Waste of Space Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Author’s Note

  Part One: Pre-Production

  Development

  Casting

  Promotion

  Part Two: Production

  Episode #1

  Online

  Reception

  Episode #2

  Acclaim

  Episode #3

  Obsession

  Episode #4

  Damage Control

  Part Three: The Last Day

  Part Four: Post-Production

  Sample Chapter from WAX

  Buy the Book

  Singular Reads

  Read More from Gina Damico

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH on Social Media

  Copyright © 2017 by Gina Damico

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  Unaltered cover photos © by Trevillion Images and Shutterstock

  Cover design by Lisa Vega

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-0-544-63316-2

  eISBN 978-0-544-63331-5

  v1.0617

  DV8

  2375 Wilshire Boulevard

  Los Angeles, CA 91523

  * * *

  National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

  Charles B. Wang International Children’s Building

  699 Prince St.

  Alexandria, VA 22314

  May 9, 2016

  To Who It Might Concern:

  As per your request, enclosed are all relevant transcripts of recorded meetings, phone calls, email correspondence, raw video footage, edited-for-broadcast video footage, and confessional interviews used in the production (from development up until the glitch) of the reality television show Waste of Space. We apologize for the admittedly substandard quality of the transcripts; since you insisted on a rushed—some would say unreasonable—deadline, the task to type them up fell to an untrained intern who seems to have inserted personal commentary and conjecture in certain places. A more objective compilation is forthcoming.

  We hope these documents will help you guys with your investigation, though we would be remiss if we did not insist yet again that we officially disavow any responsibility for the incident currently under investigation. Waivers were signed. Parents were informed, or so we thought.

  This isn’t on us.

  Sincerely,

  Chazz Young

  CEO, DV8 Productions

  Author’s Note

  UNTRAINED INTERN HERE.

  Shortly after my boss wrote the above letter, he instructed me to go down to the post office and mail it, along with the thick packet of documents that accompanied it. On the way, I was to ask his personal courier, Boris, to deliver to the office enough recreational drugs to “stop the heart of an elephant,” as the DV8 team was “super stressed.” Then it was suggested that, in honor of the people who were giving our company so much trouble, I stop by an Edible Arrangements store to buy a symbolic bouquet of “fruits with sticks up their asses.”

  I did none of those things. The packet was not mailed. Fruit was not purchased, sarcastically or otherwise. I spoke to Boris, but about a different matter altogether. Drugs were acquired—but only for me, and only in the form of caffeine. The decision to become a whistleblower is not an easy one, and faced with the daunting task of tearing into that packet of documents and learning things I could not unlearn, I needed a pot of freshly brewed courage.

  The account that follows is my attempt to ascertain what really happened in January and February of the year 2016—not what was reported in the news, not what was claimed afterward in the statements from all parties involved. The evidence I will present is composed of the files found in the aforementioned packet, plus several additional records unearthed over the course of my investigation (some of which were obtained through measures that were not, I admit, strictly legal). All documents are presented in their original states and are labeled with as much information as I could discern.

  The full body of evidence calls to mind a jigsaw puzzle at a yard sale—some pieces are missing, some are bent out of shape, and some don’t make sense unless one can see the full picture. The truth may be out there, but I doubt anyone will ever be able to irrefutably prove what it is. All I can hope for is that my version is the closest.

  Full disclaimer: Because I personally knew and/or met most of the witnesses, and as I was watching and listening from behind the scenes throughout many of the events described herein, it’s inevitable that some of my own judgments and criticisms will leak into this report. But I’ll do my best to keep my perspective to a minimum and to interpret the events in an unbiased manner. To that end, I will refrain from telling this story from my point of view, as it is not meant to be a tell-all. From this point forth I’ll let the evidence speak for itself.

  I am not the story here. I, like each of you, was only a helpless witness.

  When I accepted an internship at DV8, I knew it wasn’t going to lead to a Pulitzer. The network isn’t what you’d call “prestigious” or “groundbreaking” or “staffed by literate individuals,” but the road to a degree in journalism is fraught with despair, douchebags, and dead ends, and I was aware of and prepared for that. In today’s competitive job market (especially in an allegedly dying profession), I was ecstatic to land any internship at all. I vowed to throw myself into the inane, unending errands. I’d cheerfully fire off meaningless tweets, retweets, and “impactful hashtags.” I’d withstand indignities and humiliations galore, and after all that, I’d be on my way with six college credits and nary a look back at the eight months of hell I’d had to endure, all in the name of my education.

  But then came Waste of Space.

  And a different type of education presented itself.

  —An Intern

  July 11, 2016

  Development

  THE YEAR IS 2016.

  Things aren’t looking good for the future of space exploration. Things aren’t looking good for the state of reality programming, either. It is at this intersection of earnestness and stupidity that the idea for Waste of Space is born.

  Naturally, it involves teenagers.

  And so it comes to pass that in the midst of a rare Los Angeles thunderstorm, a dozen shadowy figures meet in the small hours of the morning at a secret and nefarious location: the Denny’s off Wilshire Boulevard. They take up two tables, eight urns of coffee, and five carafes of orange juice. The astrophysicists wittily order Moons Over My Hammy. The television executives order nothing.

  The following meeting ensues.

  Item: Transcript of audio recording

  Source: Development meeting

  Date: January 4, 2016

  [Note: Due to the difficulty in identifying multiple voices, most speakers have been labeled with their organizations rather than as individuals; this format will be employed in several instances throughout this report.]

  DV8: You’re okay with us recording this, right?

  NASAW: We don’t know what “this” is yet.

  Waiter: [off-mike] Who ordered extra hash browns?

  [thirty seconds of unintelligible chatter, rustling, sound of plates being placed on table and silverware clanging]

  DV8: All right. Now that you’ve got your breakfasts—

  NASAW: Aren’t you going to eat?

  DV8: We don’t have time to eat.

  NASAW: No
t even a bagel?

  DV8: Especially not a bagel, Paleo doesn’t—forget it. Back to the matter at hand: our proposal. Chazz?

  [sound of a throat clearing, then a chair scraping across the floor as Chazz Young, CEO of DV8, stands up to address the group]

  Chazz: Ladies and gentlemen of science, I hate to break it to you, but astrophysics isn’t cool anymore. Sure, people embrace technology when it allows them to post photos of epic bacon-wrapped food items, but drag them into a planetarium and you’ll end up with desperate scratch marks on the walls. Funds have been cut, the man on the moon is several decades in the rearview mirror, and the youth of America continue to respond to the vast and impossibly boundless possibilities of outer space with an emphatic yawn.

  NASAW: What about Cosmic Crusades? Cosmic Crusades is cool.

  Chazz: Science fiction is cool. Science is not.

  NASAW: But—

  Chazz: Example: two different panels at Comic Con, one with the cast of a space-movie franchise and one with genuine astronauts. Which do you think will be better attended?

  NASAW: [unintelligible grumbling]

  Chazz: Exactly. Likewise, we admit, people have grown bored with the repetitive nature of reality television. They can only watch so many bar fighters, spurned lovers, table flippers, bug eaters, bad singers, and cat hoarders before it all seems like stuff they’ve already seen before. The world is clamoring for something new! Otherwise they’ll have to turn off their devices and go read a book, and we simply can’t have that.

  NASAW: Books aren’t bad!

  Chazz: Books are the worst.

  NASAW: [unintelligible grumbling]

  Chazz: So. You need to drum up interest in the space program, and we need more eyes on more screens. Luckily, we’ve come up with a solution that we feel will be mutually beneficial to both of us.

  NASAW: And that is?

  Chazz: We want to take a bunch of teenagers and shoot them into space.

  [choking noises]

  Chazz: And put it on television.

  NASAW: That’s—er—not possible.

  Chazz: Why not?

  NASAW: Aside from reasons that should be apparent to anyone with a functioning brainstem, it’s a logistical nightmare. They’d need to undergo months of training and health assessments. You’d need a ship big enough to accommodate a cast, crew, equipment—

  Chazz: Oh, we’ll be faking it. The whole thing will be shot on a soundstage. You really think The Real Housewives of Atlantis was filmed at the bottom of the ocean? Please. Those women were so full of silicone they would have floated straight to the surface.

  NASAW: But we thought this would be a purely educational endeavor. Didn’t you say you were from PBS?

  Chazz: Yes! We lied. We’re from DV8.

  NASAW: DV . . . 8?

  Chazz: It’s a cable television network with several blocks of programming across multiple platforms, including streaming services, our own website, and every social media outlet there is. We’d like to cram all of them full of this.

  [sound of coffee urns shakily hitting the rims of coffee mugs]

  Chazz: Which is why we need you! Our first choice was obviously NASA, but they not-so-politely declined. So the low-rent version of NASA it is!

  NASAW: I beg your pardon. We are the National Association for the Study of Astronomy and Weightlessness. We are not some piddling little administration—

  Chazz: Which is exactly why we’d like you to be consultants. We’ll take care of the casting, the production, everything on that end. You, meanwhile, design a convincing spaceplane—

  NASAW: [overlapping] Spaceship.

  Chazz: —you tell us what all the rumbles and beeps and boops are supposed to sound like, and we’ll bring in the best special-effects team money can buy.

  NASAW: But won’t this seem like one big joke? With all due respect to your special effects, not even the major Hollywood movies can get it a hundred percent right. It’s going to look silly.

  Chazz: People believe what they want to believe. Remember America’s Next Top Murderer? Viewers thought that victims were actually being picked off by a serial killer. The network had to start airing a disclaimer before each episode, saying, “No one’s really dying, you morons.”

  NASAW: Are you serious?

  Chazz: Well, I’m paraphrasing.

  NASAW: I’m sorry, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this. It just doesn’t seem necessary. We’ve got a bunch of new initiatives in the works—

  Chazz: Snore. Yawn. Coma. Let’s be real. Space is passé, and everyone knows it. But you still need a new generation to carry on that galaxy research gobbledygook, or your life’s work will be nothing more than a sham, right? [hearty laughter] So let’s get them excited. Let’s take a bunch of young, gullible, energetic, absurdly good-looking teenagers, stuff them into a spaceplane—

  NASAW: [overlapping] Spaceship.

  Chazz: —give them some bullshit training, and tell them they’ll be the first ones ever to set foot on Jupiter!

  NASAW: You can’t set foot on Jupiter. Jupiter is a gas giant.

  Chazz: You’re a gas giant! [sound of high-fiving] That’s what they’ll say. That’s what the kids will say. Comedy gold like that.

  NASAW: But—

  Chazz: Point is, this’ll get the youth of America high on space again. Audiences will watch those beautiful idiots floating out there in zero G and want to be just like them. They’ll buy spacesuits. They’ll buy that astronaut ice cream that tastes and looks and feels like Styrofoam. The merchandising possibilities alone are astronomical. Pun intended! [sound of more high-fives]

  NASAW: Now, you listen here. I’ve raised teenagers, and if there’s one thing I can tell you about them, it’s that they do nothing but talk. All day long. On the phone, on the computer, to themselves. How do you expect to get a group of high-schoolers in on a secret like this and not blab thirty seconds later about how lame and fake it is?

  Chazz: Easy. We tell them it’s real.

  [pause]

  NASAW: You want to trick a group of kids into thinking that they’re actually being launched into space?

  Chazz: Yes.

  NASAW: You want them to think that they’re actually being torn away from their friends and family for months, undertaking a dangerous mission from which they actually might not return?

  Chazz: Yes. Drama.

  NASAW: But isn’t that cruel?

  Chazz: “Cruel” is such a subjective word . . .

  NASAW: Not in this case! The entire proposition is morally questionable! I’m sorry, but we—we can’t sign on to do something like this.

  Chazz: Fine. Continue your recruiting efforts in the same way you have been. How’s that going for you?

  [silence]

  Chazz: Envision with us, for a moment: Plucky kids. Touching backstories. Plaintive piano music. They first set foot in the spaceplane. Their eyes light up. Our intrepit explorers are—

  NASAW: Intrepid.

  Chazz: Huh?

  NASAW: The word you’re attempting to use is “intrepid.”

  Chazz: Pretty sure it’s intrepit. Anyway, the mission commences. Lifelong friendships are formed. Bitter fights erupt. Maybe a slap or two. A slap in zero gravity—that’s never been done before! [sound of a pen scribbling in a notebook] Every eye in America will tune in to check on their new cosmic sweethearts. We’ll edit it down to a half hour each week, plus a live segment tacked on at the end of the show so the cast can wave to their furiously jealous friends in real time. We’ll air it online, too. Live stream, 24/7. Shove it into viewers’ faces until they can’t help but get swept up by it. And before you know it, their impressionable young minds will be putty in your hands. They’ll sign up in droves to join the Cosmic Crusades!

  NASAW: That is a fictional movie featuring fictional space heroes.

  Chazz: All the more reason to bolster their ranks! Point is, once this show airs, you’ll have an entire generation of walking, talking, floating
space zombies begging to be a part of it, ready to do your bidding.

  [sound of chairs scraping]

  Chazz: We’ll give you some privacy to discuss.

  [rustling]

  NASAW #1: Has it really come to this?

  NASAW #2: The worst part is, they’re right. We’ve tried so hard, reached out as much as we can, but we still haven’t connected with the voice of today’s youth. These . . . people, horrible as they are, do have the kids’ attention.

  NASAW #3: It pisses me off! Sitting here across from these plastic, vapid nincompoops, having to listen to this claptrap. We’re scientists, for Galileo’s sake! People should be looking to us as golden gods of knowledge, worshiping us for our big brains and thick glasses! Why can’t anyone see that?

  NASAW #4: I don’t know. But something has to be done. Something drastic.

  [commotion]

  Chazz: All right, time’s up. What do you say, nerds?

  [long pause]

  NASAW: [dejected] When do we get started?

  Chazz: Casting begins next week!

  Casting

  DESPITE THE ASSUMED GLAMOUR OF IT ALL, THE LOGISTICS OF organizing a nationwide audition are tedious, daunting, and involve more screaming fits than one might think. Hundreds of phone calls, emails, contracts, and location deposits go into the organization of the Waste of Space Star Search (pun intended!), and within one breakneck week, all necessary casting and administrative personnel are marshaled and five lucky shopping malls across America are chosen as casting locations.

  Thousands of teenagers show up. Each is photographed, given an applicant number, and paraded before a panel of network representatives. Those deemed attractive enough are admitted through to the interview phase, where casting directors interrogate them on the spot.

  Not a single interview is recorded. DV8’s casting procedures are unconventional at best and impulsive at worst; this is by design, as will be described in the pages ahead. But this particular lack of content may be for the best. Many applicants are desperate, depressed, lonely, and/or starving for attention, the sorts of kids for whom the opportunity to be shot into space would be an improvement to their lives rather than a calamity. The fact that their audition interviews will never see the light of day will be, for many of the applicants in the years to come, a blessing in disguise.