Installation 11: The Apprentice previous
Corey Feldman, the museum's Director of Corporate Giving, was selected to be a contestant on the television show The Apprentice. He was the wild card, the first contestant who came from the mysterious world of nonprofits but who also had quite a track record convincing corporations to part with their money. The first detail he had to clear up was that he is not the Corey Feldman, meaning the actor who was quite well-known in the 1980s and perhaps the early 1990s before flaming out. At first, no one on the show believed that he wasn't Corey Feldman the actor because he happens to look just enough like that Cory Feldman to be convincing. Initially, there was a lot of debate amongst the Apprentice contestants as to his true identity, with the most heat coming from a contestant named Rob Barnard, who wanted to know why, if he was in Gremlins and Goonies, he needed to work at all. Eventually the grind of the show's shooting schedule and trying to prove themselves to be business geniuses distracted the contestants and they forgot about Corey altogether, except when they were in the boardroom trying to get rid of him.
Corey's downfall on the show turned out to be his humanity. He was project manager when the teams were assigned to renovate crack houses overnight and sell them the next day as lofts, and he made the fatal error of allowing his team to have a dinner break. The fact that the dinner break turned into a three-hour detour to Tower Records and a bar that served 70 flavors of margaritas came back to bite him in the ass when his team failed to sell their crack house/loft. And, although everyone had begged to be allowed to go, they were vicious in their attacks, questioning his judgment.
A transcript of that episode reads as follows:
ROB B.: Mr. Trump,what kind of manager allows anyone to take a three-hour break when there's only 24 hours to completely finish renovating a crack house? We had barely finished sweeping up the vials and loose teeth off the floor and he was ringing the dinner bell.
TRUMP: Is this true Corey? Did you allow this to happen?
COREY F: I allowed a short break, sir. I said twenty minutes, maybe half an hour if they wanted to go to Applebee's instead of Taco Bell, but they just took off.
TRUMP: Just took off? But who was in charge here, you or them? Let me tell you something, I've managed a lot of construction projects in my time and I've never had anything like this happen on my watch.
COREY F: That you know about.
TRUMP: What did you say?
COREY F: Aren't your workers all in unions? There are rules, guidelines, regulations. This was like working with a bunch of sailors on leave…
TRUMP: Rob, who would you fire if you were me?
ROB B: Actually, Mr. Trump, I wouldn't fire Corey… yet. I think we had a bigger problem with Duane.
TRUMP: What did he do?
ROB B: He was smoking crack, sir. I guess he found some, or some dealer came by the house who didn't know that it was sold…
TRUMP: Duane? Did you do that? You know how I feel about drugs. You'll never be a mogul if you're smoking crack. Cigars, OK. You pretty much have to smoke cigars. Crack, no. Unacceptable.
DUANE: I don't know what Rob's talking about.
TRUMP: Denial will get you nowhere. Duane… You're fired!
After the debacle of his week as project manager, Corey managed to “fly under the radar” for a few weeks, limping along, making suggestions that were sometimes incorporated into his team's plans.
Ultimately though, this maneuver of trying to be somewhat useful but not too useful angered his teammates, which confused Corey because this tactic had not only worked at the museum but had been expected. He decided it was probably because most of his cast mates had gone to Ivy League schools. They were used to being surrounded by people who wanted to change the world, or at least get rich trying to change the world, and they expected the same attitude from everyone.
In the eighth week, Corey's nemesis, Rob B., elected Corey to be project manager again.
ROB B: I think Corey should be project manager. I think it's time he showed what he's made of instead of riding on our coat tails. You made a bunch of movies in the 80s, so what? That doesn't mean you can run a company for Mr. Trump.
COREY F: I work at a museum. I've never made a movie in my life.
ROB B: I saw Stand By Me…
COREY F: It wasn't me!
BELINDA P: Do you even need to work? What happened to all the money you made?
The task that week was to help AOL promote its new virus protection program. In a word, Corey was screwed. It seemed to him that you couldn't sell something no one wanted unless you foisted it on them when they weren't looking or packaged it with something they did want. Thinking in that vein, he suggested that his team develop a direct mail campaign for the program, sending trial CDs to 200,000 households. The kicker was that the CD would contain a downloadable poster of Jessica Simpson dressed in her costume from The Dukes of Hazard. People would only be able to get to the poster if they downloaded the software first. It was a long shot, but he had to do something. The team worked for 48 hours nonstop, recruiting computer experts, software writers, all the tech people they could find and three teenage boys who searched the Internet for images of Jessica as Daisy Duke. The mail went out and the task ended and Corey's team lost.
TRUMP: So, I'm confused here. Team Corporate Hacks put on a big event in Times Square for AOL and handed out thousands of free CDs. They had 200 computer kiosks where people could try out the new software. There were celebrity appearances by Jerry O'Connell, Terry Bradshaw, Jeff Foxworthy… What did Team Layoff do?
COREY F: Direct mail.
TRUMP: Corporate Hacks made $30,000 at their event from sales of the new program. What did Layoff make?
COREY F: Uh… well, nothing yet, sir, but that's the nature of direct mail. We're hoping for a one or two percent return. Plus, it takes a while for people to try out the free version and sign up for the service.
ROB B: Sir, I think you should ask him about Jessica Simpson.
TRUMP: Jessica Simpson is a great, great friend of mine. A great patriot and fabulous entertainer. What did she have to do with this?
COREY F: Nothing, sir. We just sent out a downloadable poster of her...
ROB B: He told us that Jessica Simpson was a friend of his from Hollywood and that she wouldn't mind.
TRUMP: Did you say that Corey?
COREY F: Well, I might have said something off the cuff, just trying to get people to calm down about the copyright...
TRUMP: That is dishonest. Besides, Jessica is a great friend of mine and how do you think she'd feel, if she knew that my show was responsible for sending something like this out and cutting her out of royalties...
COREY F: She won't miss it...
TRUMP: I can't believe what I'm hearing here. Caroline, do you believe this guy?
CAROLINE: I can't believe it.
TRUMP: I'm going to tell you something Corey, and I hope you remember this for the rest of your life - you can't trade on past successes. You always need to be proving yourself. You made a few movies in the 80s... had some early victories, but so what? I mean, so what?
COREY F: That wasn't me.
TRUMP: Corey... You're fired.