MONDO EXTRAS

We plunge in. I don't even remember how it opens, but we get talking about editing and how you look and that sort of thing. "I would probably never do it," I say about going on such a show, using a standard line of mine, "because it's a very specific bargain that you make when you go on a show like this." "It's a gamble," Colin says. I go on to say that it's certainly true that if you were to tape me for a week and just use all the most unflattering --

Here, he stops me. "No, no -- it's not that. It's fabricated." That's the word he uses -- "fabricated." They offer me a couple of examples. She swears that she was not only goaded by the interviewer into giving her "the other teams suuuck" quote, but that she was basically kidding. Which, having seen it, I can completely believe. And which doesn't change my impression of it very much. ["Yeah, mine either. The Real World kids use that excuse all the time, all 'they just wouldn't stop asking until they got the answer they wanted,' but at this point in the evolution of the genre, you know that that's part of going on a show like this, and if you don't want to stay obnoxious shit, you should prepare yourself to resist doing so. In other words: whatev." -- Sars] He says that when he threw the money at the end of the police station thing in Tanzania, he went back and apologized and picked it up and gave it to the guy. Which, frankly, strikes me as more of a "trying not to get in even more trouble" gesture than an "I was legitimately regretful" gesture, but certainly, if I were Colin, I would feel like a more complete picture of me would be created if they included the apology. But does that make it "fabricated"? Considering how long that tirade went on and some of the things that he said, would going back and picking up the money and shaking the guy's hand undo very much of the impression people walked away with? Isn't it likely that the apology would have been blown off as self-serving? I'm just saying...not so much "fabricated."