Back in the 90s, one of the cable channels carried Howard Stern. It was video of his radio broadcasts cut and edited for TV. In one episode, Rodney Dangerfield was the guest. It was a regular Stern softball interview, and was pretty ordinary as far as Stern bits go.
After Dangerfield left, he hung out in the lounge, and one of Stern’s interns came up to him with a video camera and asked him about working with Stern’s joke writer, Jack “The Joke Man” Martling. Dangerfield said it wasn’t a good arrangement. He only bought one joke from Martling, the one about the chick who’s so ugly she’s a double-bagger. (One bag wasn’t enough to cover her ugliness.) He then started ranting about how he loaned Martling $2000 and Martling never paid him back.
The intern ran back to the studio and showed Stern the video. Stern immediately got Dangerfield to come back to the show. Dangerfield told them about Martling shafting him and ranted at Martling for being such a bum. Martling weasled big time. He said “I did pay you back Rodney! In jokes!”
Immediate verbal onslaught on the part of Stern, his crew and Dangerfield ensued. Martling caved in and wrote Dangerfield a check. Dangerfield tore it up in his face. Stern has an uncanny instinct to find the hot button topic to make for awesome TV at the time.
I had been subscribed to the Howard Stern newsgroup, and I posted to the freshly-made thread. I said Martling could have avoided this train wreck if he had just said up front, “Howard, early in my career, this man loaned me $2000 to help me out. I just want to tell him how much I appreciated it.”
A couple of days later, I got an email from Dangerfield. He said he appreciated what I had to say and that I was a deep one. I was skeptical that it was actually Dangerfield, and I asked an internet-savvy friend if that email was legit. He said Dangerfield probably did a vanity search and saw my post in his results. That was when I realized the Internet was no longer an underground thing.
Not really famous but a popular character on the “Happy Days” series and " Mork and Mindy". Not going to drop the name because we still chat. I have a much longer list of no responses.
On a friend’s post on Facebook I made a joke Godwinizing post. I don’t remember the exact context but it fit as a joke. The very next reply was from Michael Godwin. I didn’t know that he was a personal friend of my childhood friend.
In 1998, 15-year-old me sent Douglas Adams an email, after finding his email address on his public website, asking about a then-current rumor that Jim Carrey was going to be playing Ford Prefect in the HHGTTG movie.
His response was as follows;
“(Myrealfirstname) - This is absolute rubbish. -DNA”
Somewhat less glamorously, I sent Jim Cornette an email a few years ago after some merch I ordered from his website never showed up, and he personally responded and promised to send me a replacement the next time he made a trip to the Post Office.
In this thread I related how I emailed and got a response from Richard “Rik” Cook III.
He is the object of John Lennon’s scorn in the song “Bungalow Bill”. Pretty cool I thought.
Cook gave up his gun for a camera and became a well respected photographer in Hawaii. I’m not sure if he is still with us, as googling didn’t come up with anything recent.
A number of writers, many FRP game designers, and a few local politicians. County Supervisor, Sheriff, City Councilperson- several are FB and LinkedIn contacts.
Many years ago I got an email from Rodney Dangerfield, telling me he got a kick out of my humor website. He particularly liked the Photoshopped photo series I made “proving” Barney (the purple dinosaur) was in fact the sniper behind the grassy knoll at Dealey Plaza, November 22, 1963. We wrote back and forth a couple of times. He was cool!
Thomas Carder, the guy who ran (runs?) the CAPAlert website (ultra-christian movie reviews).
I wrote a long, respectful (I didn’t call him a fucking idiot once!) email telling him he may want to reconsider his methods; mainly because according to him, Harry Potter was basically corrupting children because it showed the use of magic, but Mary Poppins received a perfect score, even though she ALSO uses magic; so his ratings seemed to be based mostly on what he his subjective opinion and really didn’t have much to do with any particular Christian teachings.
My only response was from him telling me I was banned from visiting or participating on his website in the future.
(Yes, he is probably not famous, but he wouldn’t be the only person mentioned in this thread that most people probably haven’t heard of…)
Exchanged a number of posts with Tony Hawk when I first joined Twitter. Found out he does this with lots of folks. Also had a email exchange with Dale Earnhardt Jr. about figure 8 racing. He has no problem driving a car at 200 mph at Daytona but said only crazy people drive figure 8 race cars.
I remember another one! I sent a cartoonist a question about a strip. The wording I used must have inspired him somehow, because a couple weeks later, the new strip had some of the dialog. I thought that was pretty cool!
In the late 60s I snail-mailed a question to the Pittsburgh Press for the Johnny Wonder column. I was a cynical lad. I knew the answer to my question, but I recognized that my question was perfectly suited for the column.
I’ve had several conversations with famous people, and people well-known in their field. I correspond with a favorite writer, and sometimes post to the blog of another that I like (sometimes he even responds). The ones that made me giggle the most were comments and likes I received from British royals. Do they randomly do that?
One time Whitley Strieber posted on his web site a real photo that had been taken of an alien. I e-mailed to point out that it was from an episode (a couple of years old at the time) of The Outer Limits. He replied, and was pretty pissy about it.