One of my favorite passages from his latest book:“For most of my life, between my father’s celebrity and my own, I’ve been able to observe what happens to people on both sides of the line separating celebrities from the rest of the world.
My first exposure to fame was on Hollywood Boulevard when I was eight years old, and I didn’t like it. It was about midnight; we’d just seen a movie. I was walking with my parents when a girl about 16 came up behind us. She punched my father in the back and screamed, ‘You son of a bitch!’ and then she ran off down the street. My parents saw that I was shaken by this and they tried to help me understand it. They explained that some people don’t know how to react to people they’d seen on the screen, and that I shouldn’t let it make me afraid. But it seemed to me that being afraid of a person like that to me was a good idea.
I knew my life had changed one day when I was sitting in a seat on the aisle, waiting for a Broadway play to start. Someone came over with a piece of paper for me to sign. Then someone else, and then another. Within a few minutes there was a line of people stretching up the aisle to the back of the theater. I was signing fast, trying to be accommodating, but wishing the lights would dim so that everyone would go back to their seats, and I could back to being a member of the audience. It was getting to be 15 minutes past curtain time. Finally, an usher came up to me apologetically. ‘Do you mind if we start the play now?’ she asked. ‘God yes, please!’ I said. ‘You’re waiting for me? I’m waiting for you.’ I’d been thinking the stage manager would start the play on time, but now I couldn’t rely on people to behave in expected ways.
On ‘Scientific Frontiers’, we did a story on the leaning tower of Piza. As we walked inside the tower, the custodian was telling me that it was still tipping over a little every year, and unless they could fix it, it wouldn’t just tip over– the pressure on the middle of the structure would make it explode. We passed a sign that read ‘No one permitted beyond this point’, and I asked if people were allowed to climb the tower. He said, ‘Oh no, not anymore. But in your case we made an exception.’
Once in a torrential rain, a cop was turning people away from a bridge that was about to be swept down the river. But when he saw my face he waved me through. Fortunately I didn’t go.
Why are we so disoriented by the sight of a famous person? We’ve seen these famous people on a screen in a darkened room, which is a dreamlike state. Is that why when this person steps out of our dreams and into reality that we become disoriented?”
