Let's hear about your unpleasant celebrity encounters?

Cafe Society
1

I don’t have any myself, but a good friend of mine hates David Schwimmer to this day because of an encounter her had with him. When he was about 14, his family went to visit his brother in Las Vegas. While there, he saw Mr. Schwimmer at a mall/arcade type place. He was standing alone looking up at one of the monitors showing a sports game. This was just as Friends was becoming a big hit, so he wasn’t being bombarded by fans. My friend Mike went over to him quietly, told he was a big fan of the show, and asked if he would mind posing for a picture with him. Mr. Schwimmer looked at him and coldly said, “Sorry kid, I don’t do photographs, but if you have something for me to sign, I will do that.” Mike said he understood, and ran over to his mom who was standing 15 feet away with his autograph book. He returned seconds later, excused himself and asked if Mr. Schwimmer would mind signing his book. Schwimmer turns around, looks him dead in the eyes, and says with a straight face, “Sorry kid, I don’t do autographs.” As he walked away, he bumped into my friend, knocking his autograph book out of his hand.

I thought the story was hillarious at the time. Even so, David Schwimmer is a real asshole for doing that. Anyone else have a story that can top that.

2

I was in Vancouver in 1986 for Expo and decided to walk around Gastown, a funky artsy area with cafes and stuff. At a street corner I noticed a guy wearing a white fedora standing next to an attractive lady; they were waiting for the walk light. I recognized the guy fairly quickly as Steve Martin and the lady as his new wife Veronica Tennant. When the light turned green I walked a short distance behind them, thinking of something to say. All I could muster was an inane “Hey, aren’t you Steve Martin?” He turned his head to acknowledge me and said, “Yes I am, fuck off.”

I guess that was my only brushoff with greatness.

3

I try to avoid the celebrities here in Tinseltown, but you do run into them once in a while if you’re a film buff.

I saw Drew Barrymore during a special screening of Donnie Darko:The Director’s Cut, and although she’s supposed to be on the wagon, she was either stone drunk or rock stupid. Loud, crude, and obnoxious doesn’t begin to cover it. I saw Quentin Tarantino at the Beverly, who acts exactly how you’d expect him to act.

Other than that, most I’ve seen are pretty benign. I’ve run across screenwriter Charlie Kaufman a few times in Pas, and saw him at Q&As after film showings during the Charlie Kaufman Retrospective at the Arclight Cinemas; he’s a completely inoffensive, very reserved person. He’s kind of funny in a quiet way, not at all like Woody Allen (or, at least they way you’d think Woody Allen would be.) I saw Angelica Huston at a showing of The Grifters, where she told an amusing story about how “Marty” [Scorsese] had her dress up in some tight lounge dress to impress upon director Steven Frears how good she’d be in that role (which she was.) And I’ve seen Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher) a couple of times at my favorite pub with this girlfriend/wife, who is astonishingly attractive. He looks like your completely typical geek. I don’t get that, but hey, more power to him.

I keep seeing that “Pretender” guy, who apparently hasn’t had a job since, at the market and the gas station. I think he’s stalking me. :eek:

Oh, and one day I was out running, and I ran past a mansion when the gate opened and a guy wheeled out the trash can. I thought to myself, “Hey, that guy looks like David Lee Roth.”

Yep.

I saw David Lee Roth taking out his trash.

I’m not a fan of Roth or Van Halen, but for some reason it was extremely cool to see a Rock Star taking out the trash. Like, maybe there’s hope for me yet. No, I don’t know what that means, either.

Stranger

4

If you mean Michael T. Weiss, I’d be happy to take him off your hands. drool

My unpleasant celebrity encounter was with former Chicago Bears quarterback Jim McMahon. I was a server at an upscale restaurant in Lake County, Illinois, which is where the Bears practice and where most of them live, so it wasn’t at all unusual to see any of the players. McMahon was seated in my station with a group of second-string players, and he was apparently trying to impress them, because he was being kinda loud and drawing a lot of attention to himself. A little boy (about 7 or 8, also seated in my station) noticed him and was fidgeting in his seat with excitement. Finally, the kid couldn’t take it anymore, and rushed over to McMahon’s table to ask for an autograph. McMahon THREW his fork down onto the table and screamed, “Jesus! I can’t even go out for a fuckin’ dinner without some asshole hassling me!” I took the kid back to his table and said loudly enough for McMahon to hear, “THAT is not Jim McMahon, that’s just some jerk who looks like him, because you know Jim McMahon would NEVER be so mean to a fan, right?” McMahon’s companions were actually embarrassed, and three of the “lesser” players later came over to the kid’s table and gave him autographs, and one of them gave me a pretty decent tip - which was nice, because McMahon had picked up the dinner bill, and had stiffed me.

5

Circa 1986. We get the news: Muhammad Ali is going to visit our high school in two days for a chat against drug abuse. This is back in the day when one of our schoolyard chants is still, “Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee!” and most black boys still had the Mego Muhammad Ali boxing figure in our toy chests. This is a huge, huge deal.

The mayor will be there, the governor will be there, the superintendent will be there, the local R&B group Ready For The World will be there. I decide I must get in on the act, somehow.

I get the brilliant idea to do a grid painting of Muhammad Ali to present to him onstage as a gift on behalf of our school. I pitch the idea to my art teacher, who immediately pitches the idea to the principal and she loves it: I get permission to skip all my classes the next two days working on the painting. I get a promised spot sitting ON STAGE next to Ali’s family when he comes.

I work like a madman to get the reference photos, grid the picture, then sketch and paint it. It is the best thing I have done up until that time.

Ali Day arrives. The gym is packed. People who don’t even belong to our school are standing in the rafters. My friends are buggin’ because I didn’t tell them I’d be on stage. My painting’s already onstage, covered up with a cloth. The police deliberately hold up the entourage for twenty minutes because the traffic is so snarled around the school. Three fistfights break out in the bleachers while we wait.

(SOME BACKGROUND. Now – this was in the weird period where Ali disappeared from sight for about a year, after losing the last championship fight and filming his last D-Con Roach Killer commercial. Nobody’s heard him speak in awhile, and it’s not widely known he has Parkinson’s Disease, either.)

Ali finally enters the gym – the place explodes – cameras go off everywhere – I get to shake the mayor and governor’s hands… then Ali!! SHAKES!!! MY!! HAND!!! He quiets down the auditorium… then he begins to speak…

, and he’s so quiet. Almost inaudible. It’s clear he has difficulty speaking. It suddenly begins to dawn on everybody that Ali is punch-drunk, brain-damaged. The Loudmouth from Louisville us stricken. Clay’s a casuality. The whole audience -roughly 3,000 strong, is struck dumb. My principal whispers under her breath, “This is a damn shame.”

Yet Ali keeps talking for over thirty minutes I am sitting right behind him on stage and I don’t hear a word he says. I’m too upset.

At the end, when I presented him the picture, i couldn’t give my little speech when I gave him the paiting. He did hold it up over his head for the audience to see better.

THEN – he handed off my painting to receive his plaque. school t-shirt, cutation from the city and other awards. My painting had been paased around from handler to boduguard to hnadler, Suddenly I saw it-- the last meanest bodyguard neear the exit had my hard-worked on painting FOLDED IN HALF UNDER HIS ARMPIT/ NooOOooo. You don’t fold ART in half. Christ, we could have MAILED IT.

THEN it’s thrown in the trunk of the limo and all the crap he just got is tossed in on top of it. Arrrrgh.

Ali was a gentleman. But his entourafe sucked…

6

I noticed a guy coming down an NYC street who was just staring at me. I thought “Who is that asshole?” I can’t describe it, but the one he was looking at me just really creeped me out.

As I passed him, I realized it was Woody Allen. This was in the middle of the whole bruhaha. To this day, thinking about the way he stared at me makes me shudder.

7

Nice job, Life On Wry.

My mom forever hates Dennis Miller because she ran into him at a restaurant once. He was here in Gainesville for Gator Growl. Mom had no idea that he would be at this restaurant, but as she was heading towards the bathroom she passed him in a little hallway. She says she must have looked surprised, because he held up his hands in a warding-off gesture and said, “No!”

8

“Typical geek”? Does your typical geek have his own monthly column in the back of Dungeon, one of the premier magazines for Dungeons and Dragons players? “Typical”–I think not!

Uhhh…don’t ask me how I know this.

Daniel

9

I was eating dinner in a restaurant off La Cienega. It was a cool evening (for L.A., anyway) and my date had checked a light jacket. On our way out, she went to the ladies room and I went to get her jacket. I got into a disagreement with another patron, who insisted the jacket I was taking was hers, and tried to kick me in an effort to assert her claim. Management intervened, and the irate customer’s real jacket was quickly produced. No apology was forthcoming from her, however.

It was Lauren Tewes, late of the “Love Boat.” As I was to discover later, she was apparently having substance abuse problems at the time, which I’m sure contributed to her behavior that evening.

10

I watched a friend of mine’s lifelong fanhood of David Lee Roth go down the tubes in very short order a few years ago.

We were in line at the Dulles Airport waiting to check our baggage and noticed a huge pile of foot lockers with "David Lee Roth’ stenciled on to them. When a particular person in line started checking them in, David Lee Roth walked in (from a car outside?) with some other people and talked to the ticket agent briefly. Afterwards, he stood over to the side and sat with some of his stuff. My friend walked over with a pen and a piece of paper and told David Lee that he was a lifelong fan who was utterly honored to see him and asked for a quick autograph. David Lee Roth stood up, walked up close to him…and told him to “F@ck off”. Next, a few of his people told my friend to “Get the hell away”.

My friend, a mid-30s professional, was utterly struck and upset for the rest of the flight. I tend to accept that most celebrities or musicians might be jerks but I don’t let it affect my appreciation or enjoyment of their work. This incident a actually led me to stop liking anything that was associated with that asshole.

I suppose it is good that I haven’t met more :slight_smile:

11

Originally posted in the “Bad Experience” thread:

No, what he did was give my nine-year-old ass a pretty good beatdown.

Harry Blackstone
Some Broadway Theater, NYC, circa roughly 1977 or so.

Many, many years ago, a small magic shop opened in town. The Magic Wand was its name, and it happened to open two blocks from my home.

I’d occasionally peek in there on my way back from Betty’s Candy Store, and as time went on I’d find my visits becoming longer and longer. The people who worked there were fascinating, making things appear, juggling balls of fire, doing amazing card tricks. After awhile, I was hooked.

I started doing my homework on the school bus (if at all) so I could get to the magic shop right after school, and spend my entire day there. I became very well versed in card manipulation, and was starting to get pretty handy with some of the bigger illusions. All this, while still having a single-digit age, mind you.

After a few years, the store formed an official Magic Club. Specialized trainings and such. Special events as well. Like a trip to New York to go to Tannen’s Magic Shop (the Mecca for magicians), and to see Harry Blackstone perform on Broadway. And to meet him after the show! :eek: Now this was a big honkin’ deal. Blackstone was the magician of the time. And I was going to meet the master. Yeah, I was psyched.

So, we go to New York, we go to Tannen’s, and we see Blackstone’s show. Afterward, our group is hustled out a side exit to an alleyway near the performer’s exit, where we’re supposed to meet the man himself.

After a short wait, he appears. I was awestruck. He was quite friendly, chatting with us and autographing our Playbills. And the whole time he’s doing this, he’s got a cane tucked under his arm.

Now, members of our magic club were not the only ones there. There were a few others who came by the stage door to get an autograph, one of which was a very young girl. I don’t remember if she was there with her parents. I don’t remember if she had supervision of any kind. All I remember is that she was pissing Harry Blackstone off severely. He was trying to sign autographs, and she was jumping up and grabbing his arm. She did it once, he said “Excuse me”. She did it again, he said “Please don’t do that”. She did it a third time, he yelled “That will be enough of that, young lady”!

But he didn’t just yell. As he was saying that, he also whirled to face her. With the aforementioned cane still under his arm. I was standing on the opposite side of him as this little girl. Cane, meet young Hal’s face.

Yes, as he turned, the ornate metal handgrip of his cane bashed me right in the nose. My hands went up, and as I was instinctively going to protect my nose, I wound up grabbing the cane. Blackstone, thinking that some miscreant was trying to make off with his cane, turned and grabbed it back, and somehow in the confusion wound up walloping me in the gut with it.

So there I was, crumpled in a heap, nose bloodied, with a manic-looking Harry Blackstone looming over me. Where was the paparazzi (and overzealous personal injury lawyers) then? :wink:

He realized his mistake and apologized profusely, even giving my an official “HB” monogrammed handkerchief to staunch the bleeding. Still, it was not the most fun way to meet someone you idolized. :slight_smile:

12

I got goosed in a Miami Beach hotel elevator by a second-string Duke of Hazzard.

I was there for a convention and a friend I was with was a fan so was getting all goofy around him and dragged me along with her. I never even watched the show and couldn’t have been less enthused to meet him and was basically ignoring him. So either that turned him on or my butt was just that irresistable.

He was the blonde replacement Duke for when the original guys went on strike or something for a season. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it were John Schnieder, then at least I could now say “Hey, I was goosed by Superman’s dad!” but I don’t think this guy has had a job since then.
In his defense, I suppose I did have a pretty cute butt back then. :wink:

13

For about three agonizingly long years, I worked as a bookseller at the Barnes & Noble on the upper west side of Manhattan - a fairly trendy neighborhood that attracts a lot of stars. Hence I’ve had the pleasure & displeasure to wait on a few of them.

The one that took the cake was Deepak Chopra. While I didn’t personally assist him, I was stocking books closely enough that I got a ringside seat to his bad attitude. He came to the store looking for “spiritual texts” that we didn’t have. These books, as near as the bookseller helping (a genial, knowledgeable older guy who was forced to work at B&N after being downsized into early retirement by his longtime employers BTW) him could figure, these books were all obscure, hundred-year-old books that simply weren’t in print. Chopra seethed in rage, angrily deriding the bookseller as a “minimum-wage stooge” and a “no-nothing idiot” (he used those terms specifically). Also, For a guy who’s supposedly so spiritually enlightened, he has expensive taste in threads - he came dressed to the nines in a versace suit and silk tie.

The icing on the cake though was who accompanied Chopra into the store - Demi Moore! While not particularly offensive herself, she tailed along behind Chopra like she was a puppy dog. She hung on his every word, and as my hapless fellow bookseller was trying to fend off Chopra, she would repeatedly approach him with handfuls of new age books, asking his opinions of them. (“Deepak, Deepak! Should I read this book? How about this one?”) Chopra was even curt to her, giving her snap one-word opinions about the books (“yes”, “no”, “shit!”) . Any book Chopra rejected, Ms. Moore instantly set aside without asking for any explanation. The whole event was pretty damn surreal.

Anyway, just to avoid an epic-length post, the following celebrities I’ve had (or seen) assisted while working at this B&N:

Rude or otherwise demonstrating “star attitude”:
Matt Dillon
Al Franken
Steve Martin
Jerry Seinfeld
Jessica Lange
Dominic Dunne
Erica Jong
Betty Friedan
Nora Ephron

Polite, courteous, non-“star” behavior:
Anne Meara
Alec Baldwin
Stephen King
Mick Jagger
David Crosby
Gladys Knight
Dianne Wiest
Bernadette Peters
Helen Hunt

14

I didn’t really have a bad experience with a celebrity so much as cause one. I was managing a video/music store in Atlanta. (this was in '92 or so) and the guy walked in and asked if we had a particular movie I’d never even heard of. Then he admitted he was in it and wanted to see if it was in stock. Well, this was in a particularly stressful time and I have no excuse but I was a complete bitch to him, I totally just brushed him off. My assistant manager felt bad for the guy and chatted with him for a while to make him feel better.

Anyway, it turns out it was Bill Paxton. This was before he was particularly famous (not that he’s hugely famous now) but he had beenin a movie, Near Dark, that I really, really liked. So if I hadn’t been so bitchy, I could’ve talked to him. :smack: Bill, if you’re readin this, I’m sorry I was such a bitch. (and that apology is not just to him, it’s to everyone else I was bitchy to from about 1988 to 1994, until I made major life changes and attitude adjustments…)

15

Coupla years ago, I won a trivia contest on the local radio station. The prize was to go to the studio and hang with the hosts for the last hour of the show on the day of my choosing. I was also privileged to bring along kaylasmom, her guide dog, and some stranger who volunteered to take a day off work and drive us in (as I don’t drive). Special added attraction: David Lee Roth was going to be there to plug his upcoming summer tour with Sammy Hagar.

I prepared for the visit with great enthusiasm. I made Tahitian Lanai banana muffins to offer to the crew. I brought along a videotape of a movie I really hated, to offer it to the guys for their junk drawer (their booby prizes have to come from somewhere, after all). We showed up at the station a bit before 9, offered Officer Quarterman a couple of muffins, and waited in the lobby to be escorted to the syndication booth. While we waited, David Lee Roth came gliding into the lobby. He, of course, was immediately escorted to some do-not-make-eye-contact-with-the-rock-star room. and he completely ignored me and mine. Didn’t respond to our “good mornings” or nuthin’. Even ignored the guide dog.

All in all, although it must be said that David Lee Roth is extraordinarily talented at extemporizing a line of self-promotional bull-hocky, the pilgrimage to bask in the Presence of the Way and the Light was an experience more tedious than fulfilling. So much so, that the next time I won the contest, and they asked me when I wanted to come in, I asked if they could just send me a LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring DVD instead.

16

I only have a very tenuous brush with famous jerks. Back in college, many years ago, I was a photographer for the school paper. That meant, among other perks, that I could go to concerts and take pictures of the performers for the paper. One day I was assigned to take pictures of a Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes concert – they were sort of a blues band riding on the Springstein Jersey mystique gravy train. Well, the stage manager talked to me before the show and said that I was free to go anywhere I wanted to take the pictures, so I went to the side of the stage to get a close up shot and some ape in the road crew offered to break my camera if I didn’t get the hell out of there.

Even before then, however, I’d decided that their music sucked.

17

I know for a fact that Angela Davis doesn’t turn in her movies on time.

18

Also, she doesn’t watch where she’s going. To be fair, I could have been watching where I was going a little more carefully.

19

Are you sure it’s here, or could it be that it’s just somebody using an account registered to her and she’s completely innocent?

I have a long story about Gallagher but the point is he’s a prick. Major star attitude even though he’s not a star (major or otherwise).

Eddie Furlong was drugged out of his mind when he stayed at the hotel where I worked and his room literally had to be taken out of order for days when he left. (He was there for about three weeks, refused maid service, and it was indescribably nasty.) He was totally p=whipped by his former tutor turned concubine (who has since split with and sued him).

Jack Lemmon was okay but his wife was a witch from hell. This was a two-story hotel with no elevator and she not only insisted on having a baby grand piano in her suite- it had to be UPSTAIRS.

Two of the nicest celebrities I met (no star attitude whatever): James Earl Jones (did something so sweet- I was a bellman at the time and helped him to his room with his loads of luggage- the first thing he did when he got to his room- I’m the only other person there so this wasn’t for anybody’s benefit- was to take a framed photo of his wife and son out of the small case he carried himself and put it by his bed- I declined a tip because he was James Earl Freakin’ Jones) and Tony Randall (I thought he’d be a total prick, but he couldn’t have been sweeter- of course he was a newlywed at the time which may have helped). And Sissy Spacek has no more star ego than your usual soccer mom.

20

I was riding my bike along Laguna heading towards Marina Green. Sharon Stone pulled out of the Safeway parking lot in her white 560 SL convertible and almost hit me, then honked at me. So I flipped her off and said “Ha! I just flipped off Sharon Stone!” to no one in particular.

They filmed a scene from Nash Bridges on my street and I got to be an extra after I complained about the trailers blocking my driveway. “If you think you can just come in here and block my…an extra? OK!! :giggle::” Don Johnson wasn’t even in the scene they were filming, (Cheech threw a guy through a window), but I still overheard several crewmembers loudly complain about what an asshole he was.