Question: Is it a charm or a curse to be a celebrity?

When you boil it down, I believe the answer is that the only ones that’ll tell you it’s a curse are the celebrities themselves. The rest of us see the money and the attention (all KINDS of attention), and think it looks pretty sweet. This, in my opinion, is particularly true of filmmakers. OK, at least it’s true of me.

 

But the reason I think that celebrity is a charm for artists of all stripes is that it (probably) allows us to continue doing what we want to do as artists: emotionally, it gives us the the strokes we need, and pragmatically it funds the next film, or painting, or opera, or whatever. So we don’t have to wait tables. Or sell insurance. Or build a website (but not THIS website. Really. OK, most of the time).

 

But being a big celebrity isn’t easy, I’m sure. My one brush with mini-celebrity came at the CineVegas film festival, where my movie drew huge crowds for three screenings (just can’t understand how a movie about a poker player would do well in Vegas…), and I did several radio and TV interviews. Everywhere I went for that three days, people were coming up to me and asking about the film, or about future plans, or just to say hello. Frankly, it was traumatic. And not entirely in a good way. I would liken it to a very strong drug. That I would take again. Just not all the time.

 

My mother used to say that she was torn between being a Supreme Court judge and a stone in the road: meaning that she sometimes wanted her life and decisions to have tremendous impact on the world around her, and at other times just wanted to BE, existing in the flow of life with no expectations.

 

Me, too.