In a parking lot off Hollywood Boulevard, Christopher Dennis recently changed into a Superman outfit, complete with a muscle suit and calf-high red boots. He headed out through the crowds, a habit he was resuming after a forced absence.
“You look like you’ve come out of the movie screen, man!” said a parking attendant.
“Man, you’re back!” said a street vendor selling imitation flowers.
Many people who frequent the boulevard – not least the other superhero impersonators, who pose for tourists for tips – know the reason Dennis was gone. For about seven months he was homeless, and lived in a tent and under tarps in different places in the city.
Among the characters showboating in front of the Chinese Theater and parading in their regalia along the Walk of Fame, his situation is not unprecedented. There is a Darth Vader who has spent nights sleeping on the sidewalk with a costume in a backpack, and a Joker whose survival strategy sometimes involved trying to stay awake when it was dark out.
“As an actor, a law-abiding citizen in Hollywood, I am very well known,” Dennis said. “For that to all be stricken from me, taken from me, and to be put in another category – that’s hell.”
About 47,000 homeless people were counted in Los Angeles County during a tally last year, a number bolstered by climbing rents in the region. Impersonators are not immune to these economic forces and face unique challenges.
“You’re on your feet the whole day long,” said Matt Ogens, the director of a 2007 documentary about several characters, including Dennis. “You have the anxiety of not knowing if you’re going to bring home enough money that day. You have to be on all the time talking to tourists.”
“They’re living hand to mouth,” Ogens added. “It’s not enough to really live in LA.”
Speaking in a secluded corner by Madame Tussauds one evening in mid-March, Darth Vader said he had made $27 in three hours that afternoon, or less than the California minimum wage. Why, then, does the work appeal?
“I suffer from social anxiety disorder,” said Vader, also known as Mitchell Schonberner, who is 6ft 8in counting his helmet and platform boots. “I realized that when I put on the costume people wouldn’t see me,” and that “it makes me a little bit braver”.
Schonberner, a gentle man missing a few front teeth, was born in St Louis and has been homeless off and on since the age of 18. His character repertoire extends from Han Solo to Chewbacca, Severus Snape and Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th. Now 32, he attributes his precarious living situation to bad luck, injuries from road and trampoline accidents that prevent him taking up other occupations, and his unwillingness to accept help from friends.
“I’m couch-surfing right now,” he said. “I could be evicted at any point.”
Character work keeps him going: as long as he is carrying a costume with him he can make money. Several have been stolen, however, including a Scream outfit at a homeless shelter. And it’s hard to stay presentable for tourists. “Jason was the only one I didn’t have to worry about looking decent, because he’s meant to look all beaten up. Even then I would make sure the outfit was clean.”
A man who plays the Joker, and goes by the adopted name of Tyler Watts, said he stays in character while homeless because it deters troublemakers.
“I would far rather be sleeping with all this makeup and everything on,” he said. “There is something a little bit intimidating about being the Joker.” His getup involves white liquid-latex face paint, luscious red lips applied with a permanent marker, green hair, and a long purple jacket. Watts even speaks with a growl.
“They don’t know,” he said of gang members and others who might cause problems for a homeless person. “I could really be a nut.”
Watts said he is staying with a friend but has experienced episodes of homelessness since the summer of 2016, amid difficult personal circumstances that included a bout of pneumonia and losing his car, phone and money in a robbery.
There is a photograph of Watts sleeping on the street on the Instagram feed of actor Jared Leto, who appeared as the Joker in the film Suicide Squad. Watts says he did not begin playing the Joker as a means to earn cash – he describes it as a kind of art project that he is documenting on social media and in a book he is writing – but he found that the tips could pay for a $50 hotel room and, therefore, safety.
The history of boulevard impersonators is often said to begin with Dennis, who began performing in 1991 as a young Superman devotee with a remarkable resemblance to Christopher Reeve. Over the years their numbers ballooned, occasionally becoming cause for concern.
“Elmo was arrested one time,” said Joseph Mariani of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, an organization that manages a local business district, ticking off the incidents. “There was an altercation between Batman and Spiderman a couple years ago where there were arrests. And an incident where Shrek pepper-sprayed some Japanese tourists.”
Still, Mariani acknowledged that members of the Hollywood impersonator industry are not inherently more badly behaved than those in any other.
Dennis became homeless after high rents prompted him to move onto the grounds of a dog rescue organization, where he worked as a caretaker, and then into an RV, which didn’t run and became unaffordable. He kept his enormous collection of Superman memorabilia – standees from movie theaters, vintage figurines, children’s wallpaper – in storage. He continued to perform as Superman, washing his outfit every day, until he was attacked by a man wielding a golf club, who broke a number of his teeth and stole his outfit.
Soon – out of necessity, he said – he began taking drugs. “When I’d wake up the money is gone, this is gone, that’s gone,” he recalled. “After about the sixth time of me losing stuff while I was sleeping I said, ‘OK, fine, fuck it, I’m gonna keep myself awake.’”
Last summer a local documentarian, Alana Jackler, recognized Dennis and made a short film about his plight. The publicity helped him raise money through a crowdfunding site, and he has now resided at a sober-living facility for several months. Rent remains a struggle, though he is working on a web series about his experiences.
On the boulevard, Dennis stayed out for a few hours. He looked a little worse for wear, in need of dental treatment and his skin weather-beaten. But standing in front of the Chinese Theater like a sentinel, he seemed transformed, dispensing gracious welcomes and practiced one-liners. He put children on his shoulders and swept up a laughing young woman in his arms.
Being back among the throngs seemed to blot out the traumatic events of the recent past. “It’s hard to describe the feeling,” he said, “because I’m a new man in the outfit.”
