ASK me: Working with Idols

Dale Herbest writes to ask…

Since you've been working as a professional writer in the entertainment arts for so long, I'm sure you've worked with plenty of people you grew up loving and tried to emulate in your own work. Has there ever been a time or project where you worked with someone you really loved and admired but the experience of working with them was so bad and so disappointing that you lost respect for that person and could never really enjoy their work ever again?

Hmm. I've worked with people I would never again want to be in the same room with, let alone on the same project. None that come immediately to mind were folks I'd admired and loved before our association. I've also worked with and gotten to know people I loved on television or in comic books — or somewhere — who fell into this category: I was glad I got to know them but wish I hadn't gotten as close as I did.

It's often the case that the more time you spend with someone, the more of their flaws or weaknesses you witness. You can wind up learning a lot about their professional lives and work (good) but along the way, you also learn about their dysfunctional personal lives (bad) and even find yourself involved in their problems.

Once in a while, you find out about something they did that in an ethical or moral sense, really disappoints you.  Because you loved them on TV or in the comics or wherever, you'd like to think nothing but good about them.  And then there's that thing they did that makes it difficult.  And no, I'm not going to name names.

Sometimes, I meet someone whose work I loved twenty years ago, thirty years ago, fifty years ago or more. I tell them what their work meant to me. And then I deal with the fact that they're now seventy years old, eighty years old, even ninety. And maybe they aren't working as much as they once did. Maybe they're having trouble figuring out how or if they fit into the different world and industry of today.

In some cases — probably most cases — they're fine. They're still working. They're still financially solvent.  They understand that you can't be the hottest thing in town forever.

But once in a while for reasons of money and/or ego, they're constantly wondering why they aren't working so much. If they're performers and they once had a time in their lives when they couldn't walk into a restaurant without signing twenty autographs, they may now be finding themselves in a world where so many young people don't know who the hell they are.

Usually, they're appreciative that I do. I'm 67 now but to them, I'm a younger person who not only knows who they are but I'm often a Human Wikipedia of their past credits.  I'm able to tick off what some would call "trivia" about their careers but to them, of course, every bit of it is very important. It's rare but once in a while, it goes like it did one time when I met a comedian I'd long admired…

We were introduced at a TV studio. I was writing a show being done elsewhere on the lot and the person who introduced us mentioned that to him. We shook hands and I told him how much I'd always loved his work; how I watched it avidly when I was a kid and how I'd seen darn near everything he'd done. This was all true.

I told him — and again, every bit of this was true — what an inspiration he'd been and how he was part of the reason that I was now a professional writer, usually of things allegedly comedic. It came in part from watching all that brilliant work he'd done.

Then he gave me a look that was ever-so-slightly mean and he said, "Then how come you haven't hired me for the show you're doing?"

Like I said, I've met lots of idols and folks I've admired and it rarely goes bad. Rarely. But when it does, that's usually the subtext.

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