the list of 9 for january 10, 2007:
NINE PEOPLE I KNEW BEFORE THEY WERE BIG
I've always been fascinated with fame, and how it comes and goes - and sometimes returns - inpeople's lives. Having lived in Los Angeles for nearly 15 years now, I've seen several nobodiesturn into somebodies. And even though there is a direct correlation between how famous thesepeople have become and how rarely I hear from them anymore, I still consider many of them myfriends, and I'm thrilled for their hard-earned success.
- Stephen Hillenburg. My old CalArts classmate entered intothe experimental animation program without ever having animated anything - and soon blew everybodyaway. Later, with his undergrad degree in marine biology and his MFA in animation, he combined histwo interests to make a little show called Spongebob Squarepants. Yes, Steve is the creatorof Spongebob. He also directed the feature film version.
- Mary Lynn Rajskub. I first saw this actress way back in1996 while working on the set of my friend Julien Nitzberg's film Bury Me in Kern County. Iwas intrigued by this strange, funny girl with the ski slope nose, and in 2002 I was very excitedto have cast her in my own film, Claustrophobia. A year later, she tried out for the partof Chloe O'Brian in the hit TV series 24 and has reached a level of notoriety so big thatshe's been a guest on Letterman, Leno, Conan, and a slew of other talk shows - and was evenprofiled in the syndicated Sunday newspaper supplement Parade last week. She's a phenomenon!
- Steve Valentine. Steve was the big discovery from my firstfilm Foreign Correspondents. Sure, the star of the film (and of Claustrophobia),Melanie Lynskey, has, since working with me, enjoyed a lucrative career in movies and TV, buteven today she remains best known for her starring role in Peter Jackson's 1994 film HeavenlyCreatures, so I can't truly count her. As for Steve, though he, like MaryLynn, was already a busy working actor by the time I cast him, it was Crossing Jordan,where he plays series regular "Nigel," that made him a household name for millions of people.
- Steve Isaacs. What's up with all these Steves? Anyway, myassociation with Mr. Isaacs predates even college. Back in high school, I took animation coursesat De Anza Community College in Cupertino, California. One summer, Steve Isaacs was my classmate.A few years later, he became a noted MTV VJ, starred in the Broadway production of The Who'sTommy, and currently is lead singer for the (potentially) popular band The Panic Channel,backed by former members of Jane's Addiction.
- Danger Mouse. While we're on the music front, back in 1998I bought a CD on eBay that was being sold by a young man in Georgia named Brian Burton. It was hisown music, under the name "Pelican City." He was so grateful that I should buy a CD from a nobodylike him that he sent me his second Pelican City CD free of charge. In 2002 he sent me an email,stating that he was moving to Los Angeles and calling himself DJ Danger Mouse. He even came to thepremiere of Claustrophobia in 2003. Who was I to know then that in three years' time hewould create the infamous mash-up The Grey Album, then would be the Grammy-nominatedproducer of Gorillaz' multi-platinum Demon Days, then would become half of 2006's biggestrecording duo, Gnarls Barkley?
- Gary Kremen. I worked with Gary at a small softwarecompany during the summer of 1991, while I was still in college. After graduation, I did some morework for his own startup company. A few years later, when the Web was still new, the shrewd Mr.Kremen purchased the domain name sex.com. What followed is the stuff of Internet legend,when some other guy literally stole the domain name away from Gary, thus inciting an enormousyears-long lawsuit over sex.com. The end result: Gary won the suit and the domain, and I believehe has since sold it for somewhere between $11-$14 million. If that weren't enough, Gary is alsocredited as the founder of the popular dating site match.com. He's quite a character. A rich character.
- Rick Yorn. The summer after college, I also readscripts in Hollywood. Unpaid, of course. One of the outfits I read for was for a managementcompany run by Phyllis Carlyle (who also produced Seven). A young assistant manager, RickYorn, was the guy I actually reported to. Nice guy. I wondered whatever happened to him until1998, when I picked up The Hollywood Reporter and saw Rick mentioned... as the agentto Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, and Claire Danes. He started the ill-fated AMG with MikeOvitz, executive produced Gangs of New York and The Aviator, and is brother topopular singer/songwriter Pete Yorn (who I suspect owes his career to the well-connected Rick).
- Kat Likkel. I worked on conceptualizing an animated TVshow with Ms. Likkel way back in 1995. It never got off the ground, but her career sure did: Sheis currently one of the producers of the popular TV series My Name Is Earl and has writtenseveral episodes of this and other shows.
- Soon to be famous... Let's hear it for those folks whosestars are on the rise. First and foremost, my dear friend Thomas Lakeman, whose first novelThe Shadow Catchers was published in 2006 by St. Martins Minotaur. It wasn't a best-seller,but neither was John Grisham's first novel initially. Next we have my old high school buddy Robert SeanCoons, a talented painter whose one-man shows always sell out in the high-priced LA art marketand who can cite famous artist Ed Ruscha - and me too! - amongst his collectors. Then there'sMark Osborne, another CalArts alumnus, who made an animated short called More in1998 that not only won best short film at Sundance but was even nominated for an Oscar. The yearssince have been long and lean for Mr. Osborne, but after directing the live action piratesequences in our mutual friend Steve Hillenburg's Spongebob Squarepants feature, is nowco-directing the big 2008 CG feature Kung Fu Panda. Finally we have Jeff Han, aformer coworker and even an investor in Foreign Correspondents, who has achieved somenotoriety for inventing the world's first multi-touch screen. His demonstration of this amazingdevice has been a big hit on YouTube, and I would be surprised if this technology doesn't becomemainstream within the next few years.
|