I Was On MTV's Made!

Back in 2004 I was living in St. Louis and worked in my free time as a stage manager for St. Louis Shakespeare. I was getting ready to stage manage their production of Richard III and was preparing to assist the director with the auditions when I got a phone call from the company's Artistic Director. She informed me that MTV would be at auditions with two young ladies who were planning to audition, as Richard III does require some young ladies to perform in it. I said eloquently, "Uhm what? MTV?" Turns out the ladies were a part of MTV's reality show, Made, which I hadn't actually heard of till that phone call. The story was, there were two sisters, Megan and Katelyn, who were a year apart in age and both wanted to be actresses. They were being coached by a local acting coach, were going through stage combat training with a local teacher, were going to be flown out to audition for a small part on a soap in LA, and so on.

My initial reaction was concern; I was concerned that MTV expected us to automatically cast the girls but was reassured that we were under no obligation, and that either way it made for a good story, and a good training experience for young wannabe actors. I was told to proceed with auditions as usual.

So the day of the auditions rolls around and they're going fine and then the volunteer working at the table says "ok, the MTV folks are here since the girls are up." The camera woman came in first, and she was was really quite kind. She assured us that she wasn't going to get in the way or spin it in a negative way, that we should just audition them like anyone else and then after the audition we'd be asked a few questions on camera or they'd record our (usually) internal conversation about their auditions. She wanted the whole experience to be as normal as possible and told us to treat it like we would an audition for any other young, mostly inexperienced, actors. They wanted to get a good TV story, but what struck me is that she seemed genuinely interested in providing a real life and supportive experience for budding young artists - it didn't read to me like she was hoping for some kind of spectacular crash and burn TV-worthy experience. I thought that was pretty cool because I was actually kind of concerned about it, never having seen an episode of the show, but was aware that most "reality" TV thrives on ridiculous humiliation.

MTV At 30: A Look Back At The MTV VJs

This list was originally published on August 17, 2010. But you knew we had to dust this one off and bring it back this week!

Here are our Top 12 MTV VJs:

12. Mark Goodman
11. Carson Daly
10. Riki Rachtman
9. Adam Curry
8. John Sencio
7. "Downtown" Julie Brown
6. Kennedy

MTV At 30: Remembering MTV

We asked people to share their MTV memories. Here are some of the best:

Dancing around the living room to Madonna's Borderline. The video inspired that Year's Halloween costume- lace gloves, spandex.
	--@Sashalyn
	We didn't yet have cable, but my cousins did. We were transfixed from the first moment we saw MTV. Back at the beginning, it didn't have commercials. We sat there for hours, ignoring the rest of our family. It was the most amazing thing. We had withdrawal when it was time to go home.
		--@Daddy Geek Boy
The thing about MTV going live is this: It's like a cool party. Not everyone was ballsy or insightful enough to attend, but in retrospect everyone tells you they were there, thinking it gives them some sort of cultural street cred. Because it does: Nothing has been the same since the moon man first came bouncing across our screens.
	--@Jett Superior

 
Got a memory of your own? Share it in the comments!

MTV At 30: Sifl And Olly, "Fake Blood"

ROCK!

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The Man Who Defined The Music Video: Our Interview With Steve Barron

When you think about the most iconic music videos of all time, what comes to mind? There have been some great videos in the last couple of decades, but invariably the ones that are most often referenced are from the first decade of MTV. There was a freshness to music videos of that period, often wildly experimental and with a lighter touch than the average over-produced Lady Gaga video. And they were everywhere, swirling 24/7 on MTV and finding their way into network programs, shopping malls, and Saturday morning cartoons. There's a reason those videos stick with us after so many years, despite how crude many seem in comparison to what you see today, and it's largely because of the brilliance of some wickedly talented directors who were defining the genre on the fly.

What not everyone knows, though, is how much of that iconic list was the inspiration of one man. His name is Steve Barron, and he was the creative force behind some of the most memorable videos of all time. A director could have made his name off any one of these videos—"Don't You Want Me?" "Billie Jean," "Summer of '69," "Money for Nothing," "Rough Boy," "Take On Me"—but Steve Barron did all of them, and many more. His artistic vision practically defined the visual template of my youth, as it did for so many other people of our generation. And on the 30th anniversary of MTV, he was gracious enough to sit down with us at Culture Brats and tell us about his experience, his art, and his role in the birth of a genre.

Thank you so much for taking the time out of your schedule to speak with me and all of us at Culture Brats.
No problem

You directed some of the most famous music videos of the early years of MTV. How did you get into that, especially at a time when directing music videos wasn't an obvious career path?
Yeah, it wasn't a clearly defined route, and it wasn't really a premeditated thing either. It just sort of happened by my start as a camera assistant and technician in films in London. I was actually very young getting into the business. By the time I was 20 or 21, I was doing some pretty big movies as the camera assistant, and when I was working on movies in the UK like Superman. I was living the 21-year old social life in London. I was meeting bands and people who were in the music business—as you do, out and about—and the more I met, the more I chatted with them. I was always a big fan of music; I just kind of got pulled into that world.

It was at a phase [when] they weren't called videos. This was like 1976, really, and they were promotional films. They seemed to be being done sporadically by the record companies who were frustrated by not having any outlet for them. But they were still making them just the same. I jumped onto that really by ignorance as much as anything, because the music world didn't understand what the film world did, and the film world didn't really understand what the music world did. The fact that I was a clapper loader and I was on this massive movie...at the time they weren't really distinguishing between the clapper loader and the director. The fact that I was working on the film gave me a certain amount of credibility. I was able to put together, through my knowledge of cameras primarily, little shoots for bands. The first one I really did was for The Jam. That's how it all sort of began: by chance, wanting to work with music but without a clear path.

MTV At 30: A Look Back At Madonna

This was originally published on Culture Brats on July 20, 2010. But nothing says early MTV like Madonna videos, so we're playing it again! Here are our eighteen favorite Madonna videos:

18. "Lucky Star"
17. "Justify My Love"
16. "Burning Up"
15. "Cherish"
14. "Ray Of Light"
13. "Express Yourself"
12. "Crazy For You"
11. "Bad Girl"
10. "True Blue"
9. "Open Your Heart"
8. "Get Into The Groove"
7. "Music"

My Favorite MTV Moment: Vanilla Rampage

My now husband and I were home watching some TV one evening back in 1999 and ran across an MTV special that looked kind of entertaining: Top 25 Lame Videos. It was hosted by a group of comedians: baby Jon Stewart, Janeane Garofolo, Denis Leary, and Chris Kattan. The premise was that MTV had fans vote on the cheesiest videos ever aired, the comics would mock them, and then the videos were banned for life (Ha! It's funny that MTV thought they'd continue to play music videos!).

So everything's fine and dandy till they get to video #9, "Ice, Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice (Rob Van Winkle). For this video they went a different route. They invited the man himself to come on and host his segment. So they kind of awkwardly watched the video together; the comedians were polite enough to not rip the video in Rob's presence, then handed him a bat to ceremonially destroy the tape of his video. Well, this is how it went down:



My husband and I looked at each other and said "what just happened?" We kept watching because we were pretty sure that nobody had expected him to go flat out insane on the set like that. Jon had a cut on his hand from the flying debris. Janeane looked genuinely terrified for pretty much the rest of the show; she started chain smoking like crazy. It was such a hilariously weird moment. I've wondered since then if Garofalo starts shaking when she hears that song (or even the opening from "Under Pressure") because she seemed so completely freaked out.

Did anyone else happen to witness this moment?

You Down Wit' MTV?

God, I loved this.

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