Reality Matters_ 19 Writers Come Clean About the Shows We Can't Stop Watching - Anna David [45]
The reality of casting down-at-the-heels celebrities lends Sober House an added conflict. The cast is battling both their addictions and an almost inevitable slide into obscurity—a premise that hasn’t always generated an outpouring of audience sympathy. When Vern Troyer, the diminutive actor known for playing Mini Me in the Austin Powers films, careened drunkenly around the Surreal Life house in his Hoveround and then peed into a closet, it didn’t exactly register as an anguished cry for help. And sometimes televising a celebrity’s struggles has an entirely negative effect. Breaking Bonaduce followed onetime Partridge Family star Danny Bonaduce as his life spiraled out of control with steroids, then alcohol, and eventually an on-camera suicide attempt. The public reaction was one of surprising hostility. I know this because my friend Phil looks exactly like Bonaduce. When the show aired, Phil was subjected to much misdirected criticism. If strangers stare at him for even a second, Phil would reflexively scream, “I’m not Danny Bonaduce!” When Phil once met the real Bonaduce, he says, the troubled actor walked over and hugged him before he could say a word.
Perhaps the reason Sober House affected me, when other shows couldn’t, is that I can relate to that world. After finally kicking drugs and alcohol for good back in the eighties, I actually did a stint working at a rehab facility. I know well the insanity of those places. Besides the near-weekly drug relapses, there was sex between staff and patients, more than one suicide, and an epic fistfight between two staff members after one insinuated that the other’s girlfriend had been spotted at the “Toto house,” a near-legendary site of cocaine-fueled hedonism owned by a now-deceased member of the popular soft rock band Toto. I also know some of the people on the show. Counselor Bob Forrest is an old friend from the LA punk scene. When I was sixteen, he watched, unmoved, as I took off my clothes and stumbled into a swimming pool while overdosing on quaaludes. In my world, that’s like going to college together.
And while it’s true that I haven’t sung on American Idol like cast member Nikki McKibbin, or starred in a film called Funbag Fantasies like Mary Carey, I certainly did a lot of drugs and spent a lot of time in rehabs. I would like to believe I was vastly more serious about my recovery than the people on the show, but the fact is, I acted just like them. I used drugs in every rehab except for the last, and once jumped out of a second-story hospital window (I was aiming for a tree) wearing a flimsy hospital gown and no pants in a desperate attempt to get high again. Nothing says stoic self-control like picking twigs out of your ass while trying to flag down cars.
A horror movie is really only as good as its monster and the same is true for reality shows. For many, the designated villain on the first season of Sober House was David Weintraub, the manager and then-boyfriend of porn actress Mary Carey. He’s definitely a more subtle instigator then some of the classic reality villains. Puck on The Real World: San Francisco antagonized another character for having AIDS and getting too much attention. Spencer Pratt of The Hills represents everything wrong with humanity and makes me yearn for an all-consuming fiery apocalypse.
And as repugnant as Weintraub seems, I also find him fascinating. His air of superiority, and the fact that he openly dates his porn-star client—and insists on escorting