Easy Money
The writer on his experience being on the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”:
“Did I mention on my questionnaire that I could perform a serviceable impression of Chewbacca? Did I offer that up to them as proof of my willingness to give them whatever they wanted in exchange for a chance at their money? Yes. Yes, I did. The rest of my interview in the cramped bowels of the Apollo Theatre was merely a formality. I would be good on the show because of X, Y, and Z. When I was twelve, I was an actor in a sex-ed video starring Bill Nye the Science Guy. I would spend a million dollars on the world’s greatest first-anniversary present for my wife. Can I do the Chewbacca now? Of course I can. It is a great and unholy sound, and for several seconds all talk in that room came to an end. A guy who recognized the noise for what it was clapped from somewhere back in the line. I boarded the train back to Brooklyn, uncertain that I had succeeded, though I needn’t have doubted the Wookiee’s allure. Two weeks later, I received a postcard informing me that I was part of the ‘contestant pool,’ and a week after that a producer called to tell me that my episode would shoot in seven days’ time.”