Videoage International October 2019

October 2019 V I D E O A G E 40 B efore August, when Donald Trump de- clared that “Hollywood is terrible” and movies are dangerous, the once and future president of the U.S. was known to be fascinated with Tinseltown. In 1964, Trump even expressed interest in attending film school at the University of Southern California, but ultimately matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania. He returned to Hollywood some 20 years later, in 1985, for a cameo appearance in The Jeffersons , a CBS comedy. This was followed by small roles in 17 other TV series, up until 2012. His film career began in 1989. “The Donald” (as he’s often called by the press) appeared in a total of 13 movies, including playing himself in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York . Trump also took part in a few music videos, various TV awards shows, and even TV commercials, including one for Pizza Hut in 1995. In 2003, he went as far as purchasing a mansion in Beverly Hills (which he didn’t sell until 2016). In 2006, Trump announced that he was planning to create a production company in Hollywood (which ultimately did not materialize). He even received his very own HollywoodWalk of Fame Star in 2007 for his work on his reality show, The Apprentice . But his relationshipwithHollywood never went smoothly, supposedly due to his braggadocious attitude. Some restaurateurs even went so far as to tell The Los Angeles Times that they never offered Trump use of their exclusive tables. And in 2016, his prized Hollywood Walk of Fame star was vandalized. For the aforementioned reasons, Tinseltown’s denizens never truly accepted Trump, but were still happy to exploit his persona, possibly because he never seems to be out of character. An episode of animated series The Simpsons on the FOX TV network, which aired in 2000, depicted a cartoon version of Donald Trump coming down the escalator of his Trump Tower in New York City to announce his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. When it really happened in a similar fashion 15 years later — in July 2015 — the episode was considered surreal. A lesser known event took place 10 years earlier, in January 1990, at the NATPE TV trade show in New Orleans, when Warner Bros. ran an ad for a newly developed syndicated game show exclusively in VideoAge ’s The TV Executive Daily with the title: “It’s Official... Donald Trump is Taking Over America!” The TV Executive Daily was then the U.S. domestic syndication version of VideoAge Daily, which, after 36 years, is still the premier TV trade publication for buying and selling TV content internationally. The TV Executive Daily was discontinued with the end of the U.S. syndication business at NATPE. So, it appears that the U.S. syndication division of Warner Bros. (then headed by Dick Robertson and Scott Carlin) had anticipated Trump’s rise to power a full decade before the well- known episode of The Simpsons aired simply by advertising its Trump Card game show. In the 1990 NATPE ad, Warner Bros. execs invited the market’s participants to stop by their booth to meet Trump in person. For the record, the Trump Card game show was taped at Trump’s Trump Tower Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey and ran in U.S. syndication for only nine months. Trump made only a brief appearance in the first episode, when he welcomed the viewers alongside the show’s host, Jimmy Cefalo. Over the phone from his Los Angeles home, Robertson (who’s still active in the television business and has several projects in the works) recalled riding with Trump on the famous Trump Tower escalator in New York City to reach the press conference announcing the production of the Trump Card game show. Robertson had met with Trump three times in 1989 to pitch the show together with David Salzman, then at Telepictures, a production arm of Warner Bros. The pilot was shot at NBC studios in Hollywood. As for NATPE 1990, Robertson said that Trump “worked the room, meeting local TV station exe- cutives at the Warner Bros. booth,” as advertised, and noted that that particular edition of NATPE “was the wildest” he had ever attended. Warner Bros. was also distributing (controversial U.S. ci- vil right activist) Jesse Jackson’s show, and guests at their stand included Trump’s friend, Edwin Edwards, the newly elected governor of Louisia- na, who was later sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for racketeering. It’s interesting to note that, in a card game, the “Trump Card” indicates a winning card, and the phrase is synonymous with over 250 expressions, including “secret weapon” and “trick up the sleeve.” Making History Without Knowing It. A Game Show Presaged A Presidency The Trump Report Business Insider ran this Pizza Hut commercial storyboard (provided by Michael Campbell, the spot writer) in an August 3, 2018 article. In 2016, Trump’s HollywoodWalk of Fame star was vandalized. Donald Trump and Megan Mullally at the 2005 Emmy Awards The ad for Trump Card , a syndicated TV show created by WB’s production/development arm, Telepictures.