Reporter
American Idle
In Austin the nation's hottest reality-tv tryouts featured emotional fireworks, uncensored tragicomedy—and endless waiting around.
AT FOUR O'CLOCK ON NOVEMBER 5, seven hundred wide-eyed singers lounged outside the DoubleTree Hotel in North Austin. It was Election Day, and all over town voters were scrambling to the polls. But no one here was talking politics. The following morning at the hotel, the reality-television show American Idol, a wildly successful hybrid of Survivor and Star Search, would hold one of seven nationwide auditions—the only one in Texas—for its second season, and nearly everyone in line was fixated on a singular, modest objective: overnight Hollywood superstardom.
There was more to this fantasy than misguided youthful ambition. After all, last summer twenty-year-old Texan Kelly Clarkson was able to quit her job as a cocktail waitress in Burleson after being selected as American Idol's first winner. The sometime karaoke singer not only dispatched her 29 competitors but also parlayed the experience into a lucrative, multifaceted entertainment career. Her success had become a model for those at the DoubleTree, many of whom had put their jobs and classes on hold for a few days and—some of them—driven as many as five hundred miles to give their own yet-to-be-recognized talents a similar Clarkson-size shot in the arm.
Fortunately, it wasn't a bad afternoon to be waiting around. The weather was gorgeous: sunny, 75 degrees, a cool breeze, and it was quiet except for the low drone of semis idling on Interstate 35. The mass of bodies, wedged between the hotel and a yellow "DO NOT CROSS" ribbon, stretched from the front entrance, down a cement sidewalk, around two corners, and on to the asphalt wasteland on the hotel's opposite side, where it had ample space to continue growing. Groups of contestants lugging overnight bags continued to arrive and were met by a grumpy Idol lackey wielding a black Sharpie, who branded them with numbers and told them to join the back of the line.
Up front, the impromptu ringleader was a nineteen-year-old prosthetics deliveryman from Kansas City, Kansas, named Curtis Cofield, who went by the nickname Dip. He was given this handle because whenever he ended one of his frequent Muhammad Ali-style rap-rhymes, he would strike a hieroglyphic sideways pose and up-sing "Di-i-i-p" before busting a swift, snaking break-dance move. Throughout the afternoon, Dip would aim his camcorder at a group of people (who, in turn, directed their camcorders back at him) and shout, "Somebody sing somethin'! Somebody uhnnn!" or "Come on, who's next? Come do your thang. Gonna sing, don't stop, if you stop this now I'm gonna have to get the cops," at which point someone would step forward and begin to sing—eyes closed, mouth down-turned and earnest, eyebrows dancing—about how his baby was so sweet to him (oh) and he'd be so good to his girl (awww). Those in the crowd would applaud, then scan the line through their camcorders, waiting for Dip to pick out the next soloist.
For the next ten hours, the singing continued uninterrupted like some operatic eternal flame. Wandering through the crowd, I watched people sing together and alone, on sidewalks, in bathrooms, and in lobby corners, rhyming "girl" with "world," "love" with "above." They affected baroque vocal gymnastics. They sang for each other, but most often they sang for nobody in particular. As if performing in their own private music video, many would sit quietly and then draw their eyes into a soft focus and serenade a patch of grass, while those nearby ignored them, sipping lunch-size boxes of apple juice or reading Cosmo, slumped over a friend's or a mother's lap.
As the sun went down, the contestants and the chaperones shielded themselves from the incoming cold front. Sleeping bags, Mexican blankets, and fleece covers were pulled over heads, and areas of the line looked like sloppy rows of discarded camping gear. But throughout the night, even as the temperature dipped to 46 degrees, spirits did not wane. Around midnight, a young woman from Buda caught her second wind and called out one of the show's catchphrases, "Who wants to go to Hollywood?!" Nearly every hand shot out of a sleeping bag into the stinging wintry air to be counted. And those who didn't at least whimpered a muffled, "Me-e-e-e."
ONLY IF YOU'D HAD YOUR head in a bag last August could you have avoided hearing about American Idol. Ever since CBS unleashed the original Survivor series in the summer of 2000, all four major networks have been carting out new reality-based shows each rerun season, attempting to uncover the next cheap-television gold standard. NBC had some luck with the gross-out hit Fear Factor in 2001, and last summer ABC got in the game with The Bachelor. But nothing's come as close to generating Survivor-level buzz as Fox's American Idol. Along the way to winning its time slot for viewers age 18 through 49 for eight weeks straight, Idol became an unavoidable conversation topic on late-night television talk shows, in entertainment magazines, and in school hallways. The show's formula—copied, like many reality-based shows, from an earlier European version—is quite simple. About two hundred singers selected from a nationwide talent search come to Los Angeles, where judges pluck 32 semifinalists to appear on the show. Each week, those semifinalists perform a song in a different genre—a power ballad, say, or an R&B classic—to show their versatility. In the first two episodes, a panel of celebrity judges—former pop star Paula Abdul, talent scout Randy Jackson, and Simon Cowell, a veteran from the original British series, Pop Idol—decide which contestants make the cut, but beginning in week three, the television audience members have a chance to hurl their weight around, calling a toll-free number to vote for the singers they want to see in the next round.
By the time the American Idol contestants were narrowed down to Clarkson and the bushy-haired Justin Guarini last August, about 40 million Americans had watched all or part of the series. The 22.8 million viewers who tuned in for the two-hour finale on September 4 made Idol the week's most watched program. And the enterprise didn't end there. After Clarkson's triumph, RCA released her winning ballad—not a bad business decision considering she had a proven fan base more than a million strong—and "A Moment Like This" opened to the best first-week sales for a single in three years, unloading 236,000 copies in its first week. The top ten Idol finalists then embarked on a six-week, 28-city tour. RCA put out both a full-length CD featuring studio versions of songs performed by the ten finalists and a DVD of the season, complete with outtakes.
Of course, those waiting at the DoubleTree understood something more important: Idol wasn't just a national phenomenon—it was a Texas phenomenon. Clarkson may have gotten the most out of her exposure, but Nikki McKibbin, of Grand Prairie, had made it to the final three as well. And Kristin Holt, of Plano, and Adriel Herrera, of Odessa, were also included in the original cast, which featured thirty members. For those not counting, that meant four of Idol's first thirty contestants—13 percent—were from the Lone Star State. Which might explain why, like gamblers who'd spotted a winning slot machine, 3,500 contestants between the ages of 16 and 24 eventually showed up at the DoubleTree by the morning of November 6.
RUMORS SPREAD THROUGH THE FIRST night like a game of telephone. Somebody said the judges were looking for more guys this time. Somebody else said more blacks. One contestant said she had heard that 10,000 people showed up for the auditions in Miami and can-you-believe-it-I-hope-it-isn't-that-bad-here-but-it-probably-will-be. A couple of folks were convinced that the security guards on the line were really judges, and so it was in a contestant's best interest to be extra nice to them. And then there was the master of all rumors, one that preyed on grim, competitive paranoia: The judges were going to come out in the middle of the night and hold auditions in the line so you'd better get ready. Like right now.
Lying down on pavement was hard enough, but this last rumor gnawed at the weary contestants, making it nearly impossible to relax. I had shrouded my head in a python-size wool scarf and was just dozing off among the first hundred contestants during a rare moment of quiet when a Louisianan named Holly drawled, "Joey? Joey, honey, it's time to get up and refresh."
"What time is it?" Joey responded.
"It's a little after three, honey."
Joey was confused: "Are you . . . are you . . . dressed?"
"I took a shower and I'm ready, honey. I think my cords are getting better; I sang a little bit and my voice hurts because I vomited."
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