My good friend Jen lives in Austin, TX, where Kevin Spacey, my favorite actor, is shooting a film. Today she was watching him film a scene, surrounded by a large crowd of students like herself.
The production breaks for lunch, and Spacey comes over to greet the crowd and spends a long time shaking hands. He’s also grabbing peoples’ cell phones as they talk on them and chatting it up with unsuspecting friends/relatives, etc.
Jen, knowing that I love Kevin Spacey, calls me at work in Washington DC as he approaches her (and she’s close; she was able to shake hands with him twice). But was I there?
:mad:NO!!!:mad: I was either on the stupid subway or getting my stupid lunch downstairs and didn’t get the call.
So now I must live with knowing that she got to actually meet him, and know that I was ever so close to actually speaking to him. I will forever regret this day.
I, too, love Kevin Spacey. And while he was filming “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”, my best friend drove to Savannah to visit her mother. Her mother was an extra in several scenes, including the party scene. Did my best friend get to meet Mr. Spacey? Yes. Did she even call me to tell me she was going to visit her mother, who she knew to be an extra for this movie? No.
Have I spoken to this girl since? No. (Well, there are much more substantial reasons, but I like to pin it on this one.)
A friend and I once got tickets to a movie premiere (Ok, I can’t remember the title but it was Anne Heche, Vince Vaughn, and Joaquim Phoenix… Return to Paradise??).
We didn’t realize until we actually got there and it was the world premiere with all the movie stars, the press, and the assortment of beautiful people that are always at these things (of course, we show up in jeans and t-shirts).
My friend and I go and line up for the ladies room, and little did I know that Julianne Moore was standing right behind me (my friend noticed and never said anything until we left). I know I should have turned around…
Though most people I know are not particularly excited by this celebrity, the story’s just so typically me.
Apparently I walked right past Russell Crowe one night in the East Village. My three other friends saw him, and couldn’t quite figure out how I’d managed to NOT see him walk past RIGHT next to me.
Strangely enough, I am still able to sleep at night…
I once rode in a limo that, once my party was dropped off, was going to pick up Yanni. When the driver said “Don’t drink the champagne, it’s for Yanni.” I said, “THE YANNI?”. None of my friends seemed to appreciate my rapier wit. My agonizingly close brush with fame.
I actually met James Bonamy, who is apparently some sort of country musician. Not a high point of life.
I worked in the same building as Michael Dell for a year and never even saw the guy. Course I doubt he hung out at Round Rock 1 from 7PM to 4AM.
Junior Seau is the hometown hero from Oceanside, CA, and he holds a steak event in the community center here just about every year. I went there and I answered one of the trivia questions to win some signed swag. I read the trivia answer right out of the program I got for the evening and made some smartass comment, and he riled me for a bit, but it was no big deal.
The big deal was that the actor that kissed Kathy Ireland in Necessary Roughness was the celebrity guest sitting at my table, and I got to chat with him about what it was like to kiss her.
My dad was very good friends with Russell Means, an American Indian actor and author that was in Natural Born Killers and Last of the Mohicans. I got to meet him, which was pretty cool because I was 5 at the time. I showed him a Far Side Comic: “Second to the Last of the Mohicans” which he thought was pretty funny.
[nitpicky]
Remember though, Holden, this is for stories about how you almost had a brush with someone famous or, as in the case of Pucette, when you had a brush with fame and didn’t even realize it so you could take advantage of it.
Sure, many of us haven’t met anyone famous. But I bet there’s quite a few more who almost have, if not for a cruel twist of fate.
[/nitpicky]
Hmmm, interesting. On a hunch I snooped around the IMDb and discovered that both Tara Reid (of American Pie, Josie and the Pussycats) and … well, Kimberly Kupps grew up in my hometown. And I never ran into either of them. Damn, damn my bad luck.
When I was reviewing books for a newspaper, I received Mel Torme’s book “My Singing Teachers.” I had read his memoirs and asked for this follow-up.
In the publicist’s letter, there was an invitation for an interview with the Velvet Fog, so I faxed my request, read the book, wrote the review, and waited.
And waited
And waited
And waited.
Until publication date came around, so I published the review, and not a week later, the publicist called. “Do you want to talk to Mel?”
“Aw, jeeze, I already ran the review, but thanks for calling!”
And it was .0000002 seconds after hanging up that I realized what I had done.
