The Real Cancun?

In the real Cancun I was hounded by the Mexican police for urinating in the bushes and emerged from the situation fifteen hundred pesos poorer. I spent wads of cash on coronas after waiting in lines that reached halfway across the peninsula to get into sweaty nightclubs. Cancun just didn't seem to be the rowdy oasis it had been cracked up to be. That was, until I walked onto the set of The Real Cancun, the creators of The Real World's cinematic account of a week in the Mexican spring break destination.

The cameras were rolling at the Baccara Hotel as five of my buddies and I strolled up to the front door with sophomore Amber Madison, a cast member in the reality film. With the flick of a wrist, we signed release forms and gained entrance to a world where the tequila flowed non-stop and apparently so did the cameras as I discovered last Friday night at the film's opening.

Sitting in the "crowd" of eight at the Assembly Square Theater, five of whom being our spring break crew hoping to catch a glimpse of ourselves on the big screen, I thought of an appropriate title change for the film. Is Nothing Sacred? would have been more fitting as there appeared to be nothing "real" about the behavior resulting from sticking cameras in people's faces and flooding them with copious amounts of free alcohol.

I entered the movie theater thinking how great it would've been to be a cast member in the film, and exited thanking God that I wasn't. The newfound porn star status that cast member Jeremy received after viewers watched him fornicate with multiple girls through the eyes of the ever-rolling camera in his bedroom just didn't seem appealing to me. True, there were blankets shielding my virginal eyes from all the bedroom forays, but I wouldn't have wanted half the English-speaking world (or maybe just the fifty other people that saw the film) to see my hip thrusts -- covered or uncovered.

Despite the omnipresence of Girls Gone Wild-esque moments in the film, viewers were presented with some story line and at least one memorable character arc. Cast member Alan was miraculously transformed from self-proclaimed milk drinker to tequila guzzler during the week's events. But come on, we've seen innocent teenagers succumb to peer pressure on after-school specials on Lifetime since middle school, so was that really even a twist?

Or how about the part where Sarah walks in on Matt having sex in the shower and Matt punches a hole in a closet door when she won't talk to him - just one of the many budding relationships stifled by the alpha male tendencies induced by alcohol, cameras, and the raunchiness that is Cancun.

Without that Jose Cuervo and those little sliced up limes, without those earphoned cameramen panning in and out of conversations, and without the two words, spring and break echoing off every surface, the cast members would've been left with nothing but a nice view. Once the swim up bar stopped serving and the helicopters with their cameramen flew off into the night, the reality of my experience on the set of The Real Cancun set in. There were no more girls playing tonsil hockey with one another, the guys breathed easier, literally, because their abs were no longer in a constant flex, and the hangover headaches started to kick in.

But back in the US, from my seat on the aisle in the middle of the theater on Friday night, I was able to relive those moments and relish in the utter absurdity of the experience, and I guess that is what spring break is all about.