Question of the Day: Brush with Fame Edition

Apropos of the meme below, and The Heretik’s charming Vonnegut story, I thought it might be fun to share lame or maybe not-lame celebrity meeting stories.

I’ve had the fortune to meet, sometimes just briefly, some of my favorite musicians/singers: Morrissey on several occasions, the boys from Suede, Craig Wedren from Shudder to Think, Harriet Wheeler from The Sundays, Tim Booth from James, Martin Rossiter from Gene (who was extraordinarily nice and witty), and some other interesting and talented folks.

The building in which I worked in Chicago for many years right out of university was on the Mag Mile, directly across the street from the Hotel Intercontinental, and had a Starbucks on the ground floor, making it an attractive stop to famous faces in Chicago. (I had quite an amusing run-in with Mel Gibson, who’s actually very nice, in that Starbucks.) One floor of the building also served as “FBI Headquarters” in The Fugitive and US Marshals, and I rode up in an elevator with Tommy Lee Jones once. All I wanted to do was ask him about being Al Gore’s roommate; I didn’t.

The Bruce Willis film Mercury Rising also filmed several scenes right outside the building, and somewhere on the cutting room floor is footage of me interrupting a scene because I was annoyed with being trapped in the lobby and prohibited from leaving for over a half hour, ending with Bruce Willis yelling at me, “We’re trying to shoot a film here!” and my yelling back, “I’m trying to live my life here!” Republican prick.

Much to Catherine’s jealous ire, I had many occasions to chat with her future husband, John Cusack, when we used to frequent the same record store over a decade ago now, and, before he was famous, bitches, I spent an evening backstage at a Chicago comedy club sharing a smoke (ahem) or two or twenty with a then-unknown comic named Dave Chappelle. Oh, the stories…

So—what are your brushes with fame?