John Del Signore: Bite Me, Kanye! I Bum-Rushed the MTV Video Music Awards—Ten Years Ago This Week

On November 9th, 1999, my morning to-do list included such items as "Make a list," "Pick up stuff from storage," and "Attend MTV awards, jump on stage, yell something nonsensical." I never made it to my storage unit in Park Slope that day, but the NYPD, while studying the list later that night, would crack wise about my busy day. They were also very curious about that storage facility.

I was 24 years old at the time, and bursting with vaguely grandiose ideas in that special way that only twenty-somethings smoking expensive, kief-encrusted weed can be. One of these ideas was a concept for a late-night, fake-reality TV series that would explore the mysterious lives of twenty-somethings living in New York City. It was to be sort of like The Blair Witch Project, but set in the city instead of the woods, and with navel-gazing instead of murder. The horror! In broad strokes, the idea was to make a Stonervision TV alternative for inebriates arriving home in the middle of the night. In truth, it was barely half-baked, but I saw no reason why that should stop a major network from broadcasting it, whatever "it" was, ideally at 3 a.m. Well. Need I tell you now that some very humbling video follows?

My collaborator on the project, Sarah Hays, is now a musician in Nashville; it was her Hi8 camcorder we were using to shoot scenes for the show's "pilot." Believe me, some of the stuff we put together was amazing once the delivery service showed up. At some point during the development process, we somehow became convinced the show would be perfect on MTV, and the thing to do was to crash the upcoming Video Music Awards at the Metropolitan Opera House and announce the "show" on air. Viacom would surely be intrigued by my rebellious attitude and option it on the spot. Like true Video Aces, we thought, "Can't lose!"

I wasn't just a dilettante in those days; I also held steady employment as a cater waiter for Restaurant Associates, the city's biggest catering company, which just so happened to hold the contract for Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera House. I wasn't hired to work that night, but I threw my tuxedo in a plastic bag and showed up with Sarah on the night of the live broadcast. We found our way to the staff sign-in table and the woman seated there adamantly insisted that all the company's "butlers" were already accounted for. I explained that we were last minute replacements, and that if we weren't admitted, Steven Tyler's cheese plate might not be promptly replenished. She still refused, so I called a friend who knew nothing of my plan and, whispering into the phone, begged her to impersonate an irate catering boss. She was game, and there was something profoundly satisfying about watching this stressed-out event planner take the phone and, after three angry "Nos" suddenly think to herself, "Fuck it" and give us backstage passes.

Sarah had the camcorder with her, and we spent the next couple of hours wandering around backstage asking celebrities to say our show's catchphrase, "Wake Up at Three," for the camera. Lauryn Hill fucked it up and said, "Turn on at three," but I didn't have the nerve to ask for another take. Dr. Dre nailed it, but the camera was out of focus. Ricky Martin was unavailable, but I'll never forget how Chris Rock took the mic after Martin finished "Livin' La Vida Loca," and sarcastically crowed, "I just can't hear that song enough times!"

We found our way to the edge of the backstage innermost sanctum, where we could see Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake preparing to go on. A senescent usher told us we didn't have the right security clearance to proceed, but we sweet-talked him into letting me in "just to take a look," and Sarah fled with the camera.

Soon I was standing behind about a dozen people huddled around a TV monitor in the dark, about ten feet from the edge of the proscenium. As Britney and 'N Sync finished their nightmarish aural assault, I had one of those "now or never feelings." Was I shitting myself with fear? A little bit, but at the same time I felt like I was back in high school, about to do another ridiculous theatrical performance everyone would reflexively hate anyway. And though I hadn't had a lick of kief that day, it still did not seem like a silly thing to do. Tim Robbins appeared on the monitor to announce the winner of the Viewer's Choice Award, and I stepped away from the little group, slipping through the narrow space between the Metropolitan Opera proscenium and the scrim.

As I passed, I heard a man's voice, in slow-motion, calling, Heeyyy, yooouuuu cannnnn't-but it was too late. There was virtually no security back there, and I was out on stage. The crowd roared, but not for Wake Up at Three, for the Backstreet Boys, who were glad-handing their way up from the house to the podium. I paused on my way there to shake Tim Robbins's hand and mention that I had a show on MTV coming out in the fall, and then I moved on to the podium, arriving at about the same time as the Boys.

As Kanye demonstrated, there is really no established etiquette for stage crashing, but I thought it only polite to ask the Boys if I might say something first. They complied, as they were trained and/or programmed to do, so I stepped to the mic and uttered the catchphrase for what was sure to become the most sensational Viacom product of all time. Then I walked upstage as one of the Boys-Zeke or Skip-shrieked, "Get that guy outta here!" But nobody touched me until I stepped offstage… at which point a scrum of irate security meatheads literally dragged me down a flight of stairs and into a small room.

A long, awkward interrogation with two cops ensued, during which I did my best to reveal as little as possible, telling them I no longer lived at the address on my driver's license (true) and was staying on various friends' couches. They had some questions.

· Was I on any medication?

· Had I ever received any electroshock treatment?

· Did I have any plans to commit violence against the United States? Or any celebrities?

· And what did "Wake Up at Three" mean?

· Also, if I didn't have a home, where were my clothes and possessions?

That was when I let slip the location of my Park Slope storage facility, which seemed like a small concession after all my evasiveness. When I finally made it out there the following week, I found that someone had rifled through my boxes. Obviously one of Sumner Redstone's goons, trying to steal my ideas.

After about an hour, they released me with a warning that I was never to attend the opera again. Some of my friends wondered why I wasn't charged with anything, but the awkward problem for the show's security is that they had voluntarily let me in. So I wasn't technically trespassing; my crime was annoying celebrities. Maybe they could have arrested me for disorderly conduct, but that would have just prolonged my fifteen minutes, and I suppose Viacom made the smart play to ignore it. There was almost no press about the incident in the following days, except for a sentence in some entertainment magazine wondering, "Who was that Soy Bomb wannabe?" And naturally my appearance has been scrubbed from the official MTV history.

A month or so later, we sent Viacom a cringe-inducing, unsolicited pilot episode, intercut with clips from the stage crash escapade. We haven't heard anything back yet (fingers crossed!), but the lesson in all of this, which I've found to be universal even post-9/11, is that if you can get past a certain level of event security, you're home free, because the staff on "the inside" is very reluctant to challenge anyone ostensibly important enough to be back there. The other lesson is that if you're ever offered a chance to watch video of yourself from your early twenties, don't do it. You are old and fat now, and Kanye West is biting your style.

John Del Signore is currently employed by Gothamist.