Just when you think certain people and companies are completely out of touch with reality, they do something that elevates cluelessness to a higher plane.
As the Jasmine Fiore tragedy unrolled, the crisis management strategies of VH1 and production companies 51 Minds and parent Endemol were simple: Don’t have it rub off on us. VH1 and 51 Minds each released a few lawyered-up statements expressing vague condolences (minus the dignity of a spokesperson’s name attached), disavowing accountability and pointing fingers elsewhere. Endemol stayed silent.
Whether you agreed with this approach or not (and I didn’t), you understood it. But just like reality shows, things got shaken up. They let someone be interviewed -- someone who not only reconnected them fiercely to this story but reminded us why bad reality TV is so bad.
Fiore’s murder by husband Ryan Jenkins, who starred in two of these companies’ reality series, raised numerous questions within the industry and the public about the extent of background checks, contestants’ psychological stability and whether the shows triggered delusions of grandeur or worse among those with mental problems.
The story was covered on Larry King’s Monday show, with guests including Fiore’s friend and a profiler. For a senior executive at 51 Minds or VH1, this would’ve been a user-friendly setting to express commitment to responsible programming and placate advertisers, the creative community, fans and critics.
Instead, the person who appeared on their behalf was the equivalent of Heidi Montag expounding on health care reform.
Credited as casting director for the VH1 show, Susan Stuart Brazell seemed downright giddy over the self-promotion opportunity. In her first comment, we learned she calls herself Stuart -- the reasons for which she began explaining in bubbly rambling detail before being thankfully cut off by King.
In fact, many of her answers circled back to herself: her disbelief at the news, her recruiting technique, how her “pretty face” led Jenkins to hit on her, her certainty that the ill-fated couple were “crazy in love for each other” (despite having never met Fiore).
Brazell boasted about how Jenkins’ “loose cannon” nature and craving for fame made him ideal. In another setting, her comments would just be silly; in the context of what we knew, they were gruesome. From the transcript, available at CNN.com:
-- “Ryan was the ideal contestant … You want a big personality. You want loud. You want someone that's entertaining and that's going to cause conflict in the house. That's exactly what I looked for and that's what he was.”
-- (their first encounter) “It's Las Vegas. He's there to have fun with his boys. There was a big porn convention … I happened to be a pretty face that he wanted to come and talk to … It took a couple sentences and he was down for it immediately, and then started talking about how he always wanted to be a movie star and actor … I thought 100 percent he would get on the show.”
-- (her thoughts in hindsight) “You kind of go through, was there something there? And to be honest, I would have met Ryan … We were looking for a fluent [sic] gentleman, so we spent more time with them.
