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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Dave -- the normal guy on the rancidly brilliant "Paradise Hotel" -- talks to Salon about giving up three months of his life to be another test rat in Fox's reality show experiment.
Oct 1, 2003 | While "Paradise Hotel" made it to the top of the "Fall of Rome" checklist within hours of its premiere, no one could have predicted how gracefully it would evolve from Pointless Make-Out Show into Unpredictable Tequila-Fueled Shouting Match. In other words, Fox blithely chose this aimless trash solely on its merits as aimless trash, never knowing that it was precisely that aimlessness and that trashiness that would uncover a fourth dimension of reality splendor. Thanks to this happy accident, the residents of paradise aren't forced to scale obstacle courses or solve big puzzles as they might on other reality shows, freeing up their time for more important things, like insulting each other. Then, following bizarre new rules created on the fly by the show's producers, they spitefully vote each other off.
Indeed, "Paradise Hotel" has emerged a beautiful butterfly (note the prescient imagery during the opening credits), a butterfly of pettiness and spitty insults, a transcendent symbol of fruity mixed drinks and insecurity and carefully applied eyeliner. This humble show has become paradise to those who carry around something sick and rotten inside of them, some corroded remnant of an Us vs. Them junior high school mentality, where a clique of hairless thugs and outright morons screeches and wails and plots ineffectually against a group of relatively normal people. Mercifully, this clique on "Paradise Hotel" -- dubbed "The Originals," and populated by bloated dimwits and warmongering pretty boys -- suffered major losses over the past few weeks at the hands of "The Barbies," my personal favorites for their tendency not to act like preteens experiencing 'roid rage.
The emergence of smart, regular-looking guy Dave Kerpen as the driving force behind "The Barbies" is perhaps just as unexpected and strange as the show's emergence as one of the most transfixing reality experiments of the year. Given the fact that Dave long ago secured his spot at the center of my personal TV universe, I was admittedly giddy when he agreed to take some time out between organizing viewing parties and chatting on radio shows to speak with me from his grandmother's place in New York City. While those unfamiliar with "Drunk Asshole Hotel" might think my excitement unwarranted, those who watch know that, between its unusual format, excellent casting, clever (if repetitive) editing, well-constructed narrative arcs, and the flat-out unhinged behavior of its inhabitants, "Paradise Hotel" is easily the most absurd, unpredictable show on TV.
So, did you win?
Bad first question!
Yeah, I know.
I can't tell you anyway. I'm under contract.
Oh good! So. What was it like to spend almost two months with those awful, awful people?
Ha! Um. It's funny you should ask that, because I just got finished reading a TV interview that several of them did in which they bashed me.
They bashed you?
They bashed me. Even after the show, even after complaints of editing, several of the so-called Originals just went on Phoenix TV and bashed me. And the reason I bring it up in response to your question is that, I absolutely refuse, under any circumstances, to speak badly about people in any way. I'm not going to.
Come on!
I will say that living there for three months, away from friends and family and with no contact with the outside world, was one of the greatest challenges of my life. One thing that made it extremely difficult was just how different I was from virtually everyone there.
That much is definitely clear. It must've been challenging to take the abuse that you took, though, for example when Alex was making fun of your ears ...
Yeah, that was difficult, but by far the most difficult experience that you've seen to date ... Of course, everyone's coming back, so, the abuse begins again.
Hold it right there. The evicted guests come back again?
Yes. Everyone's in the final episode.
Oh Jesus.
It's their return, once more. They vote for the winner.
Oh god. That's not fair!
Well, what's fair? The thing is, a lot of people, especially viewers, even very intelligent ones, even close friends and family members of mine, looked at this too much like a reality show and too much like a game. And of course, I was playing the game and I was trying to win. But in reality, what "Paradise Hotel" was, or at least what it billed itself as, is the first docu-soap -- you know, a soap opera featuring real people -- rather than a game show.
Obviously it was a game, but the game was mostly a structure to create characters. And to create good and evil and hurt and sadness and love and conflict and all those sorts of things that you would see in a soap opera. So that's what I would say in response to the "That's not fair" comment. I mean, of course it's not fair, but a lot of things weren't fair. It wasn't fair when they [the evicted guests] came back the first time. It wasn't fair to, uh ...
To shift the rules around left and right.
To change the rules as we went along.
