Just About Famous

- I'm drivin' through Pennsylvania.

Through the night. In the morning I get to Ohio.

I go to a diner to have breakfast and a cup of coffee.

No mole, regular clothing, I sit down at the counter,

order scrambled eggs and toast, and a cup of coffee,

with some home fries.

Waitress comes up to me and takes my order

and she's starin' at me.

Goes back, gets the coffee, brings it out, and says,

"You're Robert De Niro, aren't you."

I go, "No, I'm not Robert De Niro."

She goes back, brings the order of eggs,

toast, and home fries, she says,

"You can tell me. You're Robert De Niro, aren't you."

"Ma'am, I look like Robert De Niro,

"but I'm not Robert De Niro."

She goes back, refills the coffee, she says,

"I know you're Robert De Niro."

I stop eating, I stand up, I say,

"If I was Robert De Niro, would I be eating

"in a scumbag joint like this?"

You know what she says?

"It's Robert De Niro!"

Hey, Mattisen?

Yeah?

- Will you come in here and help me, please?

Sure.

- Like this? - Pull it out, yup.

And hook that right in there.

Ta da.

Ta da.

What we're doing tonight is a pre-convention webcast.

We invite all of the attendees,

and anybody else in the world who wants to log in,

and they can ask questions about Sunburst Convention,

what the schedule's going to be like,

who's going to be there, anything and everything

they wanna ask about the convention.

Okay, guys, if you're joining me, make sure

you have your headsets on or your microphone muted.

Jim Mority, I believe that is our new

Frank Sinatra impersonator.

Jack Berrios is getting in the room,

Kiss is in the house, whoop whoop!

My very first desire to be in entertainment

was after I saw the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey circus.

P.T. Barnum is probably my hero,

he had a knack for taking almost next to nothing

and making something big out of it.

I really liked his ballyhoo, his announcing

this marvelous, spectacular, wonderful thing

that's gonna happen, and people stop

and listen, and go, "Really?"

And they go and see it. And that's some of the

marketing stuff we do with Sunburst,

is going, hey, we have 100 professional

celebrity impersonators and lookalikes

from all over the country and even Canada coming in,

and you should come see it, it's going to be

a lot of fun, and it is.

Is everybody having a groovy time, say; "Yeah baby!"

"Yeah baby!"

- Absolutely, allow myself to introduce myself.

Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery,

at your service, baby, yeah!

Ladies and gentlemen, we are presenting the

Sunburst Convention of celebrity impersonators

and tribute artists, and we have a fantastic

parade of stars for you, ladies and gentlemen,

Lady Gaga and Kenny Rogers, you'll never see this again,

take a picture right here.

Hail to the Chief, President Barack Obama.

Here come Hef and Pamela Anderson, ladies and gentlemen...

If they're really good,

it's, you just think you're sittin' there

watching that person.

It's amazing. The makeup, the look, the hair,

the movement, the voice, every little aspect

of the character that you can get.

- It started in the early 80s, when

singing telegram companies and entertainment companies

said, hey, we have celebrity lookalikes,

or people who look like Elvis, or Marilyn Monroe,

or maybe James Dean, and then it just kinda

started growing from there.

You can hire an Angelina Jolie lookalike

and a Johnny Depp lookalike, and they can walk into

a conference, and people react to the lookalikes

just as much as they do to the real people.

But, you can't get to the real people.

The business has really become more and more professional.

To me, it's like a magician.

- That's what I was gonna say, it's like magic.

- Yeah. - It's like magic.

- You know the magician is not cutting the woman in half,

but you're very impressed as to how real it looks,

and does something to people that I don't

even know how to describe.

- Oh yeah! - Oh my god, all of you!

My heart is skipping a beat!

I can't function

- I've been doin' this with the convention now,

I think this is my fifth year.

The reason it was put together, basically,

was to get celebrity impersonators, work, you know,

Greg started it, but it was kind of like an accident,

he said he was talkin' about havin' a convention to a friend

and the next thing he knew, she put it on the internet

and said, Greg's havin' a convention next year,

and he was like...

- 4000 people had received an email with my phone number

and my email address on it, and an announcement that

we were gonna do a celebrity impersonators convention.

I went home, I came in the door, I shut the door,

I looked at Jackie, and said, guess what we're doing?

And she said, what?

And I said, we're hosting a

celebrity impersonators convention.

- I think probably the biggest misconception

is that we're all crazy.

- Is that we always do it for money.

That everybody's an Elvis.

Yeah, that's probably true.

- That it's all made up of, you know,

nuts and flakes, you know, like granola.

- Most of us know we are entertainers.

Most of us know we are impersonators.

- There is actually demand for it.

I never knew that the career of impersonator

was ever existed.

- It's theater people, it's performers, it's musicians,

it's people, you know, it's your next door neighbor.

I mean, literally, it's your next door neighbor.

- People will automatically assume that you have

similar personality traits, or, you know,

that, you know, you've got the same habits as that person

whether they do something good or bad.

- They think that we all belong in some

rubber room somewhere, 'cause obviously we must be crazy.

- It's a job that, I've become very good at it,

but I don't get my lines crossed,

I don't think that I'm Tiger Woods.

- All I gotta do is walk out to my car

and I know I'm not Jay Leno, that's for sure.

- We are trying to portray an image

and do justice to the celebrities that we are impersonating.

- The secret to the whole impersonation business,

really, is, we like to make people smile.

- People think I just fly out to San Francisco, or

get on the Midway, we were on the aircraft carrier,

the Midway aircraft carrier, for Kentucky Fried Chicken,

fireworks are going off, and that's what

people see on Facebook.

Like, oh, Patsy was on the Midway.

And they don't know that for two weeks ahead of time

I am not able to eat.

- Up until now, we go to convention,

and I thought I was a weirdo.

Now, damn, I see so many weirdos, I feel normal.

Hello, is this room service?

Yeah, can you send up a fried peanut butter

and banana sandwich?

Thank you, thank you very much.

This is my hair and my sideburns,

so I look like this all the time. And it's great,

because, I take people who've never

been with me before, and we'll be driving in our car,

and we'll have people hangin' out

of their windows with cameras.

As a performer back east, there's only a few

places that you wanna ultimately end up.

Either you want to be in Hollywood as an actor,

and if you do what I do, Vegas was the place.

Everybody said so, and everybody kept telling me,

you need to be in Vegas.

So I came here, and I really am excited,

I joke, you look in anybody's attic

in this town, you're gonna find an Elvis.

There's hundreds of them here.

The toughest part, with doing Elvis,

is not the hair and the makeup and the costumes,

because you can wear white pajamas with studs on 'em

and put sod on your head and people are gonna say

it looks like Elvis.

It's the charisma that he had.

Elvis has always been something that has been very,

ah, very easy for me.

I started when I was 12 years old,

I was actually in a band, a Sha Na Na type band,

a 50's band, even when I sang in, I was worship leader

in church, and I remember people sayin', you know,

don't sing like Elvis when you're

leading praise and worship.

And I said, well, Elvis did, and that's the way I sound,

so what am I gonna do?

I remember seeing him in 1977, and he looked,

it was actually a week before he died.

And his belt was facing down, but I remember,

if he told 35,000 people to stand on their heads

and spin, they'd have done it.