Oreck - 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 Jacksons dad, and got a waterfall to flow backward so I

SHARON ORECK

VIDEO SLUT

Sharon Oreck is a film, video, and commercial producer. Between 1986 and 2000 she was the owner-operator of O Pictures. She is an Academy Award nominee and the recipient of a Grammy Award, two Women in Film Awards, and several MTV awards. She lives in Los Angeles.

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 Jacksons Dad,

and Got a Waterfall to Flow Backward So I Could Bring

Rock Videos to the Masses

SHARON ORECK

FABER AND FABER, INC.

An affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright 2010 by Sharon Oreck

All rights reserved

Distributed in Canada by D&M Publishers, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

First edition, 2010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Oreck, Sharon.

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 Jacksons dad, and got a waterfall to flow backward so I could bring rock videos to the masses / Sharon Oreck.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-86547-986-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Oreck, Sharon. 2. Motion picture producers and directorsUnited StatesBiography. 3. Music videosProduction and direction. I. Title.

PN1998.3.O74A3 2010

791.430232092dc22

[B]

2009043062

Designed by Abby Kagan

www.fsgbooks.com

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

This is a true story, but some names have been changed to protect privacy.

To Bill, Savannah, Tina,
Harper, Tess, and William
for being the loves of my life.
But even more to
Josh,
who saved me.

The Sacred Time Line
Leading to Me (and Rock Videos)

The Sacred Time Line
Leading to Rock Videos (and Me)

Packing List for Four-Month Visit to the Florence
Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers (and Others)

The (Nineteen) Sacred Steps Leading to
Making a Rock Video

VIDEO SLUT

I ts December 12, 1988, and Im just finishing up lunch with an egregiously hairy, three-hundred-and-forty-pound Geffen Record Company executive whos swaddled in an immaculate knee-length white silk Indian kurta that turns out to be a precise color match for the pearl-handled revolver that he whips out of his size ninety-nine dhoti pantaloons while were waiting for the parking valet to roll up with his Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud.

Et voil! Rod Stovington snorts through his two-inch plank of Santa-Christ facial hair, which is currently flecked with spit, tomato skin, and tiny bits of lacto-vegetarian nut loaf. I always carry a .357 Magnum, just in case Axl Rose stops taking his lithium and tries to, like, fuckin impale me with a machete again.

Since he has immediate access to a loaded handgun and has recently awarded me two rock video contracts worth a quarter of a million dollars, I elect not to mention that Rod looks like a deranged three-thousand-year-old Norse deity after a six-week crack binge before I jump into my battered, bird shitencrusted forest-and-black Saab convertible and wave bye-bye. Then I roll approximately 2,050 feet to the threshold of O Pictures, my hip, happening, totally eighties rock video and commercial production boutique, conveniently located at the ugliest, most architecturally incoherent end of East Melrose Avenue, between Paramount motion picture studios and the Hollywood Theatrical Car Painting Center.

Im lucky I was too terrified to eat my truffled risotto at lunch today, because now Im still thin enough (if I only drink watermelon juice for the next three days) to wear that size-four, lime green, fancy French mermaid dress that I just bought to wear to Madonnas surprise party this weekend for famous movie star Warren Beatty at her recently redecorated, super-sophisticated, white-on-white Bel Air pied terre! I muse to myself. Im also super lucky that I bought my $800 outfit with a postdated company check because itll bounce like a lowrider on Saturday night if anyone tries to cash it before next February!

Although I own a (purportedly) successful, top-tier, totally professional rock video and commercial company that takes in (a rumored) $20 million a year, I am actually poised at the gaping abyss of bankruptcy and shame, due to questionable insurance claims, catastrophic production overages, and the kind of insanely outsize workers compensation suits that are always being filed by the kind of overly litigious methamphetamine addicts who we always hire to be rock video extras because theyre the only kind of people wholl take $50 for a seventeen-hour workday.

Since Im a (ridiculously) optimistic kind of person, I joyously ram my nonluxury vehicle into my undersized parking space and strut with (false) pride and (faked) confidence toward my (utterly bitchin) silk-screened double doors just as they fling open to disgorge a large, scary clutch of disgruntled twenty-five-year-old women who all happen to be sporting suspiciously similar faux-platinum hair bobs and chocolate-brown Sophia Loren fuck-me slips.

Well hello, adorable and athletic fake-Madonna stunt double applicants! I recognize them immediately. Thanks so much for what Im sure were your amazing auditions, which I unfortunately missed, due to an important preexisting appointment with a renowned recording industry sociopath! I hope your experience at my company was pleasurable all the same!

The stunt doubles glare at me with an unsettling degree of aggression before they stomp off into the smog, like bleachedblonde lady Spartans exiting a successful peace conference.

Not. Fucking. Amazing. Their spokesperson barks at me while attempting to trap my head in the door. Although stunt doubles are psychologically sensitive, like actors, theyre physically insensitive, like athletes, with a strong desire to slam you into a wall and fuck you exactly where you never wanted to be fucked just because your company declined to hire them.

I run away, fast, up the new fake-marble stairwell that leads into the old brick-and-stucco photographers studio that used to look like a decaying New York slum right before we borrowed fifty thousand bucks to make it look like a peeling Caribbean tenement instead. The complex, love/hate affair with money and privilege that defines the late 1980s has led my company to a bold, pseudopoverty design statement that unequivocally declares that were living in a shithole because we can afford to live in a shit-hole and not because we have to live in a shit-hole.

Jeepers! I scream with joy as I hit the second floor 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 its 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 Saint n Super-Vixen who will get to simulate sex with Madonna on a down-at-the-heels church altar in order to end national racism, encourage world peace, and promote the ultimate salvation of the universe until the end of time.