Hi. It’s Richard, half the equation of our Punk Marketing world. I’ve just released “2011: Trendspotting” from the great McGraw-Hill. Here is the link so go buy a copy. This book is 77 tiny chapters on just how much is going to happen ONCE we get out of this era of mediocrity. And it teaches people how to be “trend spotters” without futurists having to do it for you!
Portfolio magazine said this about it (they loved the darn thing).
And now the news. I have been thinking a lot about “slap of fame” that hits a lot of us in our lives and how it is SOOOOO much better than “brushes with greatness” or just seeing a star and telling our close pals.
This sample are the kind of words you’ll find in my new one (though below is original work):
Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for a star.” -radio era comedian Fred Allen
In the coming years, insubstantial moments where you come upon someone famous must be lessened in importance. Please stop thinking those Brushes With Greatness (”I saw X picking his nose at Olive Garden!”) make you whole.
Take my nonstop colorful buddy — let’s call her Martha — who once sat behind Kate Hepburn at a Broadway matinee and tapped her on a shoulder to ask her what the longevity was about. “Chocolate, my dear,” came the remark she’ll tell to this day.
BWG is over. Instead, let’s talk about utterly useless moments of personal fame that charge us up. “This paltry thing, our life,” as Ouisa Kittredge claims in John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, is nothing more than fantastic vignettes to tell our friends! The way I see it, though, the tale that trumps all is when we stumble upon fame — by accident! Let’s look at times when as though by fate, we’re plucked from obscurity to become known to the masses.
Yeah, well, for a few days, anyway.
We live for the movies, TV and the “the-at-ah” — watching, talking about, and living amongst. A regular guy gets his face on the screen (or standing in real life) and everyone chatters. Here are funny examples — some from my own days in the sun.
* Inside “Annie Hall”: An older lady I met in a manicurist shop looked like Diane Keaton so I told her and she cracked up. “Remember the scene where Annie [Keaton] and Alvy Singer [Woody Allen] sleep together but he won’t let her get high so she leaves the bed and watches?” It turned out the woman in the bed with Allen was the lady from the manicurist’s, who was an artist The Woodman discovered and asked to play along. You know, 1976 was a world away from the CGI capabilities of today so a stand-in was needed. Today they’d just shoot Diane in both places. I asked the artist how it felt to be used in such a way. “Marvelous. I love seeing it.” I admit I’ve checked it out a few times since. You’d recognize her on the street.
* Inside “Manhattan”: An acquaintance’s wife had a torrid affair with Woody Allen while in her teens and a few years later got outed in Allen’s black-and-white classic. Since the 70s people have looked her up and asked what the fuck? She explains that while art imitates life, this was just a rip-off!
*Inside “Saturday Night Live”: Remember that copy-guy character The Richmeister, who added a suffix to everyone’s name in the most loserish way? “Hey! How’s the Samster today?” Well the copy-guy’s name was…yep…Richard “Lermer”. I know how this transpired, but the telling was not as uproarious as the calls I got asking me how Rob Schneider knew me. [If you want the copy-guy story about an SNL writer and a too long article I wrote for the Chicago Tribune on “Late Night with David Letterman,” write me at richard@laermer.com. Not for the blogosphere–not yet.]
* Inside “Woodstock”: The Movie: I once had this oddball accountant, Jeff Something, who blabbered all the time about his days at the Woodstock Festival. I didn’t believe him since everyone claimed same. And this dude was EIGHT YEARS OLD in 1969! But he had proof that no one but CSNY possessed. In a scene from the documentary Woodstock, you can see a chubby child version of Jeff dancing in the mud! Talk about an historic moment for the cable archives!
* Inside Manhattan Cable “Public Access”: This one proves how even in pre-Internet era any concept of privacy was laughable. A guy I know, some comedian, used to tape a show for Channel 35 back in the 20th century where he interviewed people along the street in the Village. My pal, let’s call her Martha since I only have one friend, was flying down Bleecker Street when Comic Fellow’s camera accosted her. “No — I’m way too busy right now” she yelled, with rude aplomb, as she swatted him away. It was sensational — proving to anyone that this busy talk was a doth-protest-too-much act. In years to come the thing got replayed ad nausea and she got hundreds of chiding calls saying “Was that you acting all self-important?” I love this woman for her audacity.
The lesson: fame teaches us about ourselves.
* Inside the Perverted Mind of Tennessee Williams: I was a big theatergoer before every show became cheap revival fodder. Theater is the bastard stepchild of art in this nation and brings fame to regular folks in an eclectic (screwy) way. Because of proximity we overhear celebs — I once listened to Carol Channing discussing Kathleen Turner’s drinking problem with a pal during intermission at Eric Bogosian’s “Sex, Drugs & Rock and Roll.” Long-lasting dinner fodder!
My bizarre moment with Tennessee made gossip rags - people were in hysterics — when I was in my late teens and ushered at a now-defunct Manhattan stager while sort of attending college.
The company was preparing the premier of Williams’ “Something Cloudy, Something Clear,” a biographical ditty about a boy crush of the playwright’s. I watched every rehearsal, dumbfounded by the writer’s sense and sensibilities, and struck by how charming and flirtatious he was with everyone.
There I was, on opening night, strolling down the aisle with the audience peering, critics and my parents watching me as a nervous Laermer ushered the great one. I handed him the Playbill™, exclaiming innocuously, “Another time for you, I guess, huh?”
He grabbed my chin in a most dramatic way and sighed with the dirtiest grin plausible: “Oh, why do I have to wait so long?”
Then I lived through an embarrassing audience moment during the First (interminable) Preview of AL Webber’s “Cats” when the audience was totally perplexed by what the hell was going on. Remember critics and crowds hadn’t pounced and proclaimed it the…meow. All we saw were a bunch of performers in cat uniforms perching on our laps singing breathlessly about feline forlorn memories. Then a silence while the audience waited patiently. I was fed up, though, and cocked my head to my confused companion with an unexpectedly loud “Nu?”
Everyone, cats included, had a laugh with fingers pointing. The Daily News ran my comment the next day. Like it mattered! While I detested the stink those critters caused the monster became the longest-running stage show since “Hamlet.” Me? I became the longest-running mouth in New York.
We love us some fame. Still there are those who bitch about it. In 1990 singer emeritus George Michael was quoted in the LA Times saying he refused to appear in any videos for his long-delayed follow-up to the zillion-selling “Faith.” He claimed “all this fame” had screwed with his head and he was “just sick of it.” Soon after the LAT published a Letter to the Editor from Frank Sinatra who said (I paraphrase): “You know what, George? Hate fame so much? Do us a favor and quit.”
Fame has its detractors who are liars waiting for it to appear or return. For most it’s a Paris Hilton-like accident or undeserved in a headshaking way. But isn’t it always funny?
*****Stories like this are all over “2011: Trendspotting” - buy it from McGraw-Hill. And read the free stuff at Laermer.com!
