In the eye of the beholder

Hollywood invaded Jersey last week, and — like the eager natives of 1492 that I was taught about in my pre-PC elementary school — many of us couldn't wait to be discovered. As Montezuma could tell you, however, being discovered has some pretty severe drawbacks.

Sure, I was as intrigued as any Princetonian by the possibility of turning on the 13-to-24 female viewing demographic with a star turn on "The Real World." I'd be the witty, intellectual one — the peacemaker who, through a combination of worldly wisdom and raw sex appeal, would be able to get the racist Austrian firearms collector and the psoriatic lesbian Eskimo princess to end their otherwise endless bickering. But as visions of guest-hosting TRL flittered momentarily through my head, I was suddenly struck by a shudder of downright Kierkegaardian terror. The price of fame is to be filmed 24/7 by a film crew with a far greater interest in stirring up a non-scripted soap opera than in preserving my basic mental health as I remain trapped in a house with seven certified sociopaths. Needless to say, I was not in line outside Triumph last Thursday.

Many, however, do not share my Sartrean nightmares. (Perhaps the average MTV viewer has yet to read "Huis Clos" in the original French. The translations favored by today's teenyboppers, after all, simply don't do the text justice). Among them is a good friend and even better colleague of mine who decided to take the Triumph plunge. Here is a guy who has a real chance at making it to reality TV: smart, funny, stunningly attractive and, most importantly, a highly skilled political scientist with an expertise in the short-lived Bolivian juntas of the fifties and sixties. After breezing his way through a ten-on-one group interview, this highly-qualified Teck wannabe made it past the first cut and was handed a fourteen-page application. "Don't call us," the Videocracy told him. "We'll call you."

As my colleague (who, for reasons that are soon to become obvious, but for now can function as a clever bit of foreshadowing, will have to remain anonymous) waited by the telephone Friday, I decided to try another, less ambitious route to fame and fortune — the open auditions for extras in the Russell Crowe movie that will be filming here next month. Why the star of "Gladiator" feels that the next logical move in his career as an action-adventure hero is to play a schizophrenic Princeton mathematician is beyond me, but the ad said they were looking for authentic-looking grad students, and I'm about as authentic as they come.

Sure enough, once he had us all packed into McCosh 10, Ron Howard's casting director let the assembled throng know that what he was looking for in what he called (I'm not kidding) "background talent" was, first and foremost, "realism." Strangely, however, when he asked all the male Princeton students to the stage, he called us to step forward one or two at a time in what was, as far as I could tell, descending order of physical attractiveness. And while the first few gorgeous guys called had their photos taken individually, the rest of us gorgons had a series of group Polaroids taken in which any unusually "realistic" Princetonians would be about as easy to spot as Waldo.

Nursing my wounded ego later that day, I ran into my Puckish colleague, who quickly revealed that he had made it through a second round of MTV auditions. He was urged to be discreet about it, but it was becoming increasingly clear that this guy now had a very good chance of finding out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. The question was: If the network made him the offer, would he agree to bare his soul on basic cable?

If only I resembled my Aryan Adonis of a friend more than I do a Romanian hunchbacked leper, then I too might be faced with such dilemmas. As it stood, however, my rejection by the superficial glitterati earlier that day had left me in a decidedly anti-Hollywood funk, and I strongly counseled my colleague against accepting any possible offer. I tried to convince myself that my advice stemmed more from my earlier abhorrence for "The Real World" than it did from my newly acquired resentment of the photogenic. Upon reflection, it probably did.

Still, it sure would be cool to be able to hang out in a camera-filled, Ikea-furnished dream home any time I'm feeling a bit exhibitionistic. And if I can't achieve fame on my own, perhaps I can make my mark in TV Land as the buddy of a beautiful Bolivianist.