Was watching a Cheers ep last night…Sam’s Goddaughter appears with a note from her father (The deceased Coach’s brother) “Dear Sam, take care of my daughter. If you let anything happen to her, I’ll go into a shed and blow my brains out”
I turned to my girlfriend and said “Hey honey. Trivia time: What movie did we see where a guy goes into a shed (barn really) and blows his brains out?”…then realized…OH. That guy is standing right beside Sam.
Couple of others that prove we live in a sim: After seeing Corey Feldman exhibit great comic timing in a movie, I said I’d tell him so if I ever ran into him. Two weeks later I saw him in Tahiti, several times, on different islands. Never got the guts up to bother him on his honeymoon.
Same thing happened with Frank Gorshin in Tulsa. (But it wasn’t two weeks later…more like a long-running bucket list) I had sworn to tell him how great he was in Star Trek if I ever ran into him. Unfortunatly, I didnt realize it was him until after he had left.
I once took a flight from L.A. to Toronto and ran into Norman Jewison on the plane. As I was a recently-graduated film student, he insisted I take his copy of a newspaper with an article about the booming Canadian industry. Interstingly, the in-flight movie (this was years before you had a menu of movies and shows to choose from and had to make do with one edited feature on a flight) happened to be The Hurricane.
Twenty years(?) ago I was speed walking through the airport in Atlanta making a connection to go somewhere. I noticed a very snappily dressed black man, and did a double take. I was pretty sure it was Johnnie Cochran. He saw me looking, turned toward me, smiled, and said, “yeah, it’s me”.
Maybe 15 years ago I was in St Martin, in the village of Grande Case for their xmas mardi gras celebration (Harmony Nights). There were bands playing and liquor flowing. A very drunk guy was dancing in the street and at one point I joined him. He looked like an older version of what I remembered Jimmy Buffet looking like. Turns out that was who I danced with. He had a home on Anguilla and had taken the ferry over for the party.
A group of us had gone to the theater to see Throw Momma from the Train. After the movie we stopped in the Ralph’s grocery store on Ventura Blvd in Sherman Oaks to pick up some snacks. As we came around the corner of the liquor aisle we bumped into Anne Ramsey who played Momma in the movie. She was with her husband (also a recognizable character actor) stocking up on some supplies.
Mid-March 2019. I’m visiting my parents in VA and we go to see a play at the Folger. As we’re walking out of the theater, one of the other audience members looks familiar. Huh, it’s Tim Kaine! Turns out he and my dad know each other slightly, so we say hello. Neat.
Early April 2019. I decide to go to New York for the weekend and see King Lear on Broadway. A few days before the performance, the theater sends out an e-mail telling us to arrive early and allow a little extra time for security. I don’t really think anything of it. I go to the theater and take my seat, which is one of the cheap ones in the upper balcony. Just before the performance, people on the lower level start applauding and turning around to look at someone near the back. Huh. Somebody famous must have walked in, I think, and forget all about it until the very end of intermission, when the guy sitting next to me says “So. This happened” and shows me the selfie he just took with … Hillary Clinton.
So apparently, I came this close to meeting both halves of a presidential ticket in a matter of weeks, and at any rate, I’ve been in a theater with them both.