How to Become Famous in Two Weeks or Less

by Melissa de la Cruz

  I rang the buzzer. I waited. I rang again. And waited some more. I considered leaving, but suddenly a thin man with a sharp nose, a thick mop of brown locks, and a brown fedora, who was one of the guys I had spotted at the restaurant earlier that week, appeared and asked me if I was waiting to get into [the name of the place]. I was, I said. “I know [the name of the owner.]”

  “Really,” he asked, “how?”

  “From around. You know,” I said.

  “That’s funny,” he replied, “because I don’t know you.”

  I turned beet red. “God, I’m an ass,” I said.

  “You are,” he confirmed. He unlocked the door, walked into his bar, and left me standing in the cold. As I turned away in defeat, the door opened.

  “I thought about it,” he said, handing me the infamous waiver. “You’re in.”

  BEFRIENDING THE GATEKEEPERS

  You, too, can buddy up to doorpeople at clubs, event planners, and OPP (other people’s publicists) in order to get access into the hottest restaurants, parties, and clubs.

  • Go clubbing on an “off night,” and befriend the doorkeepers (the bouncers and clipboard carriers who decide who gets inside). Do this regularly for weeks. After a while, you will be one of their favorite faces—and you’ll never have to wait on line again.

  • Have your “publicist” contact the club’s owner or publicist in order to get your name on the list—and forewarn them of your imminent appearance. It will not only get you in, but assure you stellar treatment.

  • People who don’t have to wait on line and are always on the list usually toil in the fashion, media, entertainment, and beauty industries. Get yourself a card (make sure the paper stock is good in order to make it believable) to prove you’re “in the biz” and flash it at the door as you make your way in.

  • Research the club and start dropping names. “I know Rudolph. He’s expecting me.” If that doesn’t work, try, “Is Kenny Kenny around?” (There’s always someone important who goes by the same first name—twice.)

  • Dress up. No one likes letting in the slobs. It’s a shallow life, but someone’s got to live it.

  • Leave your boyfriend at home. Doorpeople like to let in single women (especially good-looking single women), not single men. So bring your most attractive friends for the ride.

  • Flirt. A friend of ours flashed her breasts to a doorman in order to avoid waiting on line and possibly getting rejected at the door. He looked at her, dumbfounded, and said, “Go in.” It must have been her triple-Ds. Don’t try this unless you can back it up with something as eye-popping.

  • If you’re a man, consider showing up in drag. You’ll be an instant hit and the club will appreciate your “flava.” But only if you’re shorter than five-eight and a perfect size six.

  • Be polite. Bitchiness won’t get you anywhere. In fact, it will inspire the doorperson to make you suffer just for fun.

  • Slip them a Benjamin. Grease the palm. It’s a lot to invest—but you’re investing in your future at the club. They’ll never forget you.

  SCOPING OUT THE PARTY CIRCUIT

  DIAL R FOR REDIAL

  A famous drum-’n’-bass DJ-ing duo from London was coming to town to throw some chichi, superexclusive costume party. There was a big buzz about the event, especially in modish downtown circles populated by high-profile artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and the ilk. It was even written about in the New York Times, but no details of the wheres and whens were disclosed. Ironically, the only prerequisite required for getting in called for just one thing—showing up. The problem: it was virtually impossible to score the coordinates.

  Instead of invitations, the hosts sent a card with a telephone number on it. When you called the number, you were told to leave your number on the answering machine. The day of the party you’d be contacted with the details … and not a moment before. The shindig could have been in Guam, for all anyone knew. I wanted that phone number! I don’t even think I cared so much about the party, even though Dmitri, the famous DJ from Paris, was spinning. I merely wanted the satisfaction of knowing I had the option of going. But I had no clue as to how to make this happen.

  That week I wound up on a photo shoot for work and I overheard one of the models talking about the soiree. She said that she had received the coveted card with the special phone number and had just called to report her information. “I can’t remember the number, but it’s on my cell phone,” she told her friend in her charming British accent. “I’ll give it to you so we can both go.”

  She slinked off to wardrobe to change into some Alexander McQueen frock. Her cell phone was nearby, resting atop her Chanel bag. Here was my opportunity to do some PI work. And I took it. Remaining calm, cool, and very Alias, I scrolled through the call log and found the ten numbers she had recently called. No one has to know and no one gets hurt, I told myself in attempt to ease my conscience. I slyly redialed each, hoping that one would lead to the party line. By my sixth attempt, I was golden. Drum-’n’-bass purred through the phone. A British voice congratulated me for having the secret number. I left my information after the beep. And—lo and behold—I was contacted the day of the party with all of the information I needed to reach the ten-thousand-square-foot loft—complete with indoor pool—near the West Side Highway.

  But the night of the party, I got food poisoning and couldn’t go! Talk about karmic boomerang! But at least I can always say I was one of the elite few hundred, lucky enough to receive the coveted info.

  HOW TO FIND OUT ABOUT EVENTS AND UNLEASH YOUR INNER SPY

  The first step of going to a party is finding out who’s throwing it, when it’s happening, and where it’s being held. Time to do your research. Check out:

  • The Fashion Calendar. If you want to know about store openings, runway shows, and glitzy fashion parties, the $400 subscription pays itself off in free champagne and caviar. It lists every fashion happening from New York to Paris.

  • When all else fails, bribing PR agents is not unheard of. It’s common knowledge that those with money but no access—say, investment bankers with the hankering to hang out with models at glitzy media events—routinely pay a monthly fee to be added to PR guest lists.

  • Newspaper listings. The Arts and Lifestyle sections of your newspaper are good sources for exclusive events. Once you spot the event you’d like to attend, put your “publicist” to work to find out who’s planning the event in order to get you an invitation.

  • Start your own Web site. The last time we checked, www.redcarpet.com was still an available domain name. Register and begin to hit the scene as a “reporter” who “covers” events. Get a business card to make it official and hand them out like crazy. Post photos from the soiree on-line. If you build it, they will log on and tell you when their parties are.

  • Trail someone who’s going to an event you’d like to attend—and follow them inside the velvet ropes by pretending to be part of their entourage.

  • Pose as a photographer, although running around a party with a camera around your neck is not a very fabulous position to be in.

  • Put your name on every mailing list for galleries, stores, and restaurants, because when they have events, they are likely to inform you.

  • Become a museum or opera member. Art museums, the opera, and the ballet hold lavish affairs that anyone can attend … for a price. But most of these galas offer “dessert and dancing” tickets for a fraction of the typical $1,000-a-plate fee.

  MUSIC … MAKES THE PEOPLE … COME TOGETHER

  The “celebrity DJ” is a nascent trend on the New York party scene and while Hollywood connections are still the easiest way to parlay a talent at the turntables into publicity and easy cash, à la Mark (stepson of Foreigner frontman Mick Jones) Ronson and Paul (brother of Chlöe) Sevigny, and any member of the family Arquette, lately everyone is getting in the game. Fashion designers, magazine editors, boutique owners, and other demi-quasi-semi-celebrities have been taking
a turn at spinning at a club for an evening. After receiving yet another invitation asking us to attend a “celebrity DJ night” featuring some veritable nobodies (“He’s spinning? What the hell does the editor of Outside magazine know about music?”), we figured it was time we hit the DJ booth.

  We convinced publicist Deborah Hughes, who organizes the DJ events at Glass, a new and trendy club in the far west of Chelsea, that we were perfect for their celebrity DJ program, as we were writing a book about celebrity and fame. To bring in a crowd, we convinced Kremly vodka to provide an open bar featuring a “Fame Cocktail,” a refreshing and tart concoction that tasted suspiciously like a cosmopolitan. Deborah e-mailed the following invitation to five hundred contacts on her publicity list:

  Come hear

  K.Ro and Mel-DLC

  (Karen Robinovitz and Melissa de la Cruz)

  authors of the forthcoming book

  How to Become Famous in Two Weeks

  spin

  greatest hits and all-time faves

  at Glass

  “Fame Cocktails” (they really go to your head!)

  from Kremly vodka

  10–11 P.M.

  RSVP: Deborah Hughes, PR, 555–5555

  Soon, colleagues and friends were calling us about our DJ night. “Are you really going to spin?”

  “Sure,” we answered, even though we had our doubts as to whether we could actually handle the turntables. Neither of us had used a record player since we were fifteen. Because we like to go home early, at first we asked if we could spin from the early hour of seven to nine P.M. “Um, the club doesn’t really start going until ten,” Deborah warned. “You might be spinning for nobody.” We settled on ten to eleven P.M.

  We arrived at Glass decked out in DJ gear. Karen wore a black split-sleeved, rhinestone-dusted blouse (recently seen on Britney Spears) with jeans folded to the calf, knee-high patent-leather stiletto boots, and a beret, while Mel opted for a trompe l’oeil sweater with a painted-on necktie, a short denim miniskirt, slouchy suede boots, and a newsboy cap. We were pleased with our getups. But when we arrived, we were a little disheartened to find the club almost completely empty, save for one lone table of smokers at nine-thirty P.M. (We arrived early to practice and prayed for lessons.)

  “Hi,” we said to the bartender, “we’re the celebrity DJs!” He looked at us blankly. No one seemed to know why we were there. Plus, neither of us had thought to bring CDs or vinyl. What exactly would we be DJ-ing with? Luckily, the “real” DJ, an affable guy named Lithium, showed us the ropes. He even lent us his personal collection of disco and house music. We spun greatest hits, all right—all of Donna Summer’s! We played everything on her album from “Bad Girls” to “MacArthur Park.” At first only a few-odd people were sitting at the bar, but at the end of the evening we had a decent crowd, boozing up with Fame Cocktails and rocking out to our Donna Summer compilation. We were a hit! Instead of DJ-ing for the fifteen-minute time period we had intended to occupy, we lasted a whole hour.

  We were fading in and out of two songs at once. We even scratched. (Okay, that happened by accident, but it still happened.) “You girls rule,” a patron at the bar told us. Perhaps it was only the Fame Cocktail speaking, but we took him at his word. (Actually, Karen took him at his word because—ahem—Mel had taken it upon herself to abandon K.Ro in the DJ booth in order to socialize!)

  The next month we fielded requests from several clubs to spin for their guest-DJ programs! Word on the street was: We were down. From now on, no turntable is safe from K.Ro and Mel-DLC. Although we’re not quitting our day jobs.

  THROW YOUR OWN VIP PARTY

  In order to get invited to great parties, it’s a good idea to throw invitation-only events yourself, and to invite those who are known for their A-list parties. If you invite them, they’ll eventually have to invite you! It’s called manners.

  • DJ (See previous anecdote) at a hip place that everyone likes to frequent.

  • Lie about your guest list. “Milla Jovovich is coming!” This is guaranteed to rope in the star-seekers. When they ask where the highly anticipated guest is, always say, “She’s on her way” or “She just left.”

  • Have a friend call your expected guests to confirm their attendance at your party. It will make the event seem bigger than it is, and hence more impressive.

  • Send out an invitation with an RSVP number—set up a voice-mail service that takes messages.

  • Set up a red carpet and a velvet rope at the entrance. Recruit someone to be the doorman with the clipboard—your brother’s largest friend. It’s called creating an image.

  • The guest list is God. If they’re not on the list—they don’t get in. Puff Daddy is famous for sending invitations that say, Don’t bring an entourage. And even when a fellow rapper friend comes with uninvited guests, they are turned away at the door.

  • Don’t let everybody in. For every eight people you grant access, instruct your doorman to send away one, even if it’s your mom and she’s on the list. “We’re at full capacity.” Sorry, Mom!

  • Rope off a VIP section at your VIP party. This will create even more sensation, as people will be craning their necks to see who’s in the VIP section, and worrying about their non-VIP status. Nothing like creating a little social anxiety to make you seem more important!

  CRASH AND BURN

  WILL WORK FOR ENTRANCE

  In the fall of 1993, Yves Saint Laurent launched Champagne, his first new fragrance in a decade. Preparations for this party were inconceivably expensive, as he had a reputation to live up to—for Opium he had thrown a party in Hong Kong complete with authentic Chinese junks. The party was to be held on Liberty Island, under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. Guests would be ferried over to partake of a lavish spread and to enjoy a fireworks show on the harbor. I was twenty-two, had just graduated from college, and was working a day job as a computer programmer. There was no way I would ever find myself at this party. Except …

  Except that I did.

  A friend of mine who worked at a graphic-arts firm knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who was—get this—the landscape artist for the Yves Saint Laurent party! And better yet, this landscape artist was looking for young, attractive people to help him set up. “Look, if we help set up, we can go to the party! It’s an island. What are they going to do, throw us out?” my friend Lauren said, enthusiasm bubbling in her voice. It was agreed. Lauren and I would show up to help with the “landscaping” and then do a quick-change into our evening gowns in the bathrooms so we could stay for the party.

  The day of the event, the landscape artist—whom I’ll call Madison, since that was his name—greeted us cheerfully at the piers. He explained his “vision” for the event and we nodded wisely. When we arrived at Liberty Island, our “work” to realize his “vision” consisted of placing votive candles on the footpaths. That was it. I marveled that someone would actually pay for such an obvious idea, but at least it spared us heavy lifting. Madison thanked us and presumed to send us on our way.

  Instead we ducked through the back and hid ourselves in the bathrooms. A few minutes later we emerged freshly made-up and wearing our most expensive outfits. The first ferries were just arriving to unload party guests. Lauren and I blended in, and we were soon giggling at our own white-linen table, champagne in hand, a plate full of smoked salmon, caviar, and oysters in front of us. We ogled the guests, who included celebrities like Cindy Crawford and Ivana Trump. I was particularly enthralled by my first sighting of old guard socialites Nan Kempner and Loulou de la Falaise.

  Japanese photographers asked to take our picture. They assumed we were somebody because of our mere attendance at such an A-list event. Feeling brazen, we even made our way to Yves, whose hand we shook. On the ferry back to New York, we heard the boat captain murmur as the guests disembarked, “So beautiful, everyone so beautiful and thin … so beautiful …” It was such a magical night. At the end of it, I had even managed to forget I hadn�
�t been invited.

  “See you at the next party,” called a dashing gentleman whose friendship we had made on the ride back.

  “Yes, of course,” we called back, delighted. Then we turned to each other. What next party? How would we find out what this “next party” was? There were more of these fabulous extravaganzas? It was my first taste of New York glitterati and I promised myself it would not be the last.

  THEY’RE CRASHING OUR PARTY?

  Shawn Purdy, Marie Claire’s publicist who was helping us throw our book deal party extravaganza, called us with some great news two weeks before the blessed event. “You won’t believe this,” she said, “but people are already RSVP-ing to your party!”

  She started fielding tons of calls, since our event became a highly touted one when George Rush, Daily News gossip columnist extraordinaire who dishes dirt in his column, “Rush & Molloy,” printed a tidbit about our party that read:

  Writers Karen Robinovitz and Melissa de la Cruz haven’t finished their book, How to Become Famous in Two Weeks (Or Less), but they’re already milking their deal with Ballantine. They’ve persuaded Marie Claire magazine to throw them a pre-book party on Nov. 25 at Lot 61, where the authors, dripping in Jacob and Co. jewels, will make their entrance with a fleet of twenty male Ford models on Vespas.