Video Slut: How I Shoved Madonna Off an Olympic High Dive, Got Prince into a Pair of Tiny Purple Woolen Underpants, Ran Away from Michael Jackson's Dad, and Got a Waterfall to Flow Backward So I Could Bring Rock Videos to the Masses
Sharon Oreck
Language: English
Pages: 159
ISBN: 2:00325476
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
When video killed the radio star, Sharon Oreck was calling the shots.
Video Slut takes an irreverent look behind the scenes of the music-video industry during its eighties heyday. Oreck, one of the top producers of all time, bluffed her way into the business with no experience whatsoever and went on to produce more than six hundred video shoots with Madonna, Sting, Mick Jagger, Prince, and several members of the increasingly unstable Jackson family—not to mention a cadre of delinquent caterers, deranged interns, self-absorbed record executives, and malfeasant animal trainers.
Oreck also shares the at turns hilarious, biting, and poignant story of her origins as a single teen mother, disowned by her middle-class parents, and of her journey from welfare to kung fu movie sets to film school. She approaches her own delinquency and that of the superstars she encountered with humor and candor. The result is an acerbic but sympathetic account of the outrageous effects of fame, power, and money on people in the entertainment business. No one is spared, especially herself.
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landing and unexpectedly encounter a teeming mass of tall, well-built young black men, suggestively garbed in the scanty, tattered robes of ancient Christian martyrs. I guess there is a God after all, and it’s not the one my fathers shed their foreskins for. Then I remember that today is casting day for the “Like a Prayer” video and that what appear to be hunky holy men are actually handsome Hollywood hopefuls who are preparing to vie for the role of Super-Studly African American Iconographic
6:00 a.m., and I had to get up by 3:00 so I could show up by 4:00. As befitted my new top status, I was expected to get there first, leave last, and tell everybody how attractive they looked in between. This meant a lot of lying, but at least I didn’t have to pick up the doughnuts, because the sacred morning meal had now been delegated to my laziest, most overqualified production assistant, who had recently graduated summa cum laude from a highly selective Ivy League university. As a general
Mexican American who just happened to have fresh blood and pus dripping down her arms. “Don’t even look at me, bitch!” Carlotta sneered. Perched on a ripped barcalounger, Carlotta was removing a homemade tattoo from her forearm by applying a lit Marlboro to it before stabbing it with a rusty stainless-steel razor blade. “I hear any more a’ that fuckin’ white pussy shit, and I kick your big white pussy ass around the big fuckin’ block, too!” “Right! No more stupid white pussy shit!” I was
well stick with us.” I wasn’t so sure. Because of the Florence Crittenton antiadoption stance, I had already been besieged by agencies that all assured me my child would be better off without me. At no time in my life, before or since, have I been treated so much like a T-bone in a kennel full of rottweilers. Finally, I settled on the Children’s Aid Society, which guaranteed to provide my nestling with loving, compassionate parents—who would not, by the way, be creeps, criminals, or slutty
go my Tourette’s-ish bad-advertising response instead. “Why don’t you just stick a rich movie star in front of a background projection of a writhing cosmos and I’ll bring the fucking doughnuts?” “Barbarian!” the agency producers would snipe at me in horror. My halfhearted attempts at bold, illusion-busting openness were a slap in the face to the marketing professionals who had spent six years at Ivy League colleges so they could hone their degrees, get a job, and trick people into buying shit