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]
you