It’s Saturday and I thought I’d spend the day catching up with my magazine reading—which has become a chore, because I get so many damn magazines. How can I help it? I hardly pay for subscriptions any more because I keep getting offers to trade in my airline mileage for magazines, and since it’s so […]
Author Archive | Lawrence Grobel
Ya Gotta Play!
Mike Wallace, who died at the age of 93, didn’t remember working for 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes! You can’t think of that show without thinking of Mike Wallace and how he asked the Ayatollah Khomeini if he was a lunatic, or how he made Barbra Streisand cry by telling her what her mother had said […]
GOODBYE AOL!
I see that Microsoft has paid AOL $1 billion for their patents, and it’s made me nervous, because I own Microsoft stock, and I was once an AOL customer, until I couldn’t take all the screwups any longer. I wrote about it for the LA Times magazine and dug it out to remind Microsoft who […]
High School Neglect
I heard from an old high school friend who helps organize our reunions every 10 years. The upcoming one is a pretty big one, and I suggested we do something at the old high school. She said that the school wasn’t that keen on having old graduates come for their reunions. It’s disruptive, apparently. There […]
5 Movies, Little to Recommend
I recently saw four new films: Wanderlust, Salmon Fishing in Yemen, John Carter, and 21 Jump Street. I wish I could recommend them with huge thumbs up and give them a high rating…but I was disappointed with all of them, especially the ones that had promise. The worst of these films, by far, was John […]
Lost Dog, Sick Horse
Last week my wife and I were walking in Runyon Canyon, stopping to say hello to the two chestnut horses and one goat that stand in a small space behind a wire fence before you reach the iron gate entrance. Small children like to look at these animals. The goat seems to be friends with […]
“I Want You in My Movie!”: Al Pacino’s Wilde Salome: Intro
On Sunday, March 26, 2006, as we sat eating lunch in his Beverly Hills backyard Al Pacino started talking about how he was about to start filming Salome, not just Oscar Wilde’s play, which he’d done on and off-Broadway over the years, but the making of the play, and his attempt at getting to understand […]
Yoga? No, Shmoga!: Intro
In the long history of trying to keep fit, there have been many exercises, stretches, movements, and sports. All have had the same goal: to make you better than you were. To give you flexibility, strength, and coordination. There are so many variations of the martial arts that schools have sprung up in countries and […]
Begin Again Finnegan: excerpt
After spending the afternoon filming Kiel walking along the Seine, reflecting on Joyce’s fascination with rivers and imagining him walking with his cane, trying hard to see out of his near-blind eyes, Devin was taken aback three hours later when he and Jim met up with Adrian and his “date,” Suzanne Florins, who costarred with […]
Catch a Fallen Star: excerpt
He felt like crying. Who could he call? Kevin Costner? Oliver Stone? Gary Oldman? Denzel Washington? He had their numbers but what would he say to them? Wanna play some ball? Go fuck women? Be friends? They had their own problems, didn’t need him. And he didn’t want to be anybody’s problem. Why did it […]
