American Outlaw - Jesse James [123]
Against all odds, I’d become a personality. That truly baffled me. In a shoe box at home, I had an old black-and-white photograph of myself on Romper Room when I was a kid—we’d lived half an hour away from where they filmed. Who in the hell would have predicted that someday I’d be stumbling around, playing an adult version of myself on so-called reality TV? It was just so unlikely, a one-in-a-million occurrence. And yet as much as I found it odd, and not really in accordance with my own vision of myself, I couldn’t exactly bring myself to give it up, either. Fame annoyed me, but at least that massive block of attention showed that people cared. If I quit TV, what exactly would I have left?
So I ventured forward, not really knowing what the hell else to do. The producers for the Apprentice had been on me for years, trying to convince me to do the show. To this point, I’d never really been interested, but now, I forced myself to listen to their pitch.
“Look, Jesse, it’ll be fantastic! I promise. We got Andrew Dice Clay!”
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” I said drily.
“We’ve got Dennis Rodman!”
“Incredible.” I yawned.
“We’ve got Scott Hamilton lined up, too,” the producer pleaded.
“Scott Hamilton’s doing the show?” I perked up. “Seriously?”
“Sure,” she said. “Interested?”
“Yes,” I said decisively. “Sign me up.”
I’d been on the fence: like a lot of America, I considered the Apprentice a little hokey. But the mention of Scott Hamilton tipped the scales. I’d been trying to find a way to hook up with him for more than twenty years, ever since I’d stolen his Porsche from outside the San Diego Sports Arena in 1986.
The story was a strange one: I was seventeen years old, and in the prime of my car thieving days. I’d already stolen another Porsche the month before, ripped it down to the bare essentials, sold what I could. Now I was looking for parts I could transplant into the shell I already had. I was cruising downtown San Diego and found myself at the Sports Arena, where Stars on Ice! were having their big day. Right outside the arena, a green Porsche 911, with a vanity plate reading “ISKATE,” just pleaded to be stolen.
So I burglarized it and drove it away.
I knew it was Scott’s car, and later, when I got more well known, Scott had found out that I’d been the guy who’d ripped it off. I’d never really managed to make a good apology, though, and I’d always felt kind of like an ass about that, particularly because Scott Hamilton was known to everyone as a really sweet guy. I figured doing the Apprentice would give me the opportunity to work alongside him, and make my amends.
And in fact, it did. We hit it off immediately, and gradually we became real friends as the filming wore on. It took me a couple of weeks, but finally, I screwed up the courage to say to his face, “Hey, Scott, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am for what I did.”
“Jesse,” he said, “I forgave you for that a long time ago. You’ll always be my favorite thief.”
It was amazing, just how good that made me feel.
As for the rest of the show? I kind of surprised myself by how much I enjoyed it. They gave you the opportunity to work pretty hard if you wanted to, which I respected, and when it came down to it, how well you did was contingent on how well you functioned with your team. I worked with some awesome guys: Herschel Walker, Clint Black, and of course Rodman. He and I got into a little on-screen drama, when I suggested that he might have a drinking problem, but I never regretted saying it.
“I can kick anybody’s ass at any task,” I remember Dennis saying, when he was defending himself in front of Trump.
“What would you say to that, Jesse?” Trump asked me.
I thought about it for a second and replied, “I’d say, Dennis, why don’t you kick