to recap, our seats were in the balcony section, above the main floor (my friend was very pissed, since one of the organizers had indicated to her that our seats had been moved downstairs (long story)). In any case, as luck would have it, our table was directly above Johnny’s – we could see his every move in that room the entire evening – we could see what he was drinking, talking to Tracey & Christie, the whole 9 yards. In the beginning of the evening, the presented the first 2 awards – the 2nd being the award to Angela Landsbury, then there was a break as they were serving dinner. We saw Johnny getting up from his table, and my friend went tearassing downstairs (didn’t even wait for me to get the picture for my daughter to bring for an autograph!), and I followed rather quickly behind. We made our way through the light crowd on the dancefloor, to discover Johnny congratulating Angela – I was a little afraid that she was going to interrupt their conversation, which obviously would not have been a good thing – we were both just caught up in the excitement that he was actually that accessible! After his conversation with Angela, he had a short conversation with Bernadette Peters – and then the moment was ours. She presented Johnny with a letter, requesting that he please read it, which he said he would, thanked her and said “Bless you!”. I then told Johnny what huge fans my 6 year old daughter & I were, that my daughter adored Jack Sparrow. He said thank you very much and shook my hand with both of his. At that point Johnny left the room with the security contingent and was gone for about a 1/2 hour. eated at our table were two little girls, age 9 & 10, who were very big Johnny fans, and their seats were closer to the balcony.. They told me when Johnny re-entered the ballroom, so I took them both downstairs with their programs and an extra sharpie pen that I had with me – by this time Johnny was mobbed by people wanting their picture taken with him and autographs, and such. I called to him 2 or 3 times to get his attention, you have to understand, as I am sure you do, he was trying to accomdate everyone’s request – and by now Johnny was so surrounded, he could barely move – probably similar to your situation outside. The security personnel stepped in and was telling folks (myself included) to move back, and give him some room, that he could not even sit down. I indicated that I would move as soon as the girls got his autograph — Toni, he took the time to talk to them, to listen to them & get their names – so they got their autograph. We went back upstairs to watch the rest of the program, I am sure you read my account of his speech (Angie just posted something from the Into Depp site (I think), there were a few inaccuracies vs. what I reported, but the jist was the same). At the end of the evening, I was hell bent & determined to get the autograph for my daughter, and as you can imagine, he was again mobbed, once again trying to accomodate everyone he possibly could. So, as I am trying to get the autograph, security is telling us to move, move back (not in a mean way, really) and as it happened, he was walking in my direction. I opened the sharpie pen, placed a picture from Venice which I printed on the computer before I left to attend the gala in front of him and asked if he would mind signing for my daughter. He looked right at me, and said sure. He signed the photo, I told him I thought he was awesome in Neverland, and smiled at me and said thank you very much, and security led him out. So in my mind, I had 3 close encounters of the third kind! Watching the Oprah interview tonite brought it all back — I’ll never forget the way he looked at me, smiled, because watching the Oprah video tape reminded me of that, because except for his drop dead gorgeous look in that black tux, he looked the same! Sorry for the very long winded reply, but I wanted to give you all of the details I could remember – just sorry I couldn’t get a picture with him, but I was fortunate to have been there that evening to begin with, and I had a connection, and it was GREAT!
