimmy Stewart.”
I had always liked Hanks, but I do believe that winning back-to-back Oscars was the worst thing that ever happened to him. Once a happy-go lucky goofball, he became super-serious and self-important after his twin Oscar wins. (When is the last time he made a funny comedy?)At the time of my visit, he was in the middle of shooting CASTAWAY. He had a long scraggly beard that he had worn for the last few months of the shoot. I was going to ask him if he wanted to borrow my razor, but I thought better of it.
After Hanks finished his segment and was leaving for the day, he passed right by Kelly and I. I looked him right in the eye and said, “Goodnight, Tom.”
Now, keep in mind, Hanks didn’t know who I was. I was a guy dressed in a suit and tie, standing there with a pretty blonde, hanging right outside the TONIGHT SHOW stage. For all he knew, I could have been an NBC executive, or a special guest of the show.
So it wouldn’t have killed the guy to give me a friendly “hello.”
Instead, he looked at me like I was a piece of crap, walked right past me, and then, perhaps remembering his “nice guy” reputation, turned and spat out “Good night,” as he walked away.
My point is, it seemed like he didn’t even want to acknowledge me.
Maybe he was just in a bad mood because he had to wear that scraggly beard for three months, but still, it was not a good first encounter. Yet another Hollywood myth shattered!
Shortly after that, my workday was over and it was time for me to head back home to reality. I said goodbye to Kelly, and we exchanged email addresses. (Shortly after that, she moved back home to Pennsylvania and married a guy who was not in show business.)
My limo came and took me back to LAX. From there, I hopped on a plane and headed back to Florida. It’s an odd feeling, going from being treated like a movie star to just being a regular guy again. I totally understand why reality TV stars try so hard to cling to their fifteen minutes of fame.
When you’re in Hollywood, riding around in limos, meeting movie stars, and being treated like a king, it’s a huge comedown to have to go back to working your regular job, driving your own beat-up car, and being surrounded by regular (non-famous!) people.
It was a bit of an adjustment, that was for sure. I was working in a bar at the time. To go from having my own chauffeur to having customers order me around was not pleasant.
I think one of the reasons for the rise of reality TV is that we live in an age now where everyone feels like they deserve special treatment. The truth, of course, is that only superstars special treatment. The rest of us deserve to be treated like normal human beings.At the end of the first day, I invited Kelly to join me for dinner. Much to my delight, she said yes!
As much as I loved my Total Hollywood Experience, I have to admit that the moment that I first stepped into my hotel room in L.A., the one emotion I felt the strongest was loneliness. I was in a strange city where I didn’t know a single person. Even having my own dressing room wasn’t as cool as it sounded. I texted my friends back in Florida to brag about it, but beyond that, I couldn't see any real point to it.
Still, I wouldn’t trade my Total Hollywood Experience for anything. I will always treasure the memory of those three days. But I do see a downside to the glamorous life. Even the most amazing experience can be an empty one if you don’t have someone to share it with.
THE HOW TO GUIDE TO LIFE never did become a series, and the pilot never aired. But that was okay. The show was just the vehicle that got me out to L.A.  For me, it was more about getting my first real taste of what the glamorous life of a Hollywood celebrity is all about.

I liked what I saw. A few years later, I moved to L.A, and I never looked back. I did get to ride in a few more limos and meet a few more movie stars (and a few more blondes). But I never forgot my first time.
And I never forgot the words of Jack Lemmon, who in the 1980 movie TRIBUTE, said, “When I first got to Hollywood, it was shallow, vulgar, tacky -- everything -- that I’d always wanted!”
Speaking as someone who had a small taste of the Hollywood high life, I know exactly what he was talking about!
　
　


　
　
　

I Get Punked by Tila Tequila -- and Learn the Truth About Celebrity Sex Tapes

By Barry Dutter

What’s the best way for a D-list celebrity to get attention? How about by releasing a sex tape? But how to sell the new sex tape in a way that would attract the most attention?
How about by pretending that she didn’t want the thing released?
Seemed like a smart business move. If an actress released the tape with her blessing, it might get an initial burst of publicity and that would be it. But if she came out against the tape, she could do a slew of media appearances detailing her various legal struggles in blocking the tape’s release. She could go on talk shows and talk about how upset she was that this private tape was being released without her permission.
That would be a hell of a lot more interesting than her just going on various shows and saying, “Buy my sex tape!” (Can we even call them “tapes” any more? I mean, does anyone even own a VCR at this point?)

I had the opportunity to find out first-hand just how the whole process works when I was invited to watch a sneak preview of a new sex tape starring reality TV “star” Tila Tequila.
Tila Tequila, you may recall, came to fame by having more friends on myspace than anyone had ever had before. That led to her starring in perhaps the greatest reality show of all time, A SHOT AT LOVE. The first season of that ground-breaking show had the pint-sized cutie looking for love amidst a group of girls and guys.
The brilliance of the show was that it was the first dating show to have a bisexual protagonist. You didn’t know if Tila was going to end up with a man or a woman at the end. My fascination with A SHOT AT LOVE lasted all the way through the first season and about five minutes into the first episode of the second season, at which point I realized that the show had nothing new to say.
Most of America seemed to loose interest in Tila after that. She tried various showbiz ventures, including music, but nothing else she did seemed to catch the attention of the American public the way the first season of her TV show did.
Once you got past the novelty of the bisexual angle, there wasn’t a lot there to keep viewers engaged.
Tila has made something of a name for herself as a sex symbol, often showing up in racy pictorials in men’s magazines. So it probably seemed a natural idea for her to make a sex tape. Her first tape was a short video of her with a male partner in 2004. That one came out around the peak of her fame.
In order to drum up interest in another one, she and her people had to come up with a new angle. What they came up with was, “The first ever three-girl celebrity sex tape!” But how to sell the new sex tape in a way that would attract the most attention?
How about by pretending that she didn’t want the thing released?
Seemed like a smart business move. If she released the tape with her blessing, it might get an initial burst of publicity and that would be it. But if she came out against the tape, she could do a slew of media appearances detailing her various legal struggles in blocking the tape’s release. She could go on talk shows and talk about how upset she was that this private tape was being released without her permission.
That would be a hell of a lot more interesting than her just going on various shows and saying, “Buy my sex tape!” (Can we even call them “tapes” any more? I mean, does anyone even own a VCR at this point?)
This is where I come in. I saw an ad on Craigs List looking for people to come in and watch a few minutes of an adult film and then have their reaction filmed for possible use of the promotional web site for the film.
The ad didn’t mention who the star of the tape was. But all applicants were warned they would be seeing some hot and heavy girl-on-girl action.
Seemed like an easy gig, so I figured what the hell. The screening was to take place at a building in North Hollywood, right next door to the offices of the porn company Vivid.
Me and my fellow screeners were to meet in a restaurant/bar on the first floor called The Casting Office. From there, we would be taken, one at a time, to the screening room upstairs to watch a few minutes of the video and give our reactions. When I arrived at the restaurant, there were three or four other people (a mix of girls and guys) waiting to screen the video.
A cute twenty-something gal named Britt was our contact. Britt gave us the lowdown. She said, “Tila is really upset about this video. She doesn’t want this thing released. We can’t even let her know we’re showing this to you. We’re so worried about her finding out about it, we couldn’t even do this in the Vivid building. We had to move next door for this screening.”
Right off the bat, this story sounded shady to me.
Would any company really have to move their screening to another building just because a celebrity was angry at them? I mean, how would the celebrity even know they were holding a screening? Why couldn’t they just do it and not tell the celebrity about it?
But Britt totally played it straight. That got me thinking, “Well, I’ve heard some pretty outrageous stories about Tila Tequila, so who knows… maybe she really is crazy enough to crash the offices of the company that is releasing her video.”
(The sex tape had officially been released a few weeks earlier. The promo we were shooting was billed as a “prank” for a web site, but let’s face -- Tila’s appearance in this video could only be construed as her way of promoting her sex tape.)
One by one, my fellow screeners were led up the stairs to watch the tape. The thing I found odd was that after each person went up the stairs, we never saw them again. I assumed they being taken out a back exit so that they couldn‘t discuss what they had seen with those of us who hadn‘t watched it yet. Those of us left at the table began to wonder if the other screeners were being taken upstairs and killed one by one!
After waiting about 45 minutes, my turn came to watch the tape. I was led up to the second floor by a very effeminate man named Jonathan. He assured me that he was not going to kill me.
We got off the elevator and I was taken into an office that had been set up for the screening.
There was a small crew in the room --a director and a cameraman. They asked me to sit in a chair and told me I would be watching Tila’s DVD on a computer monitor.
I was warned that I would be seeing some hot and heavy action. I said I could handle it.
The director said there would be two cameras filming me -- the big camera behind my back and a smaller camera on the computer itself, aimed at my face. I was told to give my honest reactions as I watched the film.
The director started the DVD in the middle of the movie -- a scene where a naked Tila and two other naked girls were, uh, doing stuff that guys like to watch.
The director said he had to run out to use the bathroom, but he would be back in a few minutes.
I started watching the movie. It looked like pretty much like any other lesbian porn you’ve seen before. (I mean, how many different ways are there to show women doing it?) Tila and these two other naked chicks were all over each other.
Then the cameraman told me he had to go check on some equipment in the next room.
Now I was alone in the offfice. Just me and the three-way celebrity lesbian sex tape that Tila Tequila did not want me to see.
It was definitely a strange experience. The cameras were still filming me, so I felt obligated to say something. I was being paid, after all. So I made a few comments to myself about the action on screen, basically cheering Tila on, and encouraging her to go for it! I wanted to give the producers something they could use in their promotional ads.
Just then, a pint-sized pixie walked into the room. It was Tila Tequlia.
The first thing you notice about her is how tiny she is. Even with high heels, she looks two feet tall!
She walked right up to me, dressed in a white blouse, a long black skirt and black boots. She looked like the way a porno actress would dress if she were playing an executive.
“What are you doing?” she asked me.
Obviously I was being punked. Obviously Tila was in on the gag. Obviously they wanted some kind of reaction out of me. But how to play it?
I assumed Tila was supposed to be mad at me, but her acting was so bland, it was hard to tell what she was feeling.
I started off sheepish: “You look a lot like the girl in the video,“ I said. “It’s my video and no one is supposed to see it,“ she replied. I realized I needed to play it up more, acknowledge that I knew who she was and how shocked I was to see her. I decided to act like I was embarrassed. “You’re not supposed to be here!” I exclaimed.
“Me? What about you? Why are you here?” We went back and forth for a minute, with her giving me a hard time about watching the video, and me acting like it was no big deal. I had to wonder where this prank was going. Was she going to take her clothes off and try to drag me into an impromptu adult film?
She reached over and took the DVD out of the computer, saying she was taking it away. I pretended to be really disappointed. “Can’t I just watch a little more?” I asked. “No,” came the reply. “You’ve seen enough.”
“Well, can I get a hug then? I’m a big fan!”
Tila very reluctantly gave me a hug then took the DVD and walked out the door.
At this point, the crew came back into the room (although Tila did not). She went back into hiding in order to spring her trap on her next unsuspecting viewer.
I didn’t know if they would be able to use my footage or not. I tend to just kind of roll with things, so when Tila walked in, I didn’t really have a big reaction at first. I think they might have been looking for more of a “Oh shit, it’s Tila Tequila, I’m in big trouble now!”
But like I said, she kind of underplayed it, too. If she had stormed into the room and seemed angry, I would definitely have played it differently. Or to put it another way, if she had been a better actress, I would have stepped up my game.
As soon as my screening was over, Jonathan handed me my cash and I was on my way. When I got home, I decided to do some research about this whole sex tape. Turns out there was a lot of press out there about Tila “fighting” the release of this tape.
She gave quotes to all the gossip sites, saying things like, “My reputation and public persona will be negatively affected in a manner that cannot be reduced to a dollar amount."
She added “The amateur videotape is of poor quality, and while I am not certain of all of its contents, I do know that it is extremely embarrassing.”
On her own web site, she reluctantly did a blog about the sex tape, saying it had been made two years ago, and that the “asshole” who was releasing it was demanding “$1 million” from Tila if she wanted to buy back the tape. She added that she had spent $75,000 in legal fees fighting then release of her first sex tape, and she was not about to go through that again.
Tila added that she had avoided talking about the tape, but she finally felt the need to address all the rumors that had been circulating about it. She stressed that that she wished the tape would never be released, “because it’s not who I am, not something I would condone, nor is it one of my proudest moments, AND the fact that it’s not the woman that I am TODAY!!!!!!!!!” (All those exclamation points are hers. She’s a bit of a drama queen when she writes!)
The main thrust of her blog was that she was a serious actress now (she just did a guest stint on $#!+ MY DAD SAYS, as well as a very funny skit with Jennifer Aniston and Zach Galifinakis on FUNNY OR DIE) and was trying to put her sexpot past behind her. She stressed that “this is not something...I wish to publicize.”
Tila apparently has some very loyal fans. Her blog got four pages of responses, all of them agreeing with her that the guy releasing the tape was an asshole, and saying that Tila deserved to be treated better. Basically, they bought every word of her denial. She calls them “the Tila army” and they are good little soldiers, I’ll grant them that. They pretty much believe anything Tila tells them.
(There was one hater on Tila’s web site who commented, “It’s not even a sex tape, it’s clearly a little porn made with professional porn stars.” Another Tila fan offered her support, but did chastise Tila for not telling the whole truth, adding “the video was obviously made recently, not two years ago.”)
Clearly the administrator for Tila’s site needs to work a little harder at keeping those truth-telling haters off her web site!
Tila’s PR people made a big deal stressing how much she was against the release of this tape. Her publicist released statement saying, "Tila Nguyen is in total shock and livid right now that someone had the audacity to leak out an intimate tape made with her and her two girlfriends without her consent. That tape was not meant for the public and she has been fighting fiercely in court to not have anything released. We are currently working with her lawyer's to decide what the next steps are."
I had to give them credit -- they certainly made a convincing argument about not wanting people to see that tape. But I knew the real truth. I was there in that screening room when Tila walked in. Clearly she was in on the whole thing from the start. Even the footage of her stopping people from watching the tape would be used to promote the tape.
It was a very clever marketing strategy, I thought.
About a week later, Tila’s “prank” video appeared online. Overall, the bit did not work out that well, because Tila just didn’t seem angry enough that people were watching her tape. I got some nice exposure in the prank tape. Mostly you see me laughing; I have a hard time keeping a straight face when I’m being punked by a petite pixie!
I don’t know if our “prank” video helped sell any copies of Tila’s sex tape. Actually, I don’t know anyone who even pays for porn any more. I still think if Tila really wanted to make some good money and get a lot of attention, rather than do a sex tape, she should have done CELEBRITY REHAB liked they asked her to. Maybe if the sex tape doesn’t sell well, she might want to start drinking heavily…

The Worst Jobs I Never Had in Hollywood

By Barry Dutter

Over the past few months, I have written about some of the crappy jobs I’ve had in Hollywood. But wait till you hear about the jobs I didn’t take!
Shortly after I arrived in L.A. and started sending my pictures out, I received a call from an agent. He said he might have a part for me in a commercial. But he had a couple of questions for me first.
“Have you ever taken any sort of martial arts classes?” he asked.
“No,” I replied.
“Oh. Because we’re looking for somebody who is able to maintain a crouching position for a long period of time, and usually people who study martial arts have really good discipline when it comes to that sort of thing.”
“What sort of job is this“ I asked.
“Well, in the commercial, you’d be wearing a frog costume. You’d be crouching on a lily pad all day.”
“Oh. Um…” I honestly didn’t know how to reply to that. This didn’t sound like much of an acting job.
“Well, we’ve got a few other people we’re looking at for this one, so we’ll be in touch.”
“Okay.”
I hung up the phone, not sure of what to think. I never did hear back from the guy.
As bizarre as that job would have been, I almost had an even weirder one recently. I saw an ad on Craigs List asking for hairy-chested men for an internet video spoof.
Being naturally hairy is one of my best talents, so of course I replied to the ad. Then I got a call from the casting director. He said he thought I would be perfect for the job.
“What’s this video all about?” I asked.
“We need a guy who’s willing to let us shave his chest-hair into the shape of a bra.”
Okay, now, that sounded pretty funny to me, but it seemed like one of those things that would be funnier to watch on the Internet than it would be to star in.
The guy offered a decent sum of money, and I gave it some thought. My first thought was, “I don’t want to do this video and then be walking around for the next few weeks with a chest-hair bra until the rest of it grows back.”
Then it occurred to me that there was nothing stopping me from shaving off the rest of my “chest-hair bra” as soon as I got home. I’ve shaved off my body hair before, and it only takes a few weeks to grow back.
I figured I could just go in to whichever studio they were shooting in, do the video, be out of there in an hour, and go straight home and shave off the rest. The money was decent for an hour’s work, so I tried convincing myself it wouldn’t be so bad. (All the while, I was conveniently ignoring the fact that this video would be probably be shown on the Internet from now until infinity.)
The next day, the casting agent called again. By this time, he was referring to the bit as a “chest-hair bikini top” instead of calling it a bra. I guess he figured that made it sound more masculine or something.
Bikini top, bra, what’s the difference? No matter what you call it, you still look like an idiot if you do it!
Then he dropped a bombshell on me. “We’ll be filming on Sunset Blvd.” he said.
Wait a minute. Did he say “on Sunset Blvd?!” As in, out in public? Not in a studio?
I had pictured a small studio shoot, with a tiny crew and maybe an audience of 25 or so. But to do it outside, in public, on one of the busiest streets in L.A.? That was a whole different kind of shoot.
This was a seeming more and more like a JACKASS stunt and less and less like an acting job.
I was trying to find a way to back out gracefully when I got an email later that day from the casting director saying the producers had decided to go with a different actor. They felt I wasn’t hairy enough for the part.
Funny thing was, I actually agreed with them!
If you’re going to do a “chest-hair bikini top” bit, you want to have an actor who is covered in hair from head to toe. I’m about as hairy as the average Italian-American man, but I’m not quite in Robin Williams territory.
This was the first time I ever lost a part for not being hairy enough, and I must say, it was quite a relief.
I’ve had some pretty humiliating jobs over the course of my acting career, but I can’t imagine one that would have been more embarrassing than that one.
Of course, that’s the great thing about Hollywood -- your next “worst job ever” is just a phone call away!

Game Show Lessons: Never Partner with a Pot-Head!

By Barry Dutter

Of all the lessons I’ve learned on various game shows over the years, probably the most important one is this: never partner with a pot-head!
In 2010, I saw an ad on Craigs List looking for people who wanted to surprise a friend by secretly signing them up for a game show for GSN -- one where the friend was unaware that they were a contestant!
As soon as I saw the ad, I figured this was a good chance for me to help a friend win some big money -- and make a few bucks for myself at the same time.
I have a friend named Kelly who is a schoolteacher. She's smart and quick, and has been on game shows before. I pitched her to the network, but for whatever reason, they weren't too excited about her. So I decided to try again with a different girl.
I decided to go with someone who was the opposite of Kelly. I had another friend, Amber, who was an actress/model. She was 25, very tall, pretty, and with huge natural boobs. Because of her Amazonian body, Amber got a lot of work in movies and TV shows in L.A. (You can see her in PIRANAHA 3-D, wearing a bikini!) Amber loved the beach, and amusement parks, and, oh yes, she had one other hobby-- like many Los Angelenos, she liked to dabble in pot-smoking.
The premise of the new game show was that you were not supposed to tell your friend you were setting her up to be on TV. She was supposed to walk into an office, thinking she was going on a job interview, and then be stunned to see legendary game show host Wink Martindale walk out and reveal that she was about to play a game for the chance to win $5,000!
I sent a picture of Amber in to the casting agents for the show, which was called INSTANT RECALL. They liked Amber and they agreed to book her on the show as a contestant -- if I could guarantee that she would show up. Even if she didn’t win, Amber would get $500 just for playing the game. I would get $100 for setting her up, regardless of whether I was there for the taping not. I thought it would be fun to be there when they sprung the trap on her.
In L.A, it’s hard to get people to show up for anything, even if there is money involved. I told Amber that I had arranged a job interview for her with a catering company. I then tipped her off that it would be in her best interests to show up for this interview, because there might be a TV game show going on at the same time.
The producers I spoke to were very concerned that Amber not know she was being set up to be on TV. They wanted to make sure she wouldn’t be suspicious, that she wouldn’t have any reason to suspect there might be something going on. They asked me if I had ever gotten Amber job interviews before. I assured them that this was a very common thing, that I have often hooked her up with waitressing gigs in the past.
This was a total lie, of course, but hey, I‘ll say anything to get on TV!
The producers were very excited about the idea of surprising Amber when they revealed that the “job interview” was a phony. They really wanted to see genuine reactions of the people they were ambushing.
Having worked on various reality shows over the years, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that all the contestants on INSTANT RECALL had been tipped off in advance by their friends. I mean, all you have to do is say to your friend, “Dude -- you get $500 just for showing up! Just act surprised and then you’ll have the chance to win $5,000!”
It’s much easier to get people to show up for stuff when you lay it all out there like that.
The premise of Amber’s episode was that she and one other unsuspecting contestant would show up in the lobby of a big hotel in L.A. where several odd people are waiting for job interviews. All of the oddballs would interact with Amber and the other contestant a little bit. Then suddenly host Wink Martindale would pop out and reveals that it's all being taped for TV. Wink would then lead the contestants to another room which has been transformed into the set of a TV game show. The two contestants are then grilled on everything that they saw from the moment they walked into the hotel lobby. Whichever one of them got the highest score would win $5,000.
I was invited to come in and watch all the action from inside the control room. At the end of the show, I was to be brought out to either congratulate or console my friend.
I arrived about an hour before Amber was scheduled for her “job interview.” I met the producers of the show, and I met Kimberly, who was setting up her friend, Claudia for the same episode.
The show was being filmed in a fancy hotel in LA. The crew had transformed a banquet room into a makeshift control room. There were a bank of monitors showing multiple views of the lobby. There was a crew of about a dozen people, as well as half a dozen actors who had been hired to play the oddballs in the lobby.
I sat and waited for Amber to arrive. At one point, Wink Martindale came over and said hi -- a super nice guy.
I texted Amber to make sure she was coming. She texted back and assured me that she was on her way, fighting rush hour traffic as best as she could. At around 5:45 pm, the actors were told to head out into the lobby to await the arrival of our two unsuspecting contestants.
Amber’s opponent arrived first -- a Mexican girl named Claudia. Claudia entered the lobby of the hotel, where she was told to have a seat and wait for her job interview along with the other applicants. Claudia sat and filled out her bogus job application as she waited.
The clock ticked closer to 6:00 p.m.-- and still no Amber. The producers started to get really stressed. They didn’t want to leave Claudia alone in that lobby with those actors for too long. They were afraid she would catch on.
I was the one who had promised I could deliver Amber, so all eyes turned to me. I didn’t know what to do. Amber was not picking up her phone and had stopped returning my texts. I wished I could magically reach into my pocket and pull out Amber, but that obviously wasn’t going to happen.
All I could do was smile feebly and say, “She’s on her way. She must be stuck in traffic.”
The producers were not impressed. Their feeling was, if Amber thinks she is going on a job interview, she should be on time.
They producers were all looking at their watches. The director was saying that they could do the show without her if they had to -- just do the show with one contestant.
I had set up this whole thing so that I could help out my starving actress friend and make both of us some money. It was looking like she was going to blow the whole thing. I was wondering if I would even get my $100 if my contestant never showed up.
Finally Amber texted me to say that she had arrived and was parking her car in the garage.
Everyone was relieved. All we had to do was wait for Amber to come up the elevator. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Something was wrong.
Amber was not coming up the elevator. Again, she was not answering her phone. By this point, the producers had had enough of her tardiness and decided to go on without her.
Just at that moment, Amber entered the lobby. She was about 20 minutes late, but she was finally ready for her “job interview.” The show could now go on as planned!
Amber was given her fake application and she began filling it out as well.
The oddball actors were all seated around Amber and Claudia. The actors started making small talk -- little bits of conversation. One girl mentioned the city where she was from -- Anchorage, Alaska. A guy had a deck of playing cards and did a magic trick using the Jack of Hearts.
He wanted to make sure each girl got a good look at the card he was holding. He tapped Amber on the shoulder to show her the card. But Amber was so focused on filling out her “job application” that she wasn’t really paying attention to what was going on around her. Claudia had long since finished filling out her application, so she was able to give her full attention to the wackos in the lobby.
A bogus “hotel manager” came out and addressed the applicants, telling them some of the crazy duties they would be expected to perform, at a fancy banquet for a visiting Chinese dignitary. The joke here was that the job applicants would be shown some crazy ways to serve food and drinks, and told, "This is the custom of how things are done in China." Amber seemed genuinely freaked out by everything that was going on around her.
She certainly did a convincing job of playing someone who had no idea she was on a TV show!
After a few minutes of craziness, Wink Martindale popped out and sprang the big surprise on the girls. Amber and Claudia were both excited about the chance to compete for big money.
The girls were led to the “game show set” in the next room. Each girl stood at a podium while Wink asked the first question: what city was the girl in the lobby from? Amber struggled to remember, but she really hadn’t been paying attention. Claudia buzzed in: “Anchorage, Alaska.”
Correct! Next question. Which card did the guy in the lobby do the card trick with? Again, Amber got a pained expression on her face. She had no clue. Claudia buzzed in with the correct answer: “Jack of Hearts.”
The rest of the game played about the same way. Amber was completely lost. She had arrived so late, and had focused so much on filling out the job application, she hadn’t paid any attention to the antics of the actors around her.
The funny thing about that is that I had told Amber ahead of time that it was a bogus job, that she was going to be quizzed on everything that happened once she arrived. And she still got all the answers wrong!
It should come as no surprise to learn that Amber's opponent, Claudia was the winner. Claudia didn’t get the big prize of $5,000, but she still won a couple grand. Not bad for an hour’s work!
At the end of the show, I was brought out on stage, along with Kimberly, the friend who had set Claudia up. We all exchanged hugs, and smiles as Wink thanked the girls for playing and wished everyone a good night.
After the show was over, Amber was nice enough to take me out to dinner. She got paid $500 just for playing, she felt like she owed me a meal. She even threw me a few bucks as her way of saying thanks, and I definitely appreciated that.
As we ate our dinner, I asked Amber why she had taken so long to come up the elevator after she had arrived. She said, "I smoked a joint in the parking garage!” I asked her why she did that, when she knew she was already late and she knew everyone was waiting for her.
She replied, “I was nervous.”
So there you have it. I never partnered with Amber on any other shows after that. I mean, sure it was fun, and we both got paid ok for basically doing nothing, but still, the payoff could have been much bigger.
Back in my college days, I did a term paper on the harmful side effects on marijuana. One of the top symptoms of smoking pot is short-term memory loss. Probably not a good drug to partake in before you go on a show called INSTANT RECALL!

The “L.A. Yes,” or, My Love Triangle is Missing a Side or Two

By Barry Dutter

Ask any actress in L.A. if she wants to work with you in a TV show or a movie, and she will always say yes. And then, a few days later, she will say no.
I call that “an L.A. Yes.” Basically, people in Hollywood will agree to anything -- as long as they can back out a few days later.
I come from the East Coast, where if people make plans to do something with you, they actually follow through. In L.A., people are a lot more unreliable. They often make plans just so they can break them later.
If the regular people in L.A. are flakey, the actors are doubly so. I found that out first-hand when I attempted to recruit an actress to appear with me on a TV show called LOVE TRIANGLE. This was a “reality dating” show that involved either a woman choosing between two men, or a man choosing between two women.
Everyone who appeared on the show was to be paid a $200 performance fee. In addition, the chooser and the contestant they chose would win a trip.
The gimmick with this show was that they would use computer simulations to show the chooser what their potential partners would look like in 20 years, plus they would show what all your kids would look like. This seemed like a fun show naturally I wanted to try out for it. The first thing I needed to do was to find two girls to go on the show with me. As luck would have it, I was involved in another project with a handful of other actors. Two of the people I was working with were a pretty blonde named Rachel and a cute brunette named Pam.
I approached both girls, and much to my delight, they agreed to try out for the show with me. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it had been to line up the other two sides of my fake TV love triangle!
I made up a back-story about how I met Pam first, we dated for a few years, but we started to cool off a bit. Then I met Rachel, who was a few years younger than Pam and she got me seriously considering ending my relationship with Pam.
Both girls agreed that the back-story was fine, but Rachel was a little concerned that people she knew might watch the show and think it was real. Pam had just broken up with her boyfriend, and wasn’t sure she wanted to go on national television and potentially get dumped again.
I dismissed their concerns by reminding them that this was a daytime TV show that no one would ever see. I’ve done tons of daytime TV shows, and I know that when you are on a cable network that no one watches, it’s almost like the show never aired at all.
I sent in pics of Rachel, Pam, and myself, along with our bogus back-story. The casting department liked us and called each of us individually for a phone interview. They asked Rachel if she had done any reality shows in the past year. She said she had. They told her, “Sorry, but we’re looking for fresh faces. We can’t use you on this show.”
Rachel had forgotten the first rule of auditioning for reality shows. Whenever a casting agent asks you if you if you’ve ever done a dating show before, the correct answer is always an unequivocal, “No!” Reality shows like to keep up the illusion that their shows are legit, so they prefer not to hire actors who have been on a bunch of similar shows. It might spoil the illusion!
With Rachel out, I now had to find another side to my triangle. I started going through my contact list, seeing if I knew any actresses that were reliable and willing to be on a reality show. One girl I called said she didn’t ever want to be on a reality show, because she thought it would hurt her career as a serious actress. I thought this was a dumb excuse -- I mean, half the shows on TV are reality shows, and many of them use actors, so if you are willing to do reality shows, you can double the amount of work you can get.
But no, her mind was made up. She was convinced that appearing on one episode of a dopey reality show that no one would ever see would somehow derail her career as a serious actress.
I asked another actress I knew, and she said she couldn’t do it because she had just been on an ABC show called DATING IN THE DARK. I knew she had been on that show, but again, I don’t see why she couldn’t lie and say she hadn't done any dating shows. I mean, I can guarantee that the producers of LOVE TRIANGLE have never seen her episode of DATING IN THE DARK! People who work in TV do not have the time to actually watch TV!
I was still trying to find a girl to replace Rachel when the other shoe dropped and Pam said she was dropping out of the show. She said she just wasn't comfortable with it. I wasn’t sure what she was so uncomfortable with. I mean, it was a goofy fake dating show. There would be no kissing or sex or even hand-holding, for that matter. Yes, they would ask her about her sex life with her two lovers, but she could always dance around that and say she was saving herself for marriage.
Now my love triangle only had one side. I started wondering where I was going to find two new girls to be on the show with me. But then I started thinking it didn’t have to be two girls. Contestants on this show could also form a Love Triangle with two guys and a girl.
I happened to be working with another actor at the time. His name was Will. He was a DJ in L.A., and he had previously appeared on MTV’s THE REAL WORLD.
Will was a black man, so I figured it would be a fun episode having a girl choose between a middle-aged white writer and a young black DJ.
I approached Will with the idea and he agreed that it sounded cool. Now all we need was to find a girl. At the moment I was asking Will, Pam happened to be wandering by.
She heard Will and I plotting to get on the show, and she was instantly back in.
What had changed her mind? Simple. I my original scenario, I would be the guy choosing between her and a younger girl. In this new scenario, she would be the one doing the choosing. Even though it was a fake show and she wouldn’t actually be dating any of us, somehow, this made all the difference. She had to be the one who was the Decider.
I sent photos of Will, Pam and myself in to the casting department. They loved us and wanted to bring us in for individual interviews. We were told to pretend that our “love triangle” was real, to never break character, even in the audition.
It was essential that when the producers of the show viewed our audition tapes, that they believed we were in a real love triangle.
Luckily for us, they bought it, even if we didn’t get our story perfectly straight. (No matter how well you prepare a made-up story, they will always throw you questions you haven‘t thought of. I n my case, they asked how long I had been dating Pam. I said “Two years.” Then they asked if I had ever met her parents. I fumbled and said, “No.” Then they asked why not. I really didn’t have a good answer for them, so I said it just hadn’thappened yet. I know, it was a weak answer, but I didn’t want to answer a bunch of questions about two people I had never met.
The casting associates forgave the holes in my story. They still loved us and were eager to book the three of us on the show. They sent each of us a questionnaire to fill out -- the standard questionnaire they send to every contestant.
Now, I’ve been on a few dating shows and I’ve filled out a few questionnaires in my day, but never one like this. With most shows, the questionnaire has a few dozen questions, maybe 50 tops.
The one for LOVE TRIANGLE had 250. That’s right -- a whopping 250 questions you had to answer if you wanted to be on the show. Here’s a sample question they gave us: “Tell us about your last three relationships and why they didn’t work out.” That was just one question! There were 249 more after that!
I had to admit, filling out a 250-question questionnaire was a little intimidating. I didn’t know when I would have time to tackle that monstrosity.
Shortly after that, I caught a cold. Nothing serious, but I needed a few nights of resting at home. So it came to pass that I found myself home on a Friday night with nothing to do. I figured I might as well take a crack at it that questionnaire. It took about two hours, but I did complete that bastard.
But I couldn’t send it in just yet. I had to check with my partners in crime, and make sure we all had our stories straight. It wouldn’t do for us to go on national television and tell inconsistent stories about when we met and who knew about who and when they knew it.
I sent an email to Pam and asked her to get back to me about our story. She responded with an email saying she was dropping out of the show again.
Her reason this time? She felt that for the amount of money involved, filling out a 250-question questionnaire wasn’t worth it.
My attitude was that for the two hours it took to fill out the questionnaire, and the maybe 5 or 6 hours it would take to tape the show, $200 was not that bad.
Besides, it wasn’t like Pam had to tell the truth in the questionnaire. She could have made up all her answers, and no one would ever have known the difference. I mean, the whole show was fake, why tell the truth on the questionnaire? It wasn’t like she had to reveal intimate detail s about her real life.
I tried changing Pam’s mind, but there was nothing I could say that would persuade her. $200 was not enough money, and that was her final answer.
Most actresses in Hollywood will drop out of any low-budget project if given the chance. Pam had now dropped out of the same project twice!
In a lame attempt to save face, Pam contacted the producers of LOVE TRIANGLE and told them she had a “scheduling conflict” and had to back out of the show. The casting department had fallen in love with Pam and they were reluctant to let her go. They contacted me and asked what was really going on.
I explained to them that it was all about the money. The casting lady I spoke to told me that if money really was the issue, then we should hang in there, because she was going to approach the producers and ask for more money for all the contestants.
That sounded like good news to me, so I dropped a note to Pam letting her know that there might be a better offer in our future. Pam did not reply, so I started thinking about how we could replace her, just in case that bigger money offer never came through.
I contacted Will and told him that we had lost Pam. He told me he was still willing to do the show, if we could find another girl. I figured that as a DJ, Will would have access to lots of girls that he could ask. He even asked his own girlfriend, but she gave him that same line about not wanting to appear in “reality shows” that we had heard from several other actresses.
A few weeks went by, and my quest to find a new girl continued. Then I got a call from the casting lady from LOVE TRIANGLE. She had great news for me -- they had raised the “performance fee” for the show to $500 per person.
This was awesome news! If the money had really been her only issue, as Pam had said it was, then surely $500 would be enough to get her to fill out the damn questionnaire. (At this point, I was even willing to fill it out for her!)
The casting lady did say she had called Pam but Pam had not picked up her phone. It seems Pam was playing “the difficult actress.”
I was asked, “Do you think you can call Pam and convince her to do the show for $500?” I promised I would try, but I didn’t think I would have any more success than the casting lady had had.
I called Pam, and, as expected, I got her voice mail. I left a message, reminding her that she had said the money was her only objection to appearing on the show. Now she was being offered two and a half times the original amount.
Pam never returned my call. I called the casting lady and let her know that Pam was not responding. The casting lady just didn’t get it. She couldn’t understand why Pam would try out for a show and then back out.
I didn’t really have any explanation for her, other than the fact that Pam was “a typical LA girl.” The thing that bugged me the most was that Pam had not only cost herself $500, but in the middle of the worst recession the country had ever known, she had just cost Will and I $500 each as well. (Not to mention a free vacation for one of us!)
I never did hear from Pam again. But I wasn’t going to let the loss of one actress discourage me. I had filled out that brutal questionnaire, after all, and I didn’t want all my hard work to go to waste.
I figured a good way to find an actress would be by placing an ad on Craigs List. I posted an ad with the headline, “Looking for the Girl Next Door.” I found out that when you post an ad like that on Craigs List, you get a lot of spam from prostitutes who don’t actually bother to read your ad. I had a lot of offers for “dates” from hookers, but none of them were looking to be on a TV reality show!
There were a few girls who sent me pics, but I was having a hard time figuring out which ones were the whores and which ones were the real actresses. (There is probably a joke in there somewhere but I'm too classy to make it!)
But then one day I saw an ad on Craigs List from a girl named Amber. Her ad said she was looking for two guys to be on LOVE TRIANGLE with her. Apparently she had tried out for the show and the producers had told her she could be on it if she could just find two guys to do it with. This was perfect! It’s like it was meant to be.
I wrote to Amber and suggested a partnership. She wrote back and said she would be happy to do the show with Will and I. At last we had found a girl who actually wanted to be on the show -- a girl who might not flake out!
Amber sent me her pic, and I forwarded to the casting lady, explaining that Amber was our replacement for Pam.
I never heard back from the casting lady. About a month later, LOVE TRIANGLE went into production, without me, Will and Amber.
I think it was a combination of us finding Amber a little too late, and the casting people being so in love with Pam, they just couldn’t picture Will and I with any other girl.
I don’t know how they were able to tape a dating show in L.A. without me in it, but somehow they found a way.
I was disappointed, mostly because this show was paying five times as much as most reality shows.
My experience with LOVE TRIANGLE taught me that if someone backs out of a project once, they will most definitely back out again.
The lesson I learned is that there is nothing more certain -- and uncertain -- than an "L.A. Yes."

The Lowest Job in Show Business or, Getting Paid to Clap

By Barry Dutter

You might think that being an extra in a movie or TV show is pretty much the lowest job a person can have in show business and still be considered a “performer.”
But there is a job that is even lower. It’s being a paid audience-member.
That’s right, in Hollywood, people actually get paid to watch TV. Or , more accurately, paid to watch the taping of a TV show and laugh and clap on cue.
It doesn’t pay a lot of money. Traditionally, it’s $8 an hour. But you couldn’t ask for an easier job. I mean, what could be simpler than sitting on your ass and clapping? It’s the lazy guy’s version of the American dream: getting paid to watch TV!
When you live in L.A., you see a lot of ads on Craigs List looking for people to do audience work. Funny thing is, the ads always try to make the job sound much more glamorous than it really is. They almost never say the words “audience work” in the listings. Usually the headline says something like, “Looking for new faces for TV!” -- as if your face is actually going to be seen on television. On most shows, the people in the audience are just blurs in the background.
Or the ads will say they are looking for “background performers” for TV. As if the simple act of laughing on cue and putting your hands together qualifies you as a “performer.” That’s a very classy way of saying “person who is one step above a trained seal!”
I did audience work shortly after I arrived in L.A.. As a lifelong TV-lover, how could I resist? I found it easier than extra work, because as an extra, you are often spending your day out in the hot sun, or out in the rain, or out in the cold, or sitting on a cold concrete floor in some warehouse somewhere.
But as a paid audience-member, you are sitting on comfortable chairs all day in a nice air-conditioned studio. As an extra, you may be called upon to spend your day walking or running or doing whatever the scene calls for. As an audience-member, your job is to simply sit, smile and clap. And pay attention. You’ve got to remember to pay attention to the show. I actually saw an audience-member kicked off a job with no pay when he was caught sending a text message while the cameras were rolling.
Most of the time the days are short -- three to five hours, generally, meaning your pay at the end of the day is usually about $40.00 cash. Not a huge sum of money. So why do people do it?
My theory is that many people in L.A. simply don’t want to work. They came to L.A. with visions of having a career in show business, and they are determined to do whatever they can to not do any real work -- even if that means a lifetime of being no more than an extra and a paid audience-member.
To give you an idea of how eager people are to get paid to do nothing in Hollywood, here is how a typical show might work: a group of 250 people will line up in the morning to be the audience for a show. After four hours or so, that group will be sent home and another group of 250 will be brought in to watch the afternoon tapings of the same show. And there a group of hopefuls that that stand out on the sidewalk, waiting, just in case the show needs to fill extra seats. That's over 500 people on a typical day, showing up to clap on cue.
I’ll never forget a girl I had met -- beautiful girl, tall, voluptuous model-type -- who told me her family just didn’t understand that she had left her small town in Minnesota and come to Hollywood to pursue her dream. My thought at the time was, “Really? Your dream was sitting in an audience and watching TV for an $8.00 an hour?”
Whenever you do audience work, there is always a guy who is in charge of the crowd, usually a comedian. He tells jokes, plays music, and does his best to get audience-members pumped up for the show.
Often he will have volunteers from the audience come out and do dance-offs to songs like Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.” For some odd reason, it’s usually the gay men who win these competitions.
There is a lot of down time during the taping of a TV show. As noted above, a one-hour show might take four or five hours to shoot. This means the audience can get bored and restless. The best solution to this is a quick injection of sugar. The audience-wrangler usually carries a bag of candy, and tries to get the audience energized by throwing out pieces of candy out to different sections of the audience.
You’d be amazed how easy it is to get grown men and women to behave themselves by tossing them a Tootsie Roll or a pack of Smarties.
Most of the time audience work is quick and easy. Occasionally it is grueling. I’ll never forget the one taping I attended that went for about 14 hours. Sure, it means you get paid more money, but try sitting and watching anything for 14 hours and maintaining interest. It isn’t easy.
The hardest audience work I ever did was for a court show. The set resembled a real courtroom. All the audience-members sat on hard wooden benches, like the kind you might find in a courtroom. They taped five episodes that day, and we had to sit through every one of them on those incredibly uncomfortable benches.
I developed a new respect for people who actually show up for jury duty.
Most people who do audience work are fairly young. Generally they are looking for audience members who are 18 to 30 and good-looking. If you’ve ever watched an awards show and noticed that all the people in the audience were young and sexy, odds are they were paid to be there.
One time I worked in the audience for a show called OUR LITTLE GENIUS. This was easily the most boring game show ever. A bunch of super-smart nerdy kids would answer super-hard questions for the chance to win big money, while some adult experts would testify just how hard these questions really were. The show was hosted by Kevin Pollack, who later went on to host MILLION-DOLLAR MONEY DROP.
When I watched the taping, I was suspicious that it seemed staged and phony. The kids seemed a little too knowledgeable about their favorite subjects. Sure enough, shortly before the show aired, the parents of one of the contestants revealed that their kid had been given all the answers beforehand. (More accurately, the kids were given factoids to study, and told, "These are the items you might want to study extra hard." Kind of like when a teacher tells you, "This will be on the test.")
When word leaked that the "little geniuses" had been prepped in advance, an embarrassed Fox had only one possible course of action. After weeks on intense promotion, the network canceled OUR LITTLE GENIUS before a single episode ever aired.
On behalf of those of us who suffered through the taping of several episodes, I can safely assure the rest of the TV-watching public that you missed nothing! Have you ever seen the promos for a new show and thought, "I wouldn't watch that show if they paid me!" Well, I was paid to watch OUR LITTLE GENIUS, and trust me, no amount of money would have been enough to make it worth your while.
Not every TV show needs to pay their audience. THE TONIGHT SHOW, for example, gets so many eager tourists coming from out of town to see it every day, they don’t have to pay anyone to be there. AMERICAN IDOL is a cultural phenomenon. They also get their audience for free.
Sometimes a show turns out to be more popular than the network had expected and they find that it‘s not necessary to pay an audience to watch it. When NBC launched a new show called THE SING-OFF in 2009, they hired 200 people to be in the audience. But so many fans wanted to attend the taping of the show, NBC sent all the “professional” audience-members home. I was hired to be there that day, but me and my fellow audience-members were each paid $16.00 cash for our two hours of waiting in line before they sent us home.
When you live in L.A., you can’t always get acting jobs every day. Sometimes, you find yourself with a day off. On those days, making $40 to $60 cash for some easy audience work does not seem like such a bad gig.
One day, I got an audience gig that wound up costing me big money, and I quit doing it forever.
It all started when I got booked to be a contestant on a new game show called LATE NIGHT LIARS. This was one of the dumbest game shows I had ever seen. It involved listening to statements from four puppets and trying to figure out which one was telling the truth.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again -- game shows and puppets just don’t mix! But the show paid every contestant $500 just for showing up. And if you won, you had the chance to make a quick $10,000.
So despite my misgivings about the show, I decided to try out for the show. When I arrived at the audition, I was pleased to see my old friend Sarah Jane was doing the casting. She had previously cast me on THE SINGING BEE and CATCH 21. I’ve auditioned for her many times before and she always recognizes me.
I hadn't won any money on either of those other shows. Now here was her chance to to make it up to em by casting me on this dopey show. Sure enough, a few days later I got the call saying I was in the contestant pool for LATE NIGHT LIARS.
Two days before I was scheduled to tape my episode, I saw an ad on Craig’s List looking for audience members for a “new late night talk show.” I called my contact at SRO (Standing Room Only -- the company that provides audiences for TV shows) and told her I was willing to work as an audience-member, though I didn’t know which show it was for.
The next day, I showed up at the studio and was horrified to find that the show I was doing audience work for was LATE NIGHT LIARS -- the same series that I was scheduled to appear on the next day as a contestant!
I should have walked away at that point and skipped the audience work. The show had never aired before, so if I witnessed a taping in advance, it would have given me an unfair advantage over the other contestants.
My instincts told me to take the $50 loss for the day and come back the next day for the $500 and the chance to win 10 grand. But I figured I had already driven all the way there, and maybe nobody would notice me sitting among 100 people in the crowd.
No such luck. As soon as we were seated, I looked up and saw Sarah Jane --
I thought that maybe she wouldn’t see me. But I was seated in the third row. I felt like I had a giant spotlight shining on me. She noticed me instantly. There was still time for me to get up and go home. But I decided to stick it out.
Stupid mistake. I made $50 for being in the audience, and lost out on the $500 or more I would have made as a contestant.
As soon as I got home, I sent Sarah Jane an email where I explained to her what had happened. She wrote back saying that she had noticed me in the audience and that I would not be allowed to be on the show.
She added that there were no hard feelings, and she even offered me the chance to be on a new dance competition show that she was also casting. I don’t dance, so I respectfully declined, but I was gald that she wasn’t mad at me. I was sure that our paths would cross again on some other show in the future.
That day marked the end of my career as a professional audience member. I decided that if doing audience work was going to possibly cost me better-paying gigs, it wasn’t worth doing.
I don’t miss it. Sure, I sometimes watch TV at home and think, “I could be getting paid for this!” But then I think back to the time I was waiting in line outside of a studio, getting ready to do some audience work. A tour bus drove by with a sarcastic driver. It was one of those cheesy Hollywood sightseeing tours that the out-of-towners eat up.
The bus driver looked over at me and the other people, in line and said over his loudspeaker, “Thank you for getting paid to clap.”
It was a funny line, one that he probably used every day. But none of us in line were laughing. How dare he mock our noble profession! We were professional audience-members, dammit. We had a proud tradition of laughing and clapping on cue.
Sure, we were only making $8.00 an hour. But we clapped like we were getting at least $12.00!
I’m not ashamed that I got paid to watch TV. Heck, I once met an L.A. resident who told me who was doing a sleep study.
Getting paid to sleep? Hmmm. Maybe that's the REAL American dream!