Category: Article

It all started when celebrity journalist Ken Baker saw Saddam Hussein getting a dental exam on TV. “I thought, Hmm. You don’t see people getting their mouths examined on TV very often. Then I thought, What just happened? This is weird.” Hussein’s capture, carefully packaged for television and announced just when missing WMDs were becoming a problem for the Bush administration, struck Baker as a Hollywood-style PR stunt–and as executive editor of US Weekly, he’s seen his share of those. Hollywood Hussein: How the U.S. Really Captured Saddam Hussein is his satirical envisioning of a back story in which George Bush hires paparazzi to dig up Hussein, and engages a hotel heiress/celebrity to distract the public from the real news of the day. It’s funny, outrageous, and disconcertingly plausible.

Do you think Bush is a smart guy?
He’s Paris Hilton smart. Paris has taken over Hollywood. Everyone thinks she’s an idiot, but guess what? She made eight million dollars last year. She’s going to double that this year! She’s twenty-four, she has made movies, a television show, she has her own fragrance, her own fashion line. George Bush, I don’t think he’s that much of an idiot. When you look at his political gamesmanship, it’s manipulative, it’s well crafted, it’s staged. It’s Hollywood.

What’s your impression of the Bush Administration’s use of propaganda?
I disagree with his position on abortion and on tax breaks for the rich, but it’s the propagandizing that really bugs me–the spin, and the stealth spin of things. They’re using all the same techniques of marketing and publicity that Hollywood PR firms use, and they pass it off as “leveling with the people.” I wanted people to read my book and think, That was funny, and you know what? That all could have happened. Look at the FEMA situation. If you could have a guy whose biggest job was making sure show horses look pretty, and he’s in charge of our country’s disaster management, then who else is working for them?

In your book, Hussein observes that “Americans will forgive celebrities for anything.”
Absolutely. They have their crises. They get caught cheating, they get arrested for drugs, for throwing telephones at people. So Hollywood PR professionals have to do a lot of clean-up, management, and fixing of situations. The White House is doing the same thing right now, and no one’s really writing about it. That’s the disgusting thing. The mainstream media is so psyched out by the Bush spin machine!

We understand that you’re friends with Paris Hilton. How did that happen?
We’re Hollywood friends, which means it’s in our mutual best interest to know each other. I get exclusive access, and her relationship with US Weekly is really important to her fan base. But it has developed into more than the usual business relationship. She says, “You get me,” and I happen to have a lot of respect for her. She’s a great celebrity, and you have to calibrate the expectations of what that entails–which basically is being fabulous, being beautiful, shocking us, entertaining us, and being true to your brand. I feel like I’ve been able to become a better celebrity journalist for having known her–like a sportswriter traveling with the team on the bus, you get a better appreciation for the game.

Ken Baker will appear at Bar Lurcat September 30 from 7:30-11 p.m. 1624 Harmon Pl., Minneapolis; 612-486-5900.

Never mind that this film shares a name with a brand of adult incontinence products. Legions of grad students and pizza delivery people have been joyously anticipating its opening day, perhaps, you might say, to a pants-wetting degree. That’s because Serenity takes up where the short-lived but beloved TV series Firefly, from Joss Whedon, left off. Fans of Whedon, who brought the world Buffy the Vampire Slayer, boast a zombie-like and academic devotion to this writer and director. While he has talked about making a Buffy movie, Serenity is the next best thing. Set in outer space, starring Nathan Fillion (from the TV series), and blessed with a movie-sized special effects budget, these two hours take the Firefly story several steps further. Dark comedy, clever dialogue, and winning characters make this film stand on its own–no TV exposure required.

This season, the Guthrie’s WORLDStage Series has some especially meaty, contemporary takes on classic texts. This Macbeth, for instance, plucked from an ultra-hip niche of London’s theater scene by impresario James Morrison, is recast in a nameless but unmistakably modern African nation. It features an all-black cast with one exception: the character of Lady Macbeth, drawn from the real-life story of a white aid worker who married a Ugandan warlord. Even more interesting: The Three Witches are modeled after the notorious cross-dressing combatants in former Liberian president Charles Taylor’s militia. Their boas and frilly dresses summon mystical powers. 700 First St N.; www.guthrietheater.org

Whaazzzaahhp?! It erupted from my niece with as much guttural bass as a five-year-old could muster, accompanied by a grin and a vigorous shake of the head. When asked if she heard that at school, she began hopping around the living room. “Everyone’s saying it!” she said. “The big kids are saying it, the little kids are saying it—everyone!”

This was several years ago (that catchphrase from a beer ad, you might recall, peaked at the millennium), but while reading Leslie Savan’s new book — Slam Dunks and No-Brainers: Language in Your Life, the Media, Business, Politics, and, Like, Whatever — I realized that my niece had defined what Savan calls “pop language.” It wasn’t just that “everyone” was saying “Whaazzzaahhp?!”; it was also her exuberance at being part of a large phenomenon, one that involved “the big kids.” That transcendence is a major factor in making a word or phrase go pop, says Savan. Its usage has to spread like wildfire, crossing boundaries of age, class, race, and ethnicity, until even the naysayers are drawn, almost involuntarily, to say it (probably with a slightly contemptuous inflection).

Having been exiled to the island of cast-off catch phrases, “Whaazzzaahhp?!” now dwells with the likes of “Show me the money!” and “Talk to the hand” (one hopes that “Don’t go there” is en route). But, of course, potential popisms are bubbling continuously into the collective consciousness, auditioning for their moment in the spotlight. They have varying life spans, just like celebrities. So, rather than creating a compendium of zeitgeist-y verbiage, one that would become dated faster than The Preppy Handbook, Savan aimed to give her book a longer shelf life (oops) by examining the whys and wherefores of pop language.

The main characteristic that distinguishes pop language from mere slang or jargon is widespread popularity. The corollary: Pop is often slang or jargon that has jumped out of its niche. Savan devotes a sizable chapter to showing how, from “bogus” to “411,” slang that was coined or popularized by African-Americans is “all over mainstream pop talk like white on rice.” Once it ascends to pop status, a phrase can pass through several stages, according to Savan. The crest of its popularity is inevitably “followed by a period of soft ridicule for overuse.” Then there’s the irony stage—people will say it, but only knowingly. After that, if it’s still around, the phrase becomes “like a Raid-resistant roach—and it sheds the irony and begins to seem as indispensable as, say, Do the math or 24/7.” Not all pop language makes it that far, but if it does (consider “awesome”), then it has attained the status of “a thought—or more accurately, a stand-in for a thought.”

Although that might sound like the definition of “cliché,” pop is also distinct from those linguistic shortcuts. The two can overlap, however; “fifteen minutes of fame” is both pop and cliché, Savan says, though as a “senior pop phrase” it has more “jolt” than its cliché siblings (“by the skin of his teeth”). That jolt is essential to pop language—maybe adults don’t hop around when they say “Fuhgedaboudit,” but it does provide a feeling of power, or at least iconoclasm, in the face of dehumanizing cubicle farms, telephone labyrinths, and big-box retailers. It shows that the speaker is in the know, up to speed, down with things.

Not that you have to be down with the history of a given word, even if Savan’s tracing the evolution of various pop terms, including “Yesss!,” makes for some of the most interesting parts of Slam Dunks. In the real world, etymology is for losers. Like, who cares that “fifteen minutes of fame” comes from one of Andy Warhol’s prophecies, or that pearls come from grains of sand? What matters is their lustrous allure, and what they say about you. Except that pop language doesn’t have to say much of anything—which makes it, like pearls, suitable for just about any occasion.

By way of a long but interesting digression into the structure, forms, and rhythms of sitcoms, Savan makes the point that, just as these shows are designed to flatter and excite audiences rather than challenge them, we translate those forms into pop language to flatter and excite each other. She describes pop phrases as “verbal viruses” with the “ability to flash-freeze thought and stun our imaginations with commercial confetti.”

Robert Altman didn’t see much of Minnesota. During his month-long stay in St. Paul this summer, he ventured beyond the Fitzgerald Theater and his hotel but once or twice. He came, though, and even if he didn’t see much, it seems as if he was out to conquer. He left for Hollywood with footage for a film in which, reportedly, the Fitzgerald Theater gets demolished, at least one character dies, and, most important, our beloved public radio program ceases to be. Who is this guy? And what does he want with A Prairie Home Companion?

For Prairie Home is not just the pride of Minnesota, but a refuge from the anxieties of television and a return to the relaxing pace of radio. For me, the show was a Midwestern haven when I was living in the San Francisco area, where people can’t afford lawns and the leaves never change. After work on Saturdays, I would collapse on my bed and listen to Garrison Keillor’s monologue, which was as soothing as a hot bath and a cold beer. So when I first discovered that Robert Altman was going to direct a movie based on Prairie Home—well, at first I didn’t know what to think.

“No one has ever made a good movie,” Altman has said. “Someday someone will make half a good one.” His own prolific career has certainly yielded some half-good films, such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nashville, and Gosford Park, but I find myself disappointed by most of the others. However, even the worst ones—and Popeye is as awful as anything ever committed to celluloid—trouble me for a long time afterward … and I like to be troubled. Altman has stated repeatedly that he tries to give his audience something to argue about afterward and that he frankly doesn’t care to appease everybody, or even anybody. He also considers his films to be like paintings, which partly explains the distinctively weak plots that irritate many filmgoers, myself included. After producing a litter of small, strange movies—thirty-one in all since 1970’s M.A.S.H.—it’s not as if Altman is suddenly going to change course now. Prairie Home is going to be distinctively a Robert Altman picture, not a Garrison Keillor film (despite his having written the screenplay), and certainly not a Minnesota Public Radio movie.

Curious fans of Keillor and the radio show can examine Altman’s plotless approach by starting with his last release, The Company (2003). The director threw together professional actors (Neve Campbell and Malcolm McDowell) and non-actors (dancers from Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet); filmed the dancing, the squabbling, the parties, the practices; and then draped all this over a story line that, after an hour, was still not entirely discernable. It had something to do with the stress of being in a dance troupe and Campbell finally becoming the star of the company. Fans of ballet loved it; considering its paltry box-office take, I doubt many others jumped on board. But there were moments in that film that lingered with me later on, like a pleasant aftertaste following a bite of bittersweet chocolate.

Such as the sound of feet slapping against a stage. This is but one of myriad sound effects in a single scene of The Company, and it was totally surprising—just some brief, sharp thwacks punctuating the music and the dance. In that same scene, which took place during a performance in a Chicago park during a storm, you hear the zip of hands over fabric as a dancer is lifted; the company’s director whispering to a colleague; the rustle of butts shifting on seats; and, of course, the sounds of wind and rain and umbrellas opening. As is often the case in an Altman film, The Company is aurally confounding; the director places microphones on numerous actors at once, whereas the usual practice is to have a boom mike overhead, or to later dub in dialogue, especially if there’s excess noise. But Altman digs excess noise the way Neil Young hungers for feedback. He likes capturing the background hubbub, forcing us to listen hard and try to figure out who (or what) we’re supposed to be listening to.

With that approach to sound, it’s easy to understand why Altman would be drawn to filming a popular radio show. PHC’s ensemble nature is another attraction. Altman adores the art of acting; he hovers over the shoulder of his performers by utilizing zoom lenses and multiple digital cameras to follow them into every nook and cranny on the set, even if he’s a dozen yards away. This forces actors to remain in character, and in this way Altman captures their spontaneous moments—the gaffes and frustrations and flashes of brilliance, whether accidental or deliberate. In 1992’s The Player, he takes us into a restaurant where Burt Reynolds (playing himself) and a friend chat in the foreground, while the “real” action takes place a good twenty feet behind, at a table with Tim Robbins (playing the fictional Griffin Mill). We can hear and see what’s going on in both places, not to mention the conversations elsewhere in the restaurant.

Almost all of Altman’s movies baffle with this kind of technical innovation. His painting metaphor—the film as picture—is apt: Watching his films, the feeling is not that this is documentary, or a typical Hollywood dynamic in which good guys and bad struggle toward the inevitable climax, but rather a moment in life, captured in sound and light in the way that a painting can capture a moment in oil and light. When we go to a restaurant or a ballet, we are inundated with sights and sounds, and naturally take away more than just the singular experience of food or dance. The moments Altman captures are often as ugly as they are beautiful, with performers opening up like a flower, singing or dancing before moving backstage and flipping someone off. His gallery is made up of these moments, as portrayed in the old West (McCabe), in seventies Nashville (Nashville), in a thirties jazz club (Kansas City), and, coming up, a contemporary weekly radio show.

Spatially, Altman’s films eschew large, open settings, retreating instead to the confines of dressing rooms, recording studios, domestic interiors. There are no expansive valleys in McCabe, but rather everything takes place in the cramped saloons, tents, and whorehouses in the town of Presbyterian Church, which is itself wedged into a high mountain gorge. Prairie will be no different, with its cozy set ensconced within the Fitzgerald Theater, both on and off stage.

In all, the nature and circumstances surrounding Prairie Home seem perfectly suited to Altman’s oeuvre. According to the film’s producer Joshua Astrachan, about three years ago Altman and Keillor met through a mutual lawyer friend, hit it off, and began to discuss the possibility of working together. Altman’s wife Kathryn was a fan of Prairie Home, and after he met the man behind it, the thought of filming this little subculture began to intrigue him. One can see why: As the last of the great radio shows, Prairie Home is a relic and a haven for dreamers, whether they’re performers or listeners. But its dark side suits Altman as well. Though I haven’t read Keillor’s novels (it’s been said that his listeners and his readers are two quite separate audiences), friends have been surprised by the edginess of their prose and the not-so-subtle desire of their author to shake things up in Lake Wobegon. The characters are looking back on wasted lives, dull marriages, probable affairs.

At first, Keillor was working on a screenplay about Lake Wobegon, but it was Altman who persuaded him to shift the focus from the fictional hamlet to the machinations behind the curtains at the radio show, thus drawing the story into the enclosed setting and focusing on the performers. And perhaps in Keillor’s case, this change—offering a glimpse of fictional characters playing fictional characters, mingling with the actual show’s regulars—allowed him to reveal to his fans the darker side of the show we love.

Robert Altman is eighty years old, a Midwesterner, and a World War II veteran who would probably cringe at being called one of the Greatest Generation. After a number of minor projects (a James Dean documentary, a sci-fi flick, a twelve-year stint directing TV shows, and a couple features that flopped), he was chosen—and this would be the last time he would ever be chosen—to direct M.A.S.H. The swinging sixties, the anti-war sentiment, and a hunger for things new made M.A.S.H. his most commercially successful film. It gave him the power and the confidence to demand complete control over the content of his work in ways that few other directors can.

Altman has since become known as one of the last of the Hollywood mavericks. At various times, he has talked openly about his penchants for booze, pot, and gambling; he can be cantankerous with screenwriters and anyone else involved in a film—except for actors, whom he indulges shamelessly; and he seems delighted when his esoteric, utterly personal films alienate audiences and studio heads alike. Actors flock to Altman because he is famous for giving them free rein to interpret their characters, while he watches with few comments or suggestions. This can be heaven for performers used to being treated as meat, but a pain to the viewer who has to watch Lily Tomlin’s brilliance mingle with Keith Carradine’s overcooked ham (in Nashville), Stephen Fry’s juvenile slapstick amongst a well-oiled ensemble machine (in Gosford Park); or Harry Belafonte’s jazzy screed to a vacuous Dermot Mulroney (in Kansas City).

Keillor, on the other hand, has never tasted such freedom. Usually he is, in his own words, handcuffed by “the restrictions of good taste.” Giving himself over to Altman, Keillor suddenly becomes both a limitless performer and a screenwriter who expects—working with this director—that spontaneity is the rule, damn the written word. Now that the film’s in the can, rumors abound that Keillor might soon draw the curtains permanently on his radio show; it is thirty years old, and the film concerns the last broadcast of a radio show after the same. Considering Keillor’s growing pessimism, as interviews and his own fiction can attest, this could be an ideal occasion. What better swan song than a collaboration with one of the greatest directors in American cinema?

This year marks the seventieth anniversary of Canoeing With the Cree, Eric Sevareid’s charming story about canoeing from Minneapolis to the Hudson Bay in the summer of 1930. Thank goodness for something timeless; the Minnesota Historical Society has been in charge of the last several reprintings—including a new anniversary edition—and they haven’t even reset the type. This of course runs against the nap and flow of every fiber in a modern brand-manager’s being.

Sevareid was a seventeen-year-old student who had scarcely been in a canoe when he and his friend Walter Port put in below Fort Snelling on the Minnesota River. Today, the book is an artifact of a bygone, genteel era—precocious gentlemen explorers dressed in canvas and wool, “encountering” wilderness and quoting Kipling, with hardly a thought for “turnkey solutions” or “value-added deliverables.” Sevareid and Port had no Gore-Tex, no freeze-dried food, no global positioning system. But they did have a sponsor—the Minneapolis Star agreed to buy for one hundred dollars the serialized narrative of their 2,500-mile trip. That sponsorship allowed Sevareid to eventually publish his account as a book, and that made the young man’s name. He went on to become one of the twentieth century’s most respected journalists. It is hard today to imagine the daily newspaper taking a chance on a nameless boy in jodhpurs; it is especially hard to make your name in a marketplace that does not need more names. But Sevareid got it right.

Getting it right is not necessarily, you know, getting it all the way right. Of course, the Cree did not call themselves the Cree—it was a name bestowed on them in the eighteenth century by French explorers and traders in James Bay. And much of Sevareid’s account records not so much a wilderness expedition through boreal wastes as an upcurrent slog through southern Minnesota, where the savages were mostly of European descent. In the intervening years, dozens of other canoeists have followed in the wake of Sevareid and Port. In fact, this month St. Cloud residents Scott Miller and Matt Lutz expect to arrive at York Factory on the Hudson Bay, and we’ve enjoyed reading their online journal, which has been published without the assistance or interference of the daily newspaper. Still, followers are inevitably less memorable than pioneers, and bloggers secretly crave print the way Simon Cowell craves to be an American idol.

You surely don’t watch that show, but its reputation has reached far beyond its name. Simon Cowell, the hateful, aggressively British panelist on American Idol, may be in a bit of a legal bind. He recently moved to Los Angeles, apparently to be closer to the source of his ill-gotten fame and wealth, but has apparently not yet taken his remedial courses on American copyright. The other day, Cowell and ABC announced plans to unroll a television program called The Million Dollar Idea, a show that rewards inventors for their original ideas. The only problem is that they seem to have pinched the name and the concept from Twin Citizens Jean Golden and Todd Walker, who have been locally producing a show just like that for two years, and who claim they pitched the idea to ABC a few months ago. Cowell perhaps cannot master the subtlety that it requires to steal an idea and give it the cover of a new name.

Then again, we should keep sharp writing instruments away from the wicked. Creating names has become bloodsport in the powerful economic recovery we’re told is underway. We paused last year when the financial department of Lutheran Brotherhood coined the new name “Thrivent.” It was not a word we’d heard before, and that made us irritable. (We have to admit that “Thrivent” briefly sounded like an erectile dysfunction medication, but then again, everything sounds like that these days, maybe because there are so many erectile dysfunction medications.) Still, it did not produce the same seizures in our copy-editing department as “Xcel” and “Qwest” did years ago. We get surly when commercial enterprises do legal and grammatical violence to the language. One sin leads to the other. Whole industries have sprung up to weld words together in strange spork-like configurations with not a lot of respect for the laws of language. This month, for example, American Express Financial Advisers officially becomes “Ameriprise,” and we’d like to issue a ticket for such a violation.

By now, the fashion police have taken notice that Macy’s has acquired Marshall Field’s, and the buzz around the block seems to be whether Macy’s will rename its new acquisition the way George Foreman named all five of his sons—you know, George Foreman. Twin Citizens probably don’t care one way or the other—most of us still think of that particular store at that particular location as Dayton’s. So we can’t muster a lot of sympathy for the idle Chicagoans resisting change at keepitfields.org.

On the other hand, the torch has finally dropped on one of our favorite local bands, the Olympic Hopefuls. Continuing correspondence with the United States Olympic Committee has resulted in a not-unfriendly caution that the USOC has trademarked the word “olympic,” and even goes so far as to suggest that there are federal laws requiring the committee to enforce the trademark. In other words, meet “the Hopefuls.” We think it’s a shame, and we want to make a stand right now against anyone who wishes to plant their institutional flag on any little dry spot within the borders of Webster’s. In fact, our view is that if the word is in common usage long enough to enter the Concise, then it falls within international waters, and ought to be open to all who wish to travel there. We wonder if the USOC has made special arrangements with the Olympic Penisula in Washington State, or, for that matter, Olympia beer. The Hopefuls are not the first local band to get beat up by the corporate poets; remember when Tilt-A-Whirl became Arcwelder?

If the tradeoff is more companies making up strange names that appear in no dictionary, the better to protect their legal and business interests, then fine. Frankly, we don’t foresee a sudden run-up in the stock of “Lucent” among poets and novelists, and we pledge never to use that word when another will do as well. Though we have taken note of how some of the world’s best-established brands become effective shortcuts in description (“Rollerblades”—an excellent word), other nonsense neologisms are headed for a richly deserved instant oblivion. May they rest in a deep, dark hole capped by a little ® manhole cover.

Reality TV is, of course, an oxymoron. There’s reality—pimples and disappointments and paper jams. And there’s TV—Jennifer Aniston. These two concepts were meant to inhabit parallel planes and never intersect. That’s the natural order of the universe, like hot air rising and white pants attracting food. Tampering with this law of nature is an abomination.

Like all natural disasters, reality TV engenders chaos—the sort of localized apocalypse where middle managers are extraordinarily nice to others with no real power. Other symptoms of reality TV in humans include a tendency to stand in long lines, a willingness to share the sort of extremely personal information the government has spent millions of dollars trying to secure, and the most outrageous optimism regarding the interest others might have in those personal details.

All of these symptoms presented at the open casting calls for The Apprentice the other day at the Carlson School of Management and the Arrow Pontiac GMC dealership in Inver Grove Heights. To cope with the stresses placed on the innocents who were unaccustomed to the debasements of the casting call, every one of the four hundred real-people hopefuls repeated such soothing mantras as, “It’s just for fun,” “Those aren’t real,” and “It’s only ketchup.” Very much the same language parents use to assuage the overexposed child. But it didn’t work. They could not find their footing in the hall of mirrors that is reality TV.

“Of course,” the Kendra wannabes snorted, “everyone knows the entire show is scripted and they’re just looking for a ditzy blond or a tattooed dude to draw in viewers. It’s all about ratings.” This was a savvy crowd. They were pretty sure they had reality TV’s number. But a quick poll of the candidates’ qualifications for filling the role of a real fake person revealed they had wandered back to familiar turf, listing such water-cooler victories as successfully managing birthday card routing and selection as I.T. Hero of the Week, achievements that lose ten pounds on TV. Some said they were “just there for the fun of it,” a brand of entertainment that involved arriving at the Arrow Pontiac dealership by 4 a.m. and standing in ninety-degree heat for seven hours or so.

A delivery driver spent the time waiting for her three-minute interview trying to mine some quirk of her everyday life so that she could spin it into something more made-for-TV—the bitch, the driven career woman, the nice girl, the hippy. There was cavalier talk among candidates of being the hunted and the hunter, the participant and the observer, the dabbler and the desperate simultaneously, but for the non-psychotic it just wasn’t working.

This casting call was working, though, for Chandra Holt, of the tight white suit and stiletto heels. She told me the key to being chosen for The Apprentice was confidence. She surveyed the room and declared she was the prettiest one there (she may have had a point, but still). She went on to say she was a merchandising manager at Target, earning her MBA at the Carlson school at night. She managed “a lot of people.” She managed a big budget. She was also, by her own admission, the smartest person in the room. When I noted her busy schedule, she quickly let me know that was only the tip of the iceberg—she predicted a top-ten place at the upcoming Lifetime Fitness Triathlon. There is confidence, and then there is megalomania. When I mentioned the proclivity of reality TV actors to backstab, Chandra lit up like a klieg. “I love when they do those little asides, little digs like that. I’m really sharp, really good at one-liners.” She snapped her fingers, click, click, click.

I had hoped to chat with the two casting agents—Cara and Toby, California girls with their sunglasses on their heads—as a regular person rather than a candidate. Unfortunately, the girls were pure business and spoke only with application-bearing candidates, so I filled out the one-page application, complete with marital status and most embarrassing moment, and got in line. When my turn came up, Cara and Toby perkily called me in and quickly noted my occupation—writer. I confessed, and indicated I was, in fact, performing my occupation even as we spoke. Apparently they missed the exit from TV world, in which people audition to be actors, to the real world, where writers interview people for a story. The disconnect continued. While I asked about the validity of the marital-status and most-embarrassing-moment questions, and how they felt after a ten-hour stint of interviewing real people, Cara and Toby shared that it was possible that I would be selected for a spot on The Apprentice—but not likely, because of my lack of business background. Cara looked at Toby and said, “All of the Apprentices have had business experience, haven’t they? I don’t think there have been any writers.” Toby agreed, “No, we’re looking for really sharp people who can get the job done.”

Despite the close call, Cara, Toby, and I were never in the same conversation. Reality and TV marched on in different directions, and order remained in the universe.—Sarah Barker