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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