Archive | Books

Though the poems in this book are about very public, very private people, they are, for me, very personal.  After spending time interviewing a particular subject for a book or magazine article, I often found myself thinking about a specific detail that seemed to define that person for me. Occasionally I’d jot down a few […]

  When writing about celebrities, I’m often confronted with how to approach them. What’s the “angle”?  Editors often want a particular slant. When Tiger Woods was chased by his wife with a golf club, stories about Tiger changed from his incredible prowess on the golf course to his remarkable infidelities off it.  When Kim Basinger […]

         Let’s not do this slow, no, let’s get the words out fast, yes, steam through the history, gas, pass, Commando Ex got class, crass? Here comes, hold it now, the rise and droppings, the stiffenings and squirtings, the balls-and-jacks beginnings of a never-ending life-suspending continent-hopping mind-expanding experience-stretching story: the life and times, the […]

At the port in Mombasa Anika asked a guard where they might find the Black Eyes of Akbah. The man said if they just walked along the docks they would surely find it if it was there. Eric suppressed his laugh. Africans were so wonderfully simple. They went into a bar, ordered a beer and […]

One definition of an Icon is somebody widely and uncritically admired, but that would eliminate the most hallowed in the pantheon, like Muhammad Ali, Marlon Brando, Fred Astaire, Marilyn Monroe, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Pablo Picasso, Cervantes, Dante, Dickens, Mozart, Beethoven, Michelangelo, Michael Jordan, John the Baptist, Abraham Lincoln….the list can go on and on, […]

“After Mickey and I separated, I got a call from a friend saying there was a man who wanted to meet me, and his name was Howard Hughes. I thought she said Howard Hawks, the director, who wanted to see me for a film.  Kay came by with Johnny Meyers, who worked for Hughes as […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]