Binderama60for60

I have a celebrity problem.

I’ve always been drawn to famous people. Fame. People who have fame. People who are famous. People who attract the eyes and admiration of other people, millions and even billions of people. I can’t say I’m proud of it, but I’ve not made it much of a secret either: Those who know me know that I can drop a name. We’ll get to Michael Jackson in a bit, natch.

My Dad once took me to task on my affinity for celebrity, citing the hollow vanity of it all in a serious world. I countered by likening a celebrity to a piece of art, like Starry Night or the David. Everybody knows of it, there’s only one, and when you stand in its presence, you can’t help but marvel: For this moment, I am the only one on the planet in the company of this unique, alluring entity.

Even better than art, it can be incredibly interesting to spend time and have a conversation with a famous person. I harbor no illusions that we’re gonna be besties, but interacting, asking questions and sharing experiences over time (even short, planned or staged) makes it more engaging than a receiving line or gazing from afar.

How it Started

Burl Ives came to my elementary school when I was in the 2nd grade. We all knew him for his avatar’s performance as the snow man in the “Rudolph…” Christmas show. The local press was there and my face was on TV and in the paper. I liked that. If you haven’t already checked, Burl Ives was a badass songwriter and performer back in the day. What he was doing at Louise Archer Elementary in Vienna, Virginia in 1972, I have no idea.

Which brings me to the role of the fringe players in the celebrity universe; there are many. This is why I took some of the jobs I did early in my career: to be “almost famous.” I liked the proximity to fame. I liked being backstage, on the set, in the car, at the party, near the spotlight. I worked concerts in college, was a driver for Wolf Trap (addressed in another episode of this series) and a publicist at Disney and Universal (also addressed in this series).

To me Jimmy Stewart was an icon and an idol, I was one of Jimmy Buffett‘s “Parrot Heads,” Steve Jobs was a guru and legend. Do I wish I’d engaged more when in their company? Of course, but the professional imperative can be at odds with the emotional: you’ve got a job to do. This is all about business.

Granted, my brushes with fame aren’t nearly as frequent today as they were in my 20s and 30s, so my name dropping is dusty. These days, though, it’s easier for me to interact with celebrities because I usually have no idea who I’m talking to, including…

…Anthony Mackie. Back in January I contracted him for a high-profile corporate gig as narrator and emcee. We got on great because I had no idea who he was. And vice versa. I Googled him, of course, that’s my job. DJ Steve Aoki was there too.

Let’s Drop Some Names, Going Way Back!

We’ll start lite, very lite, even liter that Burl Ives: freshman year in high school, rumor had it that Anson Williams was in the building with his girlfriend who was a recent grad. Man, that was awesome. Never saw him though. So close!

In the mid-80s, as a driver for Wolf Trap, a prestigious venue in Northern Virginia, I got to shuckin’ and jivin’ with the likes of Tommy Smothers, who taught me yo-yo tricks, asked me to “hook him up” and was a big tipper; Fabian, Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell, whose fans were rabid old ladies who surrounded my car, but now I think they were only in their 40s or so; Frankie Valli tipped me extra to compensate for The Four Seasons stiffing me on an earlier run. 60|60 will revisit that summer later on, including opera singers and conductors, Stars on Ice, lots of folk groups and one Top-40 queen, plus a day with Ferrante & Teischer.

At college, I worked concerts, spending travel and backstage time with the likes of James Taylor and The Go-Gos (who came to my fraternity party). I dropped a young Weird Al at the Howard Johnson’s, which doubled as a girls’ freshmen dorm; quite the scene on the balconies of the park-at-your-room motel just off the interstate. During summers, I worked concerts at a theme park, spending time with Jimmy Buffett, Charlie Daniels, Fee Waybill and the lead singer for Foghat.

The Universal days were rife with celebrity. The grand opening attracted some big names, like Michael J. Fox, Steven Spielberg, Charlton Heston, Robert Wagner, Jane Seymour, Ernest Borgnine, Janet Leigh, Sly Stallone, Bill Cosby and dozens of others. A publicist’s job is to get them where they need to be, prep them with context and content: they are here to promote the studio and whatever else they might be hyping. Sometimes the vibe is dismissive, sometimes it’s lovely.

Jimmy Stewart was at the event. Who isn’t a fan of Jimmy Stewart? I toured him through the Hitchcock attraction that featured a recreation of the apartment courtyard from “Rear Window;” a very cool experience. Jimmy’s wife had died recently and I’d been told he wasn’t tracking 100%. So as we entered the space, he seemed confused; I’m not sure my explanation cleared anything up, but he was very polite and pleasant.

Even before the park opened, celebrities showed up for tours several times a week. Most of those times, my friend — and studio photographer — Kevin Kolczynski would be with me. Celebs got VIP treatment in exchange for signing a photo release so we could put pics on the wire.

Over the years at Universal we met up with a steady stream of kinda-notables, like Vanilla Ice jumping a motorcycle for a TV show (very chill), the author Tom Clancy (deadly serious), Patrick Swayze (beyond generous), Joe Piscopo (excellent guy), McCauley Culkin (normal kid), NKOTB (pop stars), the cast of “90210.” Morgan Fairchild (who remembered my friend Paul Meena from years before), Fabio, Barry Williams (who volunteered TMI Marcia stories), Gilbert Gottfried (he wanted to know what happened to the merch I promised), Linda Blair (I had seen “The Exorcist” the night before, coincidentally), a bunch of Nickelodeon faces like Kenan Thompson, plenty of legendary athletes (thanks to our friends at ABC Sports), and lots of up-and-coming country music starts like Garth Brooks, Faith Hill and Vince Gill. I smoked a pack of cigarettes with River Phoenix and his little brother Joaquin at the premiere of “Parenthood,” and had a lovely, intimate dinner with the legendary Steve Allen and his wife Jayne Meadows. I think that was one that finally impressed my Dad.

Pro tip: Do your research, pander with intelligence. Jerry Lewis was on the lot for a week. On our first encounter I told him how much I enjoyed his work in “The King of Comedy,” that we studied it in college. His wife came to me later to let me know how deeply that touched him; it was some of his proudest work. For the rest of week, when I entered a room or stepped on set, he’d race over to greet me, give me a hug and a sock in the arm.

Of all the celebrities I’ve met, the strongest aura came from Halle Berry. She was early in her career and I was among the posse that was with her everywhere during a promotional appearance. She was very friendly, but the aura was like a force field: you want to treat her normally, but it was impossible, one loses their breath in her presence. I did, at least.

I also met Cheryl Hines at Universal. She wasn’t famous yet. She played the role of Janet Leigh (who I also spent time with at the opening) in a reenactment of the shower scene from “Psycho.” Several times a day Cheryl’d don a wig and a nude body suit and take a shower in front of a live audience. And then she’d get stabbed, scream and die. After she moved to LA, she shared with me her own star-struck stories of the celebrities she met as a bartender and caterer — the good, bad and the ugly. When she finally started getting famous on her own, we discussed that, because it came later in her life, she never developed the callousness or armor of notoriety. Still very down to Earth.

In NYC, I befriended Richard Kind who was courting (and later married) an ex-girlfriend. He invited me to tapings of “Spin City” and even gave me notes on a few spec scripts. And when I first moved to LA, I found myself at a house party locked in a multi-hour political chat with Bradley Whitford of “The West Wing,” who described his lobbying efforts as being “celebrity lube.” I hired James Garner for a corporate gig; he picked me up at my hotel in Palm Springs and drove me around, pointing out the hotspots. That guy was from the golden age.

After I left Universal, the celebrities I encountered were in the world of high-tech. Over the years, I shared event stages and green rooms with Michael Dell, Google’s Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendee, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Richard Branson and Steve Jobs. Again, these encounters were professional but often with a modicum of substance and jocularity; Dell was especially gregarious, Jobs pleasant.

I first encountered Intel chairman Andy Grove in the demo lab at HQ while staring into the back of a server rack. I had no idea what I was looking at, but I knew who Andy was because of his book Only the Paranoid Survive. Plus, he’d recently been named Time magazine Man of the Year. It all felt a bit surreal: “What am I doing here? I have no idea what anyone is saying, I do not belong here.” A few years later, I had become Andy’s producer for his increasingly infrequent appearances, including an evening on stage at the MGM Grand Garden Arena with with his onetime mentee Steve Jobs. In the tech world, Andy was a rock star who seemed to relish my brand of levity. So on one occasion when he insisted on wearing leather pants on stage, I told him he looked sexy. He blushed and his wife Eva howled with laughter.

I will lastly proffer some regret for not making more of my time with the legends like Tommy Smothers, Steve Allen and Michael Dell. Pure badass iconoclasts. Amazing to think what their careers and experiences were like, the stories they could tell. But I had a job to do.

I’ll sign off for now, but more names will be dropping — hard! — in upcoming 60|60 posts. Watch out!

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