Type Casting

It felt like one of those interminable lines in Disney World where you wait for an hour outside and then move slowly through a dimly lit passageway for another hour until you finally reach the attraction.

But instead of licking ice cream cones, the people leaving the ride are smoking cigarettes.

The dimly lit passage is filled with banners marked with names of different beers instead of TV screens with Christopher Lloyd preparing you for your ride back to the future.

And you arrive at an audition that might let you experience the "real world," instead of reaching a boat that will carry you past singing dolls in a small world of fantasy.

The real world? Or a two story beach house with a "nice guy," a "mediator," "a loud girl" and as Jim DeRose '01 — who auditioned —put it, "the blue-blooded Princeton kid," who tries stirring up emotions.

What would the typical Princeton kid look like?

Gray pants, a black three-quarter turtleneck and red sneakers might say "traditional, but also a free spirit with some flair." But the plaid hat looked dumb with the sides flapping down too far along the sides of the face.

And what were the right answers to write down on the application? Most embarrassing moment? They would never pick someone who said that she was just generally absent-minded — a native New Yorker who walks into Central Park with the intention of crossing town but comes out on the same side she started.

Status of relationship with a significant other? It might be a little uncomfortable to talk about that if it were asked in the interview, which took place behind a black curtain on the second floor of the restaurant.

"I can't believe I took my shirt off," one boy exclaimed as he came out of Triumph Brewing Company with a group of his friends.

Someone who had waited in line since 8 a.m. and had just emerged at 12 p.m. stopped right outside the door to offer two girls his advice. "You have very little time," he said. "So you just have to be as boisterous as possible."

And many of the people interviewed were ostensibly playing to a certain character.

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"I felt like people went in there totally prepared to present themselves in an artificial way," said Danielle Shrader-Frechette '02 after she came out of the interview. "People tried to make themselves into the star they thought would be on the show."

While sitting around a table with nine other people, a woman likely in her thirties asked whether anyone had ever cheated or been cheated on.

An appropriate candidate for "the mediator on the show," one boy said that he was always the one other people came to for advice. And when asked what sense he would most like to lose, responded that losing "sight would enable him to see the world in a whole new way."

In roughly 10 minutes, the interview was over. If you didn't speak up, you lost your chance to enter into MTV's idea of reality — clearly of the utmost importance to the 45-year-old woman who insisted on trying out, and to the girl who came to the auditions with her mother.

But then, there is always the possibility of playing the "Princeton student" in "A Beautiful Life."