© AP Photo/MTV
Xzibit with a custom Cadillac.
Pimp My Ride premiered on MTV in 2004 with a
straightforward premise that was beautiful in its simplicity: Take a kid
with a beat up car and have the rapper Xzibit orchestrate a massive and
ridiculous upgrade. The theme song explained it all in just a few
lines: "So you wanna be a player, but your wheels ain't fine / You gotta
hit us up, to get a pimp't out ride."
But although the show
operated within such a minimal framework, things were a bit more
complicated behind the scenes. From cars that would break down in a
matter of weeks to fat-shaming a contestant to one MTV employee
apparently trying to convince another car owner to break up with his
girlfriend to fit into the narrative, there was a lot more to the
creation of this show than Xzibit simply saying, "Yo dawg."
The
Huffington Post spoke with three of the kids who got their cars pimped:
Jake Glazier from Season 4 and Seth Martino and Justin Dearinger from
Season 6. All three had previously done brief AMAs on Reddit about their
time on the show. (It should be noted that each appeared on
Pimp My Ride near
the later half of its run.) And for a perspective from the other side
of the camera, co-executive producer Larry Hochberg responded to a few
of the claims made my contestants.
Although all of the people spoken to about
Pimp My Ride ultimately
had mostly positive experiences, the reality of what it took to get
pimped ended up being even more strange than expected.
"I was very
excited and naïve, so they could have told me unicorns were making me
breakfast and I wouldn’t have questioned it," Martino said. Viewers of
this aughts-spectacle ended up having the same experience ...
Sometimes additions to the cars were just for the show and would be taken out of the vehicle immediately after filming.
© Justin Dearinger/MySpace
Red is not Justin's favourite colour.
In Justin Dearinger's
Reddit AMA,
he claimed that "they actually take out a lot of the stuff that they
showed on TV," such as in his case, a "pop-up" champagne contraption and
a "drive-in theatre." Further explaining to
HuffPost,
Dearinger said that they removed the champagne part because the show
didn't want to condone drinking and driving and the theatre was removed
for not being street safe.
According to Larry Hochberg, however,
the removals were done with a specific purpose in mind.
"Sometimes we
did things for safety reasons that the kids on show interpreted as us
'taking away' some items," he said. He gave an example where 24-inch
spinner rims on a 1977 Cutlass would look amazing for television, but
"out of abundance of caution" they'd end up switching the spinners to
"beautiful 20s for daily driving."
That said, it seems as if
things were occasionally put into cars with no intention of them ever
working in real life. For example, a robotic arm installed into Seth
Martino's car was, as he put it, actually solely "controlled by commands
that were entered into a laptop by the spiky haired guy off screen." In
reality, it "was just a robotic arm with a bunch of wires hanging out
of it."
And often additions - such as the famous backseat TV screens - simply wouldn't work.
© Justin Dearinger/MySpace
The backscreens in the car don't work.
Seth Martino's car seemed to be particularly low quality. "There were plenty of things wrong with it," he told
HuffPost,
including television screens never working again after filming. As
Martino recalled, some things that didn't work on the car included the
LED lights that were put in the seats.
"They would get
really
hot if left on so I couldn't drive with them on," Martino said. "They
took the gull-wing doors off because the pistons used to lift them kept
them from putting seat belts in the back which was highly dangerous." A
cotton candy machine they installed was fit into the trunk without
leaving enough room for the dome top to keep the cotton candy strands
"from flying all over the place."
Apparently, Mad Mike would try
and help out when cars would have problems. MTV also had flatbed tow
truck driver on call according to Larry Hochberg. "The people who had
cars that appeared on the show would call me, and I would leave my desk,
run to meet up with the flatbed tow truck and go help them," he said.
Hochberg
also said the cars would occasionally have wiring issues, which he
would coordinate in getting back to the West Coast Customs or eventually
the GAS shop. At least it seems for the serious issues, MTV attempted
to reconcile problems. "I made sure that things were fixed on cars that
needed fixing," Hochberg said. But speaking of the root of those more
serious issues ...
Although the cars were visually pimped, the insides were seemingly given far less attention.
© Justin Dearinger/MySpace
From bomb to totally pimped out.
From the onset here, it should be noted that Larry Hochberg
says that "it's not accurate to say that we didn't work on the mechanics
of the cars" and that the contestants on the show had a misconception
of what had happened with their vehicles. As Hochberg explained to
HuffPost,
"Some of the cars were so old and rusted that they would have
mechanical issues no matter how much work you put into them [and] the
production team and the car shops worked their butts off to get parts
for these cars."
In one instance, MTV even sent someone all the
way to a desert junkyard in Arizona just for a replacement hood on a
car. A lot of these cars were almost spent and this wasn't a show about
saving cars from breaking down, it was a show about pimping. That said,
as mentioned before, the cars did break down.
Jake Glazier, who
felt "there were a lot of problems" with the mechanics, sold his car
after just about a month. He was then told by the new owner that it had
already blown out. Glazier told one example of what he felt was shoddy
work: the car needed a muffler, and so a fake exhaust pipe was installed
to make it seem as if that's what the car was supposed to sound like,
"even though it was just lack of a muffler."
"There wasn't much
done under the hood in regards to the actual mechanics of the vehicle,"
according to Seth Martino. "For the most part, it needed a lot of work
done to make it a functioning regular driver, which they did not do."
Martino said he had a hard time even driving the car home. "They added a
lot of extra weight but didn't adjust the suspension to compensate so I
felt like I was in a boat, and every time I hit a bump the car would
bottom out and the tires would scrape inside the wheel well." According
to Martino, that the car would only run for about a month. Then he had
to save up his own money to replace the engine.
This happened many years after the show -- and after extensive outside work -- but one car exploded into flames.
Five
years after the show, with extensive and expensive outside work done by
Dearinger himself, his pimped car burst into flames. Dearinger was
driving home with his girlfriend when smoke started flooding the car.
Then the two jumped out on the side of the road and within just moments
the car was destroyed.
Although probably expected, those reveal shots of excitement were staged.
© The Huffington Post
Jake Glazier's was over-excited about his new pimped out ride.
At the beginning of segments, Xzibit would be shown ringing the
doorbell to a contestant's house to surprise them. These houses were
often times not the contestants' homes; instead, each dwelling had been
rented by MTV. Contestants were told to wait in the house and that at
the door would either be someone holding something like a $100 Pep Boys
gift certificate or it would be "ya boy Xzibit." So the surprise of
Xzibit at the door was real, but in maybe a weirder way than you
expected.
Less real was the famous freak-outs of contestants
jumping up and down when their pimped out car was revealed. All
contestants spoken to ended up having to do multiple takes of their
reaction with Justin Dearinger explaining, "I guess I didn't show enough
enthusiasm.' The director specifically told him to "be more energetic
and jump around and scream."
Jake Glazier had a bit of a different
experience, remembering they had to coax him to go "ape shit" as his
natural reaction to being genuinely excited is a more silent shock. His
first real reaction to the car was just a quiet amazement where he said,
"This is good" and they immediately yelled "re-do!" And then things got
a bit weirder.
"I remember this very clearly, Big Dane, very big
dude, he like puts his arm around my shoulder, kind of walks me around
the shop for like 10 minutes and he's like, 'Listen, we put a lot of
work into this ... we expect you to be a little more f**king
enthusiastic,'" Glazier recalled. From there, Glazier went full over the
top and his reaction (pictured above) even became a bit of a meme.
The
show made it seem as if the cars were in the garage for a few days, but
it was actually about half a year -- causing daily problems.
© Justin Dearinger/MySpace
Justin Dearinger and Xzibit.
From watching the show, you might have thought that the
vehicles were in the shop for about a weekend or even a week or two and
then were given back to their owners. Not the case at all. At least for
the contestants spoken to by HuffPost, the cars would actually be in the
garage for about six to seven months, which obviously caused some
problems.
Seth Martino had a particularly frustrating time where
he had to go through a "really small, shady company off the freeway by
LAX because they were the only ones willing to rent to me because of my
age."
According to Martino, at first MTV only paid for a couple months
and then he had to pay out of pocket. He held on to the receipts and
then about two years after the show aired MTV reached out and finally
reimbursed him. "It sucked having that rental car because they wouldn't
take payments over the phone so once a month I had to drive all the way
from West Covina to LAX just for them to swipe my card," Martino
explained.
At least in these instances, the backstories and interests of the contestants were kind of made up.
© Justin Dearinger/MySpace
pimpmyride
For Jake Glazier, MTV "pretty much just went with what I told
them," but with exaggerations. Glazier had said that his grandmother
smoked in the car. For the show, MTV threw an "extra few dozen cigarette
butts in the car to maker her just look like a total disgusting
person."
MTV apparently didn't really listen to Justin Dearinger
when they asked about his favourite colours. He said he "hated red" and
then the interior of his car ended up being almost entirely that colour.
The damage of the cars in the pre-pimped stage was also exaggerated by the show.
Dearinger
remembered that they added aircraft remover to help with the paint
removal and made the bumper "look like it was falling off."
But
besides small exaggerations of likes and dislikes, MTV seems to have
kind of messed with the contestants lives for the sake of the show...
MTV
dumped bags of candy in one contestant's pre-pimped car and told him to
act as if he always had it there in case he got hungry. He felt as if
they were going out of their way to make fun of his size
© The Huffington Post
Seth Martino was made to look like a man with an unhealthy eating habit.
In Seth Martino's
Reddit AMA,
the contestant said, "I know im fat, but they went the extra mile to
make me look extra fat by telling the world that I kept candy all over
my seat and floor just in case I got hungry. Then gave me a cotton candy
machine in my trunk." Further explaining the situation, Martino said,
"I sat there and watched them dump out two bags of generic candy."
HuffPost
asked Martino about the instance and he stressed again, "I did not have
any candy all over my car. That was completely fabricated for the
story."
Why didn't he speak up and say something about how MTV was
treating him? "At the time, I didn't question anything because it was
an exciting experience and I just kind of went with the flow," Martino
said. He further felt as if this was all just a reason to install a
cotton candy machine. "I know it is kind of mean, but I think they just
wanted to put a cotton candy machine in a car and used the fat guy as
the opportunity to do it."
A suggestion to another
contestant: dump his girlfriend for the half hour show because the
premise was becoming a "playa" through the pimped ride.
© The Huffington Post
Jake Glazier and his pimped out ride.
Jake Glazier remembered who he thought was one of the producers
mentioning that breaking up with his girlfriend would be good for the
show. As he explained to
HuffPost, the apparent producer said
something about how it would play better into the storyline of him
having a "shitty car" and needing the pimping to no longer be lonely.
The MTV employee apparently suggested to "basically either get rid of her or have her not be a part of the program."
For
what it's worth, Larry Hochberg said that he was not aware of either
this instance of the fat-shaming story. "Why would we want a kid to
break up with his girlfriend?" he asked. "How would that have helped the
show?"
Despite everything though -- all of the
contestants still enjoyed their time on the show and their pimped out
cars, even if they caused much more attention from the cops.
© Justin Dearinger/MySpace
Dearinger's car attracted a lot of attention from police.
"I felt like a celebrity when people recognised me/the car," said
Seth Martino who enjoyed driving the car once he "put the $1700 of work"
into fixing the engine. He particularly like the sound system.
Jake
Glazier only had the car for about a month as he sold it fairly quickly
for about $18,000. He had originally bought the car for $500. But
Glazier also regretted selling the car as the buyer - MTX, the audio
company whose product was in the car - really just wanted their sound
system back so it didn't fall into the hands of their competitors. He
had a really good time taking his little brothers and sisters to school
in the car because them and their friends were so excited.
After
the show, Justin Dearinger actually joined a car club and put about
$20,000 more of his own money into the car (possibly causing the
aforementioned fiery end). The car would attract a lot of attention from
cops however, with Dearinger saying he was "getting pulled over on a
daily basis." Every time, Dearinger would have to explain the show
Pimp My Ride to the cops and most of the time they "were really cool about it."
They would all happily go on the show again and had "no real complaints."
© Justin Dearinger/MySpace
Justin Dearinger's assorted car photos.
"Honestly, I missed it for many years," Glazier said of the show, while adding he had no real complaints.Dearinger,
too, enjoyed himself and said he'd be happy to do it all again. "Before
then I was just a kid, I was shy, I was really shy," he said. "And then
it's sad to say, but being on the show gave me some confidence. And it
made me the person I am today. I'm the most outgoing person you ever
met." Dearinger said the pimping truly brought more attention to him
from girls saying "a lot of girls noticed me more."
Of the three,
it was Martino who had more mixed feelings about the experience. "The
whole situation was definitely not what I hoped for, and there were
times I wanted to give it all back because of how frustrating it was,
but now I look back and laugh." Martino said. "I have this really cool
story that only a handful of people can really say they experienced.
That makes it all worth it."
As for Hochberg, he "loved working on
the show." Hochberg further explained his memories saying, "There were
so many great kids on the show, and it was fun to give the cars to all
of them." Hochberg said one of his favourites was pimping an Ice Cream
Truck, a creation that ended up being parodied by "The Simpsons."
BONUS: But what was hanging out with Xzibit actually like?
© REUTERS/Eric Thayer
Rapper and 'Pimp My Ride' host Xzibit.
"Xzibit is the greatest," said Hochberg who interacted more
closely with the rapper than the contestants. "He's a talented rapper,
and he is a natural host. He's cool, funny and always thinking on his
feet. I really enjoyed working with him."
Although he wasn't
quite sure as wasn't involved in the initial discussions, Hochberg
believed Xzibit may have gotten the job because he already was a
frequent customer at West Coast Customs.
The contestants didn't
get to talk with Xzibit too much at all, but each felt he was chill,
easy-going and fun to be around. Martino said Xzibit would say things
like "time to smoke" and that he "never got the feeling he was talking
about cigarettes" although he couldn't confirm otherwise.
"He did
smell of [weed]. A lot of it," Dearinger said. "Someone did at least, I
don't know who did, but I'm pretty sure it was ... you know."
But Jake Glazier had hands down the best interaction with Xzibit ...
"I
don't remember why he brought it up, but we were just kind of talking
about what we were doing that weekend and he said he's going to go down
to hell to kill the devil so he can make some Satan skin boots."
Now that sounds like an amazing idea for a spinoff.
msn.com 28 Feb 2015
Quite simply put, another fraudulent TV show scamming the viewers.
Australian 'reality' shows are also a total scam, where the so called 'dramas' are scripted by the producers.
American Trash TV, keeping the plebs docile and entertained, with shows of zero value to one's life.