How to Become Famous in Two Weeks or Less

  Praise for How to Become Famous in Two Weeks or Less

  “Let’s face it, who doesn’t want their fifteen minutes of fame! But the road to getting there can be as difficult as crawling over broken glass. Karen and Mel take you on an ‘ouch-free’ red carpet ride to the VIP room in this great read, with lots of laughs along the way.”

  —ROSHUMBA WILLIAMS Supermodel

  Acclaim for Melissa de la Cruz’s novel Cat’s Meow

  “Grab de la Cruz’s debut novel and get swept up in Cat’s whirlwind quest for fame, fortune, and designer outlet stores.”

  —Glamour

  “Melissa de la Cruz captures all the nuances of the New York fashion sillies with wit and accuracy.”

  —TODD OLDHAM

  “A gift-bag of satire, spectacle, and name-dropping. It’s all too fabulous for words!”

  —MICHAEL MUSTO

  “Melissa de la Cruz has created a rambunctious first novel that deserves to have its every page encrusted with sand, its binding ringed with condensation from highball glasses. At once calculating and clueless, Cat is a hilarious Virgil…. Writing in the zippy, breathless argot of Vogue and Vanity Fair, Cruz pinpoints the sinister vanities of this air-headed realm while making it all sound absurdly fun.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  For anyone who:

  never got invited to the prom,

  always got picked last for teams in gym class,

  wondered where to sit in the school cafeteria,

  spent most Friday nights in front of the television,

  was too afraid to try out for a talent show,

  was in the “cool group” but secretly felt like a misfit,

  click your heels (make that stilettos) together three times

  and repeat after us,

  “Fame and fortune await me. Fame and fortune await me.”

  P.S. And to our families, friends, and Mike (Mel’s husband),

  who always believed we would become famous,

  even if we don’t have the guitar-shaped

  swimming pools to prove it.

  Come on, shake the covers of this sloth … for sitting softly cushioned, or tucked in bed, is no way to win fame; and without it man must waste his life away, leaving such traces of what he was on earth as smoke in wind and foam upon the water.

  —Dante, THE INFERNO

  Fame, what you like is in the limo …

  Fame, what you need you have to borrow …

  —David Bowie, “Fame”

  Contents

  Foreword

  Introduction: Chasing Fame

  Days 1–2: A “Brand” New You

  Days 2–5: There’s No Such Thing as Bad Publicity, Darling

  Days 5–8: Holy Entourage!

  Days 8–10: Managing the Press Machine

  Days 10–12: The Schmooze Factor

  Days 12–14: Inside the Velvet Ropes

  Day 14-Forever, If You’re Lucky: Swag-a-licious, Baby!

  Two Weeks and Onward: Life Beyond the First Fifteen Minutes

  Acknowledgments

  This Foreword Brought to You By …

  Since we were writing a book on how to become famous, we thought it would be excellent—nay, mandatory!—to have a bona fide celebrity write our book foreword. You know, so they could blather on about how great it is to be famous, how they’re put on a pedestal, lavished with gifts, but also mention one or two of the perils (oh, the perils!) inherent in the privileged life they lead (no privacy, can’t have dinner with anyone of the opposite sex without the media harping on your new love life …). We wanted to find someone that you, our reader, could relate to; someone young, pretty, and likable—with blockbuster movie (or television) credits to her name, who would earnestly tell you how great and hilarious our book was.

  We rifled through our Rolodexes and came up with the perfect person. A controversial starlet who had appeared in numerous big-budget movies and played a very familiar TV character for years on a major network during a prime-time slot. We had her personal cell phone number, which we procured during a trip to Las Vegas when we bonded with her over blackjack. We called to ask if she’d be willing to do us the honor of writing our foreword and to our delight, she agreed!

  (We thanked her with a gift from our goodie-bag stash: candles and bath salts!)

  She admitted that she hated to write and asked us to simply interview her on the phone and write it for her. No problem, we thought! We could certainly pull that one off. After three months of stalking her by phone, she finally called us at seven A.M. to give us her quotes. She rambled semi-coherently about fame, fortune, and how she designed her own dresses for awards ceremonies. At one point, she referred to fame as “Christmas on acid.” It was a mess, but we endeavored to fix it—editing it here, rewriting it there, chopping it up and rewording it so that it could have some semblance of prose.

  But before we even sent her the final draft, we got a call from one of her friends who we happen to be friends with, too. Apparently, our movie/TV star no longer wanted to write the foreword since the lawyer of her high powered, much older Hollywood boyfriend told her it wasn’t a good idea. We were shocked. She told us she was “excited” and “flattered” and “honored” to be a part of our project. And we were upset. We sent her a gift, dammit! We called her a dozen times to find out what went awry and tried to salvage the situation. But we never heard back from her. Not even to apologize. Nothing.

  Instead, we got an angry call from her manager, someone who was clearly playing the role of the wicked stage mother. She berated us for not going through the starlet’s publicist from the get-go. She called us unprofessional and said that the foreword we had written in no way depicts her client. (We faxed a copy to the starlet’s publicist after the rejection call to say “See how cute this is…. Please convince her not to bail.”) We tried to defend ourselves, but no amount of groveling, begging, and pleading would do. The starlet was out. And it was our problem.

  “That’s Hollywood. Celebrities are like that,” we were told by those in the biz. (Later, when the starlet showed up at an awards ceremony in an atrocious dress that was a veritable fashion disaster, we had a good chuckle at the karmic boomerang.)

  Our nice editor gave us a month to find another celebrity. But we were panicked—and desperate. This is why they call trying to convince a celebrity to do something “celebrity wrangling.” Celebrities are a skittish, difficult-to-pin-down bunch, akin to a herd of stampeding buffalo. Trying to lasso one is an art in itself. We messengered our manuscript to every publicist, agent, and producer we knew, even to those we just met once, at a party, four years ago.

  A call to a certain pretty woman who makes twenty million a picture garnered us no luck. “Sorry,” her publicist said before we even finished our sentence, “but she doesn’t do things like that, not even for knitting books. And she’s really into knitting.” We were friendly with the manager of a much-married singer/dancer/actress who likes to think she’s still “from the block,” hoping that she would understand our plight and happily lend her services. But her manager said, “not unless she gets royalties.”

  So it was on to Plan B. We sent one to the cute star of a racy HBO sitcom, who was hot on the idea until she realized our book “wasn’t a novel.” We sent one to a very famous former child-actor. His publicist didn’t think it was a good idea for him to talk about fame since he was in the middle of attempting a comeback. We received the great news that the edgy widow of a dead rock star was reading our manuscript on her Hawaiian vacation. Unfortunately, we read in Page Six the next day that her trip to Maui ended in her arrest at the airport, so we figured,
correctly, that writing a book foreword was the last thing on her mind. At a fancy dinner, we sat next to the famous daughter of a red-carpet maven, who raved about our article in Marie Claire and loved the idea of our book. She promised to pen our foreword. We were beside ourselves. She’d gone to an Ivy league college! She could write! But needless to say, we’re still waiting….

  So alas. We do not have a celebrity foreword. We weren’t able to find a famous person who will tell you that our book is funny and smart, sarcastic and honest, a journey through the ups-and-downs of trying and succeeding and trying and failing, in the art of being famous. If you’re the kind of person (like us) who gets haircuts that resemble famous people’s haircuts, or buys boots because somebody famous bought the same pair, you are out of luck. You’ll just have to trust us.

  Introduction

  CHASING FAME

  Like anyone who’s ever stuffed her face full of popcorn while watching Joan Rivers needle celebrities on the red carpet, we have been obsessed with fame and those who are famous for as long as we can remember. We longed for attention—glamorous dresses, standing ovations, and a reason to thank the Academy. Growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey (Karen) and San Francisco (Melissa), we used to transform our bedrooms into theaters and produce one-girl shows with our tolerant parents as our only audience. We wanted to guest star on Romper Room, Sesame Street, and The Electric Company because we believed it would lead to the kind of success that would garner us more than three and a half stars on Star Search.

  Unfortunately, we couldn’t act to save our lives—Karen tried out for countless plays in elementary school through senior year in high school, always landing the part of understudy for a non-speaking role, while Melissa developed an acute attack of stage fright during a kindergarten Christmas performance as the an gel of the Lord who forgot all her lines. Moreover, our last names weren’t Spelling or Spielberg. We had to face reality: we would never find a place on Hollywood’s coveted A-list or land a role as a spoiled virgin on some kind of teen dramedy.

  We spent junior high imagining our lives as rock stars. The screaming, frenzied fans! The skintight leather pants! The gravity-defying haircuts! The world tours! The feather boas! The limousine lifestyle! The shopping! It seemed to suit us perfectly. C’mon, we air-guitared and handled fake microphones with divalike aplomb. Multiple karaoke experiences however, confirmed the unthinkable—we had the worst voices on Earth! And what good is being a rock star if you’re not a lead singer? As much as we longed to be fitted for our own Gaultier-designed cone bras (remember Madonna’s, circa “Express Yourself”?), we had to admit that mega, arena-stadium-filling, iconic rock stardom was not in the cards either.

  How would we ever achieve our quest for massive recognition? we wondered. The covers of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, W, Elle, and even the JCPenney catalog were closed to us. A modeling agent who visited Melissa’s all-girls high school on a talent-scouting trip broke the bad news: she was five inches too short. And at four feet, eleven inches, Karen never even stood a chance at catwalk glory. (Oh, well. We weren’t prepared to give up Cad-bury chocolate bars!)

  We were never going to be famous. So we did the next best thing. We moved to New York City. And a funny thing happened on the way to the subway.

  In New York, we soon came to realize, anyone could be famous. As we devoured the pages of glossy magazines and scanned the gossip columns of daily metropolitan newspapers at a feverish pace, we discovered a city filled with people we had never heard of but who boasted tons of press clips anyway. This glittery group was invited to the best parties, given gaggles of free clothes, and never had to pay their bar tabs. Oh, sure, some had last names that doubled as condiment brands and hotel chains. Some had powerful husbands. But most had no name and no talent to speak of, other than the ability to look pretty in the right dress.

  They were famous simply for being famous. And we wanted to be one of them.

  Instead, we wound up writing about them. As journalists we covered the salmon-tartar and caviar-potato circuit, went backstage at fashion shows, survived throbbing champagne hangovers, and perfected the art of talking in patently fake British accents (the better to wrangle invitations with!). We wrote about the rarefied world of private jets, chartering yachts, celebrity dentists, and invitation-only Botox parties. We befriended publicists who had access to the hottest celebrities and the most exclusive shindigs. We rubbed shoulders and thrust tape recorders under the noses of Ethan Hawke, Jason Priestly, Puff Daddy, Marisa Tomei, Will Ferrell, Alicia Silverstone, and many, many more famous people who brushed us off with a gruff, “Oh, there’s Alec (Baldwin). I’m going to say hi.” (A true story!)

  We may have had the dress, the shoes, and the bylines. But we were still on the sidelines. So close, yet so far from our very own stars on Hollywood Boulevard.

  SMALL WORLDS

  The media is a small industry. Everyone knows everyone—at least by name. I had heard of Melissa de la Cruz a million times. I knew her as the fashion addict (she wrote a style column for a groovy Web site called hintmag.com), who had penned a hilarious novel called Cat’s Meow about a wanna-be socialite that was a must-read with the catty jet set. When I read the opening line of her book, “I am the type of girl who laughs loudly, smokes incessantly, and is hell-bent on destroying herself, but stylishly,” I became obsessed with her.

  She gets it, I thought. Her book totally encapsulated my bipolar, love-hate relationship with a city where anyone can be the next It girl, the Nazis who man the velvet ropes judge you by your shoes (Manolos, darling), and Page Six (the New York Post’s gossip column) is God.

  Then I saw her picture in New York magazine. She was wearing an insane white silk, one-shouldered top with cartoon-like kittens all over it by Alice Roi, a trendy New York designer. I owned that same shirt! (I found out later that Mel and I bought them from the same store, where they had only two in stock because the owners thought, No way would more than two people want something this ridiculous.) I knew right then, I had to be her friend. She was just like moi!

  At a friend’s brunch party, I spotted her at a table across from mine. Wearing gold high-heeled boots with torn “dirty” jeans and a fur-trimmed pink corduroy jacket, she was every bit the cool, brashly funny fashionista I had imagined her to be. She had the whole table agog, laughing heartily while divulging the inside scoop on perhaps the most well-known fashion editrix, who was rumored to be going bald and had her hairpiece fly off during an editorial meeting. I wanted in on that convo!

  But I wasn’t sure how to introduce myself. I didn’t want to seem like a stalking fan. I had devoured all of her pieces. The one she had written about her weakness over giddy indulgences like fur tippets, zipper mules, Victorian jean jackets, and all the superfluous trends of the moment was holding court right smack in the middle of my corkboard in front of my desk. I constantly read it for adjective inspiration when I suffered from writer’s block. She might be “just” a writer, but to me, she was famous.

  She was the Melissa de la Cruz, the girl who did high-profile book readings, traveled to the Hamptons on a chopper, and wrote outrageous stories about crashing her fiancé’s bachelor party—while disguised as a man! And she seemed refreshingly laid-back, unaware of her fabulosity. Sometimes, when people reach the limelight, they lose sight of who they are. They think their you-know-what doesn’t stink. And they have that constant neck-craning habit of having a conversation with one person while looking over their shoulder to find someone better to talk to. But Melissa didn’t project any snobbery.

  I decided to approach, and as I walked toward her, she practically leaped off her seat. “You’re Karen Robinovitz!” she yelped. Oh, my God. MdlC knew who I was! It was love at first sight! And the rest, as they say, is history.

  MEETING THE $2,500-BOOTS GIRL

  I had been a fan of Karen’s for a long time before I met her. Her name was popping up everywhere! I was slightly annoyed. She was a writer too, but she seemed to be living a much, m
uch more fun life than I was. There she was, photographed in St. Bart’s on a yacht next to Liev Schreiber in Harper’s Bazaar. Or else writing for the Times about her unorthodox foot laser treatment because of her predilection for wearing four-inch heels. Or else looking foxy in a Details spread, wearing nothing but a cat mask and rhinestone underwear at an haute orgy in Soho. The $2,500 Manolo Blahnik knee-high boots she wore in a photo shoot about her “favorite shoes” was the icing on the cake—and more than I could take. “Who is she?” I groaned, throwing the magazine across the room in disgust. Even if I wrote about Manolos, I had never owned a pair.

  At a brunch organized by a mutual friend, I finally met my “rival.” She was wearing a ripped-up T-shirt with Karen playfully spray-painted on the chest, just like a similarly personalized one Madonna was sporting that week on MTV. She had the shortest denim miniskirt I have ever seen, with the waistband and the hem hacked off, so that her Calvin Klein boxers peeked out of the top (and the bottom). On her feet were buttery-soft calf-hugging fringed moccasins, and to complete the outfit, she wore these crazy earrings that looped continuously from one earlobe to the other. She looked fierce, tribal, funny, and over-the-top. She had this huge grin on her face, and when she sat down she pulled out a quilted Chanel bag. Purple. Suede. Gorge.

  She kept getting up and taking people’s pictures with her disposable camera. She seemed to know everybody at the restaurant but me. And I desperately wanted her to be my friend. I grabbed her elbow as she made her rounds. “You’re Karen Robinovitz!”