Time for The Friday Five...
1. If you could eat dinner with and "get to know" one famous person (living or dead), who would you choose? Tom Hanks. His body of work has been great - even back to the days of Bosom Buddies. He's a quality actor/director/producer. And he seems to be a quality guy. We also have a the same passion about one subject - Space. I'd love to be able to sit down and talk to him about it.
2. Has the death of a famous person ever had an effect on you? Who was it and how did you feel? Jim Henson. His death was so deeply sad. This man had brought so much joy and happiness to so many people. I wanted to be him - in fact, I started along a certain path because of him. Here's something I haven't written about yet in this blog - I used to be a puppeteer from 1975 to about 1980. I worked on a local children's show in Chicago for one of my childhood idols - Bill Jackson. Bill, Nancy Wettler and I were the performers of a show called "Gigglesnort Hotel" for two years (the show actually lasted 3 years, but I joined Bill to start the second season) on Sunday mornings on the ABC affiliate in Chicago, WLS-TV Channel 7. The show won two Emmy awards and an NATPE Iris Award for Excellence in Children's Programming. We did another short series called "Firehouse Follies" that was only 13-weeks long. We did some commercials for Plywood Minnesota, we did some HR Training videos for the Budd Company (the train car people), and, when Bill left Chicago to teach at Cal Arts, I went out to Los Angeles once to do a pilot for a series with him. We all wanted to be part of Henson Associates - in fact I think Nancy may have actually auditioned for him. He's what we strove for. However, I feel absolutely blessed to have worked with Bill Jackson. I have many stories to tell about my brief stint in local television, but that was over 25 years ago. Back on April 5, 1995, The Museum of Broadcast Communications had "An Evening With Bill Jackson" and it was at that event I realized how what I worked on changed the lives of so many people. Looking back, it was the best time of my life.
3. If you could BE a famous person for 24 hours, who would you choose? George Clooney. Here's a guy, very famous and good looking, who's still having the time of his life - working on some quality projects, with quality people, who seems wanted by everyone. 24 hours of that would be a great ride.
4. Do people ever tell you that you look like someone famous? Who? This is pretty lame, but I actually had someone come up to me and say that I looked like Steven Spielberg. No, seriously. No, somebody actually said that to me. I had a baseball cap on, and they said it. Really. It doesn't help that he's 10 years older than me...
5. Have you ever met anyone famous? I worked on a pilot with Broderick Crawford. Let's see.. I worked with Broderick Crawford on Le HotSpot in 1980. Broderick Crawford was in A Little Romance (1979) with Diane Lane. Diane Lane was in My Dog Skip (2000) with Kevin Bacon! Is that three degrees from Kevin Bacon???? ( I checked this at The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia)