3 days with MTV, 30 seconds with Jared Leto

Climbing up the Titiwangsa Mountain range in a minivan, an hour or so north of Kuala Lumpur and 6,000 feet in the sky — that’s a pretty good place to hold the MTV Asia Awards. And that’s where we were scheduled to visit with Jared Leto, the host of the awards, along with foreign acts like Panic at the Disco, X Factor winner Leona Lewis, and Asian bands like Project E.A.R. (East Asian Revolution). 

It’s a majestic sight, winding your way up curvy roads reminiscent of Tagaytay Highlands, until you start to spot the mist-enshrouded pleasure dome — Genting Highlands Resort, something like Shangri-La in Lost Horizon (the Burt Bacharach musical version). As you get closer you realize: all this was constructed just so Malaysians could have a taste of Vegas, complete with casinos, cotton candy, roller coasters and waterslides.

I skipped the kiddie rides and patiently waited for the presscon. Hosted by MTV’s VJ Utt and Denise Keller, the press meet-and-greet featured a parade of bands and musicians set to play the following night at Genting’s Arena of Stars — after a routine bomb sweep of the premises before we could take our seats.

Of interest to Filipinos was the presence of two Slapshock members, Jamir Garcia (vocals) and Lean Ansing (guitar), part of the pan-Asian lineup in Project E.A.R. Along with members of Malaysia’s Pop Shuvit, Singapore’s Ali Fiqir, Thailand’s Thaitanium and Silksounds, and Indonesia’s Saint Loco, the two added a bit of Pinoy flava to what looked to be the P-Funkiest band scheduled to kick the stage at the MTV Asia Awards. One Asian reporter asked, “How will you be able to upstage (show host) Jared Leto?”

Moots of Pop Shuvit shrugged and waved a hand at his 11 band members onstage: “Just look at us, man!” He had a point.

Later I asked Slapshock vocalist Jamir how they would avoid upstaging each other onstage: “Pretty much we know what each brings to the table. Like, I’m not gonna rap, we’ve got much better rappers onstage. I think it’s pretty much a respect of what the others bring. Like, they know I can scream some, so I can put that flavor in there.” The ensemble plays around Asia, including Pulp Summer Slams and recently the Dubai Rock Festival, but they also travel as far as Vancouver. This mash-up concept is also central to Jabbawockeez, a US-based dance collective that opened the show in white face masks (think Blue Man Group meets Mike Myers), but is as multi-ethnic as it gets, including a couple Fil-Ams.

Amit Jain, MTV Networks VP for China and SEA, reminded us that MTV Asia started 14 years ago in Japan and now has 12 channels broadcasting in 10 languages. Sandy Monteiro, chairman of the Recording Industry of Malaysia (amusingly called “RIM”), pointed out that for Asian acts, the network provides “an introduction to a much bigger market,” citing Rivermaya: “They were the top-dog indie band in the Philippines, but nobody knew who they were outside of the country. But after MTV rotated their songs, Warner Music snapped them up and made them a priority.” As we know, this is not the case with all bands trying to get a slice of the music-biz pie. In this age of dwindling music sales, playing out live tends to be the key income generator for bands; CD sales and royalty earnings can be as misty and hard to grasp as the fog encircling Genting.

The main celeb of the day was host Leto, who, many were surprised to see, was not wearing makeup. He unveiled this year’s MTV Asia Award trophy — a 24-karat gold-plated bar that looked to many like Toblerone — and joked about the mystifying matrix of walkways and escalators connecting Genring’s five hotels: “Once you check in, you never check out.” He also answered questions about his favorite Asian food, compared acting to performing with his screamo band 30 Seconds to Mars (“I tend to be pretty specific when I make films, so making music helps, because instead of going stir crazy, I have plenty to do in the downtime”) and talked about putting on eyeliner: “I tend to go makeup-free 99 percent of the time,” he explained. “When I was a kid, I idolized people like Robert Smith from The Cure, even Ozzy Osbourne … It’s the sense of theatricality they had onstage. It’s not something where I wake up and put on eyeliner or something. It’s kind of like putting on war paint before you go into battle. And I’m sure we all have had periods in life that we look back on with, uh … questions.”

Basically, Leto seemed like he was having a pretty cool time in Asia. “I have a tremendous interest in everything Asian,” he said. “When they called me (to host), I just thought it would be an exciting and fun thing to do.” We believed him.

VJ Denise reminded the press to use the microphones spread around the room, and as I stepped up to ask a question, Leto quipped, “She’s not beyond punishing you if you don’t patronize the mikes and follow the rules. Including you, white man.”

I said I was representing the Philippines and asked, since music is one of the few things that can still reach kids, if he thought musicians had a responsibility to take a stand on issues.

“It’s an interesting question. I think it really is dependent upon the individual,” Leto reflected. “We’ve recently had a lot of success (with 30 Seconds to Mars) and we felt it was important to give back in some way. So we went to the Arctic and shot a music video among glaciers and icebergs 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. And it was a transformative experience; it taught us a lot about our responsibility and the Inuit culture and how they’re being affected today by global warming.”

I considered asking how filming a video in the Arctic “gave back” to the planet, but I was too chicken. Leto went on:

“I think reaching young people is an amazing gift, but I don’t think it’s the job of the entertainer to postulate about the state of the world. I think our rule is if it helps more than it hurts, then we do it.”

He talked a bit more about directing his band’s video in the frozen north: “We were literally the dumbest people on the planet, because we were standing on top of these icebergs which were exploding around us and cracking apart at our feet. I was shooting a shot of my guitarist, and a crack just blew up between his feet, and we were 200 feet in the air, standing above water that you would certainly not live a few seconds in. So that video, it was such an experience making it, I think getting an award for it is, like, secondary. I feel like we already got the award.”

Ever since playing the so-cool-it-hurts character of Jordan Catalano in the short-lived TV series My So-Called Life, Leto has had a reputation for being somewhat … idiosyncratic. Maybe even spacey. At least on camera. But his strong work in key films like Requiem for a Dream and Fight Club shows he’s canny enough to pick good projects. And he’s obviously enjoying his life. Still, there’s a bit of Jordan Catalano in there, after all. When he left the stage, thanking the audience and bidding adieu to the VJ onstage, Leto said: “I’ll see you at the show, Karen.” “My name is Denise,” the VJ firmly corrected. “Oh, yeah, right. Denise. See you tomorrow.” And with a wave, Jared Leto was off.

The next night, we filed into the 3,000-seat Arena of Stars and got in the mood while Nicole Scherzinger led the Pussycat Dolls through some pole-dancing moves onstage. Nicole told the crowd she was proud to have parents from Pampanga (she was born in Hawaii) and yelled out: “What up to all my fellow Pampangeños out there?” Hoots of recognition, or just Asian teen hormones in overdrive, came back from the audience. Host Leto was a little less animated than he was during the presscon and generally stuck to the script, though he did manage to learn a couple Malaysian phrases from the squealing mosh pit girls. Lest we forget, this was an awards show, so big-screen graphics played on two screens above an elaborate stage spelling out “MTV 2008.” One nice feature was the video bits shown to introduce each country’s category: “viewer-generated content” included vids from kids in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the Philippines, YouTubing themselves with giant microphones, animation and white bunny suits (the Malaysian dudes, who showed up at the post-party wearing the same silly suits; hey, how else could they get recognized by chicks?). There were slight nods to MTV’s “causes,” like MTV Exit, which fights human trafficking in Asia, and co-host Karen Mok’s UNICEF advocacy; and MTV pledged to raise funds for disaster victims in Myanmar and China; but this was pretty much buried amid the corporate sponsorship by MAC, Esprit, Malaysian Tourism and others and the calls from VJ Keller onstage to “go shopping.” “Slacktivism” at its best.

Oddly, MTV is one of the most democratic institutions in Asia, allowing kids to choose their favorite videos and acts. How else could Linkin Park still remain popular, long after their US stock has plummeted? (They were deemed “Best International Act,” outpolling Fergie, JT and Avril Lavigne.) And whatever your musical tastes, you’ve got to admit the awards show reflects what kids enjoy these days in a very regional way. In between the US acts like One Republic, The Click Five and Panic at the Disco, we caught mash-ups between Singapore’s Electrico and singer Stefanie Sun (she won “Favorite Artist” for her country); an Irish trio called The Script, who were hyped as “the new U2” but sounded more like “the new Maroon 5” to these ears; and Leona Lewis, who belts it out like Mariah Carey. The act that perhaps best captured the ephemeral nature of video fame was the Korean lads of Super Junior, who were described as “the biggest act in the world” at the moment, having racked up “3 million downloads.” Onstage, they did a good impression of a Madame Tussaud’s exhibit for their first number, barely moving their torsos. They ended their second number in an explosion of dance, pyrotechnics and sullen expressions.

Since I like to think of MTV as occasionally rebellious and rock-oriented, it was good to see Project E.A.R. make some noise during their two numbers, adding some edge to the otherwise slick surface of the evening. Philippine act Chicosci didn’t get to perform, but they won the “Favorite Artist Philippines” award, and must have paid someone good money to have their category presented by the Pussycat Dolls — thus also scoring the “Best Grope of the Night,” molesting the curvy presenters onstage.

The show ended with Panic at the Disco, a Las Vegas band whose Yellow Submarine-inspired video Nine in the Afternoon was screened behind as the stage filled up with Malaysian acrobats, bird-plumed chorus girls, marching band members and silver confetti. Yup, it was Vegas, baby. Vegas in the Malaysian mountains. It doesn’t get any more MTV than that.