Mole-dy Oldies: "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You"

Published in the VC Reporter, 7/7/05:

Don’t call us; we’ll call you
Inside try-outs for The Apprentice, one writer discovers his true-self.

by Matthew Singer

The law of averages states that, eventually, every single person on the planet will have appeared on a reality television show. It’s not just an extension of Andy Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” theory; it’s a mathematical fact. As it stands right now, we all have at least six degrees of separation from someone who was on one of these programs. I only need one degree: I went to high school with a girl who was on MTV’s Surf Gir#. More recently, my friend briefly worked with a contestant from another MTV vehicle, Andy Dick’s The Assistant. Despite the proven inevitably of all of us one day winding up in front of a camera devouring cockroaches and/or marrying a midget, everyone still watches others doing those things and wonders, “Where in the hell do they find these people? Are they created in a lab? Rolled off a Bizarro World assembly line?” No. As I learned one Saturday afternoon, these people often come from the same place regular human beings sometimes congregate: Orange County strip malls.

On June 25, at Five Points Plaza in Huntington Beach, NBC held the first of 17 countrywide open tryouts for the fifth season of one of the relatively classier, more high-stakes reality dynasties, The Apprentice. To be honest, I’ve never really watched the show. Most of what I know about it are the things that anyone who half pays attention to pop-culture knows: “You’re fired,” Omarosa, Donald Trump’s living hairpiece. But I figured the casting directors wouldn’t hold that against me. So, donning my most professional outfit—meaning, I tucked in my shirt—I ventured into the heart of the Big Orange, to mingle with the hopeful masses and observe the very genesis of the artificial reality we gleefully beam into our homes during prime time. And maybe, just maybe, claim my own spot in that manufactured universe.

Considering this was the only Los Angeles-area tryout, I was expecting to drive up to a scene out of a Fellini film, or at least the Michael Jackson trial: struggling actors and actresses with plastic chests and faces full of Botox; transvestites on unicycles; nutcases of all shapes and sizes, clamoring for a table scrap of fame.

Unfortunately, a show like #The Apprentice# pretty much eliminates the circus aspect one hopes to find at these kinds of open cattle calls. Instead, it was a parade of white-collar normalcy (and a surprisingly small one at that): men in business suits with ponytails and perfectly shaped goatees, women in power dresses with meticulously applied makeup. But that’s exactly what was freakish about these people. None of them appeared to be dressed to audition for a television show; all of them looked as though they believed they were going into a serious job interview. Most acted indifferent about the whole thing, insisting they were just trying out on a lark. Yet they all got up early on a Saturday morning, dressed sharply, put together their resumes and leather-bound portfolios, and lined up along the parking lot behind Bed, Bath & Beyond to wait in the sun for two hours. Reality TV is no longer the realm of weirdos and the emotionally fucked-up. Now, it’s a legitimate career path.

Of course, there were a few crazies here and there. There was the Paris Hilton lookalike, tagging along with her banker boyfriend and two bulldogs, one of which had been shoved into a dress. Perhaps expectedly, there was also a bloated Donald Trump lookalike, who presumably thought his resemblance would help his chances. Strangely, the person who received the most stares was the Danny Bonaduce lookalike, although I don’t think the guy was actively trying to look like him. (Note to the real Danny Bonaduce: When people believe you may actually be standing in line to audition for #The Apprentice#, your career is in serious trouble.)

It was easy to make friends among this group, since everyone was forced to practice having that “outgoing personality” the producers are supposedly searching for. One of the nicer—and more casually dressed, in paint-flecked shorts and a T-shirt—people there was Rob, a construction worker from Santa Barbara who was saving a spot for his girlfriend, which must be the new-millennium version of holding her purse in a department store. Naturally, he was a hero to the ladies in line. Another, Marc, who works in public affairs and sort of resembles a bald version of Dante from #Clerks#, did seem genuinely unenthused by the prospect of getting on television, although he had the ingrained shit-talking attitude viewers love to hate.

“I don’t trust people who wear enamel pins,” he said, referring to the guy at the end of the line with a bad orange-colored dye job and a Department of Homeland Security button attached to his lapel. (He’s a pilot, he told me later.) “They just want you to ask about what they do so they can ramble on and on about themselves.”

Indeed, asking anyone there about his or her job was a loaded question that required a minimum 20-minute response, including a comprehensive occupational and residential history. The first person I met, a burly middle-aged dude with wraparound Bono shades named Todd, prefaced his answer to my simple inquiry with, “It’s kinda complicated …” He’s been a singer and a dancer, a bodyguard for the Grateful Dead, a lawyer, the owner of a low-income apartment complex and is currently a crusader for medicinal marijuana, since both his parents died of cancer. According to him, his father built this shopping center, and he brought along the newspaper clipping to prove it.

Another, a wild-eyed blond lady in a Pepto-Bismol-pink skirt, told me she operates a kids clothing line. She pulled from her matching purse a little tank top with the word “HUNK” printed across the front; she said the female version has “HOTTIE” written on it. She barely found out about the auditions that morning, thanks to her mom, and she immediately ran down, because The Apprentice is her favorite show. It’s her young son’s favorite, too; he always sings the theme song. A tall, toothy, 40-something commercial actor promptly began hitting on her.

No one was quite sure what the process of elimination was going to be. All we were told was to slap on a wristband and wait. A lot of people spent the time pounding coffee and mulling over the mysterious inner workings of reality television. “Like, how do they cast for shows like #The World’s Ugliest Person# and stuff?” Mrs. Clothing Line pondered out loud. Apparently, most of the crowd were novices to this game, although I did overhear conversations between serial auditioners saying stuff like, “I missed the #Survivor# tryout, so I came to this one.”

After two-and-a-half hours, the line started to move. They were counting off groups of eight, taking four of them at a time into an empty storefront and seating them at tables with pairs of network reps. Through some reconnaissance work, I discovered that what they were doing at this stage was tossing out “controversial” subjects to the groups and allowing them to discuss for ten minutes. I guess the point was to locate the articulate ones, or those likely to dive across the table and rip out the throat of whoever disagreed with them.

I explained this to a guy standing behind me, then mentioned that I probably wasn’t going to try that hard, since I was there primarily to observe. “I want to be in your group then,” he said. “It’ll increase my chances.”

A strange thing happened once I finally walked through the door, though: I suddenly wanted to win. I’m not a naturally competitive person, mostly because the few things I consider myself good at don’t really lend themselves to competition. Maybe it was my mounting impatience, maybe it was the squinting face of the Donald staring at me from the banner on the wall, but when I sat down at that table and surveyed my group, I was suddenly overcome with the furious desire to mentally decimate all seven of my peers.

It was an interesting bunch: a 6-foot-10-inch ex-pro benchwarmer for the Cleveland Cavaliers; a woman who had earlier told a story about how she once accidentally brushed her teeth with Vagisil; another woman from Germany; a guy from Romania; Rob the Construction Worker’s girlfriend; a pint-sized businessman who looked about 14 years old; and my enamel-pin-hating friend from outside. All of them had job titles featuring some combination of the words “manager,” “consultant,” “project,” “analyst” and “financial.” These were my opponents. And I wanted to crush them.

“So,” began one of the casting people, “the question is: Should prostitution be legalized?”

Hmm, a curiously appropriate topic, considering The Apprentice is all about whoring yourself out to the almighty Mr. Trump, and one I had some pre-formed opinions on. But I decided to let the others talk before chiming in—you know, watch them set their strategy, then blow it to pieces.

Romania started in immediately, predictably pointing to Amsterdam as a model for the regulation and taxation of prostitution. The majority of the table nodded in agreement with his point, then basically rephrased it, just to get their voices heard. There were two dissenters, however: Tallboy McLonglegs and Mini Businessman. Both opposed the idea of legalized prostitution on moral grounds, using the old slippery-slope argument that legitimizing the profession could corrupt the entire fiber of the nation and send us spiraling into a cesspool of filth and degradation. (If I didn’t know better, I’d think they’d formed an alliance.)

“It’s not a morality issue, it’s a reality issue,” I finally said, giving myself the perfect soundbite I always hope for but never get. I then launched into an improvised speech about how America tries to deal with its social ills by making them illegal and hoping they’ll gradually go away, when the only effective way to deal with drugs and prostitution is to address them as problems to be solved rather than crimes to be punished. It sounded pretty good, and by the end, I was prepared to attack the little man if he said anything back.

Luckily for him, he didn’t have a chance to respond. The casting guy stopped the conversation, then asked all of us in the group who we would hire if we ran a company. Obviously, I would have chosen myself, but that didn’t seem like a decent answer. So I went with Romania, because he would bring an “international perspective” to my hypothetical corporation and because he happened to be sitting next to me. Romania said he would choose me, because I was “outspoken.” So did Rob the Construction Worker’s girlfriend, and even Tallboy (so much for the alliance). Overall, I ended up being the only person chosen more than once. I felt victorious, although I didn’t know what that meant.

As it turned out, it didn’t mean anything—they turned us loose afterward, saying that if anyone was moving forward, they would contact us in about a month. “Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” the casting guy said with a vaguely ominous, fake Hollywood chuckle.

When I stumbled back out into the light, I felt as though I’d just woken up from surgery: disoriented, confused, and I probably drooled on myself a little bit. As I untucked my shirt and began the grueling drive in weekend traffic back to Ventura County, I realized that I can no longer stare in disgusted amazement at the casts of reality shows and think, “Who are these people?” Because now I know: they’re you and me.

These aren’t mutants from the edges of society. They’re normal folks who probably tried out “on a lark” and got trapped in a situation they couldn’t control. The Apprentice might not have the stigma of other shows, but it causes the same reactions in the participants—it wrenches something out from deep within them that they may not have known existed. Surely no one who auditions for Fear Factor really thinks they’re going to be bobbing for horse testicles weeks later, and I didn’t wake up at 6 a.m. that Saturday morning thinking that I’d be defending hookers in front of a bunch of strangers by noon. It just happens, and it can’t be avoided. You might as well just get in line at a strip mall somewhere right now because with the amount of programs debuting every season, the networks are going to need fresh bodies. No one can escape reality, or reality television for that matter.