Reality Check: Fame is a bitch.
Century Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles, June 12, 2005. I was running late. Not the first time. The changeover from Dennis into “Dennis Rodman” was taking a little longer than usual. This time, it was a footwear problem. So everybody was waiting around in the suite: Darren, his fiancé Symone, and Thaer in the bedroom, and the reporter in the living room peeking through the door. I had put on this new pair of black “Wellington boots,” I guess you’d call them, with these hideous straps across the instep. I looked at them this way, that way, thought about changing shoes, then ended up cutting the straps off. Crisis averted—but I still wasn’t satisfied.
In the elevator going downstairs, I kept messing with my shirttails. When the door opened to the lobby, I asked Darren what he thought of my one-shirttail-in, one-shirttail-out look; and he glanced over his shoulder, gave his usual “whatever” shrug, and kept walking. Symone waded in. Then, as I stood there with my ass propping the elevator door open, she tucked in the right shirttail so it matched the left, bloused the bottom of the shirt over my belt, stepped back, and pronounced me, “Done.” Meanwhile, I’m thinking there are worse things in life than having a beautiful woman dress you.
After over an hour in the making, the ensemble was complete. Showtime. We strolled through the lobby, and I could see the outfit was working, heads turning as we took a hard left and went down the stairs to navigate the red carpet, the first phase of Sports Spectacular 2005—the 20th annual benefit for the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
If you see me on the street on a typical day. I’ll be wearing drawstring pants, a long-sleeve T-shirt, baseball cap, and basketball shoes, which I’ll shed the first chance I get and be walking around in socks. That’s like my uniform—the real Dennis. But when I’m making an appearance as “Dennis Rodman,” that’s a whole ’nother deal. I’ve got to look the part. My fans, my sponsors, have certain expectations and I meet them—like on this night.
I had on an extra-long, five-button, navy blue “suit” jacket that hit me about mid-thigh and looked kind of like a riding jacket; an open-neck, patterned, satiny white shirt; jeans; and the Wellington boots. I had tied a red bandana around my head and topped it off with a chocolate-colored, felt fedora with a blue headband. I accessorized with shades, about five pounds of multicolored necklace— turquoise, orange, yellow, blue—and the usual collection of piercing hardware.
Normally I turn my head into a human pincushion with hoops in my ears, nose studs, a lip ring. On more festive occasions, I have dressier earrings and this stud about an inch-and-a-half long that replaces the ring in my lower lip. Son of a bitch sets off metal detectors at the airport—anything for fashion. Almost. You’ll be happy to hear I no longer wear any hardware in my nether regions.
So how’s my fashion sense?
“When it’s time to make a statement, he knows how to make a statement,” said Wendell, who is currently a fashion designer. “He doesn’t have a fashion consultant or a stylist or anything like that. He does it all himself.”
So you can blame it all on me—and my tailors.
“He gets mostly everything made. Mostly at Lords or Von Dutch,” Thaer told the reporter.
That’s not a luxury—it’s a necessity. As Wendell said:“You’re not gonna find anything off the rack in his size.”
The way it works is: I’ll go up to maybe, Lords in L.A., pick out a fabric, and then, if it’s a shirt, we’ll talk about the cut, what we want to do with the collar, cuffs—pick out the buttons, this, that. Then they make it for me. Some stores give me the stuff for the free PR. Others charge me a lot of money.
A lot of money.
When I’m headed out of town to some event, I’ll pack a bunch of different stuff—shirts, jackets, hats, shoes—and when it comes time to get dressed, I’ll try this, try that, and put an outfit together depending on how I’m feeling at the moment. Sometimes that takes a while.
“It takes him forever to put on a pair of sweats,” said Wendell.
“Like a woman?” asked the reporter.
“Like two women,” said Wendell.
But when I’m done, even fashion hotshot Wendell admits I have the knack.
“He knows how to make a bunch of avant-garde items look like an outfit,” Wendell said. “He knows how to do it, man. And like I say, he’s doing it all himself. It’s all him.”
And unless I’m headed for the Academy Awards or something like that, it’s all pretty much spontaneous.
“If he’s going to a major, major event, then the outfit is thought out,” said Wendell. “If he’s gonna be on television, like he’s going to the Jay Leno show or something like that, then the outfit is thought out.”
The Cedars-Sinai outfit was not thought out. It was a spur-ofthe-moment creation. Still I felt good about it as I turned the corner onto the red carpet and was blinded by lights from around 10 television cameras. These guys who looked like secret service agents—black suits, wires trailing out of their ears—herded the Rodman entourage in the right direction. One television reporter yelled, and I stepped up to the red-velvet rope separating me from the media and started yapping.
Normally, you would expect the red carpet to be outside. But inside or outside, it serves the same purpose. Fans think the red carpet is a way of making celebrity guests feel special. Actually, it’s a way to accommodate the media without asking much of the stars or, for that matter, the PR people. For a big, celebrity-studded event, there would be no way to accommodate the hundreds of interview requests. So the PR people strike a bargain, line the photographers and reporters up behind a velvet rope and say, “You stay here, and we’ll troop the celebrities by.” So instead of having reporters and photographers swarming all over the place, pushing and shoving, creating havoc, you have a nice, controlled environment: the red carpet. The media get a sound bite, quote, video, or photo without too much work, and it’s easy for the celebs, too. They breeze through, stop to talk to whoever they want to, ignore the rest, and get on with it.
Since I was late, there wasn’t exactly a traffic jam on the red carpet, and I was like a one-man show, although I did see San Francisco Forty-Niner great Jerry Rice—one of the night’s honorees—down at the other end of the line about 50 yards away. He looked shorter than I remembered.
As I was talking to, I think it was the Best Damn Sports Show Period, the still photographers at the next “media station” were just hanging out, waiting for me to come their way. Then they spotted Symone in the shadows behind me. They were like, “Damn! Who’s the blonde?” Now Symone always looks good, but on that night, she was the pride of her home country, Australia, looking particularly take-your-breath-away spectacular in this low-cut, pink, corsetlooking thing and fitted white pants.
Now most photographers are men, and at first, they were like, “Is that somebody?” Then they were like, “Who the fuck cares!” So they started waving her over, like, “Come on down! Come on down!”
Symone has done a lot of spokesmodel work, and so she knew the drill. She walked over and started posing for maybe a dozen photographers, and there was an explosion of flashbulbs like fireworks on the Fourth of July, enough to make you see orange spots for a week. She was smiling, just eating it up. The woman is photogenic, like me, but for entirely different reasons. She’s beautiful.
Me? A photographer once told me, “If you’ve got a choice between shooting 50 guys in pinstripe suits and a six-foot-eight black man wearing a feather boa, who are you going to photograph? Who do you think is going to make the more eye-grabbing picture?”
I moved on through the media gauntlet to the next reporter, a camera-mounted light blinding me. A pretty woman from FOX Sports Net stuck a wireless mike in my face—looked like a black vibrator—and a guy from Xtra Sports 570 AM, “Southern California’s Sports Superstation” followed suit. I was wearing my lips out talking. Way in the back, behind the media, several rows of “civilian” gawkers looked on, trying to get a glimpse of me.
Other celebs walked by on the red carpet as I was talking, and I recognized faces, but I couldn’t tell you their names. Must have been the same deal for the media, which showed no interest whatever and just let those faces cruise on through. It has been a long time since I could get away with that. So long ago that I think of it as the “good old days,” days when Dennis Rodman could be anonymous, y’know, walk the street, work out, take my daughter Alexis to the park without feeling like I was center stage.
Reality Check: Fame is a bitch.
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably already figured out that I have this love-hate relationship with fame. If not, you can sure tell it by listening to the people who know me best.
“He needs to be out there,” Michelle told a reporter. “He needs to be seen.”
“He does not want to be famous, but yet that’s how he feeds himself,” said Wendell. “That’s how he lives his extraordinary life.”
“He eats it up. I watch him,” said Michelle.
“He loves the attention?” the reporter asked.
“Oh, yeah. … He plays like he doesn’t,” said Michelle. “But I know he loves it. And how can you not?”
“There were points where he cried to me about killing himself,” said Darren. “He just didn’t want to live anymore. And the last thing he wanted was the fame. He hated the fame.”
So who’s right?
Everybody.
Where I rank in the celebrity pecking order is something that matters to me. I’m proud that, while other basketball players of my era have mostly disappeared, I’m still a household name. I have staying power. I still matter to people. If I were not so important to society, they wouldn’t still be talking about me. I see fame as one way to measure that importance.
When I first became famous in the late 1990s, it didn’t mean shit. I was just having a good time, living the life of a rock star. I wasn’t saying, “Oh, I gotta go make this move, I gotta do this, I gotta do that.” It was more like, “I’m gonna play the game, go to practice, then go out and have a good time.”That was my whole thing right there.
Famous or not famous? I didn’t care.
Things are different now. Now fame does mean something to me. Now it’s a part of who I am, and I don’t want to lose it. Michelle hit it right on the nose.
“If you’ve been used to that for so long, if it were to go away,” she said. “I mean, it would be hard. I couldn’t even imagine to be so big and then to not have anyone care. I’m sure that’s what he holds onto.”
People have asked me if I see fame as a “measuring stick” of my worth. Yeah, I’m proud of my fame because of why I’m famous. I’m not famous because of some corporate image-making machine. “Dennis Rodman” wasn’t dreamed up in the bowels of some ad agency. I’m famous, one because I’m one of the best basketball players who ever played the game; and two, because as I went about living my life—“just being Dennis”—I struck a nerve with the people outside of basketball, people who don’t know a basketball from a billiard ball. I’ve lasted because my fame has meaning, substance, I stand for something rock solid. As I said before, I’ve freed people up, made it okay to say, “Fuck it!” and be your freaky self. I’m proud of that. I’m not somebody like Paris Hilton who is famous for being famous. So yeah, I do see my fame as a “measuring stick.” It shows I still matter to people. But being proud of my fame, even needing it, and living with it are two different things.
Fame is cool for about the first five minutes that you’re out in public. I’m like, “They still care. I still matter,” and then I wish I could be left alone to just go about my business. But you’re either famous, or you’re not. If you are, you get the whole package—the good, the bad, the ugly. Here’s some “good, bad, and ugly,” all in the same package.
For the past two years, I’ve run with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain for GoldenPalace.com. The “Running of the Bulls” is this centuries-old, coming-of-age ritual that Ernest Hemingway made famous in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.The run is a part of the Fiesta of San Fermin, which honors the city’s patron saint. Beginning at 8:00 a.m. every day for a week in July, hundreds of mostly young men run ahead of six, bred-to-be-nasty bulls, that weigh in at about 1,000 pounds each, leading them from their pens through narrow cobblestone streets to the bullring about a half-mile away.
That’s the plan anyway. I don’t really get to do much running because people won’t let me. I get rushed by fans who want to get a piece of Dennis Rodman. Five feet away, runners are falling down, getting trampled, gored, run over—in the past people have even been killed—and these fools are like, “Fuck the bulls! We want a picture with Dennis Rodman.” This year, when it was over—it takes about three minutes—Thaer was like, “What the hell is wrong with these people? You got a pissed off, half-ton bull with these huge horns chasing your ass, and you’re trying to get a fucking autograph from Dennis Rodman? It’s nuts.” So I ended up running from the people, not the bulls. But still, it’s a really cool thing—a “Dennis Rodman” thing. Too bad I can’t enjoy it the way other people do. But the fans won’t let me. They won’t let me. Like Thaer says, when you’re famous, “You can’t do shit.”
Meanwhile that same fame means the wire services are beaming a picture of Dennis Rodman in a white T-shirt with a foot-high, red GoldenPalace.com logo on the chest all over the world. The same fame that made it impossible for me to enjoy the event like a normal person is what made it possible for me to be there in the first place, what makes it possible for me to make a living. So you can see why when it comes to fame, I have mixed emotions.
Love it, hate it, can’t get away from it. No wonder I’m nuts.
Remember that reality check from earlier: “Fame warps everything?” Well, that’s no exaggeration, and it goes far beyond my ability to enjoy simple human pleasures that “nobodies” take for granted. Fame warps every human relationship—every human relationship.
Ever since I became famous, my relationships with my mother, my sisters, my friends, my wives, my girlfriends, even my children have all been warped. People I do business with, people on the street, total strangers treat me differently than they treat you.
Michelle summed it up for a reporter. “He can’t possibly trust or know that anyone loves him for him,” she said. “Since he became famous, [the love] has always been because he’s ‘Dennis Rodman.’ I don’t think it’s ever been because of who he is as a person.”
That same poison spreads to the people around me.
“Do you get people sucking up to you because you’re Dennis Rodman’s wife?” a reporter asked Michelle.
“Hell, yes! Yeah. It’s amazing,” she said. “Are you trying to be my friend, or are you friends with me because I’m Dennis Rodman’s wife? It happens all the time.”
Everything a famous person does begins and ends with fame. Nothing a normal person does is like what I do. The whole context is different. I am literally living in a different world, a parallel universe. We could be walking side by side through the same restaurant, and an entirely different set of rules apply. I’m always being watched. I’m always accountable. I can’t have a bad day, make some smartass remark, raise an eyebrow. If I do, it’s a huge deal. If I offend some guy, he won’t just let it go, say, “What-fuckingever,” and move on. It’s a turning point in his life. How did he react when dissed by the bad boy, when Dennis Rodman challenged his manhood? I’m just trying to eat my sushi in peace, and this guy has shifted into holy war mode. In the past, wild-boy Rodman, most likely drunk, reacted like a normal human being, and got his ass sued. Today’s sober “Dennis Rodman” acts like a veteran famous guy and backs off, way off, gives Mr. Intifada a wide berth, and serves up a character-defining war story the guy will be telling his grandchildren.
“Yeah, I called the son of a bitch on it, and he hid behind his bodyguard.”
These are not lessons you read in some guidebook or learn at your mother’s knee. This is stuff you learn the hard way, making it up as you go along. And as the lessons learned pile up, they lead to a set of rules. Rules that say exactly what “a famous person” can and cannot do. Then you wake up one day and realize you’re hog-tied by your own rules—that your fame has become a trap.
I made my last stop on the red carpet, autographing this and that for the non-media “civilians” at the end of the line. Then the secret service dudes led me into this adjoining room—or maybe it was a blocked-off hallway, I don’t remember—where the Cedars-Sinai folk had me autograph some basketballs. Thaer was by my side checking everybody out. I don’t know if they auctioned the balls off, sold them—whatever. A kid about 12 in a blue blazer showed up and had me sign his program. I still hadn’t escaped the cameras.
Now the reporter was popping flashbulbs in my face. It’s a wonder my ass hasn’t gone blind.
I signed an official NBA Spalding basketball, with my distinctive, looping, totally illegible scrawl. I didn’t know if this guy was a fan or somebody from Cedars-Sinai. Want to know what fame smells like? A Sharpie. The airplane-cement-on-downers smell of those felt-tip pens—corporate sponsorship anyone?—has been a part of my everyday life for decades.
That and the fucking flashbulbs.
I used to think of myself as an “accidental celebrity.” Not anymore. These days there is nothing accidental about it. I go out of my way to get attention. I was at the Cedars-Sinai benefit not only to promote a worthy cause, but to get in front of those cameras and microphones on the red carpet. “Why” is no mystery. Darren and I work at keeping me famous because that’s how I make a living.
I started out being totally free, playing basketball with reckless abandon, screwing with my hair, dating Madonna—just being Dennis. That turned out to be newsworthy. I kept on doing what I was doing, dressing up in women’s clothes, pulling down rebounds, winning championships, partying, gambling—free as a bird. That led to more coverage, fame, lawsuits, and the first appearance of those rules I was talking about. Now the book of “Rodman’s Rules” is so long and involved that it makes the NCAA rulebook look simple; and my days of total freedom are long gone. To put it in Biblical terms: total freedom begat media coverage begat fame begat a list of freedom-sapping “no-nos.” I’m caged by my own rules—the rules of fame. How do I fix it? I could drop out of sight, of course, give up my fame; but then how do I make a living? And I don’t want to stop being that symbol of freedom, either. It’s like anything else: I have to find a way to strike a balance.
Reality Check: You can’t be both free and famous.
I can’t have all the benefits of fame—the good—without living with the bad and the ugly. The bad and the ugly? Seems like we’ve been through that. I can’t live a normal life. I have no privacy. Everything I do is “news.” I’m no longer free. All human relationships are warped. The good? Fame makes me a lot of money, proves to me I still matter, feeds my ego, and, on good days, is a hell of a lot of fun.
A hell of a lot of fun.
So just like just about everything else in life, fame has its upside and its downside. It’s like having a dog. He gives you all the love, but he’s got to be fed and he’s got to be walked—he’s got to be cared for. Sooner or later, no matter what you do, he’s going to crap on the carpet. Count on it. That’s part of what having a dog means. Every single time. If you want a dog—I hate to trot this one out, but it fits—you got to take the good with the bad. Same goes with fame. Just as there ain’t no dog without dog shit, there ain’t no fame without people shit. People are going to disappoint you. Count on it.
So you just learn to live with it.
Here’s one final reality check to balance out all my bitching about fame, to put things in perspective. It isn’t true, but let’s just say Carmen Electra only wanted to sleep with me because I was famous. She was using my ass to advance her career. Is this supposed to be some kind of big problem? I mean, I’m a guy, and Carmen Electra, one of the most beautiful women in the world, wants to sleep with me.
Am I asking, “Why?”
No. No. No. No. …
Repeat after me, bro: “Who gives a shit?”
Again, “Who gives a shit?”
One last time: “Who gives a shit?”
Reality Check: When it comes to the good, bad, and ugly of fame, sometimes even the ugly is good.
Very, very, very good.