Saturday, April 4, 1998

Hero worship is hard work

By Ken Garfield / Knight Ridder Newspapers

LOS ANGELES -- Hero worship takes hard work.

If you're 12-year-old Debbie Schreiner of St. Paul, Minn., and your sole mission is to see a celebrity, it also takes about $2,000.

That's what it cost to fly to California with her mom, rent a motel room and a car and line up for 12 hours outside the Academy Awards -- all in hopes of seeing someone famous. She'd take any star, but her first choice was Kate Winslet of "Titanic."

"I just want to see her," Debbie said. "I don't have to touch her."

As Debbie explained her goal, her mother held their place in line. Karen Schreiner looked worried. Her first four children weren't like this. Only Debbie made her drop everything to take this journey to her version of Mecca.

"I'd give anything if she wasn't like that," Karen Schreiner said. "But what do you do?"

ÔWhat the heck'

What you did Monday, in the case of the Schreiners and thousands of other star-struck souls, was travel to the center of the pop culture universe. That would be outside the Shrine Auditorium for the 70th Oscars.

There was no chance of getting inside the auditorium and not much more of a shot to get one of the 500 seats in the bleachers near the front door. Short of that, the crowd lived on the faint hope of spotting a star getting out of a shiny stretch limo.

It seemed sad at first. "Get a life" kept running through my head. But the more I watched them laugh and look for someone famous, the more I appreciated the motives that inspired the giddy search.

Sarah Snowwhite (her real name) came for the adventure. Twenty and taking a break from college, she's on a three-month road trip across America. She woke up in New Mexico and decided, what could be more fun than driving to L.A. for the Oscars? "What the heck," she said.

Beverly Bunn, 43, came from nearby Tustin, Calif., for the fun of it. She and and her buddies put "Titanic" models on their heads and sang a ditty to the tune of the "Gilligan's Island" theme. "It's just a hoot," Bunn said.

Barbara Bahruth, 48, came to fill the long days. Disabled by a stroke, she moved from New Jersey to L.A. for the weather and the stars. She read the National Enquirer while waiting to recognize someone, anyone. On a normal day, she'd be home watching a TV game show.

ÔIt's an obsession'

What happens when, instead of looking for stars, you become blinded by them?

You become a 12-year-old from Minnesota who thinks of little else beyond celebrities. Who blurs the line between reality and fantasy -- to her, Winslet isn't a young English actress but the heroine whose handsome young love goes down with the ship.

Debbie scares her mom to death.

"She is absolutely, completely, totally obsessed," Schreiner said. "It's hard to separate who the person is and who the character is. I don't think there's a reality to it."

Schreiner is trying to channel Debbie's obsession into something constructive. She's encouraging her to act in local plays.

Back home in Minnesota

The Schreiners never saw a star.

Despite getting a wristband they thought guaranteed them a bleacher seat, they were stopped 10 people short of the promised land. They went to a restaurant to watch the Oscars on a wide-screen TV, only the TV was regular size. They were going to drive to Beverly Hills in search of the post-Oscars "Titanic" party, only they never got directions.

While Winslet celebrated the Oscars in Beverly Hills, the Schreiners were flying home to Minnesota. All Debbie has to show for the journey is a piece of torn red carpet she picked up on the street. She's hoping Kate walked on it.

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(Ken Garfield is the religion editor at The Charlotte Observer. Write to him at: The Charlotte Observer, 600 S. Tryon St., Charlotte, NC 28232.)

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(c) 1998, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).

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