On Facebook and other such forums, I see a lot of messages from people who had an encounter with someone who was, to them, famous. They report on this experience and come to the conclusion that the famous-to-them person…
- Couldn't have been nicer and more friendly or…
- Couldn't have been a bigger a-hole.
None of what follows is intended to suggest that those deductions might not have been spot-on accurate. I would just like to suggest that some might not have been completely valid about the way that famous-to-you person is or was all or most of the time.
Obviously — and I'm sure everyone understands this is possible — there are moments when a person is not at their best and their behavior is affected by circumstances that may not be apparent to others. I'm going to use myself for an example or two here though this piece is mainly about people who are a lot more notorious than I could ever be or would even want to be.
But one time at a WonderCon in San Francisco, I was hosting a panel when I got a cellphone call that my mother back in Los Angeles had had a heart attack and was being ambulanced to a hospital. I decided I had way more important things to do than host the remainder of that panel. I excused myself and ran back to my hotel to make a few more calls to get information and to book the soonest-feasible flight back to L.A.
I was between the panel room and my hotel when a gent cut me off. He had a pile of Groo comics my partner Sergio had signed and he wanted me to autograph 'em for sale in his store. Which I would have gladly done except…well, you understand why not just then. He didn't. I explained to him why I'd have to do it some other time and I fled…and I never saw the guy or his stack o' Groos again. I did though see on the Internet where he posted how I was rude and didn't care about the fans.
(A side tip: If you want a comic book person to sign a number of comics, at least pretend you read the comic and love it. This guy actually said he just wanted them signed to raise their value. He and others like him are the reason so many professionals now charge to do this. I sign for free if the pile ain't too big and you can fool me into thinking you read some of it. Which is like tricking Charlie Brown into taking another try at kicking the old football.)
I'll tell you another story somewhat like this. Years ago, I was a guest at a big comic convention in Philadelphia. Saturday evening, I was in my hotel room and I heard someone yelling "Fire!" I looked out into the hall and there was smoke — not a lot but enough to make me think, "This is not a good place to be." Fortunately, I was dressed. I grabbed up my laptop computer in its case (which also held my airplane tickets) and I did what I'd always heard you're supposed to do in such situations. I located the stairs and began walking down…even though I was on something like the twenty-fourth floor.
I immediately found myself walking down with a couple I knew — Archie Goodwin and his wife Anne. I forget if Archie was an editor at DC at the time or at Marvel — he went back and forth — but he was one of those and a good friend. He was also the nicest man you could ever meet and that's not just my opinion. If you doubt me, stop and Google his name and make sure you don't get the basketball player or the character in the Nero Wolfe books with the same name. You can search every byte of the vast worldwide web and not find anyone who ever knew Archie who had anything bad to say about him.
Together, we walked down a couple dozen flights of stairs as rapidly as we could…and by the time we reached the lobby, there were firemen there announcing that the fire was out. It was not a big one but what there was of one was no more. Archie, Anne and I were exhausted from the vertical Bataan Death March to the lobby and we all flopped down on a couch there to rest and catch what we could of our breaths.
And just at that moment — ignoring our obvious-to-anyone-with-eyes fatigue and the fact that the lobby was full of guests in their jammies and firefighters and hoses and police officers — a young man walked up to Archie and asked him to look at his portfolio and maybe hire him to draw comics.
It was at that moment that I witnessed something that folks who knew and worked with Archie probably never witnessed. I witnessed Archie Goodwin yelling at someone.
As yelling goes, it wasn't bad. I've seen people yell more when they got unwanted guacamole on a burger in a restaurant. But Archie yelled at the kid. And if he hadn't apologized a minute later, that kid would have gone around forever saying what a rude, nasty man Archie Goodwin was.
So that kind of thing happens and I've just decided I'll have to do a Part Two and probably a Part Three to get through the other reasons why brief "celebrity encounters" are sometimes not a judge of what that "celebrity" is really like. SPOILER ALERT: One reason has to do with the context of who you are and if they think you're any kind of threat to them, and another is about famous folks who are scared to death of being recognized or approached and don't handle the situation well.
Those parts will be along soon and, again, I'm not suggesting that observations made from brief encounters are not sometimes valid. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes, an a-hole is just an a-hole.