About Fifteen Moments of Fame

“I met this guy once.”
“Who?”
“This old movie star here in the obituaries. John Phillip Law.
He died yesterday.”

In the early ‘70s, my wife Jane and her then boyfriend were living in Los Angeles and looking for a house to rent. One place they looked was that of a handsome young actor who had achieved some Hollywood celebrity, having appeared in several successful movies: The Russians are Coming and more famously, the trippy Jane Fonda sci-fi, ‘Barbarella’. His name was John Phillip Law.

“We went to look at his house,” Jane said. “I didn’t know who he was.”
Having seen both of these films, I was immediately impressed by the fact that she had met an authentic A-list Hollywood actor.
“Really! John Phillip Law! The angel in Barbarella! Where was this? Did you go in his house? Did he still sport those wings?” I was star-struck.
“I remember he answered the door,” she said, revisiting the moment. “He was very friendly. I don’t know. He was busy cleaning his pool.”

Cleaning his pool? He was cleaning his pool. This didn’t seem right. An
A-list celebrity living in Hollywood would not be cleaning his or her own pool. You’d never see Steven Spielberg poolside in banana print shorts and flip-flops toting around a net and some Clorox. Steven Segal maybe but not Steven Spielberg. The Hollywood scene I imagined would have had “people who do that sort of thing” for you clambering about the place. Maids and staff would be scurrying about doing all the things a star could not be bothered with: answering the door, dusting, taking calls, wiping down the mirrors, rinsing the bong. In my movie, a short Asian man in a Nero jacket would have answered the door. “May I take your poncho, sir?” he would say. “And if you would, please leave your sandals and attitude at the door.”
I began to think that maybe John Phillip was not the A-lister I imagined him to be and...

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