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THE BIRTH OF "SPEW"
In October of 1994, I was in my first year at NYU's Graduate Acting Program. I found myself with a lot of free time at night, which I spent watching public access. Between shows, Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN), the public-access provider, flashed their address. On a whim, I decided to see what it would take to get a public-access show of my own. It began as simply as this: I sent MNN a letter, saying, "I'd like to produce a public-access television show. Please send any relevant information." A week later, I got a two-page letter back. The second page was the application form. It asked for preferred time-slots, the title of my proposed show, and a brief description. Having no idea what my show might be, I chose an abstract name: "Spew." I wrote something about it being a media collage, asked for a prime time-slot, put the form in an envelope and mailed it. About a month later, MNN replied. "Starting January 4th, SPEW will air on Channel 17 every Tuesday at 10:30 PM."
I kid you not. For a good full minute of effort, I was set to broadcast to the artistic and financial center of the universe in a great time slot on a highly-trafficked channel. Now I just had a few details to cover. I needed a show.
Every Saturday morning by 10AM, I had to bring a tape to the MNN offices on 23rd Street. I developed a routine over the next few months where I would come home to my eight-foot by twenty-two-foot apartment after school, set up my ramshackle editing equipment, smoke a joint, and edit into the wee hours. Sometimes I'd get the video to 23rd Street just minutes under the wire. "Spew" did become a media collage of sorts. Because I had no access to decent microphones, I decided that the show would never feature a moment where I looked into the camera and spoke. If I was speaking, I'd run another video under it. My only physical appearances featured the light of an unseen television playing across my face while different audio played. But I get ahead of myself, and the part where my bad luck took over. The first episode of Spew was a bit of a wash. But one two-minute segment captured the spirit that would define the show.
I still had technical issues to work out, but I liked the grainy, washed-out effect of filming the television. You can see the heavy dust on the screen and, in some shots, the reflection of That Black Halogen Torch Lamp That Everyone Had in Their First Apartment.
About six episodes into its run, "Spew" hit its stride. I mastered the primitive technology of my video camera, and my editing became more fluid and fast-paced. I found that I could tell stories by layering tonal incongruencies. A children's show went well with a slasher film, I discovered, with a soundtrack perhaps by Enya. By flashing words on the screen, sometimes telling stories from an unseen narrator, otherwise random moments gained significance. And it never hurt to flash a millisecond of porn every now and then. I got a ten-dollar voicemail number and ran it on the screen several times during each show. I loved checking my messages when the show was over. The death threats grew dull after awhile, but I loved the drunk, debauched people who'd call and ramble for minutes at a time. I was invited to a gallery opening, and went! A hospital employee left a message from an operating room. I felt a thrill when a viewer complained the day I put up a rerun -- someone was watching me more than once! I once heard from a one-night trick-gone-bad, who recognized me from the screen and called, asking for another date. Another lonely guy called in almost every week. I called him "The Gland." He'd speak in a high-pitched, womanly voice, oozing with eroticism: "Spewie Spewie Spew -- your name rolls off my lips like buttah ..." A public access show about public access shows, "Channel Surfing USA," declared me one of the ten best shows of the year. I became friends with the show's producers, and met some of the other members of the public access circus. It was a preposterous, fun hobby, launching your 28 minutes into the void and wondering who was watching.
One day, about five months into the run, my bad luck showed up -- a version of the bad luck I experienced with Troy so many years ago. But instead of infringing on somebody's feelings, I was caught committing another kind of infringement.
Because "Spew" was a media collage, I needed media. So during the course of every week, I'd harvest the available channels for compelling images and audio to reassemble for the show. One week, I ran about two minutes of footage from "The Twentieth Century with Mike Wallace" -- hilarious footage of hippies in a hospital emergency room, tripping their balls off. The night the show aired, I was out with my friend Brendan at The Break, a bar on 20th and 8th (now the glorious "View"). There was a payphone on a pole, and at a few minutes after eleven, I called my voicemail to get my viewers' responses. The rest of the story is in the video below.
What, I must ask, was the PRODUCER of the Mike Wallace program doing watching my smutty, amateurish public access show? Was he scrolling by on his way to "Robin Byrd"? Was he considering hiring me for my editing prowess, until he caught me using their footage? Doesn't he sound unnaturally bitter? Was he doing cocaine? And this is where the story becomes, partly, about my bad luck: WHAT ARE THE CHANCES THAT THE PRODUCER OF THE SHOW I WAS STEALING FOOTAGE FROM WOULD BE WATCHING MY SHOW? In any case, I've always wanted to know his name. What a complete dickwad. If for some reason, Sir, you Google yourself with the search term of, say, "mike wallace producer," and come across my webpage, please email me. I'd love to chat with you. Or, say, "mike wallace producer dickwad" -- yes, I'm talking to you. Call me!
In any case, that incident spelled curtains for "Spew." The legwork required to mend my relationship with Manhattan Neighborhood Network was too onerous. And frankly, I was getting a bit tired of the grind. It takes rafts of people to make 22 minutes of subpar network television a week, and I was doing 28 minutes all by myself with one VCR and one video camera. I wanted my Friday nights back. So I set "Spew" free.
AFTERWORD
Recently, I discovered that "Mrs. Mouth" is back on the air, doing reruns of old episodes and even some fresh ones. "Marcia Steiner" was a dignified talk show that had the misfortune of running directly after me, and she's still cranking out episodes. Brandy Wine and Brenda a Go Go no longer produce "On Patrol," but they have a fantastic store in the East Village called "Howdy Do" (72 East 7th Street) with a highly evolved kitsch aesthetic. I shop there every Christmas. Robin Byrd runs the exact same episodes she was running in 1995. While the hairstyles have not aged well, it's a nostalgic immersion for New Yorkers of a certain era. Some of the same commercials still run, and there are some brilliant new ones -- my boyfriend Steve is especially fond of the one featuring a dumpy-looking M-to-F transsexual. She cavorts "erotically" under a woman's sassy, leering voiceover: "I don't know whether to call you 'Big Boy' or 'Big Girl,' but I do know that your body is MADE for sex!"
Public Access will never be the same. Rafts of struggling artists have been forced out of Manhattan to make room for I-bankers and their double-wide-strollered progeny. The Manhattan of the flea markets is gone. I used to declare that the city's wonderful, rough-and-tumble character is vanishing, but I now declare it vanished. Public access will never be the same because the people who made it just don't live in Manhattan any more. Much of Manhattan Neighborhood Network's current scheduling appears to be oriented toward public service. Yes, there are the occasional "Mrs. Mouths" every now and then, but whimsy seems to have lost out to earnest, civic-minded programming. Dull! And who even knows that public access exists, lost as it is among the hundreds and hundreds of channels we now have available? I miss my old New York.
After-AFTERWORD
Back in the day when I lived on West 14th Street, as I walked to my apartment for a night's editing, I'd pass the transvestite hookers on their way to work. I never minded them. They never bothered me, except for the occasional amusing observation as I passed. The tranny hookers are chased away, now, replaced by drunken, vomiting, wealthy party girls who dress just like tranny hookers, wishing to live a "Sex and the City" life that never really existed. And I wonder: we got rid of the hookers to make room for THEM? At least the trannies knew how to work the cobblestones in stiletto heels. And I never once caught a tranny hooker puking on the curb steps from my apartment building, like the Paris Hilton wanna-be's of today. I'm not sure what will save the creativity of Manhattan, and New York in general. It's an ugly time. I'll just put on some Mrs. Mouth and wait it out.
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I had one VCR, one television, but no
camera. So I visited "Nobody Beats the Wiz," a no-longer-present
electronics retailer with a branch across from NYU. I got a store
credit card, and bought a camera for eight hundred bucks that could
do primitive, two-color titling effects.