ARTICLE: Lights Camera Addiction - Dr. Drew & TV
From Frank "Dr Drew Pinksy uses one of the most exploitative mediums in entertainment, reality television, to treat some of the most desperate people, addicts. Is this healing or just voyeurism?"
Hitting Bottom
By CHRIS NORRIS Published: December 30, 2009
Last spring, at the Pasadena Recovery Center, while staff members were doing their morning rounds, three men sat behind the closed door of a dim in-patient bedroom. Members of a video production team, they were monitoring live feeds on glowing screens in a part of the Los Angeles drug-and-alcohol unit then serving as an ad-hoc command center for “Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew” — a reality show on which celebrities who habitually alter their realities receive treatment for their addictions from a celebrity. On TV.
Three mounted widescreens were broken into a dozen digital monitors, each showing a face from television past: Dennis Rodman, Heidi Fleiss, Mackenzie Phillips, Tom Sizemore and other less-celebrated substance abusers filled surveillance shots from around the building, the composite grid of video screens suggesting “Hollywood Squares” as directed by David Cronenberg. In one square, Sizemore, an actor known for playing hardboiled military men in such movies as “Black Hawk Down” and “Saving Private Ryan,” lay half conscious in his bed, detoxing from heroin, crystal meth, benzodiazepines and marijuana. He’d been in that state for two days, said Mark Perez, the show’s supervising producer, which didn’t seem to augur for great TV. But moments later, when I checked back in with Sizemore, the entire screen had lighted up: Dr. Drew Pinsky had entered the frame.
Dr. Drew edged up to the pajama-clad Sizemore, bent over his bed to draw some blood and then left — only to appear the next screen over. Robocams and roving camera operators tracked the show’s star from room to room, as he ministered to nine fallen souls. Perez alerted a cameraman of Pinsky’s approach — “Mustang, coming to you, in three, two . . . one . . . ” — as he passed across another screen, then another, to enter through the door right beside me.
“What’s happening?” Pinsky said, greeting me with a sly half-smile, looking and talking just like TV’s Dr. Drew. He carried a clipboard and wore a tie, a cobalt dress shirt and pleated gray trousers, his gym-buff torso suggesting a medical-board-certified Clark Kent. Unlike the hospital scrubs Dr. Mehmet Oz wore to Oprah’s soundstage, the stethoscope around Pinsky’s neck was not a prop; it had just been used to check Tom Sizemore’s lung capacity. Pinsky’s close-cropped silver hair and crow’s feet lent him a gravitas that befitted his 20-plus years’ experience treating addiction, while his tanned skin and stylish rectangular glasses attested to his camera readiness: Dr. Drew, face of addiction medicine, surgeon general of youth culture and now — either through unsurpassed gamesmanship or cultural harmonic convergence — something even greater. Perhaps even, as the media scholar Mark Andrejevic would have it, “TV giving itself a moral center.”
With a glance to the screens, the moral center turned to confer with Perez and John Irwin, one of the show’s executive producers. “Did you see that?” Pinsky asked Irwin. “Sizemore? He’s sick.” As they moved on to other patients, Pinsky, Irwin and Perez conferred, like three members of a rehab team. “How was Kari Ann?” asked Irwin, referring to the meth-addicted former Miss United States Teen Kari Ann Peniche. “Kari Ann was good,” Pinsky said. “I did Dennis — he committed to not drinking, but he’s ambivalent about 12 Step.”
“That’s good,” Perez said. “That’s a start.”
Pinsky then reported on his unfilmed, one-on-one session with Lisa D’Amato, an “America’s Next Top Model” contestant and alcoholic, who had relayed a harrowing memory that he planned to bring up in a group therapy session. Not a half-hour later, as Perez and I watched on three screens covering the therapy room, Pinsky prompted D’Amato to share this story with six patients, two camera operators and, potentially, 1.2 million viewers.
“I don’t want to cry again,” D’Amato protested. “Just tell them the story,” Pinsky gently urged. Then, as Perez gave directions from the control room, D’Amato puffed out a deep breath and began. “Um . . . I went on a European trip?” she said and then stopped, eyes pooling. Pinsky watched patiently, a clipboard on his lap. As D’Amato began to haltingly recount her traumatic memory, Perez positioned his crew to zero in.
“Um . . . my mom was upset with me,” D’Amato said, “I was pushing her buttons and she was pushing mine.” Perez called out to Sarah, a camera operator, to move in. D’Amato’s voice became tiny, then started trembling and, as she finished her brief tale of a life-scarring confrontation, she broke into sobs. A screen held a close-up of her doe-eyed, tear-streaked face. “Thank you so much, Sarah,” Perez said in a reverent sotto voce. “Thank you.”
Minutes later, Pinsky popped in the control room. “Nice job there, Doc,” Perez said.
“That all right?” Pinsky said, turning bright-eyed to Perez. “You like that group? Interesting, right? Full article continued here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/magazine/03Pinsky-t.html
Views: 47
© 2024 Created by Ryan Goble.
Powered by
