A celebrity imitator finds real inspiration

James Dean rolled out of bed Friday morning and caught a bus near Beverly and Western, transferred to a Red Line train and reported for work on Hollywood Boulevard with Batman, Elvis and Capt. Jack Sparrow.

Marilyn Monroe was supposed to join him, but she didn’t show.

Earlier in the week, I had spotted James and Marilyn working together in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, posing for photos and hoping for tips.

I wondered what their story was.

Were they a couple?

Did they just get off a bus from the Midwest with big dreams?

And have things calmed down on Hollywood Boulevard since Elmo, Chewbacca and Freddy Kruger were arrested after altercations with passersby?

James Dean, whose real name is Gerard Christian Zacher, dialed Marilyn but got a recording saying the service had been cut off.

“I know she was excited about coming,” he said, concerned about what might have happened to her. No, they’re not a couple. Just friends who have discovered that more tourists flock to them when they stand next to each other.

We crossed the boulevard with Zacher in character. When I first saw him, earlier in the week, he was James Dean in “Giant,” but on this day he was dressed for “Rebel Without a Cause.” Cuffed jeans, T-shirt, light jacket and fake cigarette. Very cool, and moody, too, like a young man whose parents were tearing him apart.

Zacher is a little guy who, at 39, could pass for 25. It’s tough out there, he says. Not only are some tourists abusive, but a lot of the reenactors are aggressive beggars, tarnishing the images of the others. He doesn’t even talk to Catwoman, he says, and one of the Elvises and a Capt. Jack Sparrow don’t respect the unwritten code of professional conduct.

That code says don’t wander off the sidewalk and onto the footprints of Hollywood legends. Perform for the tourists, but never harass them, even when they take your picture and stiff you on a tip. On a good day, Zacher says, behaving professionally can bring $200.

“Chewbacca was arrested for head-butting a Star Line tour guide,” Zacher says with disgust, noting that a Marilyn Monroe had also accused Chewbacca of a lewd act. “And a Batman was arrested during an anti-Bush demonstration, then kicked out the police car windows.”

Zacher said he sent e-mails to the mayor and to City Council President Eric Garcetti asking them to meet with him and discuss ways to regulate street performers and “class it up.” You’ve got Batmen coming in by the busload, he said, and it gets out of control at times.

“At one point we had 16 Spider-Men out here, and a lot of them were just begging.”

If Zacher sounds like a bit of a crusader, it’s partly because he’s still trying to restore his own image, which suffered a brief setback in May of last year. Zacher, who has worked as Luke Skywalker, Peter Pan, the Grinch and Beetlejuice, among others, revealed over coffee and a muffin that he was the Freddy Kruger who ended up in handcuffs.

“I was attacked by this guy who was homeless or high or something,” Zacher said.

One of Zacher’s Freddy Kruger claws scraped his assailant. Police confiscated the blades and Zacher was charged with assault with a deadly weapon in what turned out to be his Nightmare on Vignes Street.

Zacher, a diabetic who had trouble getting his medication while in custody, spent four days in jail before pleading no contest to the lesser charge of possessing a deadly weapon -- blades that were perhaps a little too authentic.

“He was just defending himself,” said Batman, who witnessed the altercation, along with Pinhead from “Hellraiser.”

It was the start of a tailspin for Zacher. His car conked out on him, his side jobs in any number of fields weren’t paying his bills, his landlord put him out and he spent several months knocking on friends’ doors and riding buses and trains for hours at a time to catch some sleep.

“There were times when I wanted to give up,” he said.

But he had grown up in Illinois determined to become an actor, staging plays in his backyard as a grade-schooler. It took him a little longer to get to Los Angeles than he had hoped, and his first jobs were never part of the dream that brought him here.

After arriving in October 1998, he worked as a Disney store clerk and then worked on the Jungle Cruise and in the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland. Then he found Hollywood Boulevard.

“Technically, it’s acting,” he said. “But I came to the Boulevard to get beyond the Boulevard, if that makes any sense.”

The low point came after his arrest: He had no car, no agent and no prospects.

“I told myself to just hang in there a little longer. I’m going to either make it or die trying.”

Then a documentary filmmaker named David Markey showed up on Hollywood Boulevard with a camera. Markey’s plan was to make a short on the lives of a few reenactors, but he quickly decided there was a full-length feature on the odd cast of look-alike performers and the strange subculture on the boulevard.

He found jealousy, desperation, trampled dreams and undying hope in the colony of celebrity imitators, all of them surviving on dollar bills tossed their way by an endless flow of gawkers from the far corners of the world.

“Gerard is the lead character,” said Markey, who hooked up with him when he was homeless and found that he was a natural in front of the camera, with a story both tragic and inspirational.

Markey called his film “The Reinactors,” misspelling the word as a play on the reincarnation of famous characters, and he said it was just selected by the Rotterdam International Film Festival. (To see a trailer and photos, go to www. thereinactors.com).

Zacher is also featured in an upcoming documentary called “Fanpire,” which is about uber-fans of legendary movie characters such as Luke Skywalker.

“I think it might be starting to turn around,” says Zacher, who, like Skywalker, doesn’t know who his biological father is. He was raised by adoptive parents but will spend Thanksgiving with his biological mother, who lives in Florida.

He had searched for her unsuccessfully for years, and then she found him recently and introduced him to three half brothers who have encouraged him not to give up on acting.

After our coffee, we walked across the street and talked to a Batman, an Elvis and a Kazaam, the genie in a Shaquille O’Neal movie. Then, Zacher leaned against a wall, lifted the fake cigarette to his lips and paid homage to the actor who once said:

“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”

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steve.lopez@latimes.com

To see a photo of Gerard Zacher, go to www.latimes.com/lopez