Surfers can check out humiliating pictures of sports figures like Kobe Bryant and Jennifer Capriati, killers such as Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski, and Hollywood stars from Yasmine Bleeth to Nick Nolte to Vanilla Ice (arrested in January 2001 for allegedly pulling hair out of his wife’s head).
So when it came time to turn the highly visited Web site into a humorous television show, the creative team began on that very page. “I said to myself, ‘How do you take something that’s static like mug shots and put them on TV’?” recalls Mo Rocca, the show’s host. “So we took it to the next level. There are so many hot makeover shows out there. Why not try to make myself over to look like Nick Nolte, People magazine’s ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ from 1992 … on [the drug] GHB?”
The result is pretty darned funny–though not all TV critics who reviewed “Smoking Gun TV” got the joke. The Court TV show, which premieres Wednesday and which will air again this week on Friday and Sunday, has received some scathing reviews. “During one particularly dreadful stretch in the preview tape, I actually hatched a plan to rub shampoo into my eyes,” wrote the Chicago Sun-Times critic. “To those whom much has been given, much is expected. Which is why I feel so let down by ‘Smoking Gun TV’,” summarized the Kansas City Star’s writer. Rocca laughs it off. “It’s been a huge strain on my family,” jokes Rocca, who is single. “My daughter Sally’s in second grade. She’s been teased mercilessly. You know how 8-year-olds are about the New York Post TV column.” In all seriousness, he adds, critics at newspapers considered broadsheets–including The New York Times–have been more “even-handed” about the show. “The tabloids were harsh, which makes sense because the tabloids are so infatuated with the Web site.”
Since the Smoking Gun launched in 1997, it has been great source material for stories about the less-refined elements of American society. It not only covers (and uncovers) celebrities, but also publishes many documents about small-town crime. It’s become a frequent stop for reporters and Internet surfers interested in the strange-but-true. William Bastone, who cofounded the site with Daniel Green and serves as its editor in chief, worked as a crime reporter for years at the New York alternative weekly The Village Voice before starting up the Web site on his downtime. “I spent many years learning how to find documents no one knows how to get,” he says. “To me, the site is a natural extension of the journalism I was doing previously.” The Smoking Gun first gained national attention in February 2000, at the height of the hoopla over “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” Its editors posted documents proving that the titular Rick Rockwell once had a restraining order placed against him by a former fiance who said he’d threatened to kill her.
In December 2000, Court TV purchased the site, and that’s when the enterprise really took off. Since then, Bastone and Green have hired two more reporters, and have continued to dig up documents other journalists either never found themselves–or just plain forgot about. This year, the site published a detailed declaration filed 10 years ago by the boy who alleged he was abused by Michael Jackson. Around Oscar time, the site produced the original transcript from the 1977 grand jury hearings in the Roman Polanski case, when a woman claimed she was raped by the director. And reality TV continues to provide the muckrakers with plenty of targets, considering the genre turns ordinary Americans into celebrities overnight. Who can forget the Speedo shots of “Joe Millionaire” (a.k.a. Evan Marriott) brought to the world’s attention courtesy of the Smoking Gun?
The site’s traffic numbers have tripled in just the last two years. It received 47.8 million page views in July, with 2.87 million unique visitors. About 125,000 people are on the site’s e-mail list; alerts to breaking news are issued a couple of times a week. A countrywide network of spies–college kids, law students, friends and relatives–continues to help Bastone and his crew secure various court papers. The Smoking Gun has never been sued and has never once taken a page down. What if Yasmine Bleeth called and begged editors to remove her mug shot, taken when she was arrested in 2001 and charged with cocaine possession, looking bloated and wearing no makeup? “First I’d say, ‘I loved you in “Nash Bridges”,’ hopefully that would soften her up,” says Bastone. “Then I’d say, ‘we don’t take things off the site. Perhaps you shouldn’t have been in possession of whatever you were in possession of that day.’ This just comes with the territory.”
With a site full of goodies, it wasn’t long before Court TV began to work on turning the whole thing into a quarterly TV show. “We wanted to do justice to what was a very revered Web site,” says Court TV CEO Henry Schleiff. “That was a legitimate concern. So we tried to capture its spirit and the attitude and the tone.” Obviously, since much of the site is page after page of documents, producers have had to think creatively. “We don’t do TV here, but we kicked around some ideas,” says Bastone. “We saw that if you put aside the tougher crime things, there’s a humorous vein running through the material, not just celebrity stuff either, but the strange crimes or funny police reports.”
Producers decided to blow out a few different elements of the Web site and twist them around some. In one sequence of Wednesday’s program, “Real Dumb Criminals,” producers turned a document from the site into a skit, reenacting the story of the “ice cooler robber,” who held up a convenience store with a Styrofoam cooler on his head–but who couldn’t get any money because no one understood what he was saying. Another segment brings to life a 1997 deposition that accused Martha Stewart of trying to run over a 23-year-old.
What’s the future of the show? Rocca and his team will be going into production shortly on the second installment, scheduled to air Dec. 16. “Honestly, we’re not planning any tonal changes,” says the host. Still, the follow-up will have a different structure. It’s being designed as an awards show. “There’s an awards show for everything these days,” says Rocca. “But there are none that celebrate wrong-headed celebrity and noncelebrity misbehavior.” The show’s team will decide on the categories and build something around it, Rocca says. Meanwhile, Bastone is hands-off. “I think the show’s funny,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll be asked for our two cents on the next one, but it’s up to them to figure out what kind of tweaking needs to be done.” His staff of journalists, however, will keep reading the e-mail they receive. “If there’s feedback from viewers, we’re assuming it will be delivered via the site. So if we’re deluged with e-mails that say the show is crap, we’ll forward them on.” And maybe publish a few, too?
