Hey there! I have a character in my novel who NEEDS to find a way to get in contact with her favorite rock star, but is little more than a fan. Have any of you ever gone to great lengths to meet a favorite celebrity? Any stories will be helpful, the weirder and more complicated the better as it has to take her half the novel to get to him. Stories that involve seduction and illicit activities will be most helpful as she fancies herself a courtesan. You can PM me if you're not comfortable making it public.
Gimme some stalking stories!
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5,549 / 50,000
Oct 3, 2007 - 21 08
Meeting someone in a band, eh? Well, first up, if you don't have skills that put you in their general orbit (guitar tech, lighting designer, venue official, radio DJ, etc.), at least part of it will probably be luck. (I kind of hope that your novel will include humor, because a lot of these tips have a ton of comedic possibility... :> )
That said, if you can't get into the inner circle, get into the circle beyond that. Or beyond THAT. Get to know people and volunteer for things and enter contests. Be extra nice to the security dudes. If it's a smaller venue with a small travelling crew, bring homemade cookies and send them backstage to the band AND the crew. (Find out their limitations / preferences first. Not impressive to send regular chocolate chip cookies back to a vegan.)
You can also get close to other fans who seem to be "close" to the band, but that can really be a gamble. You don't know how the band actually views that person until you're inside with them, and then it's too late to recover your reputation if your new "friend" has a security block on them.
Prefer to use the body-as-backstage-pass route for this character? Have her get front row tickets and wear skimpy clothes (as long as she looks good in them). It's not a guaranteed shoo-in for getting backstage (depending on the band member's age, feelings that night, marital status, proximity of spouse and/or children, etc.), but it can work if you write it that way. :D
If her desires only extend to meeting the rock star (but not using her seduction on them), she could use seduction on the security guys and/or roadies to get backstage. Beware this approach, though. It invites all sorts of negative outcomes, including having the star refuse to talk to her because he's lost all respect for her. Some bands even used to have "special" backstage passes (often coded) for girls who used seduction on the crew to get backstage. Their treatment was sometimes less than pleasant and even if all had a good time, all respect was lost. Again, it depends on what she wants out of the final encounter with the star.
Desperate approach? Call every hotel in town and ask for a band member. Will it work? Almost never. Some don't stay in hotels. Sometimes they don't happen to stay in a hotel in that particular town, opting to stay in the previous town the night before and the next town the night after the concert. Often they use aliases. I've talked to a lot of people, and this approach is much more time-consuming than it's ever worth.
Accidentally ending up in the right hotel? Priceless. :D
6,772 / 50,000
Oct 3, 2007 - 23 26
Thanks for the ideas! That's super-helpful. I shall incorporate it into my collective of "what ifs" and see if anything sticks.
50,513 / 50,000
Nov 15, 2007 - 18 42
I used to be kind of obsessed with this guy in a band--ok, not really "kind of". Anyway. I was very good at getting to shows like six hours early and just waiting around by the tour bus for him to show up. And I did get to talk to him a few times that way. I usually didn't because um, he kind of hates his fans and tries to avoid them. But. A few times. That isn't really complicated I know, sorry, but if you want to make it more dramatic you can talk about like this one time I was doing it and was wearing practically nothing (of course) and it was Chicago in the end of Oct., probably like 30 degrees, and I had to sit there wrapped up in a blanket waiting for him. Good times. Anyway, let me know if you have any other questions about what being in that mentality is like or anything.
----------Quinn
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The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it. ~Ernest Hemingway
http://www.museumofidiots.com
13,071 / 50,000
Nov 15, 2007 - 19 38
The craziest thing I did to meet one of my favorite celebrities was to fly across the country to attend a concert event he organized (even though he wasn't going to be performing on stage). I lived in Florida, and it was in Los Angeles. On top of that, it was the week of my finals, so I took some of my finals early so I could make the trip.
I went to the concert event for both days, keeping an eye out for him the whole time. I asked some of the security guards if there was any way I could meet him, not expecting any results, but they actually told me where the backstage door was. XD So after the show ended on the second night, I waited outside, along with a bunch of other fans, for about 2-3 hours. It was really cold out, too. But of course all of this was worth it when he finally walked through the door and I got to shake hands with him, give him a gift (a drawing of him I had made) and take a photo with him (well actually two photos since the camera went off at the wrong time the first time XD)!
Best day of my life. =)
Oh, and the concert event was awesome, too!
51,532 / 50,000
Nov 15, 2007 - 21 02
We had a concert venue in my hometown that some pretty major acts came through, but only one hotel nice enough for a band to stay at, so without any real information, people in the know would go and wait at the hotel to wait and see if a tour bus would show up after the show. My older brothers did this (I was a bit younger and too young to go out) and they met most of the big acts that defined the 80s. And got some pretty cool stories out of it too -