Web site smokes out reality stars' pasts
By David Bauder
Associated Press
Finding embarrassing secrets in the past of reality television stars is about as tough as finding Botox in Hollywood.
Associated Press library photo
That doesn't stop The Smoking Gun from looking, or Web surfers from lapping it up. The Web site has made a specialty of finding the drunken driving arrests, porn acting jobs or other not-so-shining moments behind the smiles of TV's newest stars.
"American Idol" finalist Corey Clark was dropped from the Fox series after his Kansas arrest record was publicized.
"I don't know how many people in the country get arrested for driving under the influence," said William Bastone, the site's editor, "but it seems like a very high percentage of reality TV participants do."
Much of their findings offer a harmless diversion, but The Smoking Gun has altered games like "American Idol" and embarrassed television networks.
Bastone, a former Village Voice writer who covered organized crime, started The Smoking Gun largely as a way to reveal interesting court documents that didn't find its way into stories.
Two entertaining features of the site collect mug shots of famous people who ran afoul of the law — even a young Bill Gates — and contract riders of entertainers who expect well-stocked dressing rooms.
Bastone and colleagues Danny Green, Andrew Goldberg and Joseph Jesselli aren't reality TV fans. But when Fox's "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire" caused a sensation in February 2000, they decided to poke around.
They quickly found, and posted, court documents revealing that the multimillionaire, Rick Rockwell, had once been under a restraining order sought by a former fiancee who said he had hit her and threatened to kill her.
Everything unraveled for Fox. They canceled plans to rerun the show and, briefly, promised more restraint in reality offerings.
The Smoking Gun had struck a nerve. Visitors and tipsters flocked to the site. The Smoking Gun could have started a private-eye agency with all the people who wanted them to look into people's pasts, Green said.
"You watch these shows and you're given a very sanitized version of who these people are," Bastone said. "Half of the time they don't even give you their last names."
The site found plenty of dirt on stars of CBS' "Survivor": business bankruptcies, check bouncing, public drunkenness, a soft-core porn past. It found a "Big Brother" contestant that had a court appearance for drunken driving scheduled for when she was supposed to be sequestered for the show.
It revealed "Joe Millionaire" Evan Marriott's past as an underwear model and contestant Sarah Kozer's roles in bondage and fetish films — illustrated with plenty of colorful pictures.
The reporters at The Smoking Gun say the information is often ridiculously easy to find.
Bastone was surfing the Web one night when he saw Fox had tossed "American Idol" contestant Frenchie Davis off the show with no explanation. It took him less than an hour to find a friend who spilled the beans: Davis had once posed for an adult-oriented Web site but, the friend argued, "it wasn't a lot of nudity."
Informants help, too. The Smoking Gun knew that the actor in the Dell Computer commercials had been arrested for marijuana possession even before he'd been booked, Bastone said.
Sometimes the site uncovers damaging information that exposes flaws in network background checks. Another "American Idol" contestant, Corey Clark, was booted from the show this spring because he had charges pending for assault and resisting arrest. Fox wasn't aware; The Smoking Gun found the case by checking court records under various spellings of his name.
What do the networks think of this? It depends on whether they believe that there's no such thing as bad publicity.
