Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Who Is Famous?

I was amazed, and I have to say a little pleased as well, to hear about this story.

In case you haven't read about it yet and the link doesn't work for some reason, it's this:

A few of the top talent agencies (in the US and the UK) have got together and decided that there "too many famous people". Apparently, in the old days it was OK - when you had Charlie Chaplin, Lindbergh, Greta Garbo, Stalin, and that was about it.

But now, with the internet, and with movie stars all wanting to be singers, and singers all wanting to be movie stars, and some people just wanting to be famous without actually doing anything at all, it's just all too much for the market to take, and the agencies are cooperating to do something about it.

It sounds like a good plan to me: some supposedly "famous" people have agreed to step down and become just "well known", with others, who are already "well known", down-grading themselves to being just "respected in their field".

It says that some "stars" like John Travolta, Minnie Driver and Linda Evangalista have agreed to relocate to other areas of the world where there is a shortage of famous people. I think it says those three are all going to Tierra Del Fuego.

I don't think the relocation thing will work very well, but they're also thinking of introducing local "fame quotas", so that you can't become famous in a country that already has its full count of famous people, until somebody dies. (The quota will presumably depend on size of population, or on the level of literacy, but it doesn't say.)

What do you think? Good plan?

2 comments:

Flaky said...

And what status does a humble childrens author as urself get? Are they moving you to Haiti?

Joe said...

Yeah, I'm off to Jersey.