On a September night in 1994, Johnson comes home in Columbia, S.C., from his job as director of marketing and communications at the health-care management firm MedCorp Health Systems. Johnson, then 32, pops in a video that has been collecting dust on top of his VCR for three months. It's an episode of The Vicki Lawrence Show featuring the personal assistants for Whoopi Goldberg, Roseanne Barr, Burt Reynolds, and Carol Burnett. ''I just said to myself, Well, if they can do that, then so can I,'' recalls Dean. ''I realized that would be a huge challenge, and for some reason I wanted it.''
When the tape ends, it's midnight in South Carolina, but 9 p.m. in California. Without wasting another minute, Johnson calls directory assistance in L.A. and asks for the home numbers of the assistants on the show. Only one of the four is listed: Ron Holder, Goldberg's assistant. A minute later, Holder picks up. ''He said I was very lucky to get through,'' Johnson recalls. ''Apparently, he was in the process of disconnecting his phone because, in the time since he had appeared on that talk show, he had received 200 calls from people like me.'' Holder suggested that Johnson consider attending one of the ACPA's seminars.
Johnson did just that and, two months later, left his MedCorp job and moved to L.A. ''M.B.A.'s are trained to be disciplined people who are rational in thought,'' says Johnson, who earned an M.B.A. from the University of South Carolina. ''There is nothing rational about leaving South Carolina and driving 3,000 miles without a job, especially if you're giving up a good job in corporate America with a 401(k) and health benefits. You just don't give up that life and drive across the country to become an assistant.''
Johnson's career arc is an updated version of that quintessential American story: the guy in the hinterland who falls in love with the glamour of the silver screen, packs up all of his possessions, and moves out to Hollywood in order to become an assistant to a star. ''Celebrities are known around the world, and assistants are the gatekeepers. That's a powerful position to be in,'' he explains. ''Within the landscape of Hollywood, if you're an assistant, sometimes you might as well be washing the floors, but in Middle America, they look on the profession with a certain amount of, well...awe.''
Not that his early years in L.A. were quite so awesome. ''My thinking was kind of pie-in-the-sky when I first got here,'' recalls Johnson. ''I thought I would just work for Julia Roberts, or Jodie Foster, or Mel Gibson right off the bat. I don't know what I was thinking.'' Instead, Johnson ended up working for Growing Pains dad Alan Thicke. Over the next decade, Johnson worked for a variety of stars — most recently Tiffani Thiessen of Beverly Hills, 90210 fame.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Johnson's fascination with fame is long-standing. Johnson recalls one of his early run-ins with a ''star'': Leigh Lewis, a schoolmate from Aynor High School whom he describes at length in his memoir, Life. Be There at 10 'Til. A Collection of Homegrown Wisdom: ''She was a star athlete. She was a star student. She was a star. Period.'' Johnson, on the other hand, portrays himself as an overweight social outcast dubbed ''Dean, Dean, the Butterbean...Fattest Man I've Ever Seen.'' Apparently, his weight was so conspicuous that within days of starting junior high, his best friend told him he was too embarrassed to be seen with him. ''If someone was picking on me during a break, during recess, or between classes, I knew a bell would eventually ring and a classroom setting would soon offer a safer haven,'' writes Johnson. ''I realized that every moment had its beginning and ending and that nothing, whether good or bad, lasts forever.''
Years later, Johnson says, this realization helped him cope with celebrity employers. ''A lot of celebrities are really high-maintenance,'' he explains. ''They can be very overbearing with their barking, screaming, and yelling — but as soon as a tantrum is over, it's over.'' Except when it's not: ''One time, I was back in a dressing room and I got such an ass-chewing from this celebrity over the timing of a publicity shoot. I couldn't remember the last time that I'd been talked to like that, and I looked in the dressing-room mirror and I thought to myself, What the f--- am I doing here? And then, a moment later, I realized: If the behavior is bad at this level, it will be worse at the next level, and you better just be glad this tantrum wasn't from a bigger star.''
Throughout his high school years, Johnson had only one interaction with Leigh Lewis, and it didn't go well. In his autobiography, he recalls approaching Lewis at the annual yearbook party to pay her a compliment. She ignored him. ''Had I left her alone, my memory would still be of a stunning beauty unlike anyone I knew,'' he concludes. ''The memory was tarnished, and I wish I had listened to my inner voice. I would have been better off wondering. But I was responsible for my fantasy's undoing.'' Johnson says he learned it's best to admire ''stars'' from afar. Even so, some 20 years later, he found himself working for the actress who played one of TV's most exalted high school queens.
