Star Struck

When you think of being star struck, you think of being in the presence of someone you idolized as a kid. You think of that great actor that you sat in the theater to watch. You think of someone that serves as a pseudo mentor to you and someone that you always wanted to be. Then you become a producer and you don’t give a shit anymore. You start to see the star of a celebrity as nothing more than a dollar sign attached to their head and a deciding factor to make a movie.

I used to want to be an actor, and then, I realized that they live and die in this town. They don’t have a long lifespan and the ones that do are the ones that can be recognized by their first names. Producers used to be the leaders of this town. They were the ones that dominated and controlled the town. They signed stars to long-term contracts and paid them little money. The stars got famous and the producers got rich.

Things have slowly changed now that everyone from the creative exec who presides over the movie to the hairdresser who fixes up the stars gets an executive producer credit on the film. Producers aren’t what they used to be now that every movie star becomes a producer after a few big hits. They want control over their vehicle and they want to drive their project forward. Movie stars and directors control the town these days because along with those nifty titles they can also throw producer by their name.

The days of the true producer who nurtures the movie to what the script meant it to be are over. These days producers are nothing more than people who whore out celebrities to get another credit to their roster that hopefully brings in enough royalties to afford the car lease and the semi-just outside of Beverly Hills mansion. I try every day to be the producer of old, but these days it’s so hard to get a beautiful movie in front of the right person that you have to take what you can get.

The people who say that they’ll never sell out are poor. You have to sell out in this town to get to do what you want. This is called show business. It’s not called show me your film theories you learned in your liberal arts college. If you take the movie part away we are just car salesmen and women (gender neutral) who are trying to move a product.

With all of my work in the business, I don’t get star struck by your average mega-star anymore. It takes something more. I will admit that I was out at Diddy Riese getting a cookie with the wife when Kobe Bryant walked up to the line. I had some loose connections with his agent when we were attempting to get a cameo out of him in the sports agent movie so we had a mutual connection. We really hit it off and I was as nervous as a hooker on tax day.(oooooh I changed that up bitches)

I kept trying to convince him that we could do the White Men Can't Jump thing and try to hustle some people on the court. We settled for a game of ping pong instead and I bet him one thousand bucks before we ever played the best of seven series. Folks, it turns out an athlete is an athlete, and that’s why I felt sorry for him when I “accidentally” forgot to tell him that I played a year of college baseball at a junior college down south. He beat me four games to zero but I think I really earned his respect when I smoked him later at Balderdash. Don’t fuck with me at Balderdash, Kobe. I’m badass.

LD