Still Looking for My Warhol Minutes

If we embrace Andy Warhols’ idea that every person will be famous for 15 minutes, then I should be getting worried. At last time check, I was getting to be older than ideal for being famous. Let’s see, the athlete me was years ago; same with being a member of a rock band. The potential for great discoveries in science disappeared when I changed my major to economics, and a Noble Prize in Economics went out the window in one of my last exams at university. The course was the scintillatingly titled , “Mathematical and Statistical Applications in Micro-Economics”, where my answer to most problems was, “Huh?” I truly only have one last kick at the can before I will have to turn to infamous instead.

While at this time, my 15 minutes have eluded me, I have had the opportunity to meet many famous people, mostly just through the course of life. The school I went to during my early years were sprinkled with the offspring of many recognizable names. Among them, for example, were the Molson and Seagram families. One of my dorm-mates at the time was Reid Willis, the son of actors Kate Reid and Austin Willis. The school population was liberally sprinkled with a number of Bay Street and political families. But probably the most memorable encounter with someone famous was during my art class that we had every two weeks.

The artist in residence at the school was David Blackwood, who, even in those days had a name for himself, but today is even more renown for his moody landscape paintings of life in Newfoundland. On this particular day he was moving around the class giving us encouragement and pointing out how to use colour to achieve a certain effect. He stood beside my painting of the Rockies with 2 majestic mountains rising up in the air. A soft pink glow of the morning sun was bathing the rocks. “Very good. Now try to get the shadow on this side of the mountain.” It was then that I notice a kind of round man beside him looking at my painting. Because I was reading Lord of the Rings at the time, he reminded me of a Hobbit. He was maybe my height, bushy red hair and beard, and smoking a pipe. He stood beside me for a few seconds then tapped the painting with his pipe and said, “Nice boobs.” My first meeting with Farley Mowat and he thought my mountains were boobs. (And I am using a nicer word than he did.) I didn’t know what to do. I felt a little embarrassed that here I was in art class drawing what he perceived to be half a naked woman before I had even seen a real half naked woman. I hastily tried to make them more mountainous-like so I capped them off with a snow covered peak. When he returned he said, “Even better. Much more life-like.”

It was at that early age that I decided that my creative outlet should not be in art but writing. So I guess I could fudge my resume a bit by saying that it was Farley Mowat who after seeing my earlier work, encouraged me write.

One time I did get close to being famous, famous by proxy, I guess. When I was younger I had a passing resemblance to hockey great Bobby Orr. One night I was with friends at The Pub at the Townhouse Motor Inn, when a local N.H.L. hockey player asked me if he could introduce me to some girls as Bobby Orr. He wanted to impress them with someone famous. Hmm, free drinks and a chance to meet some fawning female fans. For that, I even threw in a free gimpy knee.

More recently, I was at a place I often go to after work. It gives me time to relax, read the newspaper and have a beer before heading home to pandemonium. This time, I noticed someone sit down at the table across from me, facing in my direction. A quick glance up and I saw it was a young guy, kind of scruffy looking, a skull cap pulled down over his forehead even though it was a very warm day. Every so often I could feel him looking up at me and I steadfastly kept my eyes on my newspaper. This internal alarm was from my days as a prison guard . Quite often, if you glanced at an inmate the wrong way, they would often spit out a “What are you looking at!”. So I avoided locking eyes with this guy altogether. It was only after he left and paid for his meal that the waitress came up to me gushing that Gord Downey of the Tragically Hip had just left. Now I knew why he kept looking up at me. He just wanted to say hello. We have crossed paths many times over the years and his sister is a dear friend of my wife and I. He’ll probably never try to say hello again.

There have been many other famous people over the years. I spoke to NDP patriarch Ed Broadbent at the liquor store one afternoon and chatted up Christopher Walken at the same place when he was here shooting Vendetta. Nice guy and not nearly as scary in real life as he is on the screen. (I was talking about Walken, not Broadbent, there). But you know there is one person I have never run into. One of my brothers actually pitched him a story I wrote and another brother has been to his house for dinner. It is amazing how many people I know who have a Dan Aykroyd story or two. Yet I have still to meet the man. Maybe one day when I sell one of my screenplays and have my 15 minutes.