Celebrity
Encounters Awkward
by Polly Summar
Source:
Albuquerque Journal
Date: 2/23/06
With Jessica
Simpson in town this week shooting "Employee of the Month,"
it reminds us of that uncomfortable truce Santa Feans have with movie
stars.
Living with
celebrities in our midst is a very complicated process here. "We're
all sort of reverse snobs," says local writer and editor Linda
Monacelli-Johnson. "A lot of us are old hippies, so we don't want
to be full-blown yuppies."
And that's why
it's so very difficult to figure out exactly how to deal with the celebrities
who actually live amongst us. Mostly, we can act like we don't know
or care when they just pop in for a movie. But when we find ourselves
face to face reaching for the same package of soy sausages at Whole
Foods, it calls up our "us vs. them" nature - our feeling
that somehow, we must let them know how we feel about them. Not that
we ever wonder about how they feel about us.
Back in the
'80s when Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange were living in town, they were
all over the place. They were picking up ground beef at Kaune's. They
were eating blueberry pancakes at Pasqual's. They were shopping for
kids' clothing. The local newspapers were always running a tidbit here
and there about those down-home activities, mostly acting like we didn't
care, but running it nevertheless.
The point is:
I should have known I was about due for a collision. I bought ground
beef at Kaune's, I ate pancakes at Pasqual's (OK, only monthly, not
daily), I shopped for kids' clothing. Once the celebs are in your personal
orbit, it's going to happen. You're going to find yourself face to face
with them and if you don't do some prep work, you are not going to have
your compliment together: the short, succinct phrase you are going to
grace them with.
In Santa Fe,
we believe in being coherent with our celebrities. You don't just walk
up to one with spittle running out the side of your mouth and say, "Hi!"
You have to have something intelligent to say, something that shows
you are not just an ordinary starstruck buffoon.
Which is why,
when I was crossing Alameda toward Canyon Road and saw Sam and Jessica
coming toward me, I was panicked. I knew I would have only a small window
of opportunity. I had just seen them both in the movie "Frances"
but I had always loved his plays, too. What could I say? I had to get
my phrase together quickly. As we moved steadily toward each other,
I stopped right in front of them, shiftily establishing eye contact,
back and forth, and said, "Love your work." Really, it seemed
rather erudite at the time. But that's why you need more time to work
with than, say, 3 minutes. (Sam and Jessica, by the way, laughed and
said, "Thank you.") This type of unpreparedness was the situation
Monacelli-Johnson encountered in the '90s when she saw Gene Hackman
and his wife at the Wild Oats' dairy case. "I went up to him and
said in a very soft voice, because I didn't want to impose, 'I love
your work,' (great minds apparently think alike) and I immediately turned
around and walked away. "Out of the corner of my eye, I caught
him turned around saying thank you," Monacelli-Johnson says, but
she, of course, had walked away by that time. "I thought, next
time I see him, I'm going to be much better." She wanted to be
forthcoming about her admiration for Hackman, and yet she didn't want
to gush because as much as she respected Hackman, she also really admired
Anthony Hopkins. "I didn't want to be disloyal to my other favorite,"
she says. "In my mind, neither one was first."
It took years
for her next opportunity to arise, some time after 2000. "I was
sitting at El Tesoro at Sanbusco with my husband, waiting for lunch
to be served," Monacelli-Johnson says, when she spied Hackman coming
out of one of the stores in the area. She stood up and approached him
and said, "Mr. Hackman, I just want to let you know that you're
one of my two favorite actors."
Well, what would
you think, if you were Hackman? "He thanked me and gave my husband
this look like
'What kind of
compliment is that?'" says Monacelli-Johnson. "It was sort
of a male-bonding look like, 'You probably get these lefthanded compliments
all the time.' '' Still, she had managed to convey a true, genuine emotion.
Which is why, if I run into Jessica over the soy sausages, I plan to
say, "I can't believe you didn't let Nick get that husky pup when
he wanted to, instead of that lap dog you wanted."
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