The Minor Larcenies of Shameless Stars

Last winter, when the Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosted its blockbuster Vincent van Gogh show, a Hollywood actor of minor renown--let’s call him Bobby Bill Bourbon--decided it might be fun to wangle a private viewing.

At the time, “Van Gogh’s Van Goghs” was drawing 7,017 visitors per day, en route to a total paid attendance of 821,004. Sorry, LACMA media relations manager Adam Coyne says he told Bobby Bill’s publicist, but a private viewing was pretty much out of the question.

When Coyne then politely suggested that Bobby Bill might simply want to buy a $17.50 ticket and get in line, as many of L.A.’s cinematic luminaries--including Liz Taylor, Jack Nicholson and Madonna--were doing, the publicist snapped: “Bobby Bill doesn’t pay for tickets!”

“It was that sense of entitlement,” Coyne says in accounting for the publicist’s boorish behavior.

Call it logrolling, “cross promotion” or shameless mooching. By any name, it’s the time-honored L.A. tradition of celebrities and other Hollywood insiders, including members of the media, seeking to barter their fame, power or star clout in exchange for complimentary concert and theater tickets, free restaurant food, designer clothes, private museum walk-throughs and other perks not available to the unwashed masses.

It’s a complex and sensitive equation in Hollywood, where a fine line sometimes exists between a celebrity seeking to gain special favors and one lending support to an event or institution by gracing it with their presence for a few hours.

Indeed, many, if not most, denizens of L.A.’s entertainment industry regard these exchanges as normal and mutually beneficial. Glamorous, beautiful personages unquestionably add cachet and marketing value to a new nightclub, restaurant opening, opera gala or charity event. Often, publicists and promoters are only too happy to supply the rich and fabulous with “comp” tickets and other freebies as part of an unwritten “quid pro quo.”

“There’s a certain [feeling of] entitlement that people in the entertainment industry have for comp tickets,” says Gary Murphy, publicity director for the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, “because this is where we work, and we expect it. We’re all family. When you sit down at your mother’s dinner table, you don’t expect to get a bill at the end of it.”

But L.A.-based humorist Sandra Tsing Loh flatly rejects this familial analogy. “It’s the Borgia family,” she says in a militant tone.

An occasional stage performer, as well as a writer and National Public Radio commentator, Loh has experienced many sides of the celebrity-comp calculus. Last fall, while performing her one-woman show “Aliens in America”--which she co-produced in West Hollywood, partly out of her own pocket--Loh gladly gave away some comp seats to friends, peers and longtime supporters.

What bugged her were the arrogant, last-minute demands for free tickets, not only from celebrities who could’ve bought the entire house out of spare change, but also from midlevel industry functionaries.

“There are some celebs and semi-celebs who when they come to a show of mine are so nice and lovely and always pay their own way,” Loh says. “It’s always these middle-manager, shoe-salesmen, weaseling [people] who want a freebie.”

Few entertainment professionals probably would dispute that Hollywood rank does, and should, have its privileges. Like motor oil, celebrity comps and perks are seen as an essential fluid that keeps L.A.’s massive entertainment-promotional complex humming like a new Miata.

“We basically never turn celebrities away or turn them down, of course within guidelines such as giving us as much [advance] notice as possible,” says Anjali Raval, promotions and publicity manager for the House of Blues.

Within Hollywood circles, providing free passes to movie screenings, film premieres and high-profile performing arts events is considered a professional courtesy, as well as good business. Ditto with inviting stars, major and minor, to your disco, restaurant or art gallery opening, especially if you’re a newcomer hoping to seize your 15 minutes in the spotlight.

“Celebrities add dazzle,” says Richard Hoffman, executive vice president of the venerable public relations firm Warren Cowan and Associates. “They’re doing you a favor by coming out to your event, and by coming out they’re going to give your event more exposure.”

Jay Weston, a movie producer (“Lady Sings the Blues”) who also edits a monthly restaurant newsletter, agrees that a celebrity’s face value usually more than repays any perks that may be bestowed by a mai^tre d’ho^tel or theater owner. Nevertheless, he says, most established L.A. restaurateurs limit their freebies to dessert or a fancy bottle of wine, at most.

“There are so many celebrities, and we’re so jaded in this town that it’s very unusual that a restaurant is going to pick up a tab,” Weston adds. “Steven Spielberg, they wouldn’t pick up the tab because they figure he can afford it, and his mother owns a deli kosher restaurant.”

Probably the most extensive system of celebrity cross-patronage occurs in the fashion industry, where stars are regularly “loaned” designer clothes, custom jewelry and other accessories in hopes they’ll be photographed wearing them while sashaying around town. A few celebrities, however, hold themselves to higher rules. Nicole Kidman is genuinely admired by fashionistas as one actress who refuses to be “gifted”; by some accounts, she buys any gown that she wears. (Kidman’s publicist says the actress does not comment on these matters.)

Attitudes toward celebrity comping vary from venue to venue. Big theaters with plenty of seats and high-end nightclubs with deep pockets usually can afford to pass out limited numbers of comps--up to a point.

“Our rule of thumb basically is, [if] we are expecting celebrities for an event and part of the event is them walking down the red carpet and being photographed, then we comp them, which is just being equitable,” says a Los Angeles Philharmonic spokesman who asked not to be named. “If they call us in the middle of the week and say, ‘Gosh, I have to see [classical violinist] Midori this weekend,’ then we ask them to pay for the seats because they’re coming to us about a performer and we’re generally a nonprofit organization.”

On the other hand, for L.A.’s numerous small theaters, comp tickets can take a disproportionately big bite out of the budget. “There really is no such thing as a comp,” says Ken Werther, a theater publicist and producer. “Somebody’s paying for that ticket.”

Still, it’s the etiquette of comping (or lack thereof), rather than its existence, that tends to raise hackles. “They usually call with quite a bit of attitude: ‘My name is so and so, and I want a pair of tickets to such and such,’ ” Werther says. “It’s not even that they feel they have to defend it.”

But though many celebs regard perks as a virtual birthright, a minority are known for not only paying their way, but going out of their way to express their gratitude. For instance, LACMA’s Coyne says the museum received several thank-you notes from glitterati who visited Van Gogh, including Ali MacGraw.

Fran Drescher of TV’s “The Nanny” paid twice to see the Van Gogh show. The second time she came with a group of friends during the exhibition’s final weeks, when LACMA was keeping its galleries open 24 hours every day to meet surging demand. “She was very gracious and she even did a CNN interview, and I think she did an [Associated Press] interview, which isn’t necessarily fun at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night,” says Coyne.

Drescher, a LACMA Circle patron, says that aiding the museum “is really my pleasure because I want to support the arts in the city that I live in.” It sounds corny, she admits, but “I am a great believer that the good fortune I have received in my career, all the wonderful things that have come my way, I really must use my celebrity to try to help.”

There you have it, Bobby Bill: Ask not what your VIP chits can do for you, but what you can do with them.