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 played
basketball with Tobey Maguire today. At the Hollywood YMCA. I don't
say that to impress you. I'm certainly not impressed. At least no
more than I'm impressed by brain surgeons or car mechanics. It's
just that even the world's best brain surgeon wouldn't get a second
look on a basketball court, unless he was playing at the National
Academy of Brain Surgeons' annual pickup, or should I say, "uptake"
game. Screen actors, however, are the sole "professionals" whose
recognition transcends race, class, language, and certainly talent.
Like I said, I was playing ball with the Tobester. This is important
because Tobey Maguire, while not a household name, falls into that
category of Semi-Famous Actor Guy (like Phillip Seymour Hoffman and
Tim Allen, two Semi-Famous Actor Guys who also work out at the
Hollywood YMCA). Semi-Famous Actor Guys are tricky. On the one hand,
they're special because there's always that chance they'll morph
into Super-Famous Actor Guys (like "Denzel"--no need for the last
name anymore--who also works out at the Hollywood YMCA). On the
other hand, they have an air of accessibility (except Phillip
Seymour Hoffman, who wears the same constipated scowl off-screen he
made famous in "Happiness"). Semi-Famous Actor Guys remain
semi-accessible because they intuitively know that one day they
might fall from the ranks of Semi-Famous Actor Guy and become a
ONCE-Semi-Famous Actor Guy. By contrast, when an actor becomes a
SUPER-Famous Actor Guy, there's no turning back. He could stop
making movies, do a Flip Wilson, but he would never be forgotten.
Bogie, for example.
I hadn't been back to L.A. for several months. So I noticed Tobey
Maguire for the first time only a couple days ago. He was shooting
alone in the Y's other, much larger, air conditioned gym (not the
funky lovable rat hole where we play pickup). Unlike other
Semi-Famous Actor Guys, Toby looked right at me. Like he was one of
the Not-So-Famous Actor Guys, who are a dime a dozen at the
Hollywood YMCA. Like he was looking to jabber a bit, as we
Not-So-Famous Basketball Guys do.
Now, I'm told that I can find these Not-So-Famous Actor/Basketball
Guys all over TV (on "ER," "That 70s Show," that 80s show, that 90s
show, whatever), all over the big screen too ("Three Kings,"
"Magnolia," "Time Code"), but at the Hollywood YMCA nobody is
supposed to care about that. As I told the Tobester before our game,
"basketball is more important than anything. Whatever you happen to
do for work pales in comparison because you will always remember
that winning shot, whether last week or from 8th grade. Always." The
Tobester agreed. "Basketball IS everything," he echoed in his
upbeat, yet low-key, Tobey Maguire way.
Only problem, of course, was that I was being disingenuous. While I
have no abiding fascination with the entertainment industry, like
any teenager from Iowa, I still get a little weird when I see a
celebrity. Especially a celebrity who's playing pickup ball at my
YMCA.
My team (consisting of a Queens-born TV guy, a German-born TV guy, a
music producer, and a struggling actor with a jump shot) had just
won five games in a row, but my fab four had all decided to quit in
glory, leaving me with a whole new ensemble. I could have played
with the Tobenheimer, but decided to let Toby, his trainer, and his
handler, play with two friends, while I teamed up with four other
warriors, including a Not-So-Famous Actor Guy named Eric Balfour,
who played the boyfriend of Mel Gibson's daughter in "What Women
Want."
I watched Tobey closely. On the sign-up board, he'd signed his name
"Tobias." With my generous move on his team's behalf, it now
happened that "Tobias" was going to be guarding moi . I decided to
take command of the situation.
"Tobias, my name's Jim. But everybody calls me Monk."
"Well, everyone calls me Tobey," he said with a wry smile.
There was something in that wry smile that spoke volumes. I took it
two ways: 1. Tobey Maguire knew that everyone in that gym knew he
was a Semi-Famous Actor Guy. So, for me to play dumb to that fact
was kind of charming, if daft; 2. Tobey Maguire was enjoying the
possibility that here might be a guy who really didn't know he was
Tobey Maguire, Semi-Famous Actor Guy, star of "Cider House Rules,"
"The Ice Storm," and, uh, "Don's Plum." How refreshing, thought
Tobey Maguire, Everyman.
Frankly, I wanted Tobey to think the latter. Because once I started
relating to him as Tobey Maguire Semi-Famous Actor Guy, once the
fact of his celebrity status became a conscious thought in my brain,
I knew I would start to act very very weird. Not the stereotypical
fawning buddy-buddy autograph-hounding will-you-be-my-friend kind of
weird, but just the opposite. A passive-aggressive "I Own You" kind
of weird.
Here's an example. I played basketball with Woody Harrelson once at
the Lincoln Street courts in Santa Monica. Talk about fiction
becoming reality: the costar of "White Men Can't Jump" playing
pickup not far from where he played ball in the film. After Woody
grabbed a rebound, I let slip a line: "so, white men CAN jump."
Woody looked around angrily trying to spot the wiseass. He never
identified me, but I learned something: famous actors don't want to
be identified with their onscreen personas. And they don't relish an
implied informality and intimacy simply because of their star
status.
But, at the same time, they don't want to be treated as just another
Joe either. Which is why interacting with celebrities can be so
touch-and-go. All the games I watched Woody play, nobody ever
excoriated him (and the Wood made some bonehead errors). My
conclusion? When a celebrity is on the court, everyone acts as if
everyone is equal, but, privately, deep inside our media-saturated
brains, all the players, even the opposing team, are subconsciously
rooting for the celeb. We turn into these nauseating sycophants,
even the most hotheaded and contentious in our ranks. And there is
something in the celebrity, even in the modest and self-effacing,
that feeds off that ingratiating treatment.
I noticed this the time Mike Tyson came to the Y. He had just gotten
into another violent brouhaha, but, hey, this was Mike Tyson. Nobody
was going to razz the champ, even with that incongruous lisp.
Outside the Y, Mike Tyson was in the parking lot perched on this
goofy giant 3-wheel contraption, smiling and signing autographs for
moms and kids (the prozac must have been working that day). But even
if Tyson had been outright belligerent, I knew there would have been
a protective bubble around the guy. As there was around Kurt Cobain
the day we shot a Monk cover with him. As there was around Bill Weld
and Gus Van Sant.
As there was around Tobias Vincent Maguire today at the Hollywood
YMCA.
Still, I played against Tobey Maguire. And, to this credit, Tobey
gave it everything he had. But I held something back. Not by
conscious choice. But on a subconscious level there was an unspoken
understanding: the sort of hard-edged hard-nosed basketball that's
my hallmark was as strictly verboten as kissing this short sweet
actor guy's ass. In other words, celebrities are like sacred cows,
free to roam, protected and enabled (read: Robert Downey, Jr.). When
a celebrity is in the room, or on the court, normal life is
suspended, and no matter how clever (or how genuine) one tries to be
in their presence, no matter how much THEY want to break through the
separation and be treated as real people, there is no getting around
the fact of their celebritydom. They are our heroes, our Brahmin.
Not surprisingly, Tobey hit the winning shot.
James Crotty is author of "How to Talk American," co-author of "The
Mad Monks' Guide to New York City," and a motive force behind the
alternative travel web site, Monk.com. He is currently on sabbatical
at the St. John's Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. Email: Jim@Monk.com
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