Let's re-read the
Details article, for those who think Heidi wouldn't possibly "allow" (HA!) Spencer to call Perez Hilton and make some shit up about Lauren.
Pratt: “All right, then here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna start dating Nicole Richie. And you’re gonna get that skinny bitch to eat, all right? You are about to become The Guy Who Got Nicole Richie to Eat. Process that shit, bro. You’ll be, like, a fucking hero to America.”
The plan to get Nicole Ritchie to eat was devised back in August. Five months later, Jenner and Pratt are telling me about it over a $900 dinner at Mr. Chow, in Beverly Hills. Such an idea is many things—perverse, postmodern, proof that apocalypse predictors shouting nonsense on street corners are onto something—but to Jenner and Pratt, it was a business plan.
Here’s how Pratt, also 23, and the son of a “celebrity dentist,” explains it: “What does it take to be famous nowadays? Nothing! Look at Nicole. She’s on the cover of every magazine every week. And why? Because she doesn’t eat. Well, lots of girls in this country don’t eat. That’s, like, my whole philosophy with Brody—make him part of that. Like at first, when he started showing up in Us Weekly, people were all, ‘Who the hell is that?’ Now they’re starting to be like, ‘Hey, do you know who that is?’”
I wish I could tell Pratt (and you) that he’s insane, but it says a lot about the current state of pop culture that he makes even an ounce of sense. After all, I’m here, having flown across the country to meet Brody Jenner. This wouldn’t have happened if Jenner hadn’t tried to get Nicole Richie to choke down a fry. And before Richie there was Kristin Cavallari (the moneyed blonde at the center of MTV’s Laguna Beach), and after Richie there was Lauren Conrad (the moneyed blonde now on MTV’s The Hills, a Laguna Beach spin-off). That these relationships are totally contrived is the point: Manufacturing fake realities is—read slowly here—the only real dimension of Jenner’s and Pratt’s lives.
The Conrad–Jenner union was forged five months ago, a week after Jenner and Richie “broke up.” You can watch the unraveling of Conrad and Jenner’s relationship in a multi-episode arc of The Hills, a show watched by 2.5 million people weekly. Pratt was the Karl Rovian mastermind behing these “branding efforts.” And he benefited too. “Basically, I made it, like, my mission to try to go on a date with every girl on The Hills,” says the guy who will proudly tell you he made $50,000 in high school by selling a photo he took of Mary-Kate Olsen drinking at a party. Pratt ended up “falling in love” with one of the Hills girls, Heidi Montag. Their drama dominates the current season.
Jenner and Pratt also manage a rapper, Ya Boy, who is “blowing up on MySpace.” Neither of these endeavors is generating any real income, but they are turning Jenner and Pratt into obscenely TV-worthy entities—and this, Pratt hopes, will be the income generator. They recently sold a show about Jenner’s love life to MTV.
“Let’s see where Lindsay’s at, get her up in here,” Jenner says, reaching for his BlackBerry and texting Lindsay Lohan. He is seated at a back table in a lounge called Hyde, mixing himself drinks with a $500 bottle of Grey Goose paid for by the Godfather.
Lohan texts back: She’ll be joining us in 20 minutes. Meanwhile, Joe Francis, creator of the Girls Gone Wild franchise, comes by the table to say hello. The 33-year-old Francis is a Yoda-like figure to Jenner and Pratt—someone who got rich simply by persuading girls to flash their breasts. Francis, Pratt informs me, has an estate in Mexico with a device called the “anything button” in select rooms. “You press that and you get anything you want. Anything. How incredible is that?”
A few minutes later, in a particularly bizarre pseudo-celebrity collision, Kevin Connolly, who plays Adrian Grenier’s best friend and manager on the HBO hit Entourage, stops by Jenner’s table. “What’s up?” he says. He grabs the bottle of vodka, pours himself a glass, and meanders over to a platinum blonde about a foot taller than he is. “That guy is a joke,” Pratt says with scorn. “We were Entourage before Entourage.” He’s not joking. To Pratt, the notion that someone would become famous by acting is ridiculous. “Why would anyone act,” he asks, “when they can just play themselves?”
Well, there’s this: While Jenner & Co. will spend $1,000 on drinks over the course of the next two hours, Connolly is drinking for free.
When Lohan arrives a short while later, she is ushered to a table by her bodyguard. Jenner goes over to greet her (tomorrow he will show me a text message he says is from Lohan inviting him to, of all places, Joe Francis’ Mexican estate). When he returns to the table after their brief exchange, he’s in an introspective mood. “This whole scene, this whole town—it’s all so fake,” he says, pulling me aside. “It’s like a movie set, like my life is a movie set. These people, they all think this is real, but it’s not. I wanna meet a girl who has nothing to do with L.A., a nice, normal, real girl.” For a moment, he sounds almost genuine. Then he says, “Actually, you know, that’s gonna be a component of our new MTV show—me leaving L.A. to meet a normal girl. It might be hard, though, with all the cameras.”
Later, we take a drive with Pratt in Jenner’s Mercedes G55 (MSRP: $105,275) down the Pacific Coast Highway, passing Mel Gibson’s house and eventually David Geffen’s. Pratt spends 20 minutes talking about how he plans to make a tape of himself and Heidi Montag having sex, which he’s thinking about posting online. Plunging ahead to tap the next vein of almost-stardom, he tells me I should have been at Jenner’s the other night after Hyde, at five in the morning. “Guess who showed up,” he says. “Lindsay Lohan. I’m telling you, man, she’s obsessed with Brody. She wrote him a note that says how she could cuddle with him forever. Kissed it and signed her name and everything.” As Pratt speaks, I glance at Jenner, looking for a reaction, but he shows no sign of emotion.
“Hey,” Pratt asks me, “do you think Details would publish that note, like a copy of it?”
Maybe, I tell him, if he gives it to me.
“All right, but only if I can film myself giving it to you. Is that cool?”