Andrew Osborne’s Brush With Greatness #4

One man’s continuing effort to catalogue every famous person he’s ever encountered.

CE1K:  It’s a little known fact that film and video lenses protect us from the full, debilitating beauty of celebrities, in much the same way pinhole cameras enable us to experience a solar eclipse without going blind. I first discovered this fact in my early days as a Los Angeles resident, when I was browsing happily through the dear, dear, departed Virgin Megastore on Sunset (damn you, Generation Y!) and happened to spot Helen Hunt shopping for CDs with then boyfriend Hank Azaria.  Now, I always thought Helen Hunt was relatively attractive, but nothing to write home about…yet seen amidst ordinary proles, without the protective filter of a lens, I couldn’t take my damn eyes off her. My God, I thought at the time, if Helen friggin’ Hunt is this hot in real life, what must it be like to encounter a celebrity like, say, Heather Graham?

CE1K:  Coming out of a theater one night at the Sunset Five in the same beloved, lamented Virgin Megastore complex, I see Heather Graham outside a movie premiere and my face melts off.

CE3K:  Years later, I co-write the film On_Line with director Jed Weintrob, who rents a Park City condo (complete with genuine show-biz jacuzzi) when the scrappy little indie gets into Sundance. Harold Perrineau, Jr., one of the stars of the production, promptly strips down to his trunks, revealing the jaw-dropping physique of a Nubian prince, and climbs into the hot tub with a pair of lovely bikini-clad ladies for a late night soak. My parents, in town for the film festival, have already met Harold and declared him the nicest, friendliest person on Earth, which is more or less true, and I think it would be a lot of fun to hang out with the actor (not to mention the sexy girls), if only to say, “Hey! Look at me!  Hangin’ out in a jacuzzi at Sundance!” But I instantly realize the sight of my flabby, pasty body side by side with Harold’s ebony musculature would be traumatic for everyone, so I keep my clothes on and head instead to the kitchen for a beer, passing another pasty white guy on his way to the jacuzzi for a soak. Five minutes later, he comes back to the kitchen, fully dressed, muttering something like, “No way.”  But, though we never become hot tub buddies, I do share a geeky yet memorable Hollywood moment with Harold later at the official On_Line party. As it happened, the actor had gone straight from our tiny film into the role of Link in The Matrix Reloaded. As party guests swirled around the actor, congratulating him on his A-list gig, I felt compelled to share my dopey fanboy theory that the Oracle from the first movie was actually a friendly computer program, giving aid and comfort to the humans attempting to break free of the Matrix. Harold smiled and said it was a good theory, but everything related to the sequel was top secret and so he couldn’t really talk about it.  Then, when the crowd had dispersed somewhat and he and I were standing off by ourselves, he leaned over, like my own personal Oracle, and whispered, “You’re right!”  Again:  nicest guy on Earth.