Careful What You Wish For

[Music]

do you remember as a young child how

many times somebody asked you what do

you want to be when you grow up you may

have answered a doctor or a nurse or

maybe an actor or an astronaut but

chances are over the years you changed

your mind several times and ended up

following a very different path in life

not for me

from my earliest memories i always

wanted to be a famous television

reporter

somebody who got to see and do things

most people didn’t and then report about

it on tv

to interview famous people and travel

the world

when i was very very young i found my

father’s film camera in a closet inside

our home

i begged him to buy me a roll of film he

did and i made my very first film at the

age of four years old

it was a film of my pet hamster running

round and round on the wheel in its cage

yeah it was simple but i was hooked

the idea of making a film that i could

watch over and over again was

mesmerizing to me

that and the fact that i had an aunt who

was a television reporter who got to

interview famous people and go to exotic

places just sealed in my mind what i

wanted to be when i grew up

i was a very curious child and they got

me into a lot of trouble

when i was eight years old there were

some baby alligators in the creek in

front of my school in georgia

all the kids every day would lean over

the bridge and watch the baby alligator

swim

but i wanted to do more i wanted to

catch one of those little alligators

and one day i took a rope tied a noose

around the end i lowered it into the

water and i did just that i caught the

cute little baby alligator

and all the kids laughed and screamed as

we started to walk towards home me

pulling the little baby alligator on a

leash like a puppy

but up ahead we saw some of the mothers

in the neighborhood screaming and

yelling and waving their arms

what we didn’t know is that the mother

alligator an eight-foot monster was

closing in on us from behind

obviously unhappy that i had kidnapped

her baby

i dropped the leash we all ran for home

screaming like crazy

and i remember my father trying to teach

me a lesson about what i’ve done

be careful what you wish for son

because you might just get more than you

bargained for

careful what you wish for it was a

lesson in life i wouldn’t learn for many

years to come

because for me as a young child and

later a young man

risk was part of obtaining any reward

and i was perfectly willing to risk

anything to become a television news

reporter

at the age of 14 i got a my own home

movie camera for my birthday and i began

filming everything my dog my friends

everywhere i went everything i did i was

obsessed with filming everything

i even began to film my diaries instead

of writing them down on paper i turned

the camera on myself or i pointed into a

mirror and record my day-to-day thoughts

at the age of 17 i got my first

broadcasting job as a radio dj

from there i went to college and studied

journalism and i even got to work as a

television news reporter on the college

tv station

my dream was coming true but in the back

of my head i could still hear it careful

what you wish for

immediately out of college i got my

first real television news job in the

small texas city of wichita falls

i was assigned to be a crime reporter

and i quickly began following the police

all over town

i saw a lot of dead bodies and a whole

lot of crime

and while they were shocked at a lot of

the things i’d seen i realized this is

what i dreamed of

to see things most people never did and

report about them on tv

after that first year i was hired as a

crime reporter in las vegas

las vegas one of the crime capitals of

america

criminals of every kind always came to

las vegas

immediately upon my arrival the sheriff

of las vegas issued me a handgun

he told me rick you can’t work in this

town as a crime reporter without

carrying a gun

there’s just too much mafia and

criminals running around

over the next few years i saw dozens of

murders bank robberies even a few

shootouts with the police

it seemed like scenes like that happen

every week in las vegas

and i was becoming known as a reporter

who always got the story

nothing was too horrible nothing too

dangerous for me

it was all about seeing everything i

could experiencing everything i could

and it became like an addiction to me

looking for hoping for the next crime

scene to occur

and with every horrible story i did my

bosses only praised me more

after four years in las vegas i had won

just about every journalistic award

there was

so it was no surprise that one day i got

a call from new york city

a new television show called inside

edition wanted me as their star crime

reporter

new york city i was going to be covering

the biggest crime stories in the world

now

flying all over the world for the

biggest stories of the day

i was on a lot of airplanes

a lot of airplanes sometimes 20

airplanes in a week flying into whatever

city in the world had the biggest news

story of the day

yeah i flew a lot

over two million miles in the first

three years of working in new york city

i traveled to london to cover a

terrorist story

i traveled to australia and new zealand

for a kidnapping to paris for a murder

story

whatever story in the world was

happening in whatever city i was there

and over the next few years i have

interviewed countless criminals and a

whole lot of hollywood celebrities

and i was becoming quite famous myself

having been on tv for so many years

but i was also very lonely and getting

even more lonely

i dated women around the world but i

never had time for a real relationship

i’d achieved my dream of traveling the

world but at what cost

careful what you wish for

kept coming back to me in my hand

it was about that time that i began to

grow tired of doing just crime stories

so i pissed an idea to the producers of

inside edition that i wanted to do some

adventure stories

i wanted to go out and do some things

that people only dreamed of

they said okay and i was off

i was set on fire for a hollywood stunt

i walked on the wing of an airplane

three thousand feet above the ground

i wrestled an eight-foot alligator yeah

i brought back some memories

i even swam with man-eating sharks

the more dangerous the adventure the

more of an adrenaline rush i got

and being on camera i was becoming more

and more famous

but the more and more dangerous stunts

turned into sort of a death wish

the adrenaline junkie in me had come to

life

and proving to an audience how fearless

i was became like a drug i needed it

more and more just to feel alive

and it seemed i was no longer just

documenting my day-to-day life i was

being challenged by the camera to push

further and further to top each

adventure stunt

but with each one of those daredevil

stunts i seem to lose a little piece of

myself i broke bones and i was injured

quite often and i was becoming more and

more physically tired with every single

story

i was also becoming reckless in my

personal life

i married a girl who became pregnant on

our third date

we didn’t even know each other but

somehow in the back of my head i thought

it might help ground me some having an

instant family give me some stability

yeah careful what you wish for

it was about that time i was sent to

interview the bodyguard of a very famous

playboy playmate anna nicole smith

my company had promised the bodyguard

three thousand dollars for the interview

but in the middle of that interview he

realized the payment hadn’t been made

and he became furious

he pulled a gun

said he was going to hold the news crew

and i hostage till he got his money

i managed to talk him into letting the

news crew go but he demanded i stay and

for the next several hours he sat there

snorting cocaine his hand getting more

and more shaky with the gun in my face

and i just waited for that moment he

pulled the trigger

finally though the payment came and he

did allow me to leave but i was a wreck

i collapsed in the parking lot

the combination of being mentally and

physically exhausted along with having

been held hostage had taken its toll i

have a complete nervous breakdown

i was sent home to dallas texas to get

professional help and i was in therapy

for the next nine months suffering from

post-traumatic stress disorder

i couldn’t work i couldn’t eat all i

could do was sit in the chair and take

handfuls of pills from several doctors

to try and keep my sanity

my new marriage was beginning to fall

apart

and soon i lost my contract with my

company

i was now unemployed with a new family

and in no condition to work

but i had to do something

television news was all i knew it had

been my whole career

so i went to another small texas city

and i got a news job but it didn’t last

a year

i left the family went to oklahoma for

another news job it too didn’t last a

year

all the horrible crime scenes i had seen

over the years along with the hostage

event had left me mentally crippled

my wife and i soon divorced

and i thought now my life and career are

over

but on the upside getting away from the

tv cameras seemed to settle me down some

that need to witness crime scenes slowly

went away

and that desire to do adventurous

daredevil death wish stunts began to

disappear i was truly beginning to live

life

on my own terms

it was that at that time a friend of

mine came to me and said rick you need

to make a film about your life

take all your video diaries and all your

professional on-air work put it together

and make a documentary film

so it took six people two years to go

through the thousands of hours of

videotapes but the film was made

and it was named tv junkie aptly sold

for my career in television

and the various addictions that have

brought me down

tv junkie was an international success

it won the sundance film festival’s

special prize for documentary film and

it was broadcast on networks around the

world like hbo

once again i have become very very

famous

and beginning to heal from the ptsd i

set off on my own now and begin filming

tv commercials and videotaping weddings

and a few years into that i came across

this crazy character named joe exotic

who ran a tiger zoo in the middle of

nowhere oklahoma

i knew instantly i had to make a reality

tv show about this crazy eccentric

character so i moved into the zoo for a

year

and i began filming everything i saw and

a lot of it was pretty horrible

i saw animals killed just to feed other

animals

and show exotics brutality on his

employees

making them eat food that was meant for

the animals and even treating their

illnesses with animal drugs

joe exotic was crazy and he was truly

evil in many ways

i began to hate the very project i had

started

and again and again in my head

careful what you wish for

after about that year in the zoo i was

just about finished with the reality

show and a fire broke out in the studio

and destroyed burned all the video i’ve

been shooting

i decided to quit the project i’d seen

too many horrible things

too much evil

a short time after i left the zoo joe

exotic was arrested and put in prison

for 22 years for trying to hire a hit

man to kill a competitive zookeeper

that’s when netflix came to me wanting

to make a tv series about joe exotic in

his crazy zoo

in 2020 netflix began airing tiger king

right at the same time the coronavirus

was exploding around the world

everybody was trying to stay home

watching tv and trying to social

distance

tiger king became the most watched

television series on netflix in its

entire history

everybody was talking about tiger king

and yet again i was more famous than

ever

but in a way my father had been right

all those years

i had wished to travel the world

to interview famous people and to

extreme do some extreme adventures

i’ve been recording them all i’ve been

i’ve become kind of a slave to the

camera i needed more and more to record

all the time

would i have been so eager to see all

those crime scenes if there hadn’t been

a camera there to record them

wouldn’t my daredevil adventures had

turned into a death wish

had there not been a camera

i don’t think so

all my life i had lived through the lens

of a camera instead of living life for

myself

six months after that fire at the zoo

my own house caught on fire

and nearly burned down on top of me

in the middle of the night my little dog

was scratched on my chest and woke me up

just as the flames burst into my bedroom

i was able to roll off the bed throw my

fist through a window

and then i went unconscious

i woke up a few days later in the

hospital i was rescued and i survived

but my little dog had not

and i have lost everything in the fire

all of my videos my photographs

everything i own had been destroyed

but in losing my recorded memories all

that video i kind of lost the desire to

document anything anymore on film

i had truly been set free from the

camera

looking at my life and the world in a

whole different way i decided to move to

norway and marry my longtime girlfriend

it seemed like i’d been on stage all of

my life and now i was beginning to

appreciate the simpler things

my father

my father’s words careful what you wish

for had a new meaning for me

the grass isn’t always greener on the

other side

in a twist of irony one thing seemed to

survive that fire miraculously in the

corner of my burned down bedroom

i found a little blackened charred bag

under some debris

and in that bag i found this

my video camera

it had survived the fire it was

completely intact and still in working

order

the camera may have fueled a lot of my

extreme ways through life but it did

have some positive benefits

it had been very therapeutic to me as i

did my video diaries over the years

camera had been my friend

and it will always be a part of me

i’m so very proud of my incredible

career phenomenal career

and very very happy with my life today

wow what a life it’s been

quite honestly i didn’t think i’d live

to be this age

so a few words of wisdom from me to you

when it comes to your life

and your career and your dreams first of

all fame or being popular it’s fleeting

it comes and goes it just isn’t it isn’t

reality

and finally

careful what you wish for

be careful

what you wish for

because you might just end up getting a

whole lot more than you expected

thank you

[Music]

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