Amanda Petrusich at the New York Times shares the tale of Melton Barker, a traveling filmmaker who wandered the U.S. for forty years making the same film with kids in different towns…for a fee.

These days Barker’s racket might seem archaic (anyone with a laptop and a camera can get on YouTube in minutes), but let us not forget Rebecca Black, the then-13-year-old aspiring pop star whose mother paid $4,000 to Ark Music Factory, a songwriting and video production company, to create a clip for “Friday,” one of the most inescapable (and mocked) memes of 2011.

The illusion of fame has always been a hot commodity.

You can view Barker’s films (or film, rather) here, but the site is pretty sluggish today.

(via Boing Boing.)