Danger, Will Robinson

Originally published November 21, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1253

We were speaking last week of how satisfying all fans, everywhere, is an impossibility. How fans can set such expectations for those whose careers they follow that meeting those expectations can become an insurmountable task.

It can become extremely frightening for those who are in the public eye. For every thousand fans who are decent, polite, caring folk (and there are thousands, tens of thousands out there) there’s the one or two who have their own agendas. Some of them deliberately target you for the purpose of building themselves up, or proving something by showing they can be tougher or smarter than “the pro,” or feel the need to show that they are not intimidated by you—even though intimidation was never your intention. (I can’t tell you the number of times fans have told me that they were afraid to come up to me; what did they think I was going to do, bite their heads off like a circus geek?)

And then there are the fans who are so obsessive, it gets… well… scary.

They believe themselves to be worshipful, but instead they only disrupt the lives of those they intend to worship. Part of what adds to the concern is the history of violence linked with such individuals. An attempted presidential assassination resulted from a fan’s urge to impress an actress; a singer’s voice was stilled by a fan who got his autograph a short time before; a young actress opened her front door and was shot and killed by a fan.

Then there was the recent experience Bill Mumy had.

I had once been witness to a fan assault on Bill (which I’ve written of a long time ago) in which a fan at the San Diego Comic Con cornered Bill in an elevator and—in reference to a memorable guest shot Bill did on Twilight Zone years ago—kept saying, “Send me to the cornfield, Bill!” before finally lunging at Bill’s throat and trying to strangle him. That was public weirdness, but not very long ago he had a very private and strange fan encounter. Bill was spending a fairly unremarkable day at home. He was alone, his wife and kids out and about, and was relaxing in his living room chatting on the phone with his friend, Robert (his partner in “Barnes and Barnes,” the novelty duo who recorded such ditties as the immortal “Fish Heads”).

And suddenly, to his shock, there was an unfamiliar (and yet vaguely familiar) face at his front door.

“I’m Herman Winkler!” he called. (Actually, he didn’t; that isn’t really his name, since I’ve taken the liberty of changing it.) “I’m Herman Winkler from Trenton! I’ve come here from Trenton! I have things for you to sign! Please! I’m from Trenton.”

In order to get to the front door, the fan had managed to bypass the front gate and had shown up on Bill’s open-air front alcove.

“Call the police!” Robert immediately urged Bill. And Bill considered the idea very strongly. But he viewed the situation realistically. Let us say that the police came and arrested the guy. Even in Los Angeles, capital of the tight stalking laws, this was a first-time transgression in regards to Bill, nor had Herman Winkler from Trenton said anything vaguely threatening. Granted, they had him on trespassing and probably illegal entry, but those are minor infractions at best. If they were indeed his first offenses, the guy would walk away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. His jail time would be non-existent. Which meant that not only would he be walking around free within twenty-four hours, but he might be really, really angry. Just what Bill needed: a revenge-crazed fanatic who knew where he lived.

Plus there was no one else home, which meant that if Bill really was dealing with a nutcase, his family wasn’t in immediate danger.

Speaking to him through the door, Bill called, “This is not cool, what you’re doing! This is making me very nervous! You’re on private property!”

“But I came from Trenton!” repeated Herman. “I have things for you to sign! I came all the way from Trenton!”

“Robert, I want you to record this,” Bill said to Robert, who was still on the phone and urging Mumy to call the cops. Bill’s reasoning was that, if the guy assaulted him, he would at least have all the details on audio tape. (And wouldn’t that sound delightful as the lead item on Entertainment Tonight. Can’t you just see Mary Hart? “Will Robinson’s final danger, plus Madonna’s mothering tips, on tonight’s ET!”)

Bill opened the door and said into the phone, “This is Bill Mumy, and I’m talking with Herman Winkler from Trenton.” He proceeded to give a physical description of the guy, and came to the slow and rather disturbing realization that the guy had a rather manufactured resemblance to Bill himself. His hair was cut and styled the same as Bill’s, and was even the same color (possibly dyed that way.) He wore glasses similar to Bill’s.

He had a huge bag filled with all manner of Bill Mumy memorabilia. Nothing from Bill’s more recent work on such series as Babylon 5. All of it was material that related to earlier in Bill’s career, back when he was Billy Mumy, child actor. Pictures, lobby cards, movie posters from such films as Dear Brigitte and Rascal. Magazine articles, TV Guides, teen magazines. A collection that was clearly begun with a childhood passion, in the same way that girls of my generation got their hands on everything having to do with Bobby Sherman or the Monkees. But how many of them still have all that stuff?

Bill started signing. Piece after piece after piece, and every single one signed—at the insistence of the fan—to “Herman Winkler.” The good news was, obviously he had no intention of selling any of the stuff. Then again, that might almost have been easier to handle. An obnoxious dealer showing up at Bill’s doorstep with one hundred Will Robinson 8x10s might have somehow been more understandable.

Bill dutifully signed around forty pieces of Billy Mumy memorabilia and then said firmly to the fan, “Okay, now, this is it. I want you to leave now. What you’ve done here isn’t right, and has made me very nervous.” The fan eagerly bobbed his head and took off.

Bill went back into the house, still talking to Robert.

Five minutes later, the fan was back. He stood at the front door, calling, “Wait! Wait! I have twenty more things for you to sign!”

Images of Mark David Chapman immediately came to mind. After all, hadn’t he gotten the last autographs from John Lennon—and then returned to blow him away? This was the John Lennon and Rebecca Schaeffer incidents all wrapped into one.

But all of the reasons from before for trying to deal with this guy preemptively himself, rather than dragging the authorities into it or risking his returning when Bill’s family was home, remained in force. With Robert on the phone desperately urging him not to, Bill once again went to the door, opened it, and Herman pulled out—

—twenty more things for Bill to sign.

He showed up one more time after that with yet more autograph items, but after that more or less vanished from Mumy Manor.

Mumy got off lucky. It could just as easily have gone the other way. He could have opened the door and found, rather than an obsessive autograph hound, a demented nutcase who wanted to have the very last Mumy autographs.

Or, as Doctor Smith might say, “Indeed!”

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Just don’t be standing outside the PO Box waiting, okay?)