Among Dopers, perhaps BKA as Lt. Barclay in various incarnations of Star Trek.
My sister used to own a bookstore, and received the American Booksellers Assn. newsletter. About a decade ago the ABA took a poll of bookstore owners on the biggest pain-in-the-ass author who’d ever visited their store. Jeffrey Archer (now the perjury-convicted Lord Archer) won, hands down. Reputed to be extremely demanding, callous and arrogant.
Too bad, 'cause I think he’s a really talented storyteller.
Okay well I have a heartwarming story to share. I’ll have to think of some creepy stuff later.
I had some friends who went to the Del Close Marathon in NYC recently. They saw a show (or shows, I forget) with Paul Scheer and Rob Riggle in it (maybe two different shows–I can’t remember exactly), and afterward when they were walking down the street came across the two of them and said how much they enjoyed the show and could they take a picture? (These particular friends being HUGE fans of The Daily Show, and while enjoying Paul Scheer, they were actually really excited to meet Rob. They had actually gone to this one show specifically because Rob and other TDS cast were performing.)
So as Paul is saying, “Sure, happy to take the picture with you,” Rob said, “Oh here Paul, I’ll hold your stuff” - and he steps to the side, as in he didn’t expect that he was supposed to be in the shot, and my friends had to say, “Um no Rob, we wanted YOU to be in the picture too.” He was just stunned that anyone would want to take HIS picture.
The whole gang from The Daily Show/The Colbert Report do not really understand that they are famous and have a huge rabid following of fans. I have met a few of them and they are the most unassuming sweet people you could find.
You want creepy? Barbara Walters killed and ate my puppy before my very eyes. She is so going to hell for that.
Some years ago, my mom was excited to tell me a story about a friend’s son who was also involved in theater. I was in my sophmore year of college and this kid had I believe just graduated from high school. He was a big fan of Kevin Spacey and wrote him a letter expressing his admiration for him and how he was going to New York for his graduation present to see Spacey on Broadway in “The Iceman Cometh.”
Spacey actually wrote this excited young man a letter back. And asked him which night he was planning to come and to let him know because he (Spacey) would get him a free ticket. The letter also went on about how Spacey could maybe invite him back stage afterward but if that didn’t work out maybe they could get together some other time whole this young man was still in New York.
My mom told the story as “What a nice man Kevin Spacey is”… my response was “I’m pretty sure he wants to fuck him.”
The director William Friedkin is an easy-going friendly guy based on my interactions with him.
The actress who plays Kimber on Nip/Tuck is according to her former roommate exactly like her character.
Placido Domingo keeps a stable of young women according to a former coworker…who was asked to join this stable.
Sorry, I’ve been off for a few days. Didn’t mean to make you think I was ignoring you.
No, I’m not joking. Nothing happened in Las Vegas, but the country was attacked, we watched nearly 3,000 people die live on TV, three iconic buildings were destroyed or heavily damaged, and I think taking a second to acknowledge that horrible loss would not have been out of line. Did Brenner (who the hell is he, anyway?) even make mention of the attacks? If so, I’ll give him a pass. If he went on, business as usual, then he’s an unfeeling bastard. YMMV, I’m sure he doesn’t give a crap what I think anyway.
For sweet stories, I watched the Biography Channel’s special on Vivien Leigh (I’m a big GWTW fan) and Laurence Olivier was quite heartbroken over her death, even though it happened after their divorce. She was bipolar, the treatments back then (shock therapy, mainly) were ineffective, and he divorced her because the woman he married was gone. I like to think if she’d been properly medicated for her bipolar and TB they would have lived happily together a good long time.
Media escorts used to have The Golden Dartboard Awards for most obnoxious celebrities (usually authors) they escorted. The 3 big winners over the years seemed to be Gore Vidal (who had his driver find him a lawyer so he could sue somebody on the way to the airport), Douglas ‘Generation X’ Coupland (who had little short of a psychotic fit), and Lewis Grizzard (foul-mouthed, rude, and sexually harassing to women).
Some individual stories (including the Coupland and Vidal from above and also Car Bernstein) are here.
Shortly before 9-11, I remember watching David Brenner’s “comeback” show on HBO. It ended with a rabbi flying (through wires presumably) onto the stage and Brenner marrying his long-time girlfriend and mother of his sons onstage. (They divorced soon after.)
For whoever asked “who is he”, he was much bigger in the 70s/early 80s. He really was good, but he gave up his career to play single father to his oldest son after a particularly long and nasty custody battle.
I’d always heard about what a dick Ellison was, but I have a writer friend who ran in the same circles as Ellison back in the day and he spoke very fondly of Ellison. He said one time when he was really down on his luck and couldn’t sell a story to save his life, Ellison loaned him $1,000 and never asked for it back.
I don’t get this. I’m pretty sure everyone at the show knew the attacks happened, and were probably all in agreement that it was a really bad thing. I suspect most of them were going out to a show that night to get away from what had happened in NYC. Is it so wrong to want to spend some time not fixating on a terrible tragedy about which you can do absolutely nothing at all? Is it wrong to provide people that escape?
This is a story I heard from a girl in college. She and a friend of hers somehow ended up partying with Kevin Costner and a friend of his, and a girl who may or may not have been a prostitute. She said that KC smoked pot the entire time and was debilitatingly stoned. They played some kind of card game and KC said if his friend won the girl would give him a blowjob. I can’t remember the outcome of the game but she said that sfterward he kind of looked at the girl kind of questioningly, and she gave him a little nod. My friend was definitely not impressed by him.
Another friend of mine was partying with Willie Brown (former mayor of San Francisco) and George Hamilton, and she said they were both total sleazebuckets.
On the evening of 9/12/01, Power 106 here in L.A. had an interview scheduled with Busta Rhymes, who had a CD to drop the following day. 95% of the interview was discussion of the previous day’s events, with the CD mentioned almost as an afterthought.
I posted about it here, in a thread entitled “WTC*: View from the 'hood”, which has since been purged. But it was interesting and relevant for many reasons. Al-Qaeda had not yet claimed responsiblity, for one thing, and for another, the spectre of You Know What, only nine years past at that time, was almost tangible. This exchange in particular stuck with me:
Rhymes: “A lot of people are saying, ah, Muslim, ah, Ay-rab, ah, some other words I don’t wanna say on the radio, heh…But lest we forget, we said the same things about Oklahoma City at first, and then we found out it was one of our own.”
DJ: "Yeah, and also let me interrupt you here…There’s a lot of anger right now, and a lotta people want revenge. But if anyone’s thinking of taking this out on someone who looks a certain way, or is a certain religion, or lives in a certain community…
“…Y’all don’t do that.” That pause spoke volumes, believe me.
So that was one scheduled, entertainment-focused thing that did go on, but not entirely business as usual. I don’t know what happened at Brenner’s show, but if he really didn’t mention 9/11 at all, perhaps he was just in shock and it was his way of coping.
*And shame on me for leaving out the Pentagon. But the term 9/11 had not yet been coined, and I got the same media overload as everyone else. “New York New York New York World Trade Center in New York [sub]and also a plane hit the Pentagon[/sub] New York New York WTC New York New York New York New York New York.”
I would love to, but I have no knowledge on the subject and so none of the people made a real impression on me. I kinow David Love, Al B! Sure, Chief Raekon, and AZ were in the office at various times. I had a nice talk with a very young woman who told me about her tour of Japan and we got into the whole Japanese love of rap and musical theatre (my specialty). A couple of years later I was told she was Alicia Keyes!
I met him once, and spent an evening with a group of five or six people including him, and he was completely charming…except I think he may have given me a subtle come-on. He’s married, and several decades older than I am. I wasn’t creeped out as much as surprised.
I smoked pot with Woody Harrelson during the filming of The People Vs. Larry Flynt. He hit on my (then) girlfriend, and I’m pretty sure she would have been pleased to take him up on it. But, all in all, he was pretty cool, and he had some good weed.
I also know a guy who sold Courtney Love smack during the filming of the same movie, but that’s not really news to anybody, is it?
Christina Ricci had a boy toy during the filming of Black Snake Moan who moved to L.A. to be with her. Once back on the West coast, she dumped his ass and he came crawling home. I didn’t really think less of her for that incident, except that she should have dumped him before he moved to L.A.
(Sam Jackson, on the other hand, was totally cool. Of course.)
The story upthread about Rob Riggle reminded me of something that happened to my sister.
She was in Park City on Main Street during the Sundance Film Festival. Strangers with Candy was premiering there, and it was before The Colbert Report started. So my sister was very familiar with Stephen Colbert because of the Daily Show and she’s a huge fan of SWC, but he wasn’t as popular as he is now. She ran into Colbert in the Rocky Mountain Candy Factory. And preceded to freak the fuck out because OH MY GOD! IT’S STEPHEN COLBERT!
Stephen was super-sweet to her, agreed to pose for a picture, and was all around a really great guy. In fact, he was really surprised that she was going all fan-girly on him., and even agreed to a hug. I told her it he probably didn’t mind a pretty 16 year old girl asking for a hug. I mean, who would?
Stephen is super-nice to fans. He’s still surprised that people are all excited to see him.
If you’ve ever seen Jon’s standup act, he is just baffled that anyone (women) hoots and hollers at him. He’s way too self-deprecating for his own good.
I am very jealous about your friend running into SC at Sundance! That must have been fun. I wonder if Paul and Amy were with him? That would be like finding a Golden Ticket!
Since Mao’s been mentioned, I’m going to dig out my favorite anecdote about Lenin:
Lenin and his wife were living in exile in Zurich, with his wife’s elderly mother, who fell ill. One evening, worn out from watching over her mother, Lenin’s wife went off to get some desperately needed sleep, but first asked Lenin, who was writing (as usual), to promise he’d wake her if her mother needed her. Lenin promised and his wife went to bed.
Some hours later she woke and found Lenin still writing–and her mother dead. Distraught, she confronted Lenin. Lenin said coldly, “You told me to wake you if your mother needed you. She died. She didn’t need you.”
More stories (though my idea of “celebrity” is probably a little off):
Met Paul Westerberg twice, once with the Replacements and once solo. He was a dick both times - gave the impression he thought he was far more important than he actually was, and had no time for fans unless they happened to be attractive females. The rest of the Replacements were cool, though, especially Tommy.
Since we’re sharing pleasant celeb stories, too - I met Bob Mould once before a show (like a geek, I’d made him a mix CD and handed it to him - he said, "Hold on, I’ve got a photo shoot, but I’ll be back in 10 minutes, which he was). We sat and talked for a full hour, right up until he had to go on. He knew a shitload about music, past and current, and was as friendly and down-to-earth as anyone I’ve ever met. It was quite a difference from the dour persona he puts across in his music.
I have also met Bob Mould and thought he was as pleasant as one could possibly hope.
Robyn Hitchcock is also just as droll in person as you would expect from his music.
My thought as well…