I Saw George Lucas Plain

. . . outside a dinner honoring Steven Spielberg. That was the first time I realized how truly hellish fame would be. The paparazzi were yelling his name, and the names of anyone else they recognized who walked through the doors. The constant yelling of names had become a very loud whirring of helicopter blades. There was something intensely ugly about it, and Lucas is about my height—that is to say, very short for a man. He almost looked scared, though I'm sure he had become acclimated to these events.

Mira Sorvino was near me on my other side. Her star was just starting to rise, and she was almost in tears from the crush of photographers, and the constant yelling of her name.

Holy fucking shit, I thought. How many people in this country think they want to live this way? No privacy. No boundaries. People in your face day and night. You'd live in a fishbowl. Hell.

Lucas was at a party once in the 90s where a friend of mine had wandered by. She had just started doing some writing for Spielberg, and she got introduced to Lucas, who really seemed to embody the classic engineer sensibility: he wanted to talk to her endlessly. I'm not so sure he was interested in her, exactly. It's just that his lack of social skills made him want to play it safe. Why look for another conversation when you already have one?

She found herself using the word "boyfriend" as much as she could, and plotting about how to exit the conversation without hurting his feelings. And she laughed at the irony of it all: most actresses in this town would have killed to have Lucas pinning them down in conversation at a party.

Yes, you are thinking. But they have nice toys.

No number of toys would be worth living on the front lines in the entertainment industry. Not a car. Not a house. Nothing.