Had a friend that went on that show as a guest in a totally fabricated story and the stories he came back with opened my eyes to the business of show business and the way they manipulate people. Say what you want about his show but he struck a nerve and had a lasting impact on this society.
The story they came up with was made up by a couple of his friends that were dating at the time. The story went that my friend was dating the woman but she had a secret she wanted to get off her chest. At that point the 2nd guy game out (the woman's real boyfriend) and she told my friend that she was a prostitute and this was her pimp who she had been sleeping with. My friend went crazy but don't think they got into a physical altercation, knowing it was fake it was some pretty bad acting. Not sure if they were drinking or high when coming up with this idea and thought it was a great idea, but my buddy regretted it pretty instantly. He is a few years older and I remember him being pretty excited about it before going and then coming back and being really down on the whole experience and really embarrassed by it, to the point that he didn't even tell us when it was airing. One of our friends had a VHS recording of it but it got lost to history. He told us about how they weren't screened at all, but got flown out to Chicago, picked up in a limo, got taken to a nice hotel the day before taping. Picked up the morning of, driven to the studio and forced to sign a bunch of contracts. He said he had to literally read the contract to two of the other people on the show that day because they couldn't read and the producers just shoved the papers in their faces and told them to sign without saying what was in the contract. As soon as the taping was over they were tossed in cars and taken right back to the airport and put on a plane. Sounded like a whirlwind of a 36 hours. I think I was 16 or 17 at the time and thought it was different, maybe manipulate was the wrong word but seems like they definitely preyed on people that didn't know better (not my friend, he is pretty smart and actually doing amazing things in the metro area for homeless people). Haven't hung out with that guy in a long time but I know whenever the topic gets brought up, he deflects pretty quickly and seems to want to forget it ever happened.
Thanks for sharing that’s an interesting story and pretty close to what I kind of assumed was happening, people making up stories to get on the show and wanting their 5 minutes of fame.
