Why You Should Never Become Famous

I have a confession to make:  I’m cruel.  Not all the time, not intentionally, but occasionally.  Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy what happened here:

A few months ago, I was asked to rewrite a treatment (A six or so page summary of the film’s plot) for a war movie.  It was done on the down-low, because as an intern I’m not supposed to be doing anything remotely challenging.

The original treatment was about a semi-racist colonel who leads an all-Japanese battalion in battle.  It’s actually heartwarming and makes you believe in the American dream; except that the main character is a racist, drunk, burn-out, and stays a racist, drunk, burn-out until the last twenty pages.  Generally, people like to see the hero become something more than what he starts as.  Generally, people don’t like racists either.

It was handed to me with the simple note to “make this more American.”  Feedback is overrated.  I dropped everything and hammered out a revised draft in a few hours.  Tweaking the action here, some racism there.  Boom, done.  Hand it in, good work, great job, no paycheck.

I took a bit of personal pride in it, and pretty much forgot about it until a few weeks ago when it showed up on IMDB.  Naturally, I edited the IMDB page so that I would get a “Story By” credit.  Most people would call this unprofessional.  They would be right.

Again, I didn’t think about it until two days ago, when I got the following Facebook message:

Dear Jeff,

Below is a short clip of me acting in a spec feature about the 442nd titled "Little Iron Men". My youtube channel has more clips from the project and a short acting demo too. I'm the actor on the left.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq0pt-P906g

It has always been my professional dream to act in a film about the 442nd/100th. And I was wondering... if you'd be open to pointing me in the right direction... How can I get the opportunity to act in your film?

That said... I really appreciate your reading this message from a complete stranger, and promise not to bother you inappropriately with inane messages. Thank you so very much for your time.

 This is the point in time when you condemn me for being a bad person.  I didn’t respond to this guy’s request, and, frankly, I don’t know how.  Worst of all, all I could do when I got his message was laugh at how absurd this was

So, ladies and gentlemen, what did we learn today?  Being famous gets you way more attention than you’re probably comfortable with, and definitely more than I deserve.  I didn’t even write the actual screenplay and this guy managed to find me.  Off of an IMDB page that has literally two people (including myself) and a title attached to it.  It’s currently ranking around 100,000 in popularity this week on IMDB.

Kind of makes me want to delete my Facebook account in anticipation of success.  That would probably be jumping the gun though.