My folks took my brothers and I to a car show back in the 70’s in a big arena. We were walking around looking at the cars, and us kids were all carrying giant helium balloons in animal shapes. (Mine was a metallic blue whale, don’t ask me why I wanted a whale, I don’t remember). We came around to one side of the cars and there was William Shatner sitting at a table signing autographs. My younger brother was really, REALLY into Star Trek, and he wanted to say hello, so he ran over to the table and waited in line while my folks and my other brother and me waited. He got up to the table and said a very shy “Hi!” and waved, and Shatner pointed to his sign and turned away from my brother to take the next adult in line. The sign? $30 PER AUTOGRAPH. He wouldn’t even say hello to a kid. My brother was crestfallen. We all tried to cheer him up as we walked away but he was inconsolable. Then we turned the corner to walk down the next line of cars, still trying to comfort my brother, and there was another table with a crowd. James Doohan was sitting behind that one, and looking our way. He actually walked out from behind his table, through the crowd, and bent down to talk to my brother and tell all of us kids what nice balloons we had! James Doohan was a Class 1 Awesome human being. William Shatner is an A**hole.
Wow. Is he still a councilor!? Did you tell him the impact he had? It’s so sad. I’m sorry to hear that.
And yet was a complete dick-head to the fans who were arranging a science fiction convention I attended many years ago. Yes, they were a bunch of amateurs, but then A.E. Van Vogt, Leonard Nimoy and Damon Knight were professional, kind and awesome.
Actually had the opposite experience than the Op suggests. I’m not much into hero worship but i once shook hands with someone who I remembered in my youth as an aerobatic pilot. My friends refused to come up to him because they were in awe of him. I had no clue. It was Bob Hoover. He shook my hand like I was his next door neighbor. THEN I learned about his life and just how over-the-top it was. He was a walking Tom Clancy character on steroids and the most unassuming person on the planet.
Is he still a councilor!?
NO. He was working in some sort of Christian organization.
Did you tell him the impact he had?
NO. He was really just rambling on and on about Christ, trump, and all the evil in the world which didn’t give me much time to actually talk to him. And to top it all off he had forgotten a lot of stuff about me and my family–which the most disappointing thing for me because it was like he was shallow and self absorbed --only focused on hearing himself talk. (When I knew him in high school he was very focused on actually listening to me and the other students which he obviously wasn’t anymore.)
II don’t mean to sound overly unsympathetic but if you expected anything else you hadn’t been paying attention.
Everything that I have ever read about meeting Hunter S Thompson has been to the effect that – while he was capable of being normal from time to time - he was generally unpredictable and weird, with all the ups and downs that entails.
I love this! Thank you for sharing it!
I got to shake hands with Bob many times over the years (I never expected him to remember me) and he was always the slickest Dude alive.
Austin Aries was completely aloof and full of himself when I met him at a VIP meet-and-greet at an indie wrestling show. It was pretty bizarre, considering that I’d paid to see him and he seemed completely uninterested in the entire affair.
The flip side of the token for me is Jake “the Snake” Roberts. When I was 7 years old my dad took me to a WWF house show where he was wrestling. During the intermission we were walking back from the bathroom and we passed a barricade where he was leaning on the wall having a smoke. I said “Hi, Jake!” to him and he said hi to me back. 25 years later he did a spoken word show in Seattle and after the show I got to talk to him and thank him for being kind to me as a kid, and of course he didn’t remember it, but he was happy to hear that he’d made my night.
Time for another linking of the sublime “William Fucking Shatner” story, from Will Wheaton’s blog.
TLDR version; Shatner is an asshole and Wil Wheaton is a hilarious writer.
To quote something Nichelle Nichols once said; “In Hollywood in the '60s, black women were frequently paid less and treated poorly compared to their white counterparts. That wasn’t the case on Bill’s set. Bill made sure that EVERYONE was paid less and treated poorly.”
With regards to the autograph stuff - we do need to keep in mind that in many cases, the celebrity has already signed perhaps 99 autographs that day and people like you or I are asking for the 100th. (Although that doesn’t seem to be the case with “Sam” or others above.)
I read one anecdote about Emmitt Smith. He had signed who-knows-how-many autographs in one day, and when a handicapped woman in a wheelchair asked for one, Emmitt refused and walked on (and this was while a golf game was going on, and Emmitt had to go to the next hole.) People then began yelling at Emmitt, calling him an ass for not giving an autograph to a handicapped person, when it was more about him needing to leave and already having signed 200 that day.
I met Jake the Snake also. He was doing one of his spoken word shows at the local sports bar, and I had a good seat. About ten minutes before the show was to start, I ducked out for a quick smoke, and who should I meet outside, also having a quick smoke? Jake himself!
He was with the show host/warmup comedian, and introductions were made. I mentioned to Jake that I had seen him wrestle many times, not just on TV but also at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens back in the day. And somehow or other, it came out that I worked with our little local pro wrestling promotion.
“You don’t look like a wrestler,” Jake observed. “What do you do with them?”
“I’m the ring announcer.”
“Yeah? Let’s hear how you would announce a wrestler coming into the ring.”
I’m not a big guy, but I do have a big voice, and I let it rip, as if I was announcing one of our own wrestlers. “Now making his way to the ring. Weighing in at 237 pounds, and coming to us from San Diego, California, he is the current heavyweight champion and the All-American Boy … Steeeeeeve Riverrrrrrs!”
“Holy shit,” said Jake. He turned to the host/comedian. “You do your thing, then bring this guy up to introduce me.”
And that’s what happened. I got to announce Jake “the Snake” Roberts! Not into a wrestling ring, but what the hell. Jake gave a great talk, was very nice with everybody that night; took the time to sign autographs, even if you were’t buying his merch, and typically having a short conversation with everybody who wanted an autograph. Jake “the Snake” is one class act.
He spoke at my college too. There was a single chair on the stage with a small table. A student assistant came out and put a bottle of Chivas Regal, a glass and an ice bucket on the table. Hunter came out and talked until the bottle ran dry. Then he left. I don’t remember what he said but I do remember being greatly entertained. I had no direct contact with him but the talk was exactly what I had hoped for.
My favorite example of Thompson at his most incoherent is his appearance on Conan O’Brien in 2003, in which he stumbled onto the stage with a margarita in hand, struggled to find his way onto the guest chair, and proceeded to babble and swear at Conan for several minutes, during which you can tell Conan is extremely disappointed and unsure of how to proceed with a guest who’s lit up eight ways from Sunday.
I once got the opportunity to get into a direct email chat with a podcast host I really enjoy, I sent him an email with questions about the show and he responded back in about 3 hours. However his email was in all caps and mainly YES/NO answers to questions I had which didn’t really answer them. I couldn’t tell if he was genuinely being kind of a dick or if he was really pressed for time when he replied back and just gave me the basics. Because of this I respect him enough I won’t give his name and it hasn’t really changed how I feel but I definitely haven’t emailed him back since.
You’re not alone. Apparently his coworkers couldn’t stand him either.
What is it with baseball players? My encounter was with Willie “Pops” Stargell, but he had to throw in a racist taunt and dismiss (elementary school aged) me with “beat it, Casper”
I saw Hunter S Thompson speak in San Diego in the mid-80s. Same deal as upthread. He was given a bottle of liquor, a tumbler and an bucket of ice. He rambled for a bit and then took questions. It was hilarious. He gave tons of shit to the people who asked him something idiotic. He came back the next year but I didn’t go because as fun as it was, I didn’t need to see it again. Well that time the booze hit different and he was much more belligerent and incoherent and he had to be dragged off stage an hour or so early. People got refunds.