Happy Birthday to You, Harrison Ford
On fandom, projection, and keeping your heroes at a safe distance.
On July 13, 1985, about a year after the second installment of the Indiana Jones franchise had made its way to my heart, I held a birthday party for Harrison Ford. He didn’t show up, partly because I didn’t invite him; I assumed he’d have neither the time nor inclination to make a trip to rural Wisconsin to hang out with a bunch of 13-year-olds. My friends and I went swimming and played volleyball, and my big sister decorated a cake with a frosting fedora and a bullwhip made from braided string licorice. While the party wasn’t entirely on-theme, it was an authentic reflection of my enthusiasm for the actor. The occasion was sincere, not satirical.
As these were the early days of my adolescent brain development, I could really only process the surface presentation of the world around me. I saw the veneer, not the workings behind it. The incongruity between a celebrity’s public persona and private personhood was not a drift I could catch. Yes, I got that actors were not actually their characters, and that their performances were scripted; it was their crafted appearances as themselves, and the Hollywood press that indulged their vanity and served the industry’s best interests, that fooled me.
In the case of Harrison Ford, I can’t say that anything particularly damning about the guy has since been revealed. He’s apparently a recluse who’s had some trouble staying married, and I’ve seen enough of his interviews over the years to know he’s not exactly loquacious; it’s pretty uncomfortable watching him squeeze out a few words. But none of that is as illusion-shattering as, say, Mel Gibson’s racist vitriol, or Pee-Wee Herman masturbating in a theater. Harrison is my first entry on the topic of celebrity influence, and where perception and reality diverge, because of how significant he once was to me.
The Man Crush
It started in 1981, when I went with my parents to see Raiders of the Lost Ark at a second-run theater. I wasn’t particularly drawn to see the movie when it first came out, maybe because the posters made it look like an old-fashioned Western — not my favorite genre. And while I’d enjoyed Harrison’s turn as Han Solo, that was more my brother’s type of character: all smirk and sarcasm. (I was more of a Luke Skywalker guy. Pure virtue.) So I settled into my theater seat with fairly low expectations and let the movie happen to me. And boy, did it. The relentless twists and turns. The exotic locations. The Nazi-killing. But more than anything, it was the character and the man who portrayed him, revealing so many more dimensions than I’d seen from his intergalactic smuggler. Indiana Jones was both intellectual and athletic. Principled, yet irreverent. He threw hard punches, and softened in the presence of strong women and ancient relics. The way he fastidiously pored over maps and markings, solved formidable problems with grit and creativity, gave those Germans the business, nonchalantly shot that scary swordsman, and looked awesome in a suit — I’d met my hero.
The actor’s bio, which suddenly interested me, only reinforced this connection I felt. Turns out he was a Midwestern fellow who attended Ripon College, just a few miles from my boyhood home. Majored in philosophy and honed his skills as a carpenter. Spoke honestly, often bluntly. Was good-looking but not vain. All the data points suggested he was a thoughtful, capable man’s man with a solid work ethic. The ladies liked him, too. We had some things in common, and what we didn’t (e.g., the ladies) were things worth aspiring to. Harrison Ford gave me a visual — an amalgam of traits I could try to attain. The future version of me.
Raiders was the first VHS tape I ever owned. That the movie was permanently in my possession — it belonged to me, and I could watch it whenever I wanted — was a thrill in those days. Not just a novelty. I mowed lawns to afford the $70 price (not adjusted for inflation), and when it was finally in my hands, I watched the movie over and over again, deconstructing every scene like it was metaphysical poetry. And my attachment to Harrison continued to grow over the next several years. I lined up for the Indiana Jones sequels, switched my allegiance from Luke to Han Solo, and delighted in the actor’s expanded range of characters in Blade Runner, Witness, and The Mosquito Coast.
If you had suggested that Harrison and I might not have much to talk about if we met, and perhaps not even enjoy each other’s company, I would have spoken as Dr. Jones did to the bureaucrat handling the Ark of the Covenant: “Fool. You don’t know what we’ve got here.”
Not Like the Rest of Us
In the years hence, my personal and professional life has brought me into frequent close contact with actors, directors, musicians, and pro athletes — not all of them household names, but some of them very much so. Generally, “relatable” is not a word I would use to describe these people. The more famous someone gets, it seems, the farther they deviate from the norm. I’m an advertising creative director, managing the three-ring circus of the business world, so normalcy isn’t the trait I value the most; it’s just that I can see more clearly now that a familiar personality doesn’t necessarily represent a shared life experience.
My first real behind-the-scenes exposure to the performing arts community, and the alter egos within it, was at Northwestern University. My freshman-year roommate was a theater major from New Jersey who plastered his side of the room with Broadway posters and listened to show tunes on his own volition. (On my side: sports cars, hot girls, and Whitesnake. Perhaps the subject of another confessional.) Through him, I met a bunch of ambitious theater types who used large gestures and had lots of feelings. They were flamboyant, expressive, angsty, sexually fluid, and constantly feeding each other’s need for attention. I couldn’t discern when their emotions were real, why they broke into song mid-sentence, and whether the rhythm of their repartee was rehearsed or the secret language of an alien race; if there were people like this in my small Dairyland high school, they were closeted outliers — certainly not a band of merrymakers who reinforced each other’s behavior in public. I’m not sure my emotional reserve and semi-jocularity made me particularly interesting to my roommate’s friends, but they did find the two of us to be a hilarious contrast in archetypes. A funny pairing courtesy of Residential Services. Whether I was in their conversation circle or (more often) just observing it, I couldn’t help but wonder: Are movie stars like this in real life? Performers now struck me as a subset of unusual people, and the thought that those responsible for all the entertainment I’d ever consumed were products of this subset — that was a mind-bender. A red pill.
I may have understood the characters, the stories, the art, but clearly not the human beings behind them.
“Celebrities are like bacon. They make everything better.” That was a quip from one of my long-ago colleagues, describing the effect of putting famous people in our ads. But early in my career, I didn’t subscribe to that notion. It seemed smarter and more effective — not to mention more creatively rewarding — to build equity than to borrow it. In my first job, I’d seen a powerful example of that when my bosses on the Taco Bell account replaced a Shaquille O’Neal endorsement with the “Yo quiero Taco Bell” talking Chihuahua; you may remember the latter campaign, but definitely not the former. I certainly didn’t see the value in spending millions for a celebrity voiceover, because 9 times out of 10, audiences didn’t recognize them by voice alone. These weren’t always my decision to make, though, and my first professional interactions with celebrities were in the recording booth.
In my first advertising job, I auditioned Harry Shearer — he of The Simpsons voices and a memorable season on SNL, where his men’s synchronized swimming sketch tickled the hell out of me — to be the voice of Kinko’s. It was a pleasant enough exchange, but my bosses picked someone else.
Chris Penn, the now-deceased brother of Sean, was the gravelly voice of Infiniti during my time on that brand. I’d been told that morning sessions with him were a disaster because it took him an hour to clear the residue of hard living from his throat before he could speak clearly, but mine was an afternoon session, so things went fairly smoothly. He made eye contact. Did his job. Kept to schedule.
Joe Mantegna, the voice of Mercedes-Benz, was lovely. Generous with his time, and patient with a young copywriter’s awkward notes. He had to run out for an appearance on Politically Incorrect, but said he’d come back if we had any second thoughts about his performance. (We didn’t.)
In a brief stint on GMC, I enjoyed a few long-distance conversations with Will Arnett, who impressed me with his knowledge of the craft, history, and booming legends of commercial voiceovers. By this point I had worked with enough famous actors and athletes who just phoned it in — as though performing badly would counterbalance the indignity of doing such work — that my experience with Arnett was a refreshing change. He took this discipline seriously, and didn’t make me feel like my choice of profession was a lesser side hustle for him.
Some performers did appear to function like the rest of us, then, at least on a surface scan — briefly, under controlled conditions. It was almost enough to make me revise my earlier hypothesis. Oh, but there were others. The “not like us” types. I’m afraid I won’t be as forthcoming with these names.
The worst pre-production meeting I’ve ever had involved an Oscar-winning director with whom I’d long wanted to work, but who turned out to be downright incoherent. A space cadet. She seemed to have no clue what she’d been hired to shoot, and got absolutely everything wrong as she blustered her way through the plan. And on the shoot days, she separated herself from everyone — actors, crew, agency people, clients — giving her direction through a walkie-talkie while sitting in an SUV parked next to a video monitor. It took an elaborate game of telephone to get our notes, usually along the lines of “you’re getting these scenes confused again,” through various channels and crew members.
Another director, who was as famous for his affair with another famous person as he was for his movies, enjoyed talking about the spoils of his generational wealth. I got good work out of him, but our families won’t be traveling together any time soon.
I convinced one of my clients to sign an actor they had never heard of, but whose star was rising fast. A real thespian, this guy, which meant he was as difficult as he was proficient. He barked at anyone or anything that disrupted his method-acting process, and stormed off the set a couple times. He also had a menagerie of quirks, props, and constant companions (of different species) to ease his anxiety; to describe them would probably give him away. I’m on record talking about why we chose him for this role, and I used the words “moral presence.” Let’s just say that in the events that followed — another story for another time — I learned that I should never say that about someone I don’t truly know.
Not an actor, but a certain NASCAR driver hit on the actress playing his wife in front of the actor playing his son, right next to photos of his actual wife and son that were part of the set dressing. Happy to say I made no public appraisals of his character.
Even just living in Los Angeles, which I’ve done twice in my career, has produced some interesting run-ins. For example, Stephen Baldwin’s and my spheres keep colliding in odd ways; he won’t remember me, but I have clear memories of him trying to exude a celebrity aura in the most anodyne settings. In my wanderings around this city, it dawned on me that there are many, many semi-recognizable actors out there — a massive accumulation of faces I can vaguely recall from all the movies, shows, and commercials I’ve ever watched. And some overestimate how familiar they are, expecting (and not getting) preferential treatment from, say, the hostess at Les Deux or the cashier at J. Crew. One exceptionally familiar face, O.J. Simpson, was at the center of my most otherworldly celebrity encounter; I wrote about that one here. Getting a palpable sense of the large population of famous, almost famous, and wannabe famous reinforced this observation: these people are different, but not necessarily special.
Over the course of my adulthood, the celebrities I’ve met tend to fall into two categories: disarmingly normal, or reliably alien. Many of them are remarkable talents, which would deserve some measure of our admiration; but the way our culture makes them the objects of relentless fascination — and the models of the people we should wish to become — can seem wildly out of proportion when you experience them IRL.
By the way, a few of those people from my Northwestern days have grown up to be well-known actors, producers, and media figures. Some of them are easy to talk to. Others, not so much.
Growing up where I did, I’m a Green Bay Packers fan by social contract, so there was a time when I had a lot of affinity for Aaron Rodgers. He was in the unenviable position of replacing an NFL legend, and he seemed to handle it with grace, humility, and a whole bunch of touchdown passes. It wasn’t just that he was a good player on behalf of my favorite team; the attributes that made him exceptional — precision, intelligence, hyper-awareness — were ones that I admired in just about any domain. He also went to a good university, dated interesting women, and (unlike his predecessor) probably voted the same way I did, which contributed to him being “my guy.” But then he started behaving strangely, adopting a grotesquely bro version of mysticism in which ayahuasca induced visions of a “woke mob,” and I learned, once again, that I need to separate the performance from the person. While I appreciated that we got a couple more good seasons out of him, I asked my teenage son to stop wearing the Aaron Rodgers jersey I bought him.
When you idolize someone, you’re not really seeing them. You’re constructing them. Or, caricaturing them. Conscious or not, it’s a choice to focus on their broadest, most positive, most obvious characteristics. Before social media, when there was more centralized control over fewer outlets, the celebrity-industrial complex could more easily manage the message; and I, as a fan, could more blithely preserve the perception. But even now, amid the relentless onslaught of unflattering clickbait, celebrities still have the teams and tools to maintain their brand image.
Maybe, just maybe, we’re better for it — if we pick the right persona. Going back to Harrison Ford: looking up to him didn’t have to be logical, or reciprocal, or even based in fact. Even if it was an illusion, that embodiment of the person I wanted to become was still valuable. For the simple reason that I could see it. My image of the man, then, was a form of goal manifestation.
So here I am, about 10–15 years older than the future me I once envisioned. Let’s just go with it. I look sillier than Indiana Jones in a fedora, but can hold my own in a suit. No Ph.D. in archeology, but my academic creds are passable. Haven’t punched out any Nazis, but if I’m being chased by Chachapoyan warriors, I might be able to keep up with Indy. I enjoy looking at ancient relics in the museum, and when my wife is feeling righteous, she exhibits certain Marion Ravenswood qualities.
I’m not disillusioned by celebrity. Just right-sized about it. As the effects of the red pill wear off, I’d say I chose my hero wisely.
