Stupid People Tricks

Andrew Hoegl and his staff are making quick work of the waist-high piles of audition tapes that came in the morning mail. Facing deadlines for a new season of MTV’s “The Real World,” it’s not like they have much choice.

The goateed Hoegl is casting director for the popular reality-based series that follows a group of seven young people picked to live together for six months. Next season’s show--to be set in Boston--is scheduled to begin filming in January.

Already, the show has received 4,000 videotaped submissions from 18- to 24-year-old aspiring cast members from around the country, the producers said.

Some of the hopefuls speak to the camera from bubble baths or showers. Others play loud music and dance. “One man conducted his interview from the grocery store where he worked without a stitch of clothes save his apron,” said assistant casting director Michelle Millard, a one-time finalist who later joined the staff.

Some resourceful candidates, Millard said, tape their interviews in the consumer electronics section of department stores using “borrowed” equipment.

And if the past is any guide, producers say, about 12,000 tapes will be sent in before the Monday’s entry deadline. Basically, it’s considered an open casting call, but one where professional actors need not apply. As the staff sifts through the day’s offerings, a momentary glance at their video monitors is often enough to determine who makes the first cut.

One in 40 will clear the initial hurdle for a shot at the next phase in the show’s five-step selection process.

Beyond that, there is a 15-page questionnaire, a videotaped phone interview with producers, semifinal interviews at six nationwide locations and then the final cutdown from 20 contestants.

The rest of the tapes are destined for the prodigious reject pile, with what the staff sees as the most extreme entries--including cross-dressers--placed in a category of their own, affectionately called the “loony bin.”

That’s a long way from the show’s modest beginnings nine years ago when Mary-Ellis Bunim, an experienced soap opera producer, and Jonathan Peterson, with a television news and documentary background, first pitched MTV with a show concept that combined elements of a documentary with those of a soap opera.

Before the first season, filmed in a loft in New York’s SoHo district in 1992, “we sent production assistants out on roller-blades to stop people who were the right age,” Bunim said. In all, about 1,500 people applied to be cast members that year, she said.

Since then, “The Real World” has assembled real-life casts for shows in Venice Beach, San Francisco, London and Miami.

“The Real World” has spawned its own spinoff, “Road Rules,” also produced by the Bunim-Murray team, where a youthful cast participates in a nationwide scavenger hunt as they travel the countryside in a Winnebago. And like “The Real World,” every move of the “Road Rules” cast is captured on film for posterity.

Besides the outlandish audition tapes, some cast hopefuls will stop at nothing to catch the attention of the producers. People send scrapbooks, glittering shoes, cereal boxes embossed with their image, and microwave popcorn, turning the Bunim-Murray offices into a pop-art gallery.

“Some people try to grab your attention by doing the zany thing,” Peterson said. “Then they start talking and have nothing to say.”

Or, Peterson said, they utter one of the three phrases that are the proverbial kiss of death:

1) “You need me.”

2) “You need to rescue me.”

3) “Get me out of my house.”

As Bunim and Peterson point out, close scrutiny is not for the camera-shy. And the rigorous selection process, according to Peterson, ensures the choice of strong-willed candidates who are photogenic, culturally and geographically diverse, and possess the right blend of “energy, passion, humor and verbal skills.”

For the show’s sixth season, set to air next summer, producers will assemble a group of young people who are socially conscious and who will operate a Boston inner-city youth center.

Bunim said the show’s primary concept is the interplay between young people of extremely diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.

And as in any other situation where people live in close quarters, cast members experience conflict over the course of a season’s filming. In two past seasons--in San Francisco and Venice Beach--individuals were kicked out of the group’s residence by other members of the cast.

“People always ask us after the fact if we would have cast anyone different or should have changed our minds,” said Bunim in an interview last week. “No. The dynamic would have been changed completely.”

“Conflict is necessary for growth and understanding,” she said.

So that leaves the question--will “The Real World” ever come to San Fernando Valley?

“If we wanted to do a season made up of a cast of young people trying to break into the film and television business, it would make sense to bring ‘The Real World’ to the Valley,” Murray said. “It’s definitely a fantasy destination for actors and actresses.

“Since we’re trying to avoid actors and actresses, we’ll probably try to avoid not only the San Fernando Valley, but all of Los Angeles.”

Applicants should send a 10-minute videotape explaining why they would be right for the show by Monday to Bunim-Murray Productions Inc., “The Real World” Casting, 6007 Sepulveda Blvd., Van Nuys 91411. All submissions must be labeled with the applicant’s name, age, address and telephone number, and he or she should be clearly seen and heard on the tape.