Sometimes I Don't Affect History.

It's the late 70's.
I'm sitting in my office at Paramount, during my tenure working on one of my one-season wonders, and I receive a letter.
It's from a woman I knew in college named Sue Hyatt.
We hung out in the theater department there.
We weren't close.
But we were close enough that she felt comfortable enough to write to me years later, and I was receptive enough to read her letter.
It contained a request not untypical of the kind of requests I was receiving in those days.
She had a younger brother who was trying to make it as an actor.
Would I be willing to meet with him, and offer him whatever advice I deemed appropriate?
Would I perhaps even give him an audition?
Is it okay if he called you?

I thought to myself that all of this was okay with me.
But for whatever reason that I can no longer recall, I didn't feel the need to respond to Sue.
I guess I thought that if her brother called me, I'd talk to him, advise him, and even audition him.
He never called me, and I guess I'd just completely forgotten about it.
Maybe Sue thought I was just blowing her off.
That wasn't my intention.
I guess I just thought that by my not saying "No", that it was all okay with me.
Maybe I just wasn't thinking.
In any case, I never heard from Sue's brother, so I never talked to him, advised him, or auditioned him.

Cut to: about ten years later.

I'm at the McCarran Airport in Las Vegas.
A place I'd been to a lot.
I'd just arrived from L.A.
I'm at baggage claim, waiting for my bags.
I see someone I know, waiting for his bags.
Airports are the easiest places in the world to run into someone you know.
It's a guy I knew in college.
Also from the theater department.
Turns out he does a lot of Audio Video work at concerts and shows in Vegas.
He lives there full time.
We cut up old touches, and chat for a while.
We share a cab to my hotel.
We agree to have dinner that night.
He continues on home in the cab.
Over dinner, he tells me that he currently has a houseguest.
Ron Jeremy.
The pornstar.
Now, everyone who does porn is considered or considers him or herself a pornstar.
Nobody considers him or herself a porn actor.
Certainly not a porn supporting actor, or a porn character actor.
But few of them are genuine pornstars in the traditional sense of the word "star".
Ron Jeremy was a genuine Pornstar.
He was and is legendary.
At least parts of him were and are.
I asked my college chum how he happened to know Ron Jeremy well enough that he was hosting him in his house.
He said "Remember Sue Hyatt?'
I said "Sure."
He said "Ron Jeremy is her younger brother."

Now here's an instance where if I had contacted Sue, and said I'd be delighted to meet with her brother, and advise him, and even audition him, it wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference to history.
Because Ron Jeremy was and is one of the worst actors who ever lived.
I would have discovered this if I had auditioned him, and probably would have advised him, as tactfully as I could muster up, to pursue other career paths.
He basically found that solution without my help.


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