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Chuck C Goes to Hollywood

How Chuck Close deals with celebrity

At Vanity Fair, Chuck Close says he wants to humanize the stars. Finally. No longer must I click to Guess My Face Without Makeup or the mug shots at www.thesmokinggun.com for a full dose of celebrity humanity. It used to be I could rely on my daughter, Christin, to endear me to famous actors, back when she was a handler at New Line Cinema for many of these luminaries on their publicity tours. I’d hear about how Woody Harrelson kept reporters waiting just a bit in Florida because he wanted to swim up along the Gulf Coast to get from his hotel to where the reporters were meeting him. Seriously. He swam to his interviews. Energy efficient and good cardiovascular: so what reporter would complain about having to wait? If I’d been there with a voice recorder, I’d have felt ashamed for having driven to see him. She also told us how Chris Tucker carried his new MacBook around from one place to another on his tour, in the Apple box itself, with its plastic black handle, using it like a briefcase. When I heard that, I thought, why not? Who’s he need to impress? Tucker was humble enough to ask her for some quick tutorials to get him up to speed with his Mac interface after it arrived. I warmed up to most of them, when I heard how they acted when a camera was pointed at them. That seems to be what Close has in mind: to warm us up to all the ordinary-ness in their faces.

I’d love to borrow that Polaroid camera if only I wouldn’t have to build an addition over the garage for it. It would be funny if Close shook the huge photographs when they came out, just for old time’s sake.