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DJ Cash Bar has lived multiple lives, from air-conditioned soundstages to the jungles of South America. In this memoir, he turns the camera lens inward to focus on the hook ups and hook downs, black-out drinking, drugs, the specter of death, and clashes mixed with reconciliations projecting in the industry’s background long after final cut.

In “Back Focus; My Life Behind the Reality Lens,” DJ Cash Bar, an experienced Camera Operator, Director of Photography, and Director, peels back the curtain to reveal the tumultuous world of reality television. With two decades of experience in the industry, he has contributed to multiple Emmy-winning and nominated shows.

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BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

BACK FOCUS

BY DJ Cash Bar • POSTED ON Sept. 25, 2023

A reality-television insider tells all in this debut memoir.

The author, who uses the pseudonym DJ Cash Bar, was a camera operator, director of photography, and director for multiple unnamed reality television shows, including several Emmy Award winners and nominees. “Depending on the show’s popularity, I am the eyes for 15 million people, or 750,000 if it flops,” he writes. The book begins in 2007 (which he describes as “the Wild West days of reality TV”), recounting his experiences on a dating show filmed in the rural Midwest; it featured 10 cosmopolitan women competing to become engaged to a local farmer. The author’s descriptions of the outlandish scenarios of reality TV are matched only by his detailing of the shenanigans behind the scenes. While the filming of some shows were defined by monotony and boredom—one anecdote, for instance, features a paper airplane contest from the author’s hotel balcony—one show, he writes, “turn[ed] into a Caligula orgy.” The book compares the reality-show experience to the fabled rock-star life with its abundance of free food and sex, but also notes that TV people often remain in the same hotel for extended periods. Over the course of the book, the author introduces readers to a compelling array of characters, from a sex-crimes unit police officer from Broward County, Florida, to a jealous Hell’s Angels biker who fought crewmembers after his ex-wife flashed them in a bar. Multiple celebrities make cameos, including Donald Trump, who insisted on ignoring the help of an audio engineer and opted to mic himself, resulting in a “scratchy” recording. An admirer of Hunter S. Thompson, the author’s gonzo writing style effectively highlights the absurdity of his profession while celebrating the people backstage who make the television industry run. As such, the book’s narrative can be disorienting, eschewing chronological storytelling and dropping readers into events midscene, but this lively approach aptly fits its subject.

An absorbing, no-holds-barred entertainment-industry remembrance.

Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2023

ISBN: 9798218253738

Page count: 212pp

Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2023

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