Awards Season
Personal Friends Only
An online magazine — are there any other kind? — recently posted a list of updated, modern etiquette rules. The theory, I suppose, is that the modern world is so vastly different from the world that existed a few years ago that the rules of social interaction need a top-down rethink.
That’s silly, of course. The old rules work just fine, with some a few obvious adjustments. It’s rude to look at your phone during dinner for about the same reason it was rude to pull out a book, back when people read books. You’re signaling to your dining companions that they’re boring. Even if that’s true, it’s rude to point it out so baldly. We didn’t need an online magazine to tell us that.
And we didn’t need a “new” rule about sending thank-you notes. You still have to send them promptly and, whenever possible, in pen and ink. And for those of you under 30 years old, you also need to stop whining about it.
There were an unusual amount of new rules about how to handle encounters with celebrities, although I suppose they’re necessary because these days there are a lot of celebrities running around loose. If you live in a mildly populated area, you’ve probably already experienced a friend suddenly stopping mid-sentence to gesture discreetly at a nearby person — someone utterly unknown to you — and saying something like, Look, it’s that guy from that thing! The contemporary world is full of famous people that you and I have never heard of.
And when you don’t know who that guy from that thing is, your friend will look at you like you’re the crazy one, you’re the out-of-touch loner. According to the audience measurement experts at Nielsen, there are 817,000 shows on television, so you should feel zero guilt about not knowing that guy, or any guy, from that thing, or any thing.
When it comes to famous people, modern etiquette is practical. If you know who they are, don’t pretend that you don’t. Don’t say Nice to meet you, what do you do? to Brad Pitt. He knows you’re lying. But if it’s that guy from the thing, you can ask away.
And you’re not supposed to gawk, or take surreptitious pictures — but you knew that, too. The general rule is, be cool. But not so cool that you pretend to mistake former CNN anchor Don Lemon for the maitre’d, as I did at a restaurant once.
He didn’t think it was funny, by the way.
But it can’t be easy to be famous. The few times I’ve been on the red carpet at an awards show, either directly behind or in front of a famous person, I’ve been really unnerved by how many cameras are whirring and snapping, and how the photographers shout out the name of the famous person. Harry! Harry! Courtney! Courtney! You know how it is when you’re walking in a crowd of people and you think you hear someone call your name and you look around, alarmed? That’s what it’s like to be famous, all day long.
If the rules of etiquette for normal people when they encounter celebrities are simple — no gushing, no mind games, no pics — the rules for the celebrities are even simpler. Famous people have to be nice to everyone, because everyone has a camera and a social media account and they are just one tweet away from becoming a world famous jerk.
On the other hand, it also works the other way. For instance, my top two famous people who I do not know are Jennifer Aniston and Jake Gyllenhall because both of them were nice to my dog.
Jennifer Aniston was sitting outside a restaurant in Malibu where I was sitting with my dog, who was wet and sandy from the beach, and she remarked on how handsome he was. (And he was, too.) For the record, I didn’t pretend not to know her and I didn’t take a secret pic.
And not too long after, at another restaurant, Jake Gyllenhall and I were sitting next to each other outside and he, too, was really nice to my dog. And not only did I acknowledge that I knew who he was, I also told him how much I enjoyed one of his early films, October Sky. To which he smiled and said, Hey, thanks man.
The outcome of both encounters is that I make sure to campaign for both of them for whatever awards they might be up for. I am a member of the Directors Guild, the Writers Guild, and the Screen Actors Guild and I have friends in the Motion Picture Academy and you can bet that everyone in my circle knows that Jake and Jen — that’s what I call them now — are certified Good People who deserve all of the statuettes.
And I guess that’s the most modern aspect of modern manners: the best reason to be polite is that it can really pay off.