Or Ellen, who I always knew was hard to work with, but had never heard was that much of a jerk.
I’ve been hearing James Corden is a jerk, not sure if anyone else has heard these stories. Kind of whiny and so forth. I have not seen any behind the scenes to prove this, but I have not heard his show is a good environment.
Anyone else known for being a jerk?
Along with Chevy Chase, Harlan Ellison was widely viewed this way, though I have heard some positives from other authors. Ellison could write, didn’t mean he liked hanging around and being super social all the time.
Is Ritchie Blackmore a celebrity? I have heard that he was such an ass that even Jon Lord, founder and backbone of Deep Purple, suffered from a lack of confidence, which he rebounded from in Ritchie’s absence.
Oh my. I photographed Art Garfunkel for a 50th anniversary of Israel concert in Evanston, Il, when I was a student at Northwestern. It was a somewhat typical setup except only allowing photography for the first song (normally, it was three) and he’s just glaring at me the whole time (no flash — nothing obtrusive on my part.) I’m just thinking “you should be happy someone gives a shit. Who do you think you are? Paul Simon?” I’ve photographed many artists in such a situation from Sting to Oasis to Lou Reed and the only one that ever made me feel animosity towards them is Art Garfunkel.
From all I’ve heard, Lou Reed must’ve been a massive asshole to almost everybody. Maybe not on that scale, but Van Morrison also has a legendary reputation of “being hard to work with”.
Gene Hackman has pretty much admitted he was a terrible person to work with. Apparently while he was a big success and was regarded as a great actor, he never liked making movies and would take it out on everyone else around him.
He had a freak out because his shirt was wrinkled and a woman who worked at the theater volunteered to iron it. While she was ironing it, everyone stood around her backstage; she said “ it’s like watching surgery,” to lighten the mood and right then, burned an iron imprint in the shirt. Garfunkel freaked out and couldn’t be calmed down. My friend had to drive him back to the hotel and the entire ride, Garfunkel berated his manager, who was also in the car, about the shirt.
Don’t know if he counts as a celebrity anymore, but Steven Seagal would probably fit the bill. The episode of Saturday Night Live that he hosted in 1991 is infamous for how much of a jerk he apparently was to the cast and crew.
Ah, and of course the famous Milton Berle, who also was impossible and ruined his hosted episode of SNL.
Seagal is definitely a bad guy. I was trying to explain to my wife that there was this really brief time where he seemed like a cool guy with a big future in action movies. Now? Just a joke and a loser.
I’m not sure why that being an asshole. A lot of people struggling to quit smoking go through a phase where not actually buying a smoke seems like a forward step in quitting.
I heard somewhere that if you recognized Steve Martin and tried to engage, he’d tell you to Fuck Off! But he’d hand you a card that said, “Yes, I met Steve Martin” or some such shit.
Eh, I give celebs a pass for reacting to rando strangers bothering them. I mean, what must it be like to not be able to be out in public without people coming up ALL THE TIME EVERY DAY 24/7/365 FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER WITHOUT ANY PAUSE IN THE ACTION EVER (repeat until you die).
Harlan is generally praised by those who knew him as being generous and caring, and I hear lots of stories of him socializing or calling another author up to congratulate him on a story he wrote. I had a conversation with him once when were were competing to be nicer to the other. He won.
However, he could be scathing. He did not suffer fools gladly – or at all – so if you said something that was on the wrong side, he’d come at you with guns blazing.
Worse than Ellison within the field was Norman Spinrad.
According to this very long piece in The New Yorker, James Corden was quite a jerk early on, but after enough people told him he was an arrogant jerk, he started going to therapy, and seems to have grown up and cleaned up his act. Corden talks about it as well. I’d like to think it’s true.
Steve Martin stopped handing out those cards once he saw looks of disappointment on the faces he gave them to. It started partly as a joke and partly because he was so hounded for autographs. The cards read: “This certifies that you have had a personal encounter with me and that you found me warm, polite, intelligent and funny.”
