So, who wants to be a millionaire? A story of unrequited love….

It had been a stressful travel day. Craig’s office hadn’t sent over the cab to take us to the airport so we grabbed one from the hotel, got there with plenty of time as it turned out since the flight was delayed. The domestic section of the Delhi airport was like much of India, dingy and crowded, and while the locals seemed to understand exactly how everything worked, it was a complete mystery to us. We got to Cochin late. And when we arrived, our copy of Lonely Planet had somehow slid from under my plane seat and was no where to be found, pilfered I suspect by the Germans sitting behind us. Hungry and tired, we argued over finding a hotel and finally after a long taxi ride made it to the bargain homestay that we were looking for. The inn featured a used bookstore and Craig found an English language, Indian novel, Q and A which he handed to me.

The plot revolved around a poor Indian boy who winds up being a contestant on a show clearly based on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? We didn’t know at the time that it was being made into a movie and retitled, Slumdog Millionaire.

What my husband did know, was that the book was a perfect reward for me after our very long day because like the novel’s protagonist, I too dreamed of winning the big dough on Millionaire.

Today, the dream has died.

Millionaire I am SOOOOOO over you.

Unrequited love is tough, though in this case, I need to be honest with myself. I didn’t really love Millionaire. It was always about the cash – the dream of easy money.

Jeopardy I was in love with. That affair started when I was about eight, home from school for lunch. My father whose office was in the house would make me frozen macaroni and cheese, and serve it on the snack table with the butterfly design in front of the portable color TV in the room I shared with my sister. My sister was at school, so I had the room and the choice of channel to myself and Jeopardy, the original hosted by Art Fleming with Don Pardo (pre-SNL) announcing was my favorite show. This was a place where smart was good. Smart won you money. You didn’t get the shit beaten out of you on your walk home from school because you knew the answers – or more accurately the questions. Knowledge equaled power equaled applause and cash.

I remember one of the five day champs. A woman named Nettie, like me she had short hair and big glasses. I watched her day after day basking in the love of the audience, chatting with Art, winning. Nettie did not have (in my memory) unusually long legs, or even white teeth. She had brains. I could grow up and be Nettie.

But it was not to be. In the 80’s when the new Jeopardy came to NY to audition contestants, they were selecting people who’d sent in postcards to audition. So I sent in hundreds of postcards, made it to the audition, but I didn’t pass the written test. I was devasted. Tried again the next couple of years, with the same miserable result despite much practice and test prep. But I didn’t blame Jeopardy for my failure. I’m still a fan. In fact, I married a Jeopardy champion, and if basking in the reflection of his glory is my lot, so be it.

But Millionaire irks. Millionaire is not and never will be Jeopardy. If these were universities, Jeopardy would be the reach, and Millionaire the safety. It’s one thing to be rejected by Harvard, another to be told “no” by the community college. One thing to be dumped by your boyfriend the doctor, more humiliating if he’s only a chiropractor.

Why doesn’t Millionaire love me?

The easiest way to audition for Millionaire (at least if you live in the NY metro area) is to request tickets to be in the audience. I have done this five times. The drill is the same. You show up and stand online for a couple of hours before you go in. Friendly young people check your name and ask if you’ll be auditioning. If so, you fill out a form. Then you mingle and chat with other people on line some of whom are tourists in town for a few days of sightseeing, a few of whom came in from very far away just for the audition. You’re standing outside the studio and on top of a grate which I swear emits a very, very bad odor. The odor is commented on by many and if a bystander was to to walk down the street and see the hordes standing there, very likely one or two would be holding their noses at any given moment. Then you are walked in to the studio, which does indeed seem much smaller in “real life.” The comedian comes out to warm up the audience. Like many comedians he can’t quite hold in his rage and while he gives out half-price flyers for his show, you know that he knows that there will be few takers. He instructs us about our expected behavior and makes us rehearse applause. Then Meredith arrives and we are all very happy. The contestant enters and sits in the hot seat. Meredith and the contestant banter for a couple of moments. The questions begin.

Most of the time, those five times that I sat in the audience, I knew the answers and wanted to scream them out. I watched people wriggle and squirm. I’ve seen entertaining contestants who know how to think out loud and others who just sit grunting with the expression of a constipated child. Very few of the contestants are from New York. Many of them are overweight, often retirees and blue collar, small town folk. Each one has a story – the guy with triplets and they all need to go to college, the retiree who worked for 30 years as a teacher on an Indian reservation and took in Native American foster children, the publicist who was told by the fortune teller she would win money on the show.

That last one was a mistake, I think. She wore expensive shoes and looked like the type who imagined herself a character on Sex in the City. She managed to alienate the audience when she was explaining why she was choosing “call a friend” as a lifeline. “This is a really hard question, so I’m going to call a friend because I don’t think the audience would know this, but my friend is really smart.”

Maybe this is why so few contestants are from New York. But I want to tell the producers that this women is not a real New Yorker. She is an arriviste, probably from Kansas who saw the latter-works of Woody Allen and bought the image. Real New Yorkers are people like me. We know the audience isn’t stupid.

After the taping, those of us auditioning walk from the studio through a very long corridor until we are finally in what seems to be a staff cafeteria. We are directed to tables on which sharpened pencils are supplied and we given our tests. The tests have numbers written at the top which we are told to memorize. The tests are multiple choice and we have around 15 minutes to complete 30 questions. While the tests are being graded, a young staff person (none of the staff people look older than 25) talks to us and answers questions except about the test. They won’t tell us how it’s graded or much else.

The numbers for the people who passed are announced. We lucky few run over to the other side of the room where we get our pictures snapped. Everyone else must leave. Then we go with our applications in hand to talk to the staff members. We get a minute or two to talk to them, try to tell them who we are and what makes us special.

In my five trips in, I’ve told them how I got married for the first time in my 40’s to a man I’d been friends with for years. I’ve told them the anecdote of the night I finally asked him whether he’d ever thought about dating me, and how he hesitated for what seemed an eternity before finally admitting that maybe it had crossed his mind. I’ve told them how I work for a non-profit that works with a NYC public school in a high poverty area and my job is to try to bring in community partners – role models, mentors to help the kids. I’ve told them that my husband and I love animals and want to have a sanctuary for unwanted and troubled dogs. Whatever I’ve told them, they haven’t been interested.

There was one really bad day when I was afraid I might have scored too high on the written test because they’d given me a form of it that I’d had before, and I’d read somewhere that if you score 100%, they won’t take you, and so I told the staff person that I wasn’t that smart and that I’d just been there the previous week and that was probably why I did so well on the test and he became very hostile, quickly insisting that there was no discrimination based on how well you did and told me that there was a lot of nonsense said about the test. And then he asked if I could tell him something special about myself. And I said, “Like what?” And he said, “Something I wouldn’t expect, like maybe you’re in a band.” And I said, “Well I used to read tarot cards on a clothing optional beach in Mexico.” And he just looked at me like a) he thought I made it up and b) that wasn’t special; it was just weird.

That was the last time I went to the regular auditions, but other than that day, I always left believing that I had a shot, only to be disappointed a couple of weeks later when I’d receive a post card thanking me for my time but telling me that I hadn’t made it into the contestant pool.

I’d sworn off, really, until the special audition last summer for the “movie lovers” game. I’ve always been a movie maven with a special love for Hollywood films of the 30’s through 50’s. This was my element. The written test that day was more difficult than I’d expected because my expertise ends around 1980, but I passed and then spoke to a staff person, telling her about the time when a boyfriend introduced me to his neighbor – Howard Koch, one of the screenwriters for Casablanca — my favorite film — who came by for cocktails and we had a wonderful evening with Howard and his wife Anne. The producer/staff even sent me to another staff who filmed me!

But a week later, the dreaded postcard arrived.

Never again, I decided. But then a few things happened this year. I took a storytelling workshop, and the workshop leaders liked my storytelling enough to invite me to tell a story on the radio and then after that they filmed me telling a story as part of a web promotion. The film, on youtube, was a story about entering a writing contest. The writing contest people liked the story and picked it up on their website, and okay I’m no Susan Boyle, but hundreds of people watched the film, so I was feeling like maybe it was my year, and then I read that Millionaire was now offering a new way to audition. You could send in a two minute video telling why you’d be a compelling contestant and what you’d do with a million dollars. So I made a film. I told them in two minutes about all the changes I’d been through in the past few years – career changes, getting married for the first time at 47, taking care of my aging parents, moving back to my hometown of NYC. I told them how I was still an aspiring writer and how I’d found that this story of mine was still being read in Denmark at a secondary school twenty years after it had been published in a small magazine so anything is possible, and if I had a million dollars, I’d go out and write a book with my stories and other women’s stories about getting married late in life, and then the camera pulls away and I’m in my pathetic 1950’s-kitchen so I throw in how I’d like to get it renovated too with my big fat million dollars.

And I uploaded the video hoping they’d like it and invite me to take the next step – an online test, but they didn’t invite me. And yes, I’m hurt, damn it. And I’m angry, because the ugly truth is Millionaire, the ugly truth which I won’t hold back any longer, the reason that you don’t want me, that I’m not your “type” is because you don’t really consider me American enough, do you Millionaire? J’accuse, Millionaire. J’accuse. It’s not that my story isn’t compelling enough. It’s not that I’m not “interesting enough.” You don’t like New Yorkers, do you? Maybe I’m just a little too ethnic for you? Too cosmopolitan, maybe? You are a restricted club, aren’t you Millionaire? You’re like the Republican party, not understanding (to paraphrase Jon Stewart who also would never be allowed on your show) that New York City is really just a bunch of small towns very close together. So fine, Millionaire, you’re just really not that into me? Fine, than why don’t you pack up your little studio and move to fucking Burbank because this is my town, you anti-semitic son of a bitch!

Tags: Add new tag, anti-Semitism, auditions, contestants, game shows, Jeopardy, Millionaire, Millionaire auditions, New York, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire auditions