When I first realized they were using my name - my first thought was - Michelle Matthow did this. Who, pray tell, is Michelle Matthow? Michelle Matthow's chief accomplishment in life seems to be that she is the niece of Walter Matthau. (Walter changed the spelling of his last name.) In addition to teaching, I had been giving feng shui consultations, and Matthow had contacted me in January of 2000 for a consultation. I met with her on a Sunday afternoon in January, and she seemed pleasant enough. She told me she was an actress and wanted to activate her career. I generally take people at face value (maybe a failing of mine) and assumed she was telling the truth. After some hesitation, she admitted the acting "thing" wasn't really working out and what she really wanted to be was a writer. I asked her if she had ever written anything, to which she replied, "Well, I don't exactly write - but I have ideas." She then proceeded to tell me about a new show, "The West Wing," which she loved and that she wanted to sell ideas to that show. "Well, what ideas do you want to sell, " I queried. "I want to sell names, she piped back. I want to sell names to the West Wing." "Well, do they pay money for that sort of thing," I questioned. "Oh, they pay lots of money for ideas." Now, if someone tells you, they want to sell names to the West Wing, and two years later, your unique name ends up on the West Wing, it doesn't take the deductive reasoning of Sherlock Holmes to figure out she's responsible. She then pressed further. "Could you tell me stories of your feng shui adventures? I mean, things that have happened to you? I have an idea for another show, a sort of holistic ER, and there would be a feng shui consultant on staff. I could base the character on you. In fact, I'm meeting with John Wells, one of the producers of ER." Now, the woman tells me she wants to sell names to the West Wing show, and wants to base a character on me... I'm not supposed to know she sold my name to the show?
People have asked me, if I would have recognized that she would do something like this. The short answer is, no. I thought she was silly and shallow, I didn't perceive her to be vicious. In retrospect, there were lots of red flags I should have heeded. The psychologist, Michael Hare, created a checklist for sociopaths. Chief among the characteristics, is lying. Michelle Matthow had repeatedly told me she was an actress, when in fact, at the time I met her, (she was about 50) she had never had an agent, had never secured a part through her own efforts, and had never made a living as an actress. Her previous acting stint when she met me, had been as a wedding guest in The Odd Couple II, which had been filmed eight years earlier! In eight years she had not appeared in any type of production. I don't think that qualifies one as an actress. (Unless you mean it in a generic sense of the word - as in one skilled in lying.) Another characteristic of sociopaths, is an inflated sense of their value or accomplishments. On the check Michelle wrote to me - was the preprinted phrase, Michelle Matthow, actress, member of SAG. Would Meryl Streep have - member of SAG printed on her check? I doubt it. Genuine accomplishment speaks for itself. Michelle Matthow was a poseur. A Hollywood wannabee, who thought her relation to Hollywood royalty, entitled her to a career. She was quite embittered over the fact that her uncle (in her words) didn't help her launch her showbiz career. According to her, he had said, "You'll never make it, so why should I help you?"
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