Celebrity Impersonators’ Tangled Lives Are Subject of New Video

Marilyn Monroe grips Elvis Presley in a mad, desperate embrace, their passion burning as hot as the eerie public fascination that keeps them both on the front pages of supermarket tabloids. Suddenly, Karen Carpenter bursts in on the carnal scene, her shock nearly as fatal as the eating disorder that ultimately would kill her--Elvis, or so she had thought, had been her man.

If this scenario, recently captured on videotape, has left you panting, or merely distressed, fear not--this is no bizarre home movie a la Rob Lowe. Instead, “It’s Only Make Believe,” as the tape is reassuringly titled, is the product of Irvine-based entrepreneur James Polakof. In it, he chronicles not the fictitious couplings of dead pop stars, but rather those of the professional impersonators who portray them in nightclubs and casinos.

With his tape, the 50-year-old Polakof hopes to launch a new era of film making in Orange County: one of low-budget productions with unknown casts, in which cassettes will be released direct to video stores without the often embarrassing and unprofitable step of theatrical release.

“Why go down a losing avenue?” he asked rhetorically. “We know we don’t have a blockbuster here.”

But while “It’s Only Make Believe” might not be able to compete against Hollywood’s offerings down at the five-plex, Polakof is convinced that nestled among the Steven (“E.T.--The Extraterrestrial”) Spielberg and Edward (“Plan 9 From Outer Space”) Wood features at the video store, it could hold its own.

Others have made handsome livings off Middle America’s obsession with the superficial personae of long-dead celebrities, so Polakof believes that his project has a huge potential audience among those who see “Elvis as the epitome of the American dream.”

“These people won’t go out to movies, but they will sit home and watch a video for two bucks,” he said. “As a writer, I think I’ve found a gold mine.”

Polakof found his inspiration while watching one of Orange County’s many Presley impersonators two years ago.

As the faux Elvis gyrated before him, Polakof recalled, “I started thinking about it philosophically. Why do these people do this? How do they stay alive?

“Then I realized, the public is keeping these people alive--and they’re paying top dollar to see them!”

Polakof joined forces with another who had come to the same conclusion, impersonation impresario John Stuart.

A Santa Ana native, Stuart, 44, had gone from producing devotional films for the Mormon Church to creating “Legends in Concert,” among the most successful celebrity-impersonation outfits. Since 1983, his Las Vegas-based company has produced revues for venues ranging from Nevada casinos to Orange County dinner theaters, including, most recently, the “Legendary Christmas” show at Hamptons in Santa Ana.

Stuart was impressed with Polakof’s idea. As a producer, he had seen dozens of impersonators of Presley, Monroe, Carpenter, Liberace, Nat (King) Cole, Judy Garland and others come and ago; never, Stuart said, had the curious psychological burdens of the work been confronted in a dramatic piece.

“God gave these people this particular ability. Yet it becomes a crutch,” he said. “Once they become the Karen Carpenter, the Elvis Presley, they then live their lives in the shell of these dead people. They need the sideburns, the rhinestones, or else they can’t go on,” in life as well as in the show.

Reflecting for a moment, Stuart concluded, “Some of these people should be locked up.”

Polakof, who wrote, directed and produced “It’s Only Make Believe,” and Stuart, who appears as himself in the video and receives credit as co-producer, make an unlikely looking team. A former advertising man from Modesto, the clean-cut, conservatively dressed Polakof would seem at home in any Orange County insurance company or real estate office.

Stuart, on the other hand, finds inspiration in Presley’s sartorial tastes of the 1970s: long, well-coiffed hair, brass-tipped python-skin boots and a shirt opened three buttons down from the collar. Polakof wears a tie; Stuart sports a bejeweled “Legends in Concert” insignia on his bare chest.

With “It’s Only Make Believe,” however, the two found much to share. Polakof was able to incorporate Stuart’s show into his video at little cost; the resulting product is, in essence, a feature length commercial for “Legends in Concert.”

“It’s Only Make Believe” features a young Orange County Presley impersonator, portrayed by an actor with the playful name of Randy Friskie. Popular at local nostalgia clubs, he yearns for the big time--and when an attractive stranger offers him the chance to appear in Stuart’s Las Vegas show, he quickly accepts.

Yet, in grim, familiar fashion, the prominence that Friskie gains is quickly followed by a life of debauchery and despair. He has an affair with the troubled Monroe impersonator, leading to estrangement from his Orange County girlfriend, herself a frustrated Carpenter impersonator.

With the guidance of the video’s moral voice--a Buddy Holly impersonator--Friskie decides to leave Las Vegas and the temptations of impersonation. He returns to Orange County to seek fame under, at last, his own name. Stuart himself, in a speech to Friskie, delivers the video’s message: “Before you live or impersonate the life of someone else,” he says wisely, “you’ve got to find yourself first.”

The video treats its subject with dead seriousness, and sticks closely to the pairing of the Presley and Monroe impersonators. More likely and interesting pairings, such as a Monroe impersonator falling in love with an Arthur Miller impersonator, or having a weekend fling with a John F. Kennedy impersonator, are not explored.

An Irvine resident, Polakof takes pride in “It’s Only Make Believe’s” many Orange County references. Pivotal scenes occur at such Orange County landmarks as the Hop, an El Toro nostalgia-theme club, and the Costa Mesa Denny’s. In a scene sure to shake up residents of one seemingly tranquil seaside community, a hoodlum warns the Presley impersonator to pay his debts or “your body might end up floating in Newport Bay.”

Although its musical numbers are skillfully dispatched, Polakof readily concedes that “this movie would never win an Academy Award.”

Indeed, the video--shot with a video camera rather than on film, giving it the textural quality of a soap opera or a game show--is so awkwardly written and performed, it could only appeal to those whose taste for impersonation of dead celebrities far exceeds their standards for acting, directing or production quality.

The video does, however, follow some Hollywood conventions: product placements, for a brand of beer and a chain of coffee shops, were arranged, and several Polakof relatives appear in the credits. Polakof said the tape, which he and several investors, mainly doctors, financed, cost “less than $400,000” for his Pola Productions Inc. to produce.

If “It’s Only Make Believe” succeeds--it was released only last week, so rental figures were not available--Orange County can expect to see Polakof and his video camera at other locations, recording other images of Orange County society.

“We’re going to try to do as much as we can in Orange County,” the film maker said. Unlike that other center of Southern California film activity, Los Angeles, Orange County “is still a place where people will let you use their places free of charge.”