Beating the Rap

Now he was seated near the back of a theater inside The Strand, a smut shop at 35th Street and Troost. The place was a grotto of stale air and worn seats in too-tight rows. The movie -- World's Biggest Prick Teasers -- offered larger-than-life views of men in leather and a rhythmic soundtrack of grunts and slaps and moans.

For Renzi, a star of the 1996, Miami-based season of MTV's The Real World, the darkness meant anonymity.

When a man inside the theater propositioned him, Renzi shooed the shadow away, saying that he wanted "self time."

Which he was getting. "I thought I was treating myself," Renzi tells the Pitch. Just for a little while, he could do whatever he wanted without being observed.

Renzi belongs to a new class of celebrity: the former reality-TV star. (Kansas Citians joining him after recent seasons are Shandi Sullivan from America's Next Top Model, Melana Scantlin from Average Joe and Frankie Abernathy from the current Real World installment.) More than 50,000 people apply for roles on the series each year, MTV spokeswoman Eileen Quast tells the Pitch. This year's Real World: San Diego averages 4 million viewers an episode, she says. (According to Nielsen ratings, 2.7 million viewers watched The Real World the week ending June 20.) MTV says The Real World is the most-watched basic-cable program in its time slot for 12-24-year-olds.

Originally from Overland Park, Renzi was Real World: Miami's scene-stealer: a good-looking gay guy from conservative Kansas. Previous seasons had featured gay cast members. Norman Korpi in New York and Pedro Zamora in San Francisco defined their sexuality as something political. The 21-year-old Renzi, though, was flamboyant, bitchy and unrepentant.

"The whole reason they picked me was because I have such a blasé attitude on being gay," Renzi says. "For everyone else, it was still an issue. It was this idea of, 'Let's put someone on the show who doesn't give a shit.'"

Since then, Renzi had converted 15 minutes into a full-blown career. Topped by a picture and his vital statistics (6 feet 3 inches tall, 190 pounds, brown hair, blue eyes), his résumé lists MTV spinoffs: Love in the Real World (Real World Hook-ups), 19 Degrees of Reality, The Real World 10th Anniversary Special, Real World/ Road Rules Battle of the Sexes, Kathy's So-Called Reality, MTV's Extreme Challenge 2001. He's done side projects such as Son of the Beach (a Baywatch parody) and Coming Out Party (a gay comedy special). He's acted in risqué comedies with titles such as My Boyfriend, Sleeping with Straight Men and Making Porn. He has studied public speaking with late-night infomercial guru Tony Robbins.

Last November, Renzi moved from Los Angeles to Kansas City to help his sister-in-law raise her two toddlers while his brother, a dental-supply salesman, was away on business. In April, when he met with the Pitch at Broadway Café in Westport, he carried a cell phone with a Los Angeles area code -- an industry trick to keep Hollywood types thinking he was still on the coast.

But he was tired of waiting for his big break, he said. He'd hosted MTV's 2003 Spring Break Bahamas special but had turned down the opportunity to appear on the Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Inferno, hosted by BMX biker Dave Mira in Acapulco, Mexico.

"I have other things to do, like laundry," he says.

Renzi's pants were at half-mast when an officer from the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department's vice squad turned on the bare light bulb in the Strand's projection booth. Across the aisle, a plainclothes cop in a T-shirt, ball cap and jeans flashed his badge.

"He was pleasuring himself, exposing his genitals. That's probably the easiest way to put it," Sgt. Brad Dumit tells the Pitch.

Officers escorted Renzi and two other men past fun booths and into the lobby. Renzi later described the events on his blog (www.danrenzi.typepad.com):

"Because the charges are minor, the cops just gave the other offenders 'arrest' citations to sign, and then they were let go. ... They wrote one of these citations for me, too; but then a cop yelled 'YOU WERE ON THE REAL WORLD!' to the whole room -- and after a quick discussion amongst themselves, they decided they needed to bring ME to the police station, so they could hold me in a cell, take my mug shots, and make me post $500 bail. ... Even though our charges were all the same, I was the only one actually brought to jail. ...While he was putting the handcuffs on me, the cop asked 'So, was being on The Real World fun?' When I replied, 'Asking me these questions while you're arresting me isn't fair,' the cop got huffy."

Dumit says that Renzi had a California driver's license and explains that it's standard procedure to take out-of-state offenders into custody for processing. He says the commotion actually erupted after he took Renzi outside to wait for a police van.

A TV news crew was doing a story on cigarette sales at the Conoco station across the street, Dumit says. "Apparently Renzi thought they were here for him. He started drawing attention to himself. He started running across the parking lot, and a camera guy recognized him. Otherwise, no one would have known. ... They called me and asked me if we'd arrested -- and then they named his name -- and to be honest with you, I didn't even remember the guy's name, so I had to go back and look."