Kurt: Surely you know that this is not how contracts to perform concerts are arranged.

They probably didn't. One of the things you won't learn from shows like this is that reality television is generally a mix of jaded technical people who are doing it for the money and overworked, underpaid, overeducated film school grads whose whole gig is to flail 90 hours a week in a Stockholm Syndrome environment where they think they're making intense interpersonal drama but are basically staging bum fights in pencil heels.

It's a process by which the soul is slowly pulled out through the eyes until mere husks of humans are left to shout at each other and impress only one another. The rate of attrition is probably 95%. I say this having worked at the absolute APEX of the field for fifteen years - "producers" would cheerfully murder each other to get on my show, and then burn themselves to the ground after one season, and then be a top pick for some bullshit Discovery thing, and then go to rehab eighteen months later and move back in with mom in Nebraska.

Everyone on this shoot who wasn't wearing stage blacks was out of the industry within two years, having learned nothing except their own susceptibility to the Stanford Prison Experiment. I myself have witnessed and reported reality TV producers threaten contestants with physical violence if they did not get the answer they wanted only to be told "oh that's just Joe he hasn't hit anyone in at least two years."

So the likelihood of anyone in that room not wearing stage blacks having the first fucking clue how concerts are arranged is zero. The likelihood of anyone in that room wearing stage blacks knowing? 100%. But they have long since learned to not engage with the producers on any level, not even if you're all drunk and horny.

I recognized this behavior. It was the way people would talk to me on video shoots

We good-cop bad-cop you. The nicer the person, the nastier their assistant. The less authority you have, the nicer you have to be. "Handler" is the lowest level on the totem pole, below "driver" or "security" or "PA who arranges the red vines." Frankly if "nice" is one of your characteristics you will either be back office or a handler.

"When one has been in the public spotlight at any time for any amount of time, the old rule is: 'always be camera ready'."

It's far simpler than that - our social programming for dealing with awkward social situations is to be polite. You have to spend some time on the other side of the camera to know that you are absolutely within your rights to go "you know what? Those assholes over there keep pointing a camera in my direction and they haven't so much as approached me for a release so either you kick them out or I'm calling Film LA." At which point you get a song and dance about how they're friends of the owner and you have to tell them that as a working professional who gets his permits this kind of shit makes it harder for everyone and if they don't cut it the fuck out you'll get the whole fucking restaurant shut down.

And you do this because goddamn it you're not interested in being background of some Channel 434 "jesus ate my bandcamp" reality shitshow while you eat pizza.

And this is why much reality television is made OUTSIDE of LA - nobody is programmed to go "eew a camera kill it kill it kill it."'

This is what it looks like, in text, when I am angry.

LOL Kurt Harland is an excessively kind man.

One useful thing about all the instagram/tiktok/whatever bullshit is it has made the entire planet less forgiving of assholes shooting content wherever they want about whatever they want. Because in 2004? Hoo boy we ran rampant.

Somehow I missed this post originally, and then read through it and the story.

It wasn't until I saw the shot of him at Burning Man that I realized it was THAT Kurt - who I know from Thunderdome at Burning Man - and that he was also in Information Society!

Funny how we learn new things about old friends.

Really really liked this article <3