No, my "Met A Celebrity" stories are not better or worse than anyone else's. Anyway, I happen to know a few people whose interactions with the famous and infamous make mine – and trust me, yours too – seem like accidental run-ins with the meter reader. So I simply can't portray myself as some kind of star-magnet.
My stand-outs, the ones I find the most amusing in hindsight, are those that weren't according to a traditional "script." I didn't own all their CDs. In some cases I hadn't seen all, or even a single episode, of their hit show. Their films weren't exactly on my must-see list.
We crossed paths, and I either knew vaguely who they were, or just happened to figure it out later.
I myself, on the other hand, meant absolutely nothing to them. They were at least on a "list" with an actual letter designation – A, B, C... H.
Some are mere single sentences in length. Like the time Larry King brushed me aside with what was probably his standard duck-n-cover line for strangers: "Hey-how-are-ya-dere."
Think a gravel-throated New-Yawker gurgle of, "I'm not stopping, I don't know you, please be nice and get lost."
There was that magical moment I found myself holding a door for Mary Tyler-Moore, mentally stunned by how impossibly petite she is – like watching a 5-foot-tall animated pencil with perfectly coifed hair, drawing a line out of the building, unaided by any push from some gigantic etherial hand. I could only grin politely, unworthy of actual speech in such close proximity to her awesomeness. I imagine she was used to it.
I've written before of my surreal encounters with Judge Lance Ito and CIA Director Leon Panetta.
There was one instance in which my long held perceptions of a particular famous person were altered 180 degrees, simply by a chance meeting as brief as a gasp. I was standing in the right office at the right time, at the newspaper where I worked, when Julia Child ambled in to hand-deliver a copy of her own press release for an upcoming culinary event in town.
My mind made the connection that I assume most minds would (you may even be doing it now) – a vision of Dan Aykroyd in drag as Julia, inadvertently slicing open a vein on Saturday Night Live.
Just the short batch of minutes I spent in the actual Julia's presence eradicated from my soul the premise of that cruel skit. She was everyone's grandmother – as warm as a cup of hot cocoa to the palm of a hand just in from a winter morning – as sweet as a box of chocolate cordials – as honest and earnest as a summer rain amid a dry spell. It was difficult to forgive Aykroyd after that, for a very long time, about a piece of TV comedy that had once brought laughter. Once.
Some encounters weren't as personal, but equally as touching – as the one in 2002, when on the catering crew for the Latino Film Festival in Los Angeles, I watched Edward James Olmos help his mother around a salad and dessert bar, holding her plate, describing each item for her.
At the same event, I was elected "Honorary Righthand Man" by the late legendary character actor Vincent Schiavelli. The caterer employing me that night made a spiced tortilla wrap that Schiavelli became addicted to. Upon serving him his second platter, I made the standard Waiter 101 comment that if he needed more, to just let me know. He took it literally, and whenever his plate became empty, he had a way of focussing a laser-like gaze at me from across the expansive dining room and drawing me to him – with a smile, and a fresh plate of tortilla wraps in hand.
I'll never forget the visage of a man whose hawkish face graced the screen in so many cherished films, mouthing from a distance with great urgency shaping his brow: "Rob! More!"
The most surreal meet-ups happen in places one would least suspect, but in retrospect suddenly reveal themselves as completely natural. In 2004, I was producing and co-starring in a stageshow about the iconic comedian Lenny Bruce. On our second weekend we arrived at the theater to find another event just concluding, with various crew packing up equipment and cleaning up a lavish hospitality area. We couldn't begin the set-up for our own show until after this group had finished.
During the wait, I stood around with a cup of their caterer's leftover coffee in hand, shooting the breeze with one of the people in charge of that earlier event. We chewed the fat about the combined hardships and joys of producing, and the general rollercoaster ride that show business can become. He asked me about the show we were about to set the stage for, and when I described for him our bio-play tribute to Bruce, he was intensely interested.
"You ought to stick around and see it," I said. He answered that it was a tempting offer, but he was expected at another social gathering elsewhere that evening. "Well," I replied, "if you're back in town the next three weeks or so."
We shook hands, and said our "see-ya's." He left with his crew and cadre of pals, and I went about my own tasks at hand to prepare that night's show. It had been refreshing to talk shop with someone else in "the business," especially someone who made it a full-time living – a trick I hadn't quite mastered.
Not long after, the CD for which that other group's event had been a "release party" hit the retail shelves. It was Brian Wilson's "Smile." The person I had chatted up in the theater kitchen weeks prior, was the man himself. Somehow within the context of a local hospitality event, and a personable conversation so casual, I had distracted myself from recognizing him.
One of the biggest clichés in Hollywood, is that when you meet a star, your "big break" is near. More often than not, it's exactly the opposite. If they are indeed real persons beneath the hoopla and sparkle, their meeting you is a much needed "break" – from their entrapment by the public spotlight – a moment to disengage from the pressures of stardom and allow their very-human real selves to breathe.
If you want to be a celebrity's instant ally, the surest way is to be the kind of person who allows them that freedom.
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