Actors, and rock stars, might have once got special treatment, but outside of LA, it ain't happening anymore. Ask the lead guitar player for Phish who has been under house arrest for the last two years for some pills in New York.
And I agree with that. No special treatment. Just because you can pose on screen or can play a lick or two is no reason that the law that puts a guy with a wife and kids in jail for the same deal should not apply. (offer not good in LA, but they could not convict OJ either).
Way back, once upon a dream as it were, I was working a NYE show with the Dead at Winterland when they had the Blues Brothers open the show. A whole lot of us skipped out on the set to have a party, thinking, and I'm not all that sure I'm wrong about it either, thinking that what they did was a poor rip off of the real blues guys we all loved - if not worshiped - for the sake of some show biz gig on TV. Now, I kinda wish I had bothered to watch them, but I'm also happy that I saw the real deal, John Lee Hooker, Albert Collins, Albert King, B.B. King and the rest when they still were young and could play, and most of all I'm happy that one night Robert Lockwood Jr. sat in and jammed with us. A direct link to Robert Johnson is pretty cool. Some white boys faking doing blues, less so.
A plot, is just a bunch of paper that you shoot a movie from. Its not real. Though shooting the film often is. A felony on film is not a real felony. What John did, the Coke and the Heroin was. Too bad the law could not save him from himself.
And its not like I don't like them. Together they were about as good as any duo short of Allen and Burns. Alone, DA was weak, but JB, well, Animal House is a classic for good reason, though anyone who went to private collage in the 70s does not see it as a comedy as much as a documentry.
But deserving of some sort of special treatment vs. people who work for a living. I'm not buying that junk. Nor do most Americans I don't think. So if you are an actor - and a famous one at that - get busted in LA, but not Des Moines. It will make a difference.