Hi, please forgive the motherhood and apple pie questions that follows.I am a complete literary novice but have a passion to write a Biography on an artist I have admired for many years. I have the idea and believe I have an interesting if not unique angle/story to tell but I just don't know where to start in terms of the process. I clearly need the trust and backing of the person in question (with whom I have never met) and I need to feel confident in articulating my idea to the artist, his agent and or potential collaborators without compromising the idea itself. Can anybody give me some sound advice on where to start and what to avoid please?..thank you so much in adavance :)
How to get attention from somebody (famous) that you admire?
a) Kris Kristofferson landed a helicopter on the lawn of Johnny Cash' estate. He was arrested... but he got Johnny's attention and they became friends (AND Kris broke into the music business). Please note: This should only be attempted if you really know how to pilot a helicopter.
Elvis Costello showed up with a guitar and a portable amp, set up, and started singing/playing on the pavement outside a London hotel where a conference of music company executives was taking place. I don't know whether HE got arrested, but he got his recording contract... and thousands of musical wanna-bes would love to get HIS attention. (A musician friend of mine was working [in the late 70s] as a waiter at - I believe - The Roundhouse when Costello and friends were sitting at a table. Without admitting his musical aspirations, he just had to go up and tell his hero how much Costello's music meant to him. He said that Costello was very gracious about the intrusion.)
Indigo Girls, the best music group in this galaxy - as far as available information goes and subject to personal tastes - were performing on a tour of Lilith Fair (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT1WyL2mCsc). I showed up at one of the gigs
[amazing experience! Most of the men's toilets in the football stadium had been turned over to the exclusive use of women, but even that wasn't enough: the uppity female audience :) :) :) invaded the few toilets reserved for men during all the breaks and were quite brazen about their right to do so. I LOVED it!!! Women ROCK! And the MUSIC! Dixie Chicks - not on the video linked to - WERE at that gig. To see Dixie Chicks, Indigo Girls, Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, and others together on stage all at once (on one song) was fantastic.]
with a signed, dedicated copy of one of my children's stories and asked a guard to pass it on to them. It probably got binned. I'm going to dedicate a future book to them. Yes, they're THAT good.
Well, I would suggest that you write to the artist via his agent. Artists are - depending on the level of fame that they've already reached, as well as their individual characters - either going to be pleased that somebody wants to write about them or fed up with starry-eyed fans invading their privacy.
Once they have achieved a moderate level of fame, artists generally shield themselves from the public by not revealing their addresses (of any kind) and having unlisted telephone numbers. Agents are paid - in part - to act as a buffer between the creative artist and (on the one hand) "the business", whether it be publishers, art galleries, music promoters, record companies, film studios, or whatever; and (on the other hand) the pestering public. The agent (earning a %age of the artist's income) is likely to feel jaded about rank amateurs offering to write a book about their hero.
In addition, the buffer is sometimes reinforced by the agent's having no visible address or telephone # as far as the fans are concerned. (The business side will be sure to have contact information.)
There are several web-sites that promise - for a fee - to supply you with guaranteed contact information for both agents AND their clients. Whether these then change their addresses / telephone #s once the level of pestering has grown to unbearable levels (and the fans have to buy updates and so on and so on) is a question that I can't answer. But from personal experience, I CAN tell you that if you contact the web-sites mentioned WITHOUT paying the fee, your e-mail inbox will be inundated with spam attempting to browbeat you into forking over the money. Sorry, I meant convince you via reminders of how beneficial to you this course would be.
There you have it. My opinion. Of course you could get lucky. Two amateurs who published a sci-fi fanzine persuaded the wonderful James Tiptree, jr. to agree to an in-depth postal interview. Of course, Tiptree didn't disclose to them the tiny detail that he was a she, Alice B. Sheldon, who also wrote [also wonderful] sci-fi under the pseudonym of Racoona Sheldon.
How much collaboration from this artist do you need before you write anything? Have you considered writing an article about him, getting it published in a relevant magazine, THEN approaching him or his agent, article in hand (figuratively speaking)? If the artist and/or agent likes your style, they might be more open to contact than if you just wrote "Plllllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease grant me an interview so that I can write about you!"
Any help? I wish you well.
W L
p.s. Do you know that my computer's spelling check advised me to correct "sci-fi" to "sci-phi"??? Impertinent whelp!