Читать книгу Fame - Justine Bateman - Страница 12

Anything

There was this photo shoot. Me and actress Sarah Jessica Parker. Me, 18 or 19, Sarah, the same. Photo shoot for Tiger Beat. Teen fan magazine. Harmless. Photo shoot with some clothes we had in our closet. That’s all.

“What are we doing today?”

“Let’s do a photo shoot.” Grab some crap in our closets—T-shirts, jeans, NOTHING. Belts, hats, and crap we had bought at army surplus stores. Whatever.

“We want to do a photo shoot.” Of course for publication. No question. Never a question/doubt. Wide-open doors. Somehow a photo studio, somehow a photographer, somehow immediately printed in the magazine. No question. Here. Here, for you. Whatever you want. Two teenagers with whatever out of their closets; shit you couldn’t get rid of at a garage sale. No questions asked, photo shoot and publication provided. Open doors, open smiles, open, open.

* * *

Concerts, backstage passes, cops letting you go when pulled over for a ticket (not always, but half the time), Super Bowl game. Super Bowl XXI, maybe XXII, I don’t know. Hosting MTV’s halftime show. Limo pickup, always a limo pickup, then in a helicopter. A helicopter because of the traffic. Skip the traffic, fly over the traffic. Let down anywhere. On the grass right there, in front of the stadium. It’s the Super Bowl, we have celebrities in the helicopter, we land wherever we want. Usher you in. Here are your free tickets, your free impossible-to-get, only-for-sponsoring-entities, 50-yard-line, you-made-not-one-effort-to-get-these-tickets Super Bowl tickets. Sure, you’ll host the halftime show later in a room where you cannot hear yourself talk into the mic because of the screaming, the cheering, the volume. But man, you don’t give a shit. THIS IS AWESOME. Like sitting in in an effortless, delicious orange custard cloud of favor all the fucking time. All the time. Everyone wants you, to be with you, be near you, give you things, do you favors, LISTENING INTENTLY TO EVERYTHING YOU ARE SAYING.

Yeah, that was a big one. Everyone was listening intently to what I was saying. A circle of people. Around me. Adults. Me, a teenager, or early 20s. Done nothing, really. Traveled, OK. Was a good student, OK. Showed up to work on time, OK. Worthy? Worthy of being listened to as if a river of holy wisdom is pouring through my mouth? No. NO. But, the feeling. Oh, it felt good. At that age, to be heard, to be taken seriously. Shut up. OK. Listen to the Fame. The way these people, or why these people, were listening to me so closely. So careful not to bring up anything about themselves and risk ripping my interest from this circle of people. Keep me from wandering off. Keep me there. We love to hear ourselves talk. Best way to keep someone engaged is to ask them about themselves. Keep a celebrity there, let them talk, hear them, REALLY hear them, show you hear them. Nod your head somberly when they make an “interesting” point, laugh quickly and heartily when they say anything amusing. KEEP. THEM. THERE. OK. So, here we had it, I had it, in spades. Spades. Everyone would stop and listen.

* * *

You see? You see what happens? The celebrity, the famous person, gets used to this. They get used to it and come to expect it. They have to because it happens all the time, every day. OK, so you expect it and you then stop asking anyone else about themselves. You just forget. It’s not part of the exchange anymore. You talk and talk. You pontificate. It seems to be what people want. They want to keep you there, and you, the famous, what are you doing? Why do you keep talking? What are you doing? You are delivering. They need something, this group, this circle of people, and you are reading the group and making an assumption. You’re right, your guess is right, and you perform, deliver. You want to make sure you aren’t trashing all this goodwill being handed to you. You don’t want to be like Justine Bateman when that guy in that bar was so disappointed in her smoking a cigarette. She trashed all that goodwill, all the adulation he was just handing her. You don’t want to be like that, right? So you give it, you deliver. And you get used to this performance to such an extent that you forget to behave any other way. So there’s that.