kingstoken

I got a fistbump from Tom Cruise yesterday.

No big deal.

For context, I went to the Mission Impossible red carpet event opening yesterday. The New York Adventure Club had gotten 20 red carpet passes issued to them, and because I get their newsletter, I was able to sign up and get in - a case of the right place, the right time, and knowing exactly where to look. There was waiting in line, there was standing in line, there was making sure I had the right information readily available, there was getting up as close to the front of the line as possible and then getting right up as close to the wall to the red carpet as possible. There was more waiting. There was a trivia question giveaway of sweatshirts and backpacks - to many, many people dressed in cocktail attire, no less - to keep energy going, and then the entertainment professionals getting people cheering.

During the waiting, I kept watching the crowds around me and on the other side of the fence. The way people were arranging cameras, getting microphones set up. I saw cast and crew walking around, glimpsing recognizable faces on the other side of the partition. The waiting around before and after intense, brief moments of activity seemed fitting, for what I know about making movies. Lights, camera, hang on, hold on, give me a moment, camera again, and then it's action. I watched pigeons fly around, and I joked about the largest animal that could be knocked unconscious by the sound system. I looked at the architecture of Lincoln Center and appreciated how Robert Moses might've liked this use of the space for a whole lot of reasons.

I got two passes and brought a friend with me, who kept checking her phone, as did many people around us. I took a few photos of Cruise at a distance, half a selfie with him, and not much else. I didn't want much else. I wanted to be right there in the moment. I wanted to take the three seconds I'd have to say something of momentary value to someone who meets more people in a day than I've probably met in the last two years.

He was announced, he was cheered for, he came out with fireworks and blaring music. He stood and smiled and waved as people looked at him, watched him, tried to capture a piece of him. There was gasping and there was cheering and I wasn't above looking at him standing there, a small army's worth of cameras from TV to handheld to drones all pointed at him. I thought about how the night before, people had waited to catch a glimpse of him walking from a car to his hotel door, and how video footage of that was uploaded to the internet, so yet more people would know where to go that night and where to wait. The architecture of Lincoln Center meant people could come out on balconies to look down at him, and people across the street could walk to the roofs of their buildings and stare down through binoculars like he was some kind of rare bird.

I knew he'd never be my friend.

Not in a negative way. I like to think we'd be friends, if the heavens parted and angels sang and we had genuine reason to speak to one another for more than a handful of seconds. It's a thought I'm happy to entertain. It's something I know won't happen unless the heavens part and angels sing. Meeting him on the red carpet was wonderful, and it wasn't celestial. I met a man. A handsome, charming man who's been meeting people for over forty years now. He's gotten quite good at it. He never learned my name and I already knew his. Everyone knew his name. Everyone there, and everyone who was watching him from far away.

We'd all been given small posters for cast and crew to sign, and I knew he'd stop for as long as it took him to deliver his signature. I'd known it was coming for some days, so I'd had time to prepare a few words to get them out as quickly and cleanly as possible.

I told him, "Minority Report was the first movie of yours I saw in a theater and I've been a fan ever since." He said he'd had a lot of fun making that, I said I'd had a lot of fun seeing it. I said, "I got these passes through the New York Adventure Club, and I'm sure the movie's going to be an adventure."

He gave me an adorable scrunched-up smile. And he offered me a fistbump.

Naturally, I took it.

There were other people who came by. I recognized the bird pin on Simon Pegg's jacket and told him, "A swift bird for a swift man!" and he liked that. I commented on people's clothing, occasionally asked for a handshake, and kept looking around at all the people coming by - the huge camera rigs, the tiny iPhone mounts, the drones buzzing by. The other actors, the sailors coming off an aircraft carrier, generally famous people I didn't recognize. Everything spinning around the gravitational pull of the star.

I got a pass to an early screening, and had a good time - anything more specific can wait a few days. But I'll still say it was a delightful movie to look at, and I couldn't understand why the person next to me kept regularly checking her phone. Later, I could barely understand why people were clustering around the service entrance's door in the hopes of glimpsing Cruise - barely, because I'd have liked a glimpse myself, and as much as I'd wanted one, I knew it was late and he'd probably like to get some sleep even more than I did, and if he was using the service entrance like I'd thought he might, that spoke to a level of necessary caution I shudder to think about. The only way he'd have been safe from people looking at him is if he'd gotten into a vehicle and then left the building, and even that would require several decoy vehicles.

I was there, and I felt the pull, and I still don't quite grasp it. I'm hoping I can hold onto that.

Yesterday I got a fistbump from the biggest movie star on the planet.

No big deal.