I Want My MTV

by Craig Marks

  TABITHA SOREN: They gave me a mix of assignments. I flew to Colorado to interview Tom Petty, and he wouldn’t talk to me. His manager said, “Tom is sick.” I thought, This is rude. I am not going home without an interview. Fuck that. I was relentless, and finally the manager called MTV. They apologized to him for me doing my job. I got a call from the news department: “You’re pissing everybody off.” Well, did you send me here to get an interview with Tom Petty or not? Christ, if Bill Clinton can talk to me, so can Tom Fucking Petty.

  ALISON STEWART: Tabitha had a lot thrown at her at a young age, and I don’t know if she handled it as well as she could have. I’ll say that diplomatically. Professionally, we were terrific, but personally, we clashed quite a bit. She got a lot of attention, and you know what happens to young people who get a lot of attention. She could be hard on people behind the scenes who were trying to help her, and I wasn’t ever sure why. There’s no reason to be short with a cameraman. There’s no reason to yell at an intern.

  ADAM CURRY: Her nickname was Crabitha. That’s what we called her. She was cranky and nasty and gnarly.

  LINDA CORRADINA: Tabitha could be moody and crabby, for sure. We’d send her out on pieces and she’d come back with the goods—breaking down “What is a caucus?” and “What is a primary?” She was doing a job way beyond her experience, and doing it well, but it took a toll, I’m sure.

  TABITHA SOREN: After the primaries, there was a lull in the news. I was at odds with the MTV publicity department, because I was being interviewed all the time. I was on Letterman, The Tonight Show, The Today Show, Good Morning America, any CNN show. No one was ever patronizing towards me; I think I was more in danger of patronizing them. Sorry, that sounds kind of jerky.

  ALISON STEWART: I think our coverage changed the election. MTV helped Bill Clinton get himself elected. A lot of people were saying, “MTV is biased for Clinton.” But he was the one candidate made most available to us.

  JUDY McGRATH: I loved the early ’90s era of MTV. It was among the lowest-rated eras of MTV, and among the most influential.

  Chapter 50

  “GETTING OUT OF THE MUSIC BUSINESS”

  THIS IS THE TRUE STORY . . . OF WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE REAL WORLD . . . TOOK OVER MTV . . . AND MADE MUSIC VIDEOS . . . OBSOLETE

  MTV HAD BEEN PLOTTING THEIR OWN VERSION OF a soap opera for years, and it finally arrived in May 1992. Except it wasn’t a soap opera, because MTV couldn’t afford scripts, costumes, actors, and sets. Instead, the original idea had mutated into The Real World, a show that invented the modern reality-TV show and brought landslide ratings to the network. Everyday people were the new rock stars.

  AMY FINNERTY: I saw flyers up around the halls of MTV for the casting of the first Real World, and I thought, Who the hell would sign up for something like that?

  TOM FRESTON: People asked me, “How did you come up with The Real World? That is genius.” It was just because we didn’t have any money.

  VAN TOFFLER: Joe Davola, Doug Herzog, and I looked at statistics about how much our audience watched soap operas during the day. So we said, “Let’s do a soap opera.”

  DOUG HERZOG: We decided to do a teen soap opera, with a rock n’ roll attitude. Fred Silverman, of all people, the former president of NBC, recommended a woman named Mary-Ellis Bunim, who came from the world of soap operas.

  JONATHAN MURRAY, TV producer: : Mary-Ellis had produced daytime soaps like As the World Turns, and she was working with MTV on St. Marks Place, a scripted show about young people on the Lower East Side. When we put together a budget, MTV was like, “Oh my god, we can’t spend this much money. We get our music videos for free, and now we’re going to spend $300,000 for a half hour of television?”

  LAUREN CORRAO: It would have cost around $500,000 a week. In comparison, Remote Control was about $15,000 an episode.

  JONATHAN MURRAY: But Mary-Ellis and I saw this as our big break, and we couldn’t let it go. So we pitched a new idea: six young, diverse people living together. We’d put them in a loft, follow their lives with cameras and create half-hour episodes. There’d be conflict and growth, and that would give us our story arc. We pitched it at breakfast and it was bought by lunch.

  LAUREN CORRAO: I’ll never forget, Mary-Ellis said, “What if you could do a soap opera with no actors and no writers?”

  JUDY McGRATH: Someone at Nickelodeon said, “You can’t put an unscripted soap opera on television!” Which immediately made me competitive and certain that we could.

  JONATHAN MURRAY: We delivered two twenty-two-minute pilot shows. MTV tested it, and it tested through the roof. And then we waited. And waited. They had six months to make a decision about giving us the go-ahead for season one, and they took all six months. I think they knew they were crossing a bridge that could change the channel forever. God, for the first ten years of The Real World, MTV never promoted the fact that the show was getting huge ratings, because they didn’t want it known that music videos weren’t getting huge ratings.

  KEVIN POWELL, cast member, The Real World: I was a freelance journalist, and I’d started writing about music. I was interviewing an R&B group called Joe Public at a diner in midtown Manhattan. They were four black guys who wore their hair the way we all did back then, in little twisties or high-tops. You know, beginning dreadlocks. A woman named Tracie Fiss came to our table and said, “I really like the way you guys look. We’re doing a documentary-type show for MTV, would any of you be interested?” I can’t say I watched a lot of MTV, but I took her card. I’d been a student leader at Rutgers University and was politically active, so I thought, If I try out for the show and get on—which was far-fetched—maybe it will lead to some college speaking appearances.

  ERIC NIES, cast member, The Real World: I was cast for The Real World through my modeling agency. I had no idea what I was getting into. I was twenty years old. I was going to clubs, having a good time. It was an opportunity to work with MTV, which could be a stepping stone for my career. And I was getting a free place to stay.

  KEVIN POWELL: Jon and Mary-Ellis had an incredible vision. Outside of An American Family on PBS in the ’70s, there wasn’t anything like it. I was really into their idea of combining documentary filmmaking with a soap opera. I thought it a fascinating social experiment.

  When Julie and I had our famous “race” argument on the sidewalk, we were so passionate about our positions that we were oblivious not only to the cameras, but to the crowd of people that had gathered. She was a Southerner, I was a Yankee, and we had completely different perspectives on the world. People have told me that was the first time they’d ever seen race talked about in that way on national television. People have written dissertations on our argument.

  ERIC NIES: I’d posed naked for a Bruce Weber book, and the producers decided to throw the book on the coffee table in our apartment for everybody to see. They felt they had to create conflict. But for me, it was all good. It grabbed me more attention and helped my career. Obviously, that’s what the show is all about.

  LAUREN CORRAO: Of that cast from the first season, Heather B. was a rap artist, Andre was in a rock band, Becky was a folk singer, Julie was a dancer. It fit into MTV’s pop culture universe. There was enough music on that first season to calm some of the fears about doing a non-music show.

  KEVIN POWELL: In September of ’92, we were flown to LA for the VMAs. You’re talking Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, Howard Stern—and then the cast of The Real World. And I swear, bro, the fans screamed for us as if we were the Beatles. That’s when I really knew the show was a game-changer.

  NICK RHODES: That’s really when MTV ended. That’s when it became entirely crap.

  SIMON LE BON: When you saw The Real World, you knew it was gone.

  JONATHAN MURRAY: When The Real World debuted in 1992, MTV was still mostly music videos. In fact, the show sometimes began at three minutes before the hour, or three minutes after the hour, depending on when a music video ended. When the first episode aired, we came o
ut of a 0.3 rating for the videos, and The Real World popped to a 0.9. We tripled our lead-in.

  ERIC NIES: We each made $1,400 for appearing on The Real World. It was completely unfair. That show made millions and millions of dollars for MTV. I made $1,400.

  STEVE ISAACS: I remember MTV saying there was no way to hold a steady rating when they played videos. If they played rock, rap fans would turn the channel, and vice versa. There was a schism in music.

  KEN R. CLARK: There was a time when I’d walk down a street in New York City wearing an MTV staff jacket, and people would yell, “Wow, man, MTV is so cool.” By the time we were airing Real World, people would yell “MTV sucks!” And a lot of us were starting to think it did.

  DOUG HERZOG: To show you what an idiot I am, when The Real World took off, I thought, Well, this can only work once. My thinking was, those kids who did the first season, they had zero expectations coming in. But since they’d become stars, the next group of kids were going to expect to become stars, too, and they’d be over the top and obnoxious and the audience wouldn’t want to see that. Wrong! That’s exactly what the audience wanted to see.

  LAUREN CORRAO: After the first season aired, kids wanted to be on the show as a means to an end. But that first group was not about that. We couldn’t even get anyone to kiss on camera that season. And now look what happens on the show.

  DAVE HOLMES: Have you seen the first season of The Real World lately? It seems like a fucking Ken Burns documentary from today’s perspective. The scenes and conversations go on forever. It’s like, you can’t believe how much shorter our attention spans have gotten since then.

  JUDY McGRATH: Academics were quick to latch on to The Real World. All of a sudden, I was getting invitations from universities, and people were writing that it was either the death of everything or the beginning of everything.

  KEVIN POWELL: Our season of The Real World opened a new chapter in television history. For our show to be part of American pop culture, that’s incredible.

  Still, it’s a mixed bag. On the one hand, I’m proud when people say to me, “Your conversation about race had an impact on my life,” or “Norman coming out and being an openly gay male on TV had an impact on me.” That’s important. But when people ask, “How can I get on reality TV?” I mean, come on, man. I’m in my forties. I’ve run for Congress twice. I could care less about that stuff.

  NICK RHODES: I saw a newspaper headline once that stuck with me: TOYS “R” US WANT TO GET OUT OF THE TOY BUSINESS. That’s what happened to MTV. They wanted to get out of the music business.

  LAUREN CORRAO: I still feel a little guilty about being the one responsible for the non-music shows.

  JOHN LACK: The Real World was the end of music as we know it on MTV.

  DOUG HERZOG: We didn’t know what to do with the kids from the first season. We felt responsible for them. We gave Eric Nies a job hosting The Grind. We hired Julie Oliver in HR, but she started looking up all the executives’ salaries and telling Bunim-Murray, so we fired her. Heather B worked on Yo! for a while. I bought a very bad painting from Norm.

  Chapter 51

  “LET’S GET CRAZY TONIGHT”

  TEARS, TEQUILA, AND BROKEN GLASS: MTV VIPs CELEBRATE THE FIRST DECADE

  TOM FRESTON: I threw a ten-year anniversary party at the Tribeca Grill in 1991, and invited John Lack and Bob Pittman and all the executives. People who had passed through, and crashed and burned, and hated each other, they all came together this night. We were upstairs in a private room, drinking tequila shots.

  FREDSEIBERT: I was looking at all these old, rich people in suits, thinking, Really? This is what I miss?

  JOHN LACK: Many of us hadn’t been together for five, six years. For a lot of people, MTV was their Camelot. It was the greatest time of their lives.

  TOM FRESTON: I toasted John Lack as the father of MTV and gave him a bottle of champagne. He was so emotional, being publicly recognized once again, in front of those people, that he was indeed the guy who had the idea.

  JOHN LACK: After I left MTV, history got a little altered. Bob Pittman began to think that he created the thing, and he went around telling everybody that it was his idea. So when Tom introduced me, I think he wanted to set the record straight in front of everyone. And he did.

  FRED SEIBERT: Tom was fucking awesome about giving John his due. For the first time among his peers, it was publicly acknowledged that John maybe hadn’t gotten the credit he deserved. And Bob raised his glass, too. It was good to get it out there like that, in front of everybody.

  ROBERT MORTON: When people were filing in, Pittman said to me, “Let’s get crazy tonight.” Sure. No problem. So after I made my toast, I took my glass and threw it against a wall, thinking, All right, this is crazy enough. At which point sixty people started throwing glasses at the wall.

  BOB PITTMAN: One of the MTV traditions was that we would shoot tequila and break the shot glasses. At my going-away party at the Cadillac Bar and Grill, paramedics had to come and stitch up people’s feet. The tenth anniversary party was at the Tribeca Grill, which is not the kind of restaurant where you throw glasses. But we all did, of course. Freston blamed it on me, which was okay, because he was still working there and I wasn’t.

  TOM FRESTON: It was crazy. Soon, everyone was standing up and throwing their glasses. It was like a Greek wedding. Management ran in and said, “Get the fuck out of here.” We ended up getting thrown out of the Tribeca Grill that night. It made Page Six.

  ROBERT MORTON: I was producing Late Night with David Letterman. When I went back to the Tribeca Grill with friends, the owner, Drew Nieporent, didn’t talk to me for years. I was the one Pittman blamed. He said I incited the breaking glass. That pussy hung me out to dry, but he incited the goddamn thing. I tease him about it every time I see him.

  BRIAN DIAMOND: Tom Freston had a great line that night. He stood up with John Lack on one said and Bob Pittman on the other side, and said, “MTV: It’s a club you can’t get into, and you can’t get out of.”

  Chapter 52

  “FAT CITY”

  THE BUBBLE BURSTS ON MUSIC VIDEOS’ GOLDEN ERA

  INITIALLY, MTV WAS SOMETHING YOU COULD FIND ONLY by watching MTV. As its influence spread, its uniqueness dissipated.

  After MTV proved the value of a teen market, Rupert Murdoch and Barry Diller launched the Fox network, which by 1993 had seven nights of prime-time programming, and launched beloved shows: Married . . . with Children, 21 Jump Street, The Arsenio Hall Show, The Simpsons, Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, and The X-Files. Robert Morton, an early MTV employee who left because he thought the network would fail, was executive producing Late Night with David Letterman, which brought anti-authoritarian absurdity to mainstream NBC. Specialization became rampant across cable—MTV’s comedy programming had to compete with an entire comedy network, Comedy Central, and its news department vied with E! Entertainment Television for celebrity interviews.

  Simultaneously, as MTV attitude became pervasive, videos began to feel commonplace. The idea of MTV—as something new and sheltered, hidden from adults or older siblings—had passed away; once the initial audience matured, the following wave of schoolkids didn’t feel the same private delight. They had Nintendo and Sega, which revitalized home gaming; Mosaic soon made the Internet accessible. Active technology was supplanting passive technology. Offering MTV to a kid in 1993 was like offering a board game to a kid in 1981.

  Also, videos had begun to lose their spark. Most of the people who created the video industry agree that by ’92, the Golden Age was winding down. Videos were now carefully controlled by record labels, minimizing the chance of imaginative work. Large budgets substituted for fresh ideas. The arrival of digital editing, in the form of Avid, made it easy for directors to flit breathlessly between images. “Directors started putting as many cuts as they could into five seconds, but none of the cuts meant anything,” says David Mallet. “Music videos were the first genre to encompass nonlinear editing. That’s when
they started to go bang bang bang bang bang. It got hugely abused.”

  Novice directors increasingly saw videos as a way to showcase their own talents, rather than the band; music video had become an internship for Hollywood employment. In December 1992, MTV began listing directors’ names in chyron credits. Videos had been ads for a song, or a band, or a way of living and dressing. Now that their names were credited at the beginning and end of each video, directors were also making ads for an additional product: themselves.