the high price of infamy
I just finished my latest – and last – interview with a documentary filmmaker doing another take on the Barefoot Bandit saga. Nice enough woman. Dedicated. Skilled. She’s spent a year doing this and plenty more work to go. It’s not HER, it’s just that after 50 interviews with reporters and film crews and book writers, you just get tired of it.
If you ever wondered what a famous person’s life might be like, try just a peripheral taste of it. Telephone calls, cameramen in the yard, reporters from France, magazines from England, film crews from Canada and Brazil, Newsweek magazine writers tromping the woods, Wired magazine guys peeking in the outhouse. Sure, it’s amusing for awhile. Hilarious even. But how long do you want the gag to go on before it’s in your throat???
Fifteen minutes of fame should be all most of us need … or want. Beyond that your life gets co-opted. The paparazzi of the news media will call and call, no taking prisoners, no taking NO for an answer. It’s their job and you’re just a paragraph in their Big Story. Trouble is, you’re a piece of hundreds of the same story. At first you think you can control the spin, but pretty quick you realize you can’t. Editing, revision misquotes, all of it slipping away on shifting sand of pseudo-notoriety.
Today I hope I’m calling it quits on this Colton mythology. Seems old, but the Hollywood movie is still on its way. So is the Canadian documentary. And the one shot today. The South End String Band can hardly stand to play the song we wrote. Although…. We’re talking about a Free Colton! Concert. Not really advocating getting him out of jail — just no admission charge to the gig.
Be careful, is all I’m saying. You want 15 more minutes of fame, better get yourself a publicist and an unlisted number. I don’t have either ….
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