To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > Arts & Entertainment Sept. 11, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/1999/09/11/mtv_video The 1999 MTV Video Music Awards What, you expected obscenities, naked butts and rock 'n' roll attitude? You should have been in the press tent. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Jennifer Weiner Backstage at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards, rapper Lil' Kim, wearing a purple wig and a mere fistful of lavender sequins, was talking about art and its responsibilities. She and fellow presenter Mary J. Blige had just handed over the trophy for best hip-hop video to the Beastie Boys, one of whom had made an impassioned plea for musicians to make sure that the rapes and sexual assaults at Woodstock '99 never happen at a concert again. "I was deeply touched by that ... especially because it was a man talking about keeping women safe," Kim said. "Women have to look out for each other." Next question: Just how did you get that pasty thingy to stay stuck over your nipple? "We use an adhesive bonding ... like, for hair and stuff," she said, segueing seamlessly from the political to the personal without batting a single false eyelash. "We didn't use Krazy Glue ..." So it went at the 16th Video Music Awards on Thursday night in Manhattan, where fashion and politics and irony and rap and rock and Buddy Hackett came together in one big pre-millennial wet kiss. The awards themselves, of course, mean nothing. The annals tend to read like a "Where are they now?" casting call (paging Jenny McCarthy). Take home an Oscar, and you spend the rest of your life as "Academy Award-winning-(your name here)." Win a Moon Man, and you're A-Ha. But if the Oscars are all about honor, then the Video Music Awards are all about spectacle. The Oscars are hushed and reverential, freighted with gravitas. The VMAs are backstage fistfights, bleeped blue language, Howard Stern's pimply bare bottom descending from the heavens and disgraced kiddie TV star Pee Wee Herman mincing onstage to ask if we've heard any good jokes lately. The 1999 show didn't -- couldn't -- offer us any of those memorable moments. The world has changed too much. Courtney Love's cleaned up. Axl Rose has calmed down. Sinéad O'Connor's been ordained. Madonna's presumably arranging play dates instead of S&M photo shoots; the feel-my-pain of grunge has been supplanted by the sugary pop of the Backstreet Boys. And given that the Clinton presidency has survived the whole nation knowing what he did with that cigar and That Woman, a guy masturbating just doesn't seem that perverted anymore. The biggest shock of the night wasn't Chris Rock's barbs or Lil' Kim's boobs or Renee Zellweger's evident lack of underwear; it was a newly brunet David Bowie taking the stage to introduce Lauryn Hill, who was looking exactly like Courteney Cox. Other than that, it was all about the love. Everything was "in the house," everything was "off the hook" and many things were both at the same time, according to the stars. MTV balloters loved Lauryn Hill and Ricky Martin, awarding them five and four Moon Man trophies, respectively. (Among their other triumphs, Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)" won for best video, best female video, best R&B video and best art direction; Martin's omnipresent "Livin' La Vida Loca" won for best pop video and best dance video.) Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith loved their nephew Kyle so much they felt compelled to deliver nonstop shout-outs to the 9-year-old birthday boy, thus turning the red carpet into a real-time version of your local radio station's all-request and dedication hour. Martin loved him some Armani. This we learned after he won the first award of the night, for best dance video, and dispatched his choreographer to the pressroom. "What are you wearing, Tina?" bellowed a reporter up front. "I'm wearing Armani," she said, "because Ricky wears Armani, and I'm with Ricky." Makes sense. Pamela Anderson Lee loved formerly estranged husband Tommy Lee, and wasn't shy about sharing. "Is it good to be back together again?" asked MTV News' Chris Connelly during the pre-pre-show interviews. "It's so good," gushed Pammy, clad in sequined pants, a corset and a fuzzy pink Cat-in-the-Hat chapeau. "It's all good." The press corps got excited when the Lees made their way backstage. Finally, here was a chance to ask that old chestnut -- "Have you stopped beating your wife?" -- and have it actually apply. Trouble was, we never got to ask anything. As soon as Pammy took the podium, moving in the tiny stutter-steps that were all her skintight pants and hooker heels would permit her and starting to talk about who'd designed her get-up, Tommy dashed into the room, flung open his trench coat and bared his naked body to the Pamster's approving eyes. "I'm too distracted!" she announced, chasing her spouse offstage. Puh-leeze ... like nobody's seen that before. Everyone loved everyone else -- except for host Chris Rock, who had nothing nice to say about anyone, and said it all anyhow. Among the notable disses: New York's Metropolitan Opera, site of this year's ceremony: "I may be the first black man to be on this stage without a mop." Jennifer Lopez: "She came in two limos: one for her, one for her ass." Kid Rock: "You see Kid Rock? He looks like a substitute pimp!" Fatboy Slim: "Looks like White Boy Retarded." ("Better than Fratboy Slim," quipped the artist backstage.) The Backstreet Boys: "Didn't you see New Kids on the Block? Don't you know how this movie ends?" No doubt this was all meant to be edgy and ironic, but show me a man who complains about everything and I won't be impressed by his sharply honed urban sensibilities -- I'll just think he's been spending too much time with my grandmother. If you wanted real angst and real anger, you should have hung out with the press corps covering the stars' arrivals. Corralled into a series of narrow gated holding pens beneath threatening skies, toting cameras, crates, stepladders, microphones and those little fuzzy purses that New York girls have instead of pets; penned up for over an hour with nary a star appearing: It wasn't long before the assembled reporters turned on each other. "These word people!" shouted one photographer, gesturing at the writers blocking his view of Christina Aguilera's entourage. "Get 'em out of here! Put them way in the back! They're only word people." It got ugly, as some of the word people used a few choice bits of their vocabulary on him. And then it started to rain. Hard. The reporters retreated to the press tent, where we'd spend the next three-plus hours engaged in what felt like a game of Bizarro Jeopardy. With photographers screaming on one side and TV sets blaring live feed from the other, it was impossible to hear each other's questions, so we had to figure out what they were from the stars' answers. In some cases, that was easy: When somebody said, "In December," they were either talking about a new album or a new baby. Likewise responses like "Armani," "Versace" and "What really happened was, I walked her out to her car and kissed her on the cheek and the next day the tabloids said we were in love." (That last was from Sugar Ray's Mark McGrath, putting the lie to the rumors that there's something going on between him and Madonna.) But sometimes it was next to impossible. "I'll tell you the truth: I was taking a shit," said Eminem, in response to I have no idea what. And on it went. Jay-Z said he'd be working on his acting skills in the new millennium. "Anything I do," he pledged through a walnut-sized wad of bubblegum, "I want to do well." Gavin Rossdale says that his next video's going to be based on shao-lin Kung Fu. Opera moppet Charlotte Church says she's had movie offers but will be sticking with the singing for now. Jay Mohr said he'd never appear on "Friends." "Hell, no," he sneered. "I'm on funny shows." Stone Cold Steve Austin bemoaned his bad knees and beer belly. Wyclef Jean pleaded, in a tone that sounded only half-joking, for someone to please ask Lauryn Hill to take his phone calls. Mary J. Blige disclosed that she's still "looking for love in all the wrong places, and you know what, I haven't found it." (She does seem to have found a prolific tattoo artist, however.) Tupac Shakur's mother is publishing a book of his poetry in time for Christmas; Biggie Smalls' mother is working on a biography and a screenplay about her slain son's life; McGrath blames the carnage of Woodstock on people who charge $4 for water; he also has his little dog's pawprint tattooed on his arm. And Ricky Martin? He's doing a lot of meditation and a lot of yoga. He's wearing a lot of Armani, which is sponsoring his next concert. "The one thing I want to keep in touch with is my emotion," he says sincerely. Oh, and he's hard at work on the video for "Shake Your Bon Bon." Amid this treacly gale of good feelings, it fell to Will Smith to inject the tiniest dose of irony and reality into the proceedings. Do you see yourself focusing more on becoming a serious actor? a reporter asked. Smith rolled his eyes. "What do you think I've been doing?" he demanded. Did he mind only winning one award, for best male video? "I’m excited any time I can get on … as long as I don't have to sit there with the dumb face on for the whole show." And finally, was Chris Rock too harsh on poor Jennifer Lopez? Smith considered. "He went at her ass a lot tonight," he opined, "but she knows, and he knows, too, that she's got a beautiful thing going there." It was, as the music channel endlessly reminded us, the last Video Music Awards of the millennium. salon.com | Sept. 11, 1999