The Celebrity Apprentice is more honest, in that creepy kind of way that the guy who admits he’s a racist is more honest. It doesn’t pretend to be about something beautiful like dance. I think business is beautiful, but The Celebrity Apprentice has nothing to do with business. No actual business skills are tested. It’s not even a real game about fake business. I can tell you the rules of chess (I know the rules well enough to lose to anyone). I can’t tell you the rules to The Celebrity Apprentice. No one can tell you the rules of The Celebrity Apprentice. No one. Donald Trump just does what he wants, which is mostly pontificating to people who are sucking up to him, while the network people try to manipulate him into making the highest-rated show they can. Trump can’t be manipulated, so the show isn’t even fair in that way. Annie Duke, the poker genius, and TCA veteran, said to me, “It’s a pretend game, about pretend business, where you get pretend fired.” Donald Trump couldn’t fire me. I work for Penn & Teller and he’s never owned any part of us. Trump tried to book Penn & Teller once in Vegas at one of his casinos, but we were priced out of his budget. He can’t fire us from the Rio, because he doesn’t own any of Caesars.
TCA pretends to be about raising money for charity. That’s true, but only so far. If I had not taken time off from the Penn & Teller show to do The Celebrity Apprentice—if Teller and I had just done our show, gotten usual pay—I could have donated four times the amount of money that Trump had pledged to give my charity if I won the whole damn shooting match. Opportunity Village, “my” charity that helps intellectually disabled adults to enter society, got a lot of attention because I was on The Celebrity Apprentice, and that does count for something. And when I was “fired,” my real bosses at Caesars, who own the Rio and the Penn & Teller Theater, said, “Oh, you wanted a quarter million for Opportunity Village? We don’t have to do some jive TV show; we’ll just write a check.” They wrote the full winning amount to Opportunity Village and everyone was happy. But The Celebrity Apprentice people are honest. They don’t pretend it’s about something beautiful, and they don’t pretend it’s fair. It’s venal people clawing at stupid, soulless shit in front of the modern-day Scrooge McDuck in order to stay famous.
The producers of TCA are a couple of really groovy women whom I grew to know a little and like a lot. They wanted the show to be honest, and they kept it honest. I didn’t watch the show, but I didn’t hear about any edits that were really disingenuous. They had to tell a story, and stories are never real, but they showed a view of the show that was certainly as accurate as the one you’re reading now. I never saw them lie, or push someone to get the reaction they wanted. They just let it happen with integrity and honesty. For one “task,” Donald Trump asked us to create a Macy’s store display and print ads for his new fragrance. Is there anyone who wants to smell like Donald Trump? Mr. Trump thinks so, so we were asked to create advertising. Instead of the usual twenty grand that the show would give to the winning “team leader’s” charity, Donald floated the promise that if he “loved” our promotional material, he would give one hundred thousand dollars to his “loved” one’s charity. Five times the amount that was arbitrarily assigned to this “task.” In other words, if Trump got an ad that he could actually use for his stink-pretty juice, he would pay about twenty percent of what he would have to pay in the free market to hire a professional to do the job properly. Trump was willing to donate one-fifth of what the campaign would be worth to charity. I got fired for coming up with the slogan “You Earned It.” They thought that slogan was “pompous.” My slogan for a perfume with Donald’s picture on it called “Success” was deemed pompous. Wow. The problem was my audience, I think. “You Earned It” isn’t good for the Trumps. It should have been “You Inherited It.” I would have won. I also helped with some of the parts of the campaign they liked, but the team chose my slogan, so not having a slogan would have been better than having one they don’t like. The game theory is to do as little as possible. Not the way I live my life, but it’s not my game, it’s Trump’s.
TCA gets the coin on both sides: they get NBC to pay for the show and they get the corporations to pay for the “challenges.”
Trump stays rich in real estate and stays kinda sorta famous for his “brand.” Trump is obsessed with his brand and that’s all you really need to know. Trump is on a game on TV where my showbiz peers, if they want to play the game, have to suck up to him, and I sucked up to him. I’d sit and smile and listen, because I promised the producers I would do my best. The boardrooms went long and I was there to spend about twenty-two hours, over six weeks listening to Trump do his monologues. He’d talk about Occupy Wall Street and global warming while he was deciding whom to pretend to fire from his pretend business. Bill Gates is fighting polio, and polio and I don’t suck up to him, but I was on TV with Donald Trump, so I did my job. I wasn’t even going to say anything about Trump’s hair. I live in a glass house. I’ve always had ugly, out-of-style hair. Trump’s hair is a lot better than mine—but as I sat there for hours half listening to Donald carry on, it struck me exactly what his hair looked like. It looks like cotton candy made of piss. That revelation came to me, and I had to type it here. But my hair is worse.
One day while shooting, Clay Aiken, Arsenio Hall, Lou Ferrigno and I were sneaking out of Trump International Hotel behind a laundry truck, to hide from the imaginary paparazzi. We’re all sub-stars, and we’d all been in showbiz for a while, so we were used to being walked in through the kitchen so the paying customers wouldn’t see the show folk. There were a few others with us, but I was trying to shock you with that opening foursome. Dee Snider, from Twisted Sister, was with us too. It was November in New York City, but in TV phony-baloney world it was March. I had been up since five a.m. for makeup, and a few days before I’d had a heart-to-heart talk with Clay. I would have preferred waterboarding. I don’t like heart-to-heart talks with anyone, but Clay Aiken? Strap me to the board, and put the wet towels over my face. Drowning sounds nice. Clay had put his arm on my shoulder, looked in my eyes and said softly something like, “You know, Penn, I really like you, I do. I think you’re really smart, but I have to talk to you about some things that are bothering me.” Clay told me, gently and kindly, that I was being condescending by talking over people’s heads. He was accusing me of being condescending and he was being… condescending. When someone is busting you for being condescending, it takes a bigger asshole than me to say, “Are you sure you know what ‘condescending’ means? It means to talk down to, not talk over someone’s head. So, you see, honey, I’m not condescending, I’m pompous, let me explain…”
So, I nodded, yeah, I’m condescending. Greed and clawing for fame got me to the point where I was pretending to care what Clay Aiken thought of me. What have I done? What have I done?
Clay spent over an hour and a half of his time, and wasted much more than that of mine, having a heart-to-heart with me over how he, Clay Aiken, thought I should treat Lou Ferrigno. He wasn’t talking about how Clay Aiken thought I should treat Clay Aiken, about which I would have had to work hard to give a flying fuck. Clay was talking to me about how he, Clay Aiken, thought I should treat the guy who played a cartoon character painted green, decades ago. He also told me to stop using the word “groovy.” This from a man who uses the word “bitch.” I like the word “groovy.” I don’t like the word “bitch.” After our talk, I went back to the hotel, called my wife and talked to her about being upset about my talk with Clay Aiken. One’s wife could bring home a couple of her sexy MILF friends for a very special sex birthday party and one could be unable to get a hard-on and then pee all over oneself and start crying like a little girl while chewing egg salad on soft bread with one’s mouth open, and it would disgust one’s wife less than talking about one’s heart-to-heart talk with Clay Aiken. She’s a very understanding woman.
If you’ve gotten yourself into a situation when Clay Aiken is going to talk about his feelings with you… and if your cock is bigger than a cashew, it’s time to kill
yourself. If it weren’t being documented, you could kill him quickly and bury him in a shallow grave—who’s going to notice? You could go on living your happy normal life, but if there are TV cameras pointed at you while Clay is pretending to soul search, and your wife is going to find out and some of your friends from the carny might watch the show in a bar somewhere, well… you should kill yourself.
It is a tribute to having the greatest parents in the world, my wonderful wife and children, and to having character rammed into me by my third-grade teacher that I’m still alive to write this now. Clay was explaining to me how I could live my life in a way that would please him, while we sat on an upper floor of Trump Towers and the door to the balcony was unlocked. I could have jumped. As the cameras shot us, Clay looked directly in my eyes like he was showing compassion for an autistic child while he knew he was on a reality TV show. He was playing compassionate, smart and practical in the face of this big loud aggressive guy. Then he used the word “bully” against me (that word was used a lot during that episode), referring to how I dealt with Lou Ferrigno. Lou had called me a “fat motherfucker” and hit me, and hurt me, several times as he pretended to greet me and show me affection but really as he showed me how strong he was. Lou said that his roughness with me was proof that he liked me. I said, “Then don’t like me.” I sure believed it was affection. He would swear that he never hit me and he wouldn’t be lying. What he considering greeting, I consider battery. I’m a pussy. I hate that jock hugging hitting thing. It’s why I became a theater guy. Lou explained to me that “no kidding” he was trained in combat and could kill me in three seconds. Clay explained how I should deal with Ferrigno. Clay said that he knew how to deal with Lou because Clay himself had worked for years with intellectually disabled students before he discovered himself on American Idol. He thought I should deal with this grown man—who was our peer, who had punched me in friendship—as if I was dealing with an intellectually disabled child, so… get this… so I wouldn’t come off as condescending in front of the non-groovy, but very bitchy Clay.
You don’t have to be a mind reader to know what I was thinking as Clay’s perpetually half-closed, unfocused eyes met mine and he placed his “comforting” hand on my shoulder. I was thinking, I have made a lot of money. So has Teller. Teller loves me. If I run out to the balcony and jump off, I’m sure my wife and children wouldn’t get my huge life insurance policy (I’ve seen Double Indemnity), but Teller would get a big press bump from me being dead, and he’d use that money to make sure that my family are taken care of. And there’s a chance, with this conversation on video, they’ll get Clay for murder, and my family will get the insurance money after all and can maybe file a civil suit against Clay for more money. I’m bigger than Clay by a lot. I could probably kill him with my bare hands even without Lou’s military training, but at this point, I’m thinking my funeral, his trial, instead of the other way around. It’s a coin toss. Condescending. Hand on shoulder. Looking into my eyes and… for OVER AN HOUR!
How long is an hour? When my wife and I decided to get married and have children, the conversation took forty-five minutes. On my mother’s deathbed, the honest “I love you”s took a half hour. The decision for Teller to quit his tenured classics teaching job and spend the rest of his life working with me took ten minutes. This “good TV” heart-to-heart with the second place winner of a talent show took over an hour. An hour during which the people I really loved, my mom, my wife and Teller, were being spit and pissed on by my hearing out Clay on camera about something completely unimportant. I should have jumped. At least some of you might have respected that. No one respects me talking to Clay Aiken about feelings. Not even Clay. He was just doing it to win a TV game so he wouldn’t have to go back to condescending to mentally disabled children for a career.
What happened? Did I forget how to say “Shut the fuck up?” Or, “I’m sorry, I think I left the bathwater running in Las Vegas, and you know it’s the desert, there’s a water shortage.” Or, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English. I learned our Vegas shows phonetically.” Or, “Hey, Clay, there are more TV cameras on the other side of the room. Why don’t you have a heart-to-heart with Arsenio Hall? That might get you more close-ups.”
I owe my family and Teller my full attention no matter what tripe they want to babble, but those people never babble tripe. I owe Aiken jack shit, and yet I was letting him tell me how I should act. He’s not fit to eat shit off Teller’s shoes, and I gave him more time than I’ve ever given Teller? The time didn’t mean anything to Clay. He would have a heart-to-heart talk with a salmon if there were a chance it would be broadcast. If you’ll listen, he will talk. He’s used to having cameras around him all the time, and he knows how to create an improvised soap opera for TV. When he said he wanted me to treat people differently, I said “Okay” and I changed how I was. Everyone who was on the show or watched the show noticed that I took all his advice and changed how I acted. I did that instantly. I told him I’d do that in the first five minutes of our talk. He got that promise from me and I kept that promise—it’s on video. But he wasn’t telling me things to have me change. What I was doing didn’t matter; it was the talk itself he wanted to have on camera. He was gathering evidence and not actually talking. Crazy world this showbiz thang.
I try to have an honest relationship with my wife, so that night I called her and told her that I’d had a heart-to-heart with Clay Aiken. I could have told her that aliens had come down and given me intergalactic herpes on my asshole and she would have been more credulous and less disgusted.
So the morning after my heart-to-heart with Clay, I’m sneaking out of Trump International, as part of my quest to have my fake business abilities judged by Trump. I’ve run a very successful business for almost forty years and have always been in the black. Always. Teller and I never went bankrupt. We’ve paid all our bills and supported our families and the people who work with us. Before Clay Aiken touched me, I was a fucking artist.
I’m walking beside Dee Snider. We’ve got our hair and makeup done, and we still look like men in their fifties with long stupid hair. We get out of the loading dock, and there’s freezing rain and wind hitting us in the face. Dee had broken his finger falling off a horse, while dressed in drag, for a medieval dinner theater show in Jersey that I made him do when I was The Celebrity Apprentice “team leader.” We were both a little damaged, bleary, worse for the wear and tear, and Dee turned to me and said, “I’m getting so paranoid, I’m starting to think that the show’s producers made this weather happen just to fuck with us.”
Dee had nailed it. His broken finger had not beaten his real-world perspective, the way Clay’s heart-to-heart had broken mine. He still had some non-reality reality left. When Dee said that, I realized that was what I was feeling, without the “I’m getting so paranoid” part. Right before Dee spoke, I was feeling that the freezing rain was some sort of TV producer plot. That they had planned it to see what we would do, that they had done it to make “good TV.”
Why people act worse on reality than they would in reality, is a mystery. Other than avarice and desire for empty fame, the main reason I did TCA was to feel what it would feel like to be in that situation. I did it to see what made people act like that. Not everyone falls off a motorcycle without a helmet to become Gary Busey. Some people do it just because there are cameras around. When you’re in it, it seems like the producers must be making this shit happen, but I don’t think they were. I don’t think they have to do much to drive people like us crazy. We start with a leg up.
Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow introduced me to the idea of “ego depletion.” I read it after my tour of duty on The Celebrity Apprentice, and it explained some of the mysteries I experienced doing that show. Studies have shown that if you make someone very self-conscious about everything they do and say, their self-control just gets tired out. The ego can be exhausted. It’s the very trying to be one’s best on camera that puts one at one’s worst o
n camera. You just can’t keep it up that long. You want to be at your best, but pretty soon the internal censors are exhausted, take a break, and pretty soon sweet Arsenio is yelling things like, “I’ll tell you what a fucking bitch whore she is!”
The non-sexual question I’ve been asked the most since TCA is “Were those others just faking?” It’s a question I can’t answer. I know Lisa Lampanelli pretty well. She did our movie The Aristocrats and we’ve been out together socially. We’ve talked. I sat with her in a room while she was yelling at Dayana Mendoza (who had been Miss Universe). Lisa and others had problems with Dy (she let me call her that), but I had no problems with Lisa or Dy. I just didn’t like Clay having a heart-to-heart talk with me. Lisa was really yelling. She was really crying. It was really real. I felt it was sincere. I felt that Lisa was really frustrated and really upset. I sat there. When people are really upset, I sit there. You can find a few ex-girlfriends who will vouch for that and not as a good thing. While she was yelling, she yelled something like, “I’ve been putting up with this shit for eight weeks.” I don’t remember the exact number of weeks she said. But I do remember it was way, way more weeks than we had been there. And I remember it was the right number of weeks it was going to be when it aired. It was both of those things. The show is shot with about two days for every week. We shoot six days a week and during most weeks we do three tasks and each one of those tasks is a week of broadcast. The first task was three days and some of the broadcasts used more or less than one task, but… overall, the amount of time we were there was about a third of the amount of time that it took when broadcast. Lisa was really upset, but the amount of time she said she’d been disgusted with Dy was the amount of time the show would be on the air, not the real amount of time we’d been there. So, they could use that video and not violate the chronology of the show. Lisa wasn’t lying, she wasn’t faking, but she was aware she was on TV. We were all professionals, we were all aware of the camera, but we were also living our lives. It makes it very crazy. I spent a lot of time saying to Paul Sr., whom I love, “It’s not real.” But that’s not true. It’s also not TV. It’s really not TV. When I was having my heart-to-heart with Clay, the full endless horror of it was never broadcast. It was edited down to a minute. When I’m on Piers Morgan and he’s ripping me a new asshole, that’s TV, I know that every word he says is going out. But The Celebrity Apprentice is so long that you know the vast majority of stuff will never be seen, but cameras are still on; it could be seen. It’s Schrödinger’s showbiz: it’s all fake and it’s all real at the same time. The situation itself makes everyone crazy.
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