Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Marina Cast.
I was at a New Year's Day reception on Friday, where one of the attendees told a truly hilarious story about meeting Bruce Springsteen. He was working a show the Boss was playing, and Bruce, wandering by, noticed his snazzy digital recorder, and proceeded to ask this guy about it. They chatted about technology for a few minutes, when this dude found himself blurting out "I really liked the Nebraska album." The Boss's response? "A lot of people just like that album."
The lesson of that story, of course, is that you want to have a meaningful interaction with a star when you meet them, you'd better game out what you're going to say to them well in advance. My friend Tony is set, at least when it comes to John Malkovich:
Because of Mutant Chronicles, I will always be ready for John Malkovich. I won't even yell lines from the movie, because honestly he doesn't have a single memorable line. It's the performance I'm interested in: a singularly wretched mail-in that really has to be seen to be believed. I'd ask him, "At what point did you realize this movie was beyond your help? If the deal was for three scenes as opposed to one, would you have still done it? Were the odd looks you and your co-stars exchanged in that one scene 'Holy shit we need to get out of this project ASAP' looks?" It's hard to really criticize Malkovich for being bad in one scene when Tom Jane and Ron Perlman shit it up for two hours, but this guy was inBurn After Reading! I'm supposed to believe his "pauses in dialogue = acting" farce? When I finally come face-to-face with Jon Malkovich on Judgment Day, I will talk Mutant Chronicles and only Mutant Chronicles. Honestly, unless he's going to put the blood back into my ears and eyes--that works, right? If blood comes out of somewhere, you can just pour it back in?--he owes me.Sadly, the only time I've ever run into a genuine Famous Person was sitting next to David Schwimmer at Barney Greengrass in New York City. And I blew that opportunity not because I said something incredibly stupid, but because my father didn't know who he was, and by the time I was done explaining, Schwimmer was looking at us a little funny.