Alas,
very few of us have our own late night talk
shows. Very few of us work in the
entertainment industry in any way, shape, or
form. Even the lowest member of the
filmmaking totem pole, production assistants, have
a bajillion stories about working with this A-list
or B-list or C-list actor or underage porn
star. Most of us are mere mortals who can
only encounter celebrities through their customary
venues, i.e., screen, stage, television, or
entertainment magazines. So permit me, if
you will, to indulge in a bout of
namedropping. Celebrity sightings, that
is. Occasionally a little more than a mere
sighting. If this sort of ego gratification
makes you sick, leave now or forever hold your
acid reflux. In chronological order as much
as I can recall:
-
Tom
Bosley. Who? Well, in the 70's, he
had a fairly prominent role as Howard
Cunningham in the TV series Happy Days.
Memory returning now? No? Watch
Nick at Nite or TVLand, then. Anyway, 2
years after Happy Days debuted, it was
in the Top Ten TV lists everywhere. It
might have been #1. I don't
recall. I was but a wee lass at the
time. It turned out, though, that the
Bosley family enjoyed vacationing in the same
place that my grandparents could afford to
send my mother and her kids: White Sun
Ranch. If it still exists, it's
somewhere in or near Palm Springs. Quite
a loverly place, too. So to make any
already long story short, I hadn't yet been
conditioned fully in southern California ways
when encountering a celebrity, which is to
leave them alone. But being a child, I
could get away with approaching Mr. Bosley at
all sorts of opportunities (while he was
trying to eat, trying to take a walk, trying
to...you get the idea). Being a very
gracious man with young'ens of his own, he
humored my attempts at conversation.
Today I have two vivid souvenirs of my
encounters with Mr. C: a handwritten
note from him thanking me for the "good
times at White Sun Ranch," and the
following snippet: I: "Did
you ever spank Ritchie?" He:
"Sure, I've spanked Ritchie."
Ah, the reminiscing we could do if we met
again.
-
Leonard
Nimoy. A mere sighting, alas. It
was during college. Or rather,
immediately after graduating from
college. With all the film school
studies and projects finished, finally I had
time to do that internship thing that I'd seen
advertised on the job postings board.
Yay! Problem: internships are for
students only. Now that I had time to
make my attempt to join the film industry, I
wasn't allowed to make the attempt
(note: internships were the only
film jobs ever listed on the board). Be
that as it may, I managed to get hired for one
day as an intern at one of Paramount Studios'
casting offices, because the main assistant
was under the mistaken impression that I was
still a student. So there I was on the
actual Paramount lot! Casting office or
not, I met no one but the assistant.
Funny that she'd asked me if I get
"starstruck." No, I
said. Wish I'd had the opportunity to
prove it, though. Had a few phone calls
with agents, every one of whom believed that
their clients deserved parking passes.
They also got quite riled if I asked them to
choose amongst the various available times for
an audition. "Just tell me when to
send him/her!!" Choices bad:
got it. But I digress. Movie lot
folks take long lunches. Apparently 1½
hours is standard at Paramount, or used to
be. Having brought no sack lunch (and
very little money), I couldn't afford the
commissary and had to stand in line at a snack
bar. The woman in front of me suddenly
turned around and waved at someone
excitedly. "OH, HI! HEY
THERE!" she cried. I turned around.
"Be
still, my Trekkie heart!" That's all
I could think, over and over. If not, I
would've lost it and rushed at Leonard Nimoy as
he tried to walk the lot, either to his own
lunch or a movie shoot. Thing is, I hadn't
lied to the assistant about not being
starstruck. It's not a lie if you truly
believe what you say. Leave it to the
Powers That Be to test my words by sending one
of Star Trek's very own deities my way. To
the woman's credit, whoever she was, she tried
to wave over Mr. Nimoy in order to chat.
"Listen to her!" I attempted to
thought-project at him. "Listen-- to---
her!!" Alas, he very politely called
out that he had places to be, and continued
on. Alas.
-
Laraine
Newman. Who? Oh for cryin' out
loud, people. Forebear your ignorance of
one of the founding Not Ready for Primetime
Players, yay, an original castmember of Saturday
Night Live. All right, I'll concede
that her star has faded much more than I like
to see of former members of that NBC jewel,
but hey: Laraine Newman. I worked at
Tower Video in Westwood, i.e. a suburb of Los
Angeles. West L.A., if you want to get
picky. West L.A. is more
celebrity-packed than Hollywood. In
fact, I wonder if any celebrity lives IN
Hollywood, since it's not a very pleasant
place. I hear that anywhere but
Hollywood is preferred. So lots of
celebs wandered around West L.A. In the
case of Ms. Newman, she frequented
"my" video store, especially during
some kind of free rentals coupon deal.
She always brought in her little dog and
rented a gamut of genres, including a very bad
Walter Koenig flick called Moonscape,
or something along those lines. The
thing is, I couldn't tell fer shur fer shur
that it really was Laraine Newman
renting videos from me. Her appearance
had changed just enough to cast some
doubt. So I decided to get sneaky.
After one of her visits, I made it a point of
memorizing her member ID displayed on the
monitor, then raced back to the customer files
and looked it up. Wow. A suspicion
confirmed. For anyone who didn't follow SNL
with the same feverish devotion that I had
(and heck, still do), this is a real yawner of
a revelation. But for someone like me,
who can't have a single conversation with
anyone without referring to an SNL
sketch that reminds me of <insert current
subject matter>, well, this was cool.
By now, though, I'd been fully conditioned in
southern California ways regarding celebrity
encounters. Now that I knew who she was,
I didn't fess up to it. I left that up
to one of my coworkers, who had his own
tradition of grabbing videos featuring
whichever actor happened to be in the store,
and asking them to sign them. In Ms.
Newman's case, of course, it was one of the
videos we had of the SNL series.
Fortunately he'd chosen the Richard Pryor
episode for her to sign. My only comment
to her as she signed was: "Oh, yeah, that
was your best episode." That was
the one with the "Exorcist 2"
parody, with Laraine as the afllicted
Regan. Truly her best comedic
performance on the show.
-
Marc
Scott Zicree. Well, to me he was a
celebrity. A screenwriter of many things
related to The Twilight Zone (the new,
not original, series), I've read his episode
guide of the original series so often, it's
all but disintegrating. He came in with
his wife to the video store and purchased
something by check. "I've seen that
name somewhere before," I said. He
thought about this a moment. "I wrote
about The Twilight Zone," he
offered. That was all I needed to, for
me, inexplicably jump into fangirl mode and
start gushing about the book. "I read it
all the time!" etc, I gushed, and shook
his hand. He seemed surprised by the
positive acknowledgement, but pleased,
too. I mean, come on: how many
authors have fan encounters?
-
Billy
Crystal. About 2 months before the first
time he hosted the Academy Awards, Mr. Crystal
entered the empty-but-for-me video store on
Sunday morning. He looked like he hadn't
been sleeping much. At the time it was
possible to buy pre-recorded movies on video
camera sized tapes. You remember those
little cartridges, right? I didn't even
know we had the things, but there turned out
to be a display right in front of the main
counter. As always whenever this branch
lacked something needed by a customer, I
referred him to the Sunset Blvd. branch, which
was rumored to be really large. I'd
never seen this for myself, though.
Amusingly enough, Crystal found a copy of This
is Spinal Tap, a film made by pretty much
all his best buddies in the biz, and in which
he had a cameo. "Good choice,"
I said. He paid by credit card. At
the time it was customary to request a photo
ID for plastic purchases, so I did that.
In his case, it wasn't needed, but I am, if
anything, pedantic. I think he was too
tired to whine about it.
-
National
Booksellers' Convention, Los Angeles.
Actually, that might not be the correct
name. I just remember that it's THE
convention for booksellers and
publishers. This one happened to be in
Los Angeles that year. Thanks to my
novels, my editor was able to get me in.
I had no idea what I was supposed to do there
except wander around, so I did. Funny
thing is that I had more celebrity sightings
there than I ever have at sci-fi fan cons,
which are famous for such things. Off
the top of my head, I caught glimpses of
writer Dave Barry, former fitness gal Susan
Powter, and Kirk Douglas. Cool.
-
Ed
Wasser, Tim Russ, Louise Jameson. This
is sort of a cheat. I suppose I should
leave out anyone I've met at a fan convention,
since all guests at those things have
autograph and/or Meet and Greet sessions for
the fans. This was a slightly different
situation. I'd managed to weasel my way
into the convention as what the guy in charge
called a "filler guest" by virtue of
the 4 novels I've written, and because I know
the guy in charge. Apparently the
purpose of filler guests is to give fans a
place to sit and read and/or view their loot
while waiting for the "real" guest
to show up. So I'd go onstage and try to
convince people that I really was allowed to
be up there, honest. Anyone have any
questions? No? Okay, I'll answer
imaginary ones...
All
right, sure, whatever. Could you please
remind us who Ed Russ and Louise Wasser and..
yeah, them? This being a sci-fi fan
convention, the guy in charge hired Ed Wasser,
who played a recurring, very creepy bad guy on Babylon
5, Tim Russ, Vulcan dude on Star Trek:
Voyager, and Louise Jameson, former
"companion" of Doctor Who, an
import from the UK. I don't know which
actor was playing the Doctor at the time of Ms.
Jameson's time on the show. Anyway, filler
guest or not, this still meant I was allowed to
be in the Guest Group Shot, which the guy in
charge took to be given as gifts to his
staff. I ended standing in front of Tim
Russ, who put his hands on my shoulders.
Again, be still my Trekkie heart.
*cough* Okay, photo session over, it was
time to sign all 100 copies of it once the thing
was developed. Mr. Russ never stuck around
for anything, preferring to nap in between
appearances, but Mr. Wasser and Ms. Jameson and
I retired to the same room for a marathon
signing session. Being the idiot that I
am, I signed my name and did a little doodle of
Mara (see Mara Stories), which meant that I had
to include the doodle on every single
picture. The upside to all this is that I
got to have decent facetime with some cool
actors.
-
Mark
Goddard. Another cheat, meaning another
convention encounter. All right, I'm
getting a little peeved with you folks who
have no idea whom I'm talking about. Or
I'm peeved with myself for having an
idea. I haven't decided yet. Mr.
Goddard used to be prominently featured on an
old series about some family being lost
somewhere in space. They had a robot and an
effete would-be saboteur along, too.
I'll remember the show's name
eventually. Anyway, this took place at
another convention, but outside of the usual
Meet and Greet situation. Goddard did
have a table set up, but the "star"
of this convention happened to be Richard
Hatch, who at the time was still trying to
generate interest in reviving Battlestar
Galactica. He also had a book to
promote. For him, there was a
line. For the guy directly next to him,
there was not. Even as a kid I barely
enjoyed Battlestar Galactica, and to
this day, don't mourn its loss. Lost
in Space, I liked very much. The
neat thing about encountering Goddard was that
he was the one excited to meet me. There
really are celebrities who really enjoy
meeting fans, and he's one of them.
Alas, there are few like that. So we
chatted about the show and the then-upcoming LiS
film, in which he had a small part.
Alas, the film did not do as well as I'd
hoped, but I got the sense Mr. Goddard would
continue having fun no matter what the grosses
are.
-
Harry
Shearer. Email only. I'm counting
this, anyway. I didn't expect him to
reply to my query sent via his website, which
coincidentally enough is at harryshearer.com,
but he did. Who's Harry, crumb, you
ask? Heard of The Simpsons?
No? Let me move that rock for you.
Better? Okay, every time you hear Mr.
Burns, Smithers, Doctor Hibbert, Lenny, Kent
Brockman, Scratchy (of Itchy and Scratchy),
Reverend Lovejoy, Principal Skinner, Reinhart
Wolfcastle, and a great deal many other
baritone-voiced characters, you're hearing
Harry. You might recall a furry-faced
bassist with a fake English accent from This
is Spinal Tap, but if not, well, never
mind. Mr. Shearer is what folks in the
biz like to call a character actor, so you've
probably seen him in a dozen other films and
didn't know it. That being said, he
replied in person a few times to my email
inquiries, and that's pretty cool. I
just wish he'd explain why he did those wine
commercials, though!
-
Jason
Mewes. Phone. "Snootchie
bootchies!" "Naga nootch!"
"Time for a phatty boom batty
blunt!" "So... Bethany's... part
black?" Okay, if that still didn't
jog any memories, Mr. Mewes is best known for
his multiple portrayals of "Jay" (no
last name), lovable drug dealer whose
ubiquitous partner in crime, aka hetero
lifemate, Silent Bob, is played by his
real-life pal Kevin Smith. No, not the
guy who played Ares in the Hercules and
Xena shows! Sheesh. Smith
wrote and directed a slew of infamously
"Jersey" films called Clerks,
Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma,
and most recently, Jay and Silent Bob
Strike Back, and Mewes has played
"Jay" in all of them. Quite
well, I might add. I'm not generally one
who bothers with fan letters to anyone, let
alone a dude ten years my junior known for
playing a stoner (no doubt partially from
personal experience), but I sent him a
"Hey There, good work" letter care
of Smith's production office (aka ViewAskew
Productions). I figured at least those
guys had his current address. To my
surprise I got a phone call about a month
later. It was an unusual call, though,
and not just because of the person making
it. When I answered, an extremely
familiar-sounding guy asked twice for me by
name. Of course I replied in the
affirmative each time. The weird thing
is that he then said, "Sorry, I must have
the wrong number," and hung up.
I've had very odd telemarketing calls before
(in spite of having a so-called unlisted
number), and wondered if this was just another
one, but was curious about this one. I
used star-6-9, which yielded a Los
Angeles-based number. I've lived in New
England for almost 5 years now, so if I did
know anyone in L.A., I'd lost track. But
damn, this guy sounded familiar. So I
called back and told who answered that someone
had asked for me, confirmed it was me, then
hung up on me. And that I couldn't
remember who I knew from L.A. "Ah, this
is Jay Mewes. I was just calling you to
thank you for your letter." Be
still my Tre--... um... ViewAskew heart!
The bummer part of this story is that Mewes
claimed to be on another call, and being the
oh-so-accommodating and trusting gal that I
am, I did not insist that he ignore the other
call and talk to me. Plus he promised to
call again after hanging up.
Did
he? No. With all due respect to how
cool it was that he'd called me, period, I don't
think Smith hired him for his brains.
After getting confused in spite of confirming my
identity twice (he thought I was a guy, and
thus, not me. I have a deep voice), I
imagine that he forgot to call again. But
that's okay.
|
