The Worst Wages of Fame
One byproduct of entertainment success is fame. Another is its ugly evil stepsister celebrity.
IMnot-soHO
I consider celebrity a cultural venereal disease – a nasty infection that, like syphilis, can in time often induce madness. And I don’t know if there’s a cure.
The most prominent example of this insidious malady is Donald J. tRump, a man whose lust for media attention prompted him years ago to call New York City journalists and pretend the he was someone else, a publicist named either John Miller or John Barron, to sing his own praises (it’s bizarre that he would later name his youngest son Barron). A key factor in his rise to national fame was his “reality” TV competition “The Apprentice” and its infected offshoot “The Celebrity Apprentice.” I don’t have to explain to my readers how his celebrity dementia has cursed the nation with unspeakable ugliness.
Another case in point is those celebrities who are famous for simply being famous – a modern media-driven phenomenon that’s a real head-scatcher to me. The worst of the lot is the Kardashian clan. I will happily admit I’ve never seen their (again) “reality” TV show, though obviously many others do watch it and I assume enjoy it. The family were initially infected with celebrity when their father, lawyer Robert Kardashian, represented O.J. Simpson in his murder trial (an affair that boosted Simpson’s celebrity suck-up friend Kato Kaelin to celebrity as well).
As Google’s AI program Bard tells me, Kim Kardashian “is one of the most successful celebrities in the world. She has used her fame and platform to build a multi-billion dollar empire,” earning her an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion. One symptom of the celebrity disease in addition to the lust for fame is a craven desire for money. Others include narcissism, vanity, entitlement, pretension, believing they are better than the rabble that made them famous, arrogance and further distasteful if not disgusting attitudes and behaviors.
An interesting sideline to Kim Kardashian’s celebrity is the speculation that she had her tush surgically enhanced (she denies it) as well as parading her butt – a sexual behavior common to lower primates – in public for paparazzi. Lots of class, all of it low, if you ask me.
Celebrity can also be fatal. The tragic death of Lady Diana is the saddest example of that.
As much as I obviously loathe celebrity, I will have to admit that sometimes I do enjoy some people becoming one. In the early 1980s, I did publicity for Ozzy Osbourne, who I’d already become quite fond of after interviewing him twice as a music journalist, as he’s a sweet and immensely likable fellow who is utterly honest about himself and his foibles, and completely without pretense. And funny as all get out.
How can you not adore a guy who readily tells you a tale about how he started drinking one night in London, blacked out, “and three days later I woke up in Germany, and I had no fooking idea how the fook I got there?” His family’s “reality” show – actually real in how he’s exactly who he is in the series – made him into the nutty uncle of the extended celebrity clan, mocking such fame by simply achieving it. Gotta love it.
Fame doesn’t have to result in celebrity. One night in the early ‘80s at the Manhattan music club the Lone Star Cafe, its owner brought over two fellows and seated them at a table with me and some friends. I turned away from watching the band and extended my paw for a handshake to the guy who sat down across the table from me and introduced myself. He took my hand in a friendly grip. “Hi. Bob Duvall.”
I turned back to the band. A wheel in my mind turned too. Bob Duvall…? I took a quick look over at the guy. Oh, Robert Duvall, one of the most celebrated actors of our time. Yes, for a second, my mind also hopped onto, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning…” being an “Apocalypse Now” buff ever since seeing it in its first matinee showing on the day it opened in NYC. I was smart enough not to say the line out loud and earn a place in the Douchebag Fan Hall of Fame.
The Bob Duvall I met was anything but a celeb. Just a fellow out to enjoy a night of fine country music, pretty much a regular guy, unpretentious, warm and friendly. Not the faintest whiff of ‘tude or even hint of celebrity.
Funny thing is, when I got home afterward, I turned on the TV and up popped “The Godfather II.” And there’s Duvall – the same person I was hanging out with about a half-an-hour before – as Corleone family consiglieri Tom Hagen. But not the same guy. Onscreen, he was Robert Duvall, doing his gig, superbly as always, I am obliged to say. The Bob Duvall I was hanging with earlier was savvy enough to know how to exhale the noxiousness that comes with fame and live a relatively normal life. If Hollywood gave awards for evading celebrity, he’s a Lifetime Achiever.
Around the same time I ecountered another famed, exceptionally talented and accomplished thespian who could also well win that title: Diane Lane, later to play the love interest of Duvall’s character in “Lonesome Dove.” She mightily impressed me at 17 years old when I interviewed her for United Feature Syndicate. Not much later I ran into her again at another NYC nightclub (her fame did enable entry though underage). And she wowed me even further as we hung out shooting the breeze for an hour or so.
She was a preternaturally mature woman rich with grace, poise and class, as well as a very keen intelligence. I don’t recall what we talked about, but my memory of a sparkling conversation with a soulful young woman resonates hugely with me. And of course, it almost goes without mention that Lane is one of the world’s great natural beauties, both then and still now.
Naturally. I’ve followed her ever since, and I’m further impressed that she seems to have largely avoided being mentioned in gossip columns and the celebrity presss (other than when, sadly, she had to call police during a domestic abuse incident with her now ex-husband Josh Brolin). The way she has managed to avoid celebrity has only enhanced my esteem for her.
But it’s likely that eschewing celebrity is one reason why, for all her consistent excellence in every film in which she’s appeared, Lane has but one Best Actress Oscar nomination and hasn’t yet won a golden statuette that her work suggests she richly deserves (Diane is, after all, one of the consistently best in the business). But a significant factor in winning one is having a high media profile and assiduously working the proverbial room of the film industry.
Both Duvall and Lane seem to be consummate class act professionals who do their job – with excellence – and then promote the project. And then go live their lives largely outside the spotlight. Given what we see way too much of under the glare of celebrity, seems like they wisely opt for happier and healthier lives.
What inoculates famed personalities against celebrity? My take is innate class, a well-grounded sense of self, personal modesty and the smarts to perceive and avoid celebrity’s dangers. I’m reminded of a story, perhaps apocryphal, of what an old school country music star said when told he should make a certain career move for the exposure.
”Exposure?” he drawled. “Ain’t that what ya die of?”
I must admit to some small part in spreading the celebrity virus as an entertainment journalist and PR flack. But that also gave me a front row seat at the largely gruesome (but never boring) sideshow of modern fame that led me to what I feel about celebrity. And my conclusion that the world would be a better place without it.
This is a timely piece for me. I learned this past week that an old Austin music scene artist of my acquaintance had died in June. We'd fallen out of regular contact, but I always liked knowing she was still around, and active, and whether in Austin or Seattle, was still involved in music. I reviewed her initial self-released cassette for the Chronicle and got a live shot photo published, I thought she deserved as much attention as anyone else at the time. Her initial Austin period was c. 1987-91, then Seattle, then Phoenix, then Austin again for much of the last decade or so, until the pandemic, when she relocated again to Seattle. Many professional and personal road bumps along the way. We were good friends in the earlier times, only erratic and occasional contacts afterward, but I liked to think we'd be those old friends who eventually reunite and share memories as we creak in our rockers and remember those bad old days. She was in part a victim of that obsessive drive to become famous and well known, that hobgoblin of manic minds. I leave her unnamed here out of respect for her family and friends, and their privacy, but I have remembered her and that long-ago community all this week.
I had my own encounter of that genuine, no-hint-of celebrity modesty in 73. I was working out in the hills of eastern oklahoma with my husband and another couple for Leon Russell. We were young, and each of us had new babies; we sorta ran the kitchen, fed the stars at midnight - that sort of thing. One day a big pink caddilac rolled in and it was Bob Dylan with several actors who had just finished the Patt Garrett movie. I had no contact with most of them (thought my husband took Dylan into town for some tires). But that night the four of us spent a very companionalbl, pleasant evening watchin TV and drinking beer with of all people, Harry Dean Stanton. He was modest and genuine, he asked about our lives and our babies and what we did in rural Oklahoma for fun. It was an evening that stood out from months of working for the stars. One of my best memories.