Word: burnett
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Sixteen contestants? Two teams? Cut-throat competition? On an island? Any resemblance to Survivor is intentional. The Apprentice is produced by Survivor's Mark Burnett, who met Trump in 2002 when he leased Central Park's skating rink from Trump for the show's live finale. "He told me all the right things," says Trump--among them, that the tycoon had been Burnett's idol ever since Burnett read Trump's The Art of the Deal when the then aspiring producer was selling T shirts in Venice Beach, Calif...
...Burnett's fandom is apt. As much salesman as entertainer, he turned reality-TV product placements into an art form (there are, he says, some 40 in The Apprentice). At heart, The Apprentice is a love letter from Burnett--a naturalized American from Britain--to Yankee capitalism. "The whole world takes America's charity," he says, "and that money is created through entrepreneurs." Survivor, with its tension between group effort and look-out-for-number-onemanship, has always been a metaphor for the corporate jungle. The Apprentice uses the business world as a metaphor for that metaphor. (Lest anyone miss...
...used to watch Don Rickles, Richard Pryor, Red Skelton, Carol Burnett--people whose expressions are so real. I have so much respect for what's funny...
...Filled out with reminiscences from every B-list celeb who ever came within 50 yds. of a VH1 camera (Ed's Michael Ian Black, Good Day Live's Jillian Barberie, porn star Ron Jeremy), it's a bit skimpy on analysis. (Here's "actor-comedian" Mitch Silpa on Carol Burnett's Tarzan yell: "Her Tarzan yell was great.") But you could argue, say, that the mainstream success of Cheech and Chong's drug comedy Up in Smoke, which VH1 lauds but IFC ignores, says more about the '70s' anything-goes Zeitgeist than McCabe & Mrs. Miller...
There are, arguably, more entertaining diversions than watching people eat. But, the producers are quick to point out, Cheers was about watching people drink. Burnett compares the tension between the wait staff and the kitchen drudges to the divide between the first-class swells and the coal shovelers in Titanic, and co--executive producer Ben Silverman, who conceived the show, argues that "restaurants are the new theater." The Restaurant is also the new advertising: it will have product placements worked in even more snugly than Survivor does. DiSpirito runs errands in a Mitsubishi, and only American Express cards and Coors...