Justine's Hijacked Fame

Justine's Hijacked Fame

Bruce Von Stiers

Have you ever thought that you'd like to be famous? Maybe, for just a moment. Have people all over know your face and your name? Just possibly grab that Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame?

Once you have that fame, what do you do with it? Are you able to keep it up, or, as the expression goes, will your fame fade? And what happens to you as a person, with all of this fame? Can you just be yourself, or would that be impossible to do? And what happens to your fame when you aren't so famous anymore?

I know that these are kind of bizarre questions. But these questions kept popping up in my mind when I began reading a book by Justine Bateman. Yes, that Justine Bateman. The one who played Mallory on Family Ties. And who has written, directed and produced several films.

The book that Justine wrote is titled Fame: The Hijacking of Reality. The book was originally released in 2018 in hardback but is now being re-released in a paperback edition. Both the hardback and paperback editions were published by Akashic Books.

Justine dives right in with the statement “I fucking hate memoirs.” So, you know that this isn't going to be a tell-all about her life. Justine drops the “f-bomb” in this book a lot. It gets the point across, the angst, but I'm not sure that all of it was necessary.

Although this isn't a memoir, Justine does provide a few snapshots of events in her life. Events that help provide context for how she had to deal with fame. Like trying to get into a club at age 21, only to be told she's not that old, because Mallory isn't 21. She goes into detail about what happened due to a tabloid article about a supposed “trial marriage” that collapsed. But how the tabloid piece spun things in one direction, whereas the truth was the complete opposite.

Justine writes about how being famous can take a toll on a person. You can't just be you. That people expect you to be exactly like whatever image they have of you. And that fans, or non-fans, spray you with this fame that you'll never get away from. That's one point that kind of stuck, is that once you're famous, you never can go back to being not famous. Even if your fame has faded into somewhat obscurity, you are still famous.

Some of what Justine writes, she just rolls with it. Doling out bits and pieces of what fame can, and will, do to a person. But tucked into the book are elements of true angst, frustration and even anger about how fame overtook some of her life. And how fame interrupts the normalcy you once had. That fame highjacks that normalcy, that reality. So, when you, as Justine puts it, have fame sprayed all over you, you are suddenly in a whole different reality.

Besides her own life experiences, Justine mentions things that happened with other famous people. How Treat Williams all of a sudden couldn't hang out at a local establishment due to one of his so-called buddies bringing up his celebrity. And a couple things that Moon Zappa related to her. There is one story about people coming to the gate of a famous person demanding to see him. When told to go away, they mentioned they had travelled 60 miles just to see the famous person. As if, by driving such a distance, they deserved an audience with the famous person.

These things and a lot more are covered in the book. At times it seems like the book rambles on, but Justine does make sense in what she writes. That being famous is not what most people think it is like. And, if you seek the spotlight, and want to stay there, fine. But if you're famous and want a sense of normalcy, being able to step away from celebrity and fame is not easy, and often times very traumatic.

For me, Fame was quite an eye-opener. You read about or see things about famous people who fade into the woodwork when not at an event or doing whatever they're famous for. But the others who can't shake the fame that has been put upon them, people such as Justine, life is a whole lot different.

Fame: The Hijacking of Reality is available at major book retailers. You can also order a copy of the book through the publisher, Akashic Books. Their webpage for the book is https://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/fame-paperback/

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