remember the remake of the stepford wives, with nicole kidman, which came out a few years ago? some of it was filmed at the farm where i used to live (the scene with the red barn, thats the one). i lived there at the time, and it was kind of a fiasco. they brought in a ridiculous amount of fancy antique cars. they brought in nicole kidman... my dad met her, i just saw her walking around. someone was carrying an umbrella to keep the sun from her fair skin. they brought in bette midler, who i also saw walking around, and boy does she have a mean temper. didn't look like a very happy person, but i suppose i did not see her long enough to really tell. matthew broderick was also there, didn't get to meet him but saw him on the set. christopher walken was in the film but not in the scenes filmed at my house, bummer. he's the only one i really would have wanted to meet. oh and faith hill, she was there and looked pretty good.

i thought it was neat to see them all at work, but the main actors were not really accessible for me to meet. i suppose if i had insisted on it, the producers would have let me meet all of them, but i had no urgent desite to meet any of them.

my mom had absolutely no interest in meeting any of these celebrities. i asked her why, especially considering how she reads things like the entertainment section of newspapers. she said its fun to read about that sort of stuff and to see their films, but that when you deal with these people and their entourage in real life, you really start to wish that these actors, like their characters, were just make believe and didn't actually exist in reality.

Christopher J. McGarvey wrote:

only here wrote:i saw stevie wonder sitting down in the detroit airport. for some strange reason i thought it would be impolite to stare, so i didn't stick around.

He wouldn't have known....

hahha...

I saw Emo Phillips at the Secretary of State's office in the James Thompson Building a few years ago when I went to renew my driver's license.

The manager on duty recognized Emo and came out from behind the counter to shake his hand, then introduced him personally to all the workers. Most of them were utterly perplexed and looked at one another like they could give a shit who this weirdo was. But Emo suddenly "was on", talking in the high-pitched voice, rolling his eyes, etc. It was kind of unsettling to watch because it appeared that he was a bit annoyed at having to jump into character like that. Emo even made kind of a lame on-the-spot joke when the manager said, "Your act is one of the funniest things I've ever seen." He replied "There is NOTHING more serious than my act!"

The manager invited him behind the counter for a tour of the DMV and it appeared Emo felt obliged. As I was receiving my license, they emerged from the back room and Emo hightailed it out of there without even making eye-contact with anybody else.

Met Spike Lee. He was bug-eyed when I said I loved his work. He just kind of nodded and exited left.

I have met Dennis Hopper. When I was working at a movie theatre in Wilmington (where he used to own a summer house) I saw him walk in the doors. A co-worked screamed "I'll fuck anything that moves!" and his eyes locked on me. I was trembling. I saw Frank Booth. He yelled at me and stormed out. A while later, he came back, and I guess he didn't recognize me because I told him I was a fan and he smiled and shook my hand.

I met Pat Hingle.

I met Katie Holmes when she used to be on Dawson's Creek, which is filmed here in Wilmington. Or was, I don't know if it is still on. She was buying cold cuts. I told her I thought "Go" was good, even though I hated it. She was nice.

Mario Andretti owns a car wash in PA. I saw him there once when I was really young, and he gave me an autograph. He was my height and I was 12.

Hung out with Chad Michael Murray with his then-fiancee, Kenzie, who was someone I sort of knew from high school. He is actually a decent fellow, very friendly. Donated a ton of money to charity recently around here, some toys for kids with no toys thing.

Met John Waters and he kissed my ticket stub after he signed it. He is incredibly funny.

Went walking with Sufjan Stevens and had him call my then-girlfriend on the phone while she was working on a paper in her dorm in Chapel Hill. This was just before Sufjan-mania. We talked about pursuing Master's Degrees in Creative Writing, which he has.

Met Martin Scorsese when he spoke in Raleigh or Charlotte...one of the two. He is very small and very timid with a terribly weak grip, but he is one of my favorite directors so I won't judge him.

I talked to Henry Rollins about Dostoyevsky when he walked into a cafe really close to the Atlanta Variety Playhouse before one of his spoken word shows. I was reading "The Idiot." I didn't approach him, he approached me, and when I looked up and saw that it was Rollins I kind of paused. He said something about "the Idiot" being the best Dostoyevsky book, and I said, and I quote, "also the best Iggy record." He nodded and sat down nearby. I didn't see him again until after the show, where he signed my copy of the Idiot which was still tucked under my arm.

Talked at length with Ian MacKaye outside of Gravity Records when the Evens played. One of the nicest "famous" people I have ever met, truly a good one to talk to. Incredibly bright. Even took a picture with me that I still have on my wall.

Oh, and I've touched Morrissey.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. Spend about 16 hours with Hunter S. Thompson at his home in Woody Creek, Colorado. Very weird scene. Almost exactly as weird as you would imagine, and in all the ways you would imagine. I should tell that story some day.

Today is some day...

Sounds like a great story.

When I was thirteen, I played in a basketball game in which Shaquille O'Neal was playing. I was attending the week-long Tree Rollins summer basketball camp, and one of the selling points of it was that Shaq was going to come and make an appearance. He came and played in a little game in which all of us ragamuffins took our turns subbing in for about three minutes. His shoes are the size of a T. Rex's fossilized footprint.

A couple of summers ago, when I was still in Orlando, Shaq's father would come into the smoothie shop at which I worked, and he would order a couple of smoothies, "One for me and one for Shaquille." Tiger Woods would also regularly come into this shop, although regrettably I was never there when he came in. Both Shaq and Tiger have homes in the ultra-pricey Isleworth community in Orlando.

Once I shook Jimmy Carter's hand at a Braves game in Atlanta.

Joey Fatone, from the popular punk rock group N'Sync, went to my high school in Orlando, and I saw him there a number of times. This was before I found out that N'Sync's svengali, Lou Pearlman, was a kiddy-fiddler who regularly had sex with several members of popular boy bands by entering into a sort of Mephistophelian bargain with them. Other famous people who went there: the girl who played Clarissa on Nickelodeon's "Clarissa Explains it All," Wayne Brady from the popular television show "Whose Line is it Anyway?", Johnny Damon from the popular foosball teams the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees (my middle school P.E. teacher was his coach at the time), and a few others whose dome-pieces I can't recall at the moment.

I was once within ten feet of Henry Rollins as he was giving a spoken word show at the House of Blues. He was my hero when I was fifteen.

That is all.

When I was in my late teens (mid 1980s) I had this place I would go to in Griffith Park in L.A. to sit and watch the sun go down. So I go there one evening and there is a photo shoot going on. It's Michael J. Fox and two big black dogs. I was a little pissed that my spot had been co-opted, but what the hell. So I stood and watched for a little while as they checked lighting, touched him up, whatever. I forgot to mention that this little spot is on the edge of a pretty good-sized drop. Anyway, just as they seem to be about to start shooting, one of the dogs loses its footing and starts to slide off the edge.

Now I hate just about everything about Los Angeles, to the extent that my brother is going to inheirit our parents' house and I'm going to be sucking hind tit because I refuse to ever live there again. But it is certainly a unique place, and every so often you get to see something pretty cool.

So as this whimpering canine thespian is slipping to its doom, Michael J. Fox dropped whatever photo shoot props he had in hand, sprinted over the edge into the loose dirt of the cliffside, grabbed the dog and held it until a couple members of the crew saw fit to lend a hand and get them both up to safety. It may not sound like much in the telling, but this was a young, rich famous actor risking his own skin (and I mean this cliff was certain, painful death) to save an animal he didn't even know.

So Rush Limbaugh can go fuck himself, in short.

iembalm wrote:So as this whimpering canine thespian is slipping to its doom, Michael J. Fox dropped whatever photo shoot props he had in hand, sprinted over the edge into the loose dirt of the cliffside, grabbed the dog and held it until a couple members of the crew saw fit to lend a hand and get them both up to safety. It may not sound like much in the telling, but this was a young, rich famous actor risking his own skin (and I mean this cliff was certain, painful death) to save an animal he didn't even know.

So Rush Limbaugh can go fuck himself, in short.

The only reason Rush would save a dog is so he could cook it and eat it later on.

iembalm wrote:So as this whimpering canine thespian is slipping to its doom, Michael J. Fox dropped whatever photo shoot props he had in hand, sprinted over the edge into the loose dirt of the cliffside, grabbed the dog and held it until a couple members of the crew saw fit to lend a hand and get them both up to safety. It may not sound like much in the telling, but this was a young, rich famous actor risking his own skin (and I mean this cliff was certain, painful death) to save an animal he didn't even know.

That's beautiful, man. Ever since I first saw him in "Back to the Future," I knew Mike was a stand-up guy.

Steve V. wrote:I have met Dennis Hopper. When I was working at a movie theatre in Wilmington (where he used to own a summer house) I saw him walk in the doors. A co-worked screamed "I'll fuck anything that moves!" and his eyes locked on me. I was trembling. I saw Frank Booth. He yelled at me and stormed out. A while later, he came back, and I guess he didn't recognize me because I told him I was a fan and he smiled and shook my hand.

i remember you telling this story. this is a very good story. although i thought it was "baby wants to fuck!", he manhandled you, you were banned from the theater and your friend got fired.