If at Birth You Don't Succeed (3 page)

In the days that followed, the attention from 4chan and Reddit caused my video to go viral, eventually tallying nine million votes and earning me a spot on Oprah's reality competition. But no matter how it happened, my audition was seen by
a lot
of people. For the first time the world knew my name, and they knew Zach Anner as the positive funny guy who wanted adventure. I was championed by everyone from John Mayer to David Hasselhoff and was suddenly featured in
Time
magazine,
USA Today
, and the
New York Times
, and on a bunch of TV shows: I was profiled by Sanjay Gupta on CNN, featured on
ABC News
with Diane Sawyer (but without Diane Sawyer), and brought my complete lack of balance over to the fair and balanced folks at
FOX News
. I received thousands of messages from complete strangers about how my video had moved them and changed their perception of people with disabilities. My name actually started to mean something bigger than myself; it meant hope and possibility to a population that had largely been ignored. And then things got ugly.

Despite a general goodwill toward me that people rarely see on the Internet, there inevitably came rumblings of cheating on both sides. Ridiculous rumors circulated that Oprah was trying to rig the competition in favor of another contestant, and for a whole day the number one search on Google was “Oprah Hates the Handicapped.” And there were still people out there who thought I was just a big ruse. To them I was some con artist who, instead of posing as a billionaire prince from some obscure country, had opted instead for the much more glamorous persona of a guy in a wheelchair with a lazy eye who sometimes peed his pants if he laughed too hard.

But amid the whispers of “cheat” and “phony,” I stayed true to myself. Whenever some shock-jock radio host or a gossip site tried to get me to say something bad about Oprah, I wouldn't engage in the negativity. I refused to speculate about why six million of my nine million votes were abruptly and mysteriously deducted from my video midway through the competition. I just shrugged and said, “The Internet's a crazy place and I'm extremely grateful to everyone who supported me. And I'm a huge fan of Oprah.” Weathering that time period and toeing the line between gratitude toward Oprah and toward my fervent but unpredictable Internet saviors helped me realize why “Old Rough and Ready” might be the right nickname for me after all.

When I was born, those who didn't know me would have called my circumstances a tragedy. But my parents knew better. When they looked at me, what they saw was just a kid who was destined to take a different path than that of anyone else they'd known. They gave me the tools to explore and let me find my own identity. It took me years to figure it out, but nowadays when people come up to me on the street and excitedly ask, “Are you Zach Anner?!” I'm able to confidently say, “Yes!” because I finally know who that guy is. I'm a guy who's been able to recognize that sometimes the only difference between mistakes and miracles is what you choose to call them. And the most interesting lives are the ones that have an equal mix of both.

 

CHAPTER 2

How to Win a Television Show

“Four thirty in the morning, perfect time to get up!” said no one ever. Day Two of filming
Your OWN Show: Oprah's Search for the Next TV Star
began in the dark, or at least it did for me. Technically, we had a 7:30 a.m. call time for arriving at the studio, but I needed a full three hours to get ready for the day. My morning routine would be repeated and perfected at my new home in the Sheraton Universal Hotel in Los Angeles over the next several weeks. First, my best friend Andrew and I would exchange groggy morning salutations through the wall of our adjoining rooms and then, five minutes later, he'd walk in like a bear fighting tranquilizers, fussing with his glasses and absentmindedly playing with his ample chest hair while he waited for me to pick the perfect outfit for him to iron. My wardrobe for my audition video had consisted of a Speedo, a dress, and a chef's hat. Somehow that silly video had made me a reality show star, and now I had to dress the part.

Filming this TV competition was potentially a monthlong gig, depending on when you were eliminated, so I'd packed optimistically according to what I thought my prospects were: about five days' worth of clothes. Upon realizing I'd only brought four pairs of underwear (and you need at
least
five), Andrew had made an emergency excursion to Target the day before, to make sure I wasn't competing commando.

“What color you wanna wear, Broseph?” Andrew asked as he ripped the plastic off the Fruit of the Loom five-pack. Today was important because it was the first elimination day and, not trusting in my actual ability, I put all my faith in my boxer briefs.

“Let's go with the purple ones. Those will be my new lucky underwear,” I declared.

Like I always say, the best friends provide moral support AND ball support.

Breakfast arrived at 5:00 a.m. with a knock on the door. Andrew answered it in a state of déshabille, greeting our formally dressed bellman, who I came to think of as a less enthusiastic, Indian version of Lumière, the candlestick from
Beauty and the Beast
. He wheeled in our morning banquet, asking eloquently, “How is morning?” before lifting silver covers from each item and announcing them as though the dishes were foreign dignitaries at a ball: “Orange juice … coffee … pastry … bacon…” and something he ingeniously mislabeled a “fruit melody.” I appreciated the pageantry for something that moments later I would be eating on the floor, still half-naked. Breakfast deserved reverence because it was the only meal I would allow myself to eat all day.

My stomach had been a beast since high school. I couldn't tame or reason with it, and it would unmercifully wreak havoc without warning. No matter how kind and careful I tried to be to my digestive tract, its mood swings were violently erratic. I was living with my own private Grendel in Tummy Town, where fruits, vegetables, enchiladas, and ice cream could happily coexist, until one misplaced bread crumb or Skittle would summon The Beast and the whole town descended into chaos. With no children to sacrifice and no Beowulf, the most I could do to appease The Beast was feed it and sedate it with Imodium. Since we're all friends here, I have no problem dropping eighth-century Old English literature analogies to tell you that I need a good twenty minutes in the bathroom every morning … and by twenty minutes I mean forty minutes … and by forty minutes I mean
at least
an hour … just check back later! My self-imposed early wake-up call was to accommodate this very long engagement.

I had a lot to prove on this competition. There was always the question of whether I could withstand the fifteen-hour days and be a serious contender. I knew my mind was up to the task, but like an elephant on a unicycle, it was a delicate balance getting my body to cooperate. After all, how would I be able to make a travel show that embraced the unexpected if I couldn't thrive in a controlled environment in which makeup artists
thanked
me for allowing them the privilege of trimming my nose hair? In order to make the world more accessible, I was going to have to present the most accessible version of myself to the world.

Andrew was there to make sure that no matter
what
transpired in the three hours before I headed out the door, I was 100 percent straightened, combed, pressed, primped, and brushed by call time (in the industry, they call it “wheels up,” just in case you want to feel cool). I was the only contestant out of the ten finalists allowed to have a friend/“medically necessary assistant” in his room at the Sheraton. Then again, I was also the only one with cerebral palsy.

The compromise we'd struck with the production team was this: Andrew could take care of me before and after hours, but I couldn't tell him anything about what was happening on the show. Since Andrew was a trained EMT, I presented him as a medical professional and neglected to mention that he had also been my best friend since third grade. Every morning he'd bid me farewell by saying, “Chew bubble gum,” a phrase co-opted from our favorite childhood video game hero, Duke Nukem, who, just before opening fire on his alien foes, boldly declares, “It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum—and I'm all out of gum.” With these three simple words, my best friend had found a way to subvert the OWN competition's strict No Encouragement policy and
chew bubble gum
became our mantra. After we parted, Andrew could go off and have adventures in Los Angeles during the day, and an aide named Hershall would look after me on set, presumably to make sure I didn't break or steal shit.

Because of my filmmaking background, the prospect of reality television terrified me. Reality shows are based on drama and character, and I knew from my own experience working in the TV studio at the University of Texas that both were extremely malleable in the editing bay. My character was in the hands of producers I had only known for a day, and my fear was that I'd be presented as the helpless little boy in the wheelchair. By Day Two, I'd given them plenty of footage to support that depiction.

The format of the show had ten finalists broken into two teams who competed by producing different types of mock-television segments with a new celebrity mentor each week—makeover segments, cooking segments, late-night talk show segments—basically, any form of TV that requires hosting. Then, the OWN competition's judges,
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
's Carson Kressley and
Entertainment Tonight
's Nancy O'Dell, would judge the segments and someone from the losing team would be sent home.

For the first challenge, we were supposed to do “Man on the Street” interviews with the guidance of Dr. Phil. Both teams were instructed to choose a topic for him to comment on, and I had come up with “How Technology Affects Relationships.” I was charged with the task of stopping people outside the Universal Studios Theme Park and talking to them about psychology. I'd done this type of thing a hundred times before when I was a show host for my student television station at the University of Texas, but how can one guy in a wheelchair surrounded by gigantic cameras compete with the magic of Harry Potter and genetically enhanced turkey legs? He can't! They were setting us up to fail! It was an experience so disheartening that when I returned to the Sheraton at the end of Day One, I told Andrew to pack our bags. Given my volume of clothes, this took two seconds.

In my mind, the only thing that could save me from the previous day's disaster was a completely superstitious one—the newly anointed pair of lucky purple underwear I'd put on that morning. I didn't think my magical boxer briefs could save me from elimination, but maybe, just maybe, they could spare me from a brutal public shaming by Dr. Phil, America's Number One Disapproving Military Father.

Dr. Phil is a large man with a looming presence. Immediately upon meeting my team, he had turned our joy and excitement about being on the show into mortal fear of being unqualified. Trying to be cool, I'd asked him casually, “What kind of dynamic do you like to have with folks onstage? What do I need to do to make you feel comfortable?” To which he'd humorlessly replied, “Don't worry about what
I
need, worry about what
YOU
need to do. You are all incredibly unprepared.” I knew what I needed to do—crawl into a corner and suck my thumb for a bit! Usually it took people getting to know me before they were so disappointed. This was not a good start. In Dr. Phil's mind, we had no business in television and should all be out digging ditches somewhere, and the last ditch we dig should be our own grave—'cause that's just how useless we were. Or at least that's how it felt.

Today, we had to answer for the losers I was sure Dr. Phil had already reduced us to. When we got to the set, I had just enough time to go up the ramp and find my place onstage, after banging into all the chairs. But when Dr. Phil arrived, he wasn't the imposing figure in a three-piece suit from the day before but rather Dr. Phil Casual, in black dress pants and a polo, accessorized with a completely new demeanor. The rehearsal went smoothly, and he gave my teammates and me the much needed and liberating advice to tone down the hammy shtick we'd pre-scripted and just keep it natural.

When my team got in front of the cameras to film our mock TV segment, the stern and unimpressed Dr. Phil we'd met yesterday magically transformed into a warm and humorous Dr. Phil. He laughed at our jokes, even though he'd already heard them at rehearsal, and made the best out of whatever we gave him. When my teammate Ryan asked how much I knew about sexting, I quipped, “Nothing, but I would like to receive some!” And Dr. Phil added, “Well, that's a whole other show.” It had gone well and I hadn't been completely useless. This could only mean one thing—the lucky purple underwear had worked!

But there was still the wild card of the other team's segment. I had no idea what
their
underwear was like. For all I knew, they could be wearing panties made from Pegasus feathers! I hoped my Fruit of the Loom would hold up against whatever under-armor they'd brought to this battle. But in the end, not even wardrobe could have saved them, because they'd chosen to focus their segment on the thought-provoking and socially responsible query: “Does wearing condoms cause depression, and considering this, should you use them?” Turns out the answer was, yes, you should use condoms, because, apparently, getting AIDS is
slightly
more depressing than wearing a condom. Glad somebody finally made the definitive call on that one!

At two thirty in the afternoon, we broke for lunch. We headed outside to the craft services table and the cast entered what is called “lockdown.” That means that since the cameras weren't rolling, all cast members had to do their best to pretend the others didn't exist. We couldn't speak to each other, because if something even remotely interesting were to happen that, God forbid, wasn't being filmed, what would be the point? So these lunches became all about the food. Even whispers about the weather were immediately shut down for fear that saying, “It's a lot hotter than I expected it to be,” might be a strategic code designed to rig the whole competition. While the rest of my team sought comfort in trays of lasagna, salad, and cobbler, I maintained my steady post-breakfast diet of air, which is more substantial in LA because of the smog.