So far, I have** personally ** gotten autographs from (and I am not a pathological collector): Terry Pratchett, Larry Niven, Stephen Barnes, Jerry Pournelle, George R. R. Martin, Harry Harrison, S. M. Stirling, Harlan Ellison, Spider Robinson, Jack Chalker, Robert Heinlein (all first editions), Erin Gray, Emma Caulfield, Amber Benson, Mark Lutz, Tom Lenk, James Marsters, Danny Strong, Anthony Stewart Head, Robin De Morte, Bruce Campbell, Kevin Smith, Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, the rest of the cast of Serenity, the members of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, Fred McMurray, Jimmy Buffett, Penn Jillette and some I have forgotten. None have been anything but polite, gregarious and co-operative. I didn’t interrupt their meals, or corral them in the men’s room, and they were all pleased to sign whatever I had.
Sorry to hijack this thread with another “celebrity who was cool story” but I just love this one.
In high school my friend and I thought it would be a hoot to go to a signing by Peter Tork of the Monkeys. I didn’t have anything for him to sign so I had him sign the organ donor thing on the back of my driver’s license. He took it really seriously and signed his real name, Peter Thorkelson. I really admire him for that.
I appreciate the people who give autographs and do realize the people who got him where they did, but I can understand the reasons for not signing as well. If they’re gracious for everyone who got them there, that’s awesome…I just don’t think it reaches owing everyone.
As for Dee, when was this interview, 1986??? Someone actually wants an autograph from him these days?? While I can understand getting pissed at someone approaching while you’re eating (the autograph etiquette is to wait until they’re finished with their dinner), truth be told, he should be glad someone recognized him 
I’m not a big autograph collector and haven’t sought any since I was a kid, but I saw boxer Riddick Bowe at JFK airport shortly after he became heavyweight champion and he was swarmed by a sea of fans asking for autographs and looked happier than I’ve ever seen anyone look while signing. I felt bad when his career went south a few years later because he clearly loved the attention and must’ve signed close to 1,000 autographs that night and smiled the entire time.
I did once ask for an autograph because I thought it would make a down-on-his-luck celebrity feel better. I was at a Petland in Chelsea and saw Alex Winter (Ted of the Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure movies). This was after the second Bill & Ted movie tanked at the box office, his MTV show The Idiot Box was cancelled and his directorial debut Freaks! and been placed in limbo by its distributor. This may sound weird, but I thought he looked sad, so I walked up to him, acted really excited to see him, raved about his work and asked for an autograph. He was really nice, chatted with me for a bit and signed a napkin. I don’t remember what I did with it.
At the same store I once accidentally made eye contact with Debbie Harry while standing in line and she turned around and looked up like she thought I might try to bother her. What a bitch.
Another time I was waiting in line to buy tickets at a movie theater when David Byrne said “excuse me” so he could unchain his bicycle. I wasn’t going to ask for an autograph but I did want to tell him how much I loved his music, both with Talking Heads and as solo artist, but I got tongue tied and just said “sure.” :smack:
That’s surprising considering Rosie is a well known massive Streisand fan and bragged on her show about framing thank-you notes from Barbra and hanging on her wall at home.
If it’s any consolation, I’m sure he took your tongue-tiedness as respect for his privacy and appreciated it.
I don’t collect autographs. I somehow got Irlene Mandrell (one of the Mandrell Sisters)'s autograph without wanting it or asking for it. I got one from Benny Goodman and another from Will Eisner, but felt like kind of a stalker afterwards both times.
Bukowski did, and often scribbled little drawings…go figure. I’m going to pick up one of Buk’s autographed books one of these days, it’s too late to get an autograph myself and he’s probably the only author I would pay to get.
I saw a T Jefferson Parker autographed book in borders, but I already had that one so bought an unautographed copy of another one of his books for the plane.
John Lee Hooker was very nice about signing his albums. He was practically illiterate and his autograph looks like a first grader. It’s one of my personal treasures.
Former Steeler Lynn Swann refused to sign any autographs during his campaign for Governor in PA. Swann went with the “If I sign one, I have to sign 100” which given the rigors of a campaign schedule makes sense, but I just can’t believe it helped his campaign.
I heard an interview with Mark McGwire before he was the unpopular steroid king where he said he was often approached in restaurants. One guy said, “I am sorry to bother you, but can I have an autograph?” Mac’s reply was “If you were really dorry to bother me, you wouldn’t have done it.”
I guess I can see how a guy wants to have dinner with his family. But there is a price for the fame and fortune. If he wanted to be unknown, there are lots of jobs where you can make decent money and no one will ever bother you. He picked his poison and he has to live with it.
Someones been stalking SciFi conventions! 
Leaving out the rude fans at urinals or while eating, the only ones I can understand not signing are older sports figures. The guys who didn’t get paid shit during their careers while the owners got rich. A lot of these oldtimers had to work in car dealerships or as salesmen during the offseason just to makes ends meet while the owners made millions off their talent. These guys can now make thousands of dollars a year at card shows for their autographs. Giving them away for free devalues the autograph. Add to that all the shills that are paid to get their autograph and I don’t blame them for refusing to sign.
Those in other fields don’t have that excuse. 99% chose the path to fame. They wanted it. You take the good with the bad.
Was BG’s or Eisner’s reaction to you at all responsible for your stalker-feeling? I’ve worked with musicians who worked with BG and he could be pretty clueless with people at times. The way they talk about him, I suspect he was Asperger’s (which I am) – preoccupied with music to the point where other people could barely break through at times.
Not that I’d noticed. This was in 1977, and I was a teenager working in a Sheraton restaurant, where he was dining with his entourage. One of the dishwasher guys was a band nerd at my high school, and he was over the top begging me to get an autograph from the guy, because I could and he couldn’t. For Goodman’s part, he was just surprised that a teenager knew who he was.
Eisner was a different story. I’d just bought one of his anthology books for twenty bucks and wanted him to autograph it at a convention, and as far as he was concerned, “autograph time” had passed. He relented, though.
Jack Nicholson doesn’t. I remember an account from a columnist who met him at a hockey (?) game. The columnist asked. Jack refused at first but finally gave in. Jack spent the rest of the game give autographs, unable to watch the action. At the end he said quietly to the columnist, “That’s why I don’t give autographs.”
Katharine Hepburn didn’t. It was on the Dick Cavett show, IIRC, that she told a story about how she refused to give her autograph to some nuns! She was very polite to them and explained herself to them for some minutes, refusing their repeated requests.
After reading Harlan Ellison’s “Xenogenesis”, I’ve become more aware of how inconsiderate, rude, and abusive some fans can be, and I’ve resolved to be careful not to be like that.
beergeek279
Yes, I saw that Dee Snyder interview around 1985 and I was going to continue with ‘who wants his autograph now’? However, I’m sure some Doper would have come back with Snyder’s present musical projects. Looking at his IMDB credits, it seems he still gets the occasional movie cameo or credit for (not surprisingly) “We’re Not Gonna Take It” or “I Wanna Rock”.
Wow and I feel very sorry for Jack Nicholson’s enjoyment of a hockey game being interrupted by fans wanting autographs. :rolleyes:
Hey if you don’t like fame and fortune, try obscurity and poverty. :mad:
There are some fans that just expect too much. Kevin Smith once had an autograph signing event at which he expected a few hundred people. He ended up getting a couple of thousand. The original announced plans had been that he would sign autographs for something like six hours and it was clear that the entire crowd would never get through in that time. But some of the fans at the back of the line stayed in line and Smith decided to keep signing all night and nobody who waited was turned away.
But other people looked at the length of the line and left. And some of them went home and began posting complaints about how they hadn’t gotten Smith’s autograph. Smith - who often reads online comments about himself - responded by defending himself and pointing out that he had in fact signed an autograph for everyone who waited. It’s hard to imagine how he could have done any more under the circumstances. But as I wrote above, some people will still complain.
Larry Hagman famously asks autograph seekers to tell him a joke, say a prayer or sing a song before he’ll sign. He said he’s heard almost all of his favorite jokes for the first time that way.
My favorite Katharine Hepburn autograph moment occurred when egomaniac Phil Donahue asked her to autograph a book to him as he concluded his hour long interview with her. She agreed to, then asked his name. She did not appear to be joking. He was somewhere between livid and crushed (but told her his name).
The author Jon Krakauer rarely does autographs- he is very anxious about public speaking or meeting fans. (I learned this when trying to book him for a speaking engagement when working for a college.) That’s as well since most author autographs I’ve received have been illegible, usually no more than a squiggly mark or two. I suppose it comes from doing mass signings.
While I know it’s an easy way to earn hundreds or even thousands of bucks for a weekend’s work, does anybody else think celebrity autograph shows are really sad? It’s almost like having your favorite “wacky TV neighbor” 30 years older, now on oxygen and asking you to buy him/her lunch- it detracts.
Of course there are. Unfortunately those are the ones who make it harder for those people who simply love to collect autographs.
I’ve never met anyone ‘famous’ just some punk bands and stuff at Warped Tour when I was fifteen. The lead singer from Anti-Flag was super nice. I talked to him for a good ten minutes. The band signed my ticket stub. And I got my Alkaline Trio shirt signed by the band. The lead singer walked right by me later that day when I was watching another band and I was so in awe I couldn’t even say anything. They were my favorite band back then.
I post at a CSI board and William Petersen recently did a play in Rhode Island or somewhere. Some of the people from the board went out there to see him perform on stage. All of them got to meet him and said he was wonderful. Signed everything they asked, posed for multiple pics, chatted, etc. And some people at the board that love Jorja Fox made her an award thing and sent it to her, and she sent a really nice letter back.
Egad! I have some books he signed for me back in the 80s! They’d probably be worth a fortune (if they weren’t read to shreds)!
The one time Kevin Smith won’t sign autographs is at his Q&A gigs. That’s because he usually answers questions for four or five hours, and he can’t really do that if he spends a lot of time signing. When I saw him in Lexington, he said he felt horrible about it, so as an act of penance he bought out a movie theatre the next day for anyone who wanted to show up and see Changing Lanes. (He was planning to go see it himself anyway.)
I don’t think most people really care about autographs; they just want an excuse to talk to somebody famous. Most people aren’t really used to just walking up to someone they don’t know personally and striking up a conversation. I’ve done exactly that (in appropriate situations) with someone well-known a few times, and they almost always seem to appreciate it more than they would an autograph request. (The exception: I tried to chat with Norah Jones while we were both waiting for our luggage in Austin last year, and she just kind of looked scared and scurried away.)
An important point when you’re talking to someone like that: don’t limit your adoration to the past. Saying something like, “Man, I loved that album you made twenty years ago!” seems to make the artist in question feel like a has-been. I made this mistake years ago with John McEnroe, when I told him that I had grown up watching him play. (This was around 1993.) “You’re dating me, aren’t you?” he said. Larry King has a chapter on meeting celebrities in one of his books, and he specifically mentions this. I’ve supervised a lot of autograph signings and such over the years, and it happens every single time, and you can usually see the artist’s face drop a little.
The best conversations I’ve had with famous people (mostly musicians, in my case) have started when I’ve asked them what they’re doing next. They always seem excited to talk about that.
I went to a comic book and pop culture convention yesterday, and almost every celebrity charged for autographs ($20 or more), and also charged people for taking pictures with them. I wouldn’t have minded meeting Adam Baldwin (Jayne from Firefly and Marcus from Angel), Andy Hallett (Lorne from Angel), and Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars), but I don’t have that kind of money. The biggest crowds, believe it or not, were for Hayden Panatierre (the cute blonde cheerleader from Heroes) and William Katt, who played The Greatest American Hero back in the '70s.
The comic book creators, however, are always willing to autograph their comics for free. I met Matt Wagner (one of my favorite creators), Gene Ha, and Chuck Dixon, and since I got to their tables early in the day, they signed all the books I had brought with me and even chatted a bit. Artists usually charge for commissioned sketches with any level of detail, but some artists will dash off a quick head sketch for people free of charge. I bring a sketchbook to comic cons with me, to help assure them I’m not going to just turn around and sell it on eBay.