Celeb-watching
The buzz all around Greensboro and Winston-Salem lately has been about George Clooney, who is currently filming the movie Leather Heads in the area. The daily papers have all had grainy, distant photographs of him and front-page stories about people camping out or packing the streets around the film locations, just hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Which is understandable because pictures of George Clooney are extremely rare.
Yesterday they were filming at Greensboro’s War Memorial Auditorium, which is one of the older stadiums still standing, built just after WWI and not yet completely crumbled into oblivion. It didn’t even occur to me that there would be throngs, let alone that we should join them, but one of my co-workers did. He said he didn’t see Clooney, but he did see somebody running down the street screaming “I saw George Clooney!” at the top of her lungs. He also got yelled at by security for being on the wrong side of some street, which is also very exciting.
It reminded me somewhat of my own most memorable brush with celebrity and fame. I was 17 and had a job doing random guest marketing surveys at our local amusement park Great America, and was working the night of the huge New Kids on the Block/Tiffany concert. I didn’t get to meet any of them, but I was honored because I had access to the staging area and spotted Tiffany making out on the tour bus with one of the New Kids when she wasn’t publicly linked romantically to any of them. If I’d had a camera and been able to take a photo and sell it within the 18 minutes that any of them had remaining in their fame at that point, I’d be a rich man today.
Though the incident took place in Olden Tymes, it certainly didn’t predate the era of mindless throngs of celebrity watchers. In that case, of course, the entire throng was made up of teenage girls, which I had no reason to object to at the time. “Mindless” might be a needlessly harsh adjective, but I can say for sure that “gullible” would apply to many of them, because one of my co-workers and I signed multiple autographs for girls that night after we told them we were brothers of two of the New Kids. The fact that he was black and, as I recall, none of the New Kids were didn’t seem to spark much suspicion.
Yesterday they were filming at Greensboro’s War Memorial Auditorium, which is one of the older stadiums still standing, built just after WWI and not yet completely crumbled into oblivion. It didn’t even occur to me that there would be throngs, let alone that we should join them, but one of my co-workers did. He said he didn’t see Clooney, but he did see somebody running down the street screaming “I saw George Clooney!” at the top of her lungs. He also got yelled at by security for being on the wrong side of some street, which is also very exciting.
It reminded me somewhat of my own most memorable brush with celebrity and fame. I was 17 and had a job doing random guest marketing surveys at our local amusement park Great America, and was working the night of the huge New Kids on the Block/Tiffany concert. I didn’t get to meet any of them, but I was honored because I had access to the staging area and spotted Tiffany making out on the tour bus with one of the New Kids when she wasn’t publicly linked romantically to any of them. If I’d had a camera and been able to take a photo and sell it within the 18 minutes that any of them had remaining in their fame at that point, I’d be a rich man today.
Though the incident took place in Olden Tymes, it certainly didn’t predate the era of mindless throngs of celebrity watchers. In that case, of course, the entire throng was made up of teenage girls, which I had no reason to object to at the time. “Mindless” might be a needlessly harsh adjective, but I can say for sure that “gullible” would apply to many of them, because one of my co-workers and I signed multiple autographs for girls that night after we told them we were brothers of two of the New Kids. The fact that he was black and, as I recall, none of the New Kids were didn’t seem to spark much suspicion.
posted by Matt | 1:02 PM
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