More withering than Simon Cowell, crazier than Paula Abdul — it’s the novel that will have Hollywood on a witch hunt. Who is anonymously exposing the secrets of “American Idol”?
“Elimination Night,” a new novel by a nameless author with “firsthand knowledge of the inner workings of a top TV talent show,” is a thinly-veiled, scathing tell-all of the 10th season of the top-ranked talent show.
That was the first season without co-founder Cowell on the panel and the year Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler debuted as judges.
Despite their warm on-air congeniality, the book describes a running backstage feud between two egomaniacs who fight over the sizes of their dressing rooms and who gets announced on air first.
The bigger bombshell is the book’s depiction of producers using a secret rating system to vet contestants before they even make it to the judge’s table and then, as the season progresses, manipulating and even sabotaging the singers they want to see rise or fall.
The book’s narrator is Sasha, a lowly production assistant tasked with corralling the aging and lecherous rocker Joey Lovecraft and the dim-witted diva with the highly prized derriere, Bibi Vasquez.
Though names have been changed and all likenesses are disclaimed as “coincidental,” the similarities to the real show are over-the-top.
Like “Idol,” the book’s “Project Icon” is the nation’s most-watched TV series but in dire straits following the departure of “Mr. Horrible,” a mean-spirited producer and judge who has left to start “The Talent Machine,” a rival show on the same network. (Ring any “X Factor” bells?)
The show desperately needs a big name, so it approaches Vasquez, a Queens-born singer known for outrageous outfits, dating a gun-toting rapper and starring with her then-fiance in a universally panned movie (titled “Jinky” instead of “Gigli”).
She agrees to appear on the show, with a whopping caveat: They must adhere to a 78-page contract rider, which includes:
“Artist’s body to be insured with $1 billion dollar policy in case of injury. (Breasts, buttocks to be valued at $100 million each.)
“Crew to be forbidden to make eye contact with Artist at all times.
“Artist to be provided with chauffeur-driven limo . . . Limo to be a Rolls-Royce Phantom, white. Artist to select driver (male, under 25) from head/torso shots.”
Lovecraft, a 62-year-old, bass-mouthed rock star with a notorious weakness for booze, pills and women, has just had a falling-out with his band, Honeyload. He comes in to meet the producers with two porn stars in tow, on the heels of a rehab stint.
Insider rips the lid off ‘Idol’
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Insider rips the lid off ‘Idol’
