Me Get Famous

I have a plan....
Yes friends, after years of scheming, I think that I've finally figured out an easy way to get famous.


See, ever since I was a small boy, I have dreamed of becoming a celebrity. In fact, I can't imagine pursuing a life that doesn't involve fame and fortune. Why bother doing anything if you're just going to be ordinary? Heck, if I didn't suspect that some kind of notoriety might be in the cards for me at all times, I'd lose my motivation entirely.

Now, I used to think that I'd get famous through some conventional method -- like, say, being a great filmmaker, rock star, or comedian. However, I now realize that all of those things require skill, talent, and intelligence, which unfortunately are qualities I do not possess. Therefore, I've been trying to come up with some alternative method of reaching celebrity status. Using my friend Internet once seemed like a viable option, but the flood of recent YouTube sensations has demonstrated that online fame is almost entirely random -- there's simply no way of telling who will become an Internet Superstar these days. One could produce the greatest viral video of all time, only to have it go completely ignored, while an off-the-wall clip of some drunkard singing karaoke spreads across the web like wildfire for no reason at all. Plus, I suspect that the realm of online celebrities has become saturated; a guy like me is too late to the table.


Therefore, I some time ago abandoned that idea and began looking at my own personal experiences for inspiration on how to get famous. And you know what??? Yesterday, it finally hit me. Yeah, an idea floated through my mind as though God himself had blown it to me in a kiss. It's kind of complicated, so I'll need to tell you a little story before getting to the nitty gritty:

As I've mentioned before, in the early 2000s I spent about five years living in the remote Thumb region of Michigan. It's a nice enough place -- good people, lovely scenery, 90 miles of Lake Huron shoreline -- but it's also very sparsely populated, and kind of...weird. Yeah, I learned a lot about how quirky small town folk can be while I was there, and my plan for celebrityhood exploits that.


When I worked at the radio station there, I'd get dozens of request calls every hour from local listeners who almost always wanted to hear the same friggin' songs. Seriously -- it drove me nuts having to play THE SAME THINGS OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER...but that was my job, I guess. Anyway, among the most popular tunes were a couple of regional releases -- specifically, songs that were written ABOUT THE THUMB. See, small town folk tend to be more proud of their local identity than suburbanites or city slickers, and when they hear a reference to their community in ANYTHING, they will most likely love it instantly. For example, if, say, an episode of the hunting show on Michigan Public Television were to be filmed in the Thumb, everyone there would watch it. The program would be profiled in the local newspaper, and folks would remind each other to tune it come six AM Saturday (or whenever). "Our county's gonna be on TV!" they'd say. It would be like an honor, which I actually think is the right attitude to have about such things.


The point is that while I was working at the local radio station, there were three songs in our rotation that had been written specifically about the Thumb (or, at least the towns in it), and people requested them CONSTANTLY. The artists who recorded these tunes were almost certainly local, and to be honest, not all that good. I mean, "I'm From Bad Axe" was a nice hometown tribute, but if it weren't for the fact that it was being played IN BAD AXE, the song would have been completely pointless. Same goes for "My Home In Huron County" and "Huron County Is Like Heaven To Me" -- both songs in heavy rotation, and both undeniably mediocre.

NOW, here's my plan: I'm going to write an "open-ended" song about a town, county, or region. The master recording will make no mention of the specific place's name (the vocal track will be blank at that point of the chorus), but it will include lines about how (insert location here) is a wonderful place to grow up, with good people who have traditional values...etc etc. I'll include a couple of verses designed to allow for interchangeable descriptive words, which will also be left blank on the original tape, so that they may be dubbed in later depending on where the song is supposed to be played. For example, if I want this tune to be about Elk Falls, Idaho, I'll simply edit the town's name into the applicable point in the chorus, and then use the blank verses to add a few lines that describe the place. You know -- the idea is to have a generic small town song into which I can edit information about any place I want.

I'll do extensive research to determine which small towns around America may be ripe for the pickin', and then edit hundreds (or thousands) of versions of my little song specifically for them and their local radio stations. I'll mail the tunes to the suckers with a false bio stating that I'm a native of their location who has just been signed to a major record label in the big city. "Wow, this guy might be famous, and he wrote a song about US!" the local jocks will say. "We should play it on the air!" With any luck, they will, and as my fake song spreads across backwaters all over the US, my name will become more and more known. "Here's hometown boy DREW GREEN with 'Cedarsville In My Heart'!" exclaims the guy in Cedarsville, Oklahoma. "Once again, it's local native Drew Green with 'Fort Ubly In My Heart'!" announces a DJ in Kansas. "We've got another request for 'Lowesberg In My Heart", by the area's own Drew Green!" says another host in Utah....In these isolated and remote communities, my song will become part of the local culture. Many of them probably don't even have Internet yet, so they wouldn't know how to scrutinize the phony artist biography I'd send. Like, for the country version of my song, I might say in the bio that I once served in the military; for the southern version, I could say that I race NASCARs; for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I'll say I'm a hunter. No one would know the difference!

(Pure poetry, ain't it?)

If things worked out as planned, I could become a celebrity in small towns across the country. Eventually, my hometown hoax may be uncovered, as different small village dwellers travel from one place to another and interact. Slowly, some of them would start to realize that the song they know so well from radio back home is not, in fact, really just about them, and that they've been duped. Who knows? Maybe some enterprising young reporter from one of their papers will unravel the entire story and send it on to the wire services, exposing me as a fraud nationally. I'd get to be on TV!

Admittedly, the weakness of my scheme is that it depends on three, somewhat risky assumptions which must be true for anything to work. FIRST, it must be the case that other small towns are similar in attitude and habits to the one in which I once lived. I mean, if a song written about, say, Loveland, Wyoming isn't going to attract the attention of people there in the same way it would back in Bad Axe, then I'm wasting my time by sending it to them. SECOND, my plan rests partly on the belief that there are still enough small market radio stations out there with independent programming staff to actually give me airtime. That is, some piece of crap station owned by CLEAR CHANNEL isn't going to let its DJs play a regional tune like mine (which is exactly why Clear Channel's evil empire is going bankrupt); I'll need real, locally-owned operations for the song to get noticed anywhere. And THIRD, my song has to be somewhat tolerable. Not GOOD, necessarily (although that would help); just AT LEAST OK.

The above circumstances must all be true in order for my plan to work, and I'm willing to bet that they are. Wish me luck, folks. I've got a song to write.


Hey, speaking of wild fantasies, here's a lovely movie starring Aaron Eckhart.

Neverwas (2005)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418004/


Netflix description:
After taking a job at the mental institution that once housed his father (Nick Nolte) -- a famous children's author -- erudite psychiatrist Zach Riley (Aaron Eckhart) befriends a schizophrenic (Ian McKellen) who unlocks a string of family secrets. Joshua Michael Stern makes an impressive directorial debut with an all-star supporting cast that includes Brittany Murphy, Jessica Lange, Bill Bellamy, William Hurt and Alan Cumming.

Neverwas was a pleasant little gem to find among the hundreds of films on my Netflix instant streaming queue. An obscure 2005 fantasy from writer-director Joshua Michael Stern, this movie on many levels reminds me of my personal favorite picture, The Fisher King. It's about a fancy-pants, Cornell-educated psychologist named Zach who returns to his boyhood hometown for a job at the local mental hospital. See, it turns out that his father -- a world-renown children's author -- had once been a patient there and his treatment didn't work out so well. Now, Zach says that he wants to somehow atone for the facility's sins by saving others there himself.

Not long after arriving, our hero meets Gabriel (Ian McKellen), a patient who believes that he's actually the king of a fantasy land lifted directly out of one Zach's dad's most famous books (also called Neverwas). It's the tale of a boy who helps a wrongly-deposed king regain control of his domain and defeat a horde of hostile invaders, and Gabriel goes off on all sorts of wild rants about things described therein. Additionally, he seems to somehow recognize Zach, which motivates our hero to begin investigating the hospital's records for some answers. What he uncovers is quite surprising, and I'll have to let you find that out for yourself.

Neverwas is one of those movies that is so well-written that it's actually difficult to describe. Yes, it has a plot (a great one, in fact), but how am I supposed to explain so much without blowing the whole thing for you? It's obvious that a great deal of time and consideration went into this (some might say) overloaded screenplay, and I admire Josh Stern for pulling it all together enough to produce a coherent viewing experience. I mean, there are SO many things going on here besides the mental patient story -- Zach has grieving issues...his old girlfriend shows up...she's got questionable motives of her own...his mother is hanging around...blah blah blah. Hey, I like a good, robust story, and this is an example of one. Why can't more movies gives us this many plot lines?

Aaron Eckhart once again defies my instinct to hate his guts, giving us an admirable Zach with whom we can empathize. Additionally, Brittany Murphy as his love interest is actually quite spirited (surprise, surprise), and Ian McKellen's Gabriel is the perfect balance of manic insanity and grandfatherly warmth (I liked him the best). Neverwas also features Allen Cumming, Nick Nolte and, one of my favorite actors, the always-solid William Hurt, as the authoritative hospital director. I've noted before that a strong ensemble cast is almost important as thoughtful writing to a quality film, and once again, Neverwas delivers. I liked each character, and felt fully engaged in their struggles all the way through. What a great bunch of guys to be in a mental home with!


So, as indicated, I can't really spoil the ending for you. It's just too pleasant to defile with a description in this terrible blog, and I'll ask everyone to suspend their disbelief long enough to take it in for themselves. I WILL say, however, that Neverwas has a beautiful, sweeping, awe-inspiring, and perhaps slightly nausea-inducing, final sequence that brought tears to the eyes of my lovely fiance, and a grin to my face. It's the kind of experience that you wouldn't have expected to be so enjoyable had someone told you about it beforehand, and really, I was suprised at myself as the credits rolled. Bravo!

It's a shame that Neverwas was almost totally overlooked upon its release, as this is one of those rare, stand-out dramas that brings genuine imagination to the table. The film ALMOST derails itself at one point in the third act by getting a bit too hokey for my tastes, but it manages to recover nicely in time for our big payoff at the end, and I'm willing to forgive a few eye-roll moments in appreciation of the overall story. Neverwas isn't PERFECT, but I strongly recommend at least giving it a chance. Movies like this don't come along often.

4 out of 5.

b.