Hollywood Lawyer Pledges to Eat a Shoe for Charity

Charity fundraising is nothing new in Hollywood. So to set his endeavor apart, Hansen Jacobson lawyer Adam Kaller is taking a page from his social media clients and relying on an online stunt to raise money for the Epilepsy Foundation. Kaller, whose daughter has epilepsy but is currently seizure-free, has promised to eat a shoe if he gets $250,000 in donations.

“I didn’t want to send out another email to all of my friends and contacts begging for money,” says Kaller. To give the campaign a boost, he filmed a tongue-in-cheek video with Good Morning America co-anchor George Stephanopoulos (his wife, Alexandra Wentworth, is a Kaller client) that has more than 182,000 views on Facebook.

Kaller also participated in the Walk to End Epilepsy on Nov. 5 with client Logan Paul. And YouTube duo Rhett & Link donated $1,000 to the cause. 

So far, Kaller has raised $57,000, but he’s confident that he’ll be dining on leather soon. He has received several recommendations for how to cook it, but may follow in the famous footsteps of Werner Herzog, who boiled and ate shoe leather in 1979 after losing a bet with Errol Morris. Says Kaller: “It’s silly, I know, but it’s hard to rise above the noise.”

A version of this story first appeared in the Nov. 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.