www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/arts/television/03true.htm
Click Here Unsimple Lives on an MTV Reality Show MTV A drug user in the season premiere of "True Life" on MTV "I'm Addicted to Crystal Meth" examines the toll taken by methamphetamine.
Paris Hiltons sex video and seen photographs of Kate Moss snorting cocaine in a recording studio, a documentary about an unknown 20-something woman prostituting herself to buy crystal meth might seem a bit ho-hum.
Forum: Television And it probably would be if the producers followed the typical documentary style, with stale video clips, voice-overs and talking heads debating morality and offering character analysis. But that is not how MTV does documentaries, and it is one reason True Life, the documentary series that has been a staple of MTVs programming for nine years, has fared so well. True Life begins its new season tonight with Im Addicted to Crystal Meth, an examination of the toll that methamphetamine can take on lives, loves, family and friends. In a world where reality shows are as scripted as serial dramas, it can be hard to find authenticity when following anyone around with a camera. But unlike many of the narcissists who might answer an Internet casting call, the addicts who are the subjects of the Crystal Meth documentary are so obviously beholden to the drug that their ability to act seems short-circuited, to the viewers benefit. Were capturing the authentic behavior of our audience in the moment that they are going through it, Dave Sirulnick, an executive vice president who oversees MTVs news and documentaries division, said recently in his office at MTV in Times Square. Unlike in mainstream documentaries, which often provide a record of things that had already happened at the time the piece was assembled, the people in our shows are going through things in their lives that they dont know the outcome of. When people think of MTV today, they often think of shows like Pimp My Ride, Real World and Newlyweds, said Brian Graden, president of entertainment for MTV Networks music group. We are in a unique situation in being able to focus on what is at the top of our audiences minds. True Life and other documentary series at MTV are produced by the news and docs unit, which grew out of but is different from MTVs news unit. Its a little bit of this hidden gem, said Mr Sirulnick, 42. In the 1980s, the news division was responsible for covering all developing issues in the music business, producing shows like The Week in Rock. The news unit also began covering live music events, like Live Aid and the Woodstock revivals, and was one of the few organizations covering what the network refers to as music social issues, like the lyric content of rap music, legal issues surrounding music sampling and the liability trials that were waged over the influence of bands like Judas Priest. After doing that for a number of years, we felt we had the credibility to step out and do longer-form shows about issues affecting our audience, Mr Sirulnick said. As the operation grew, the documentary efforts were split from the news operation in 2000, although now Mr Sirulnick says there is about a 20 percent overlap in content. Most things that require coverage of more than a half-hour of television time fall to the documentaries unit. The MTV news and docs unit produces a style of documentary that would not have been possible even several years ago, when producing hours of television-quality video would mean invading the subjects home or other space with at least a five-person crew, lights, bulky cameras and other behavior-altering paraphernalia. We couldnt do this if we had to rely on the old equipment, said Marshall Eisen, a vice president for news and documentaries for MTV True Life works because were fly-on-the-wall observers. One of the ways MTV maintains both an intimacy with and a distance from its subjects is to spend hours and hours with them. The network will shoot up to 150 hours of video over a period of months to get the 43 minutes of material that makes it into the final program.
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