Archive | Interviews

When Lisa Kudrow and the five other cast members of Friends decided to leave that show after its tenth season in 2004, they were giving up the most lucrative deal in TV history. For their last two seasons, they were each being paid a million dollars per episode. Yet, they thought it was time to […]

After I finished interviewing James A. Michener for my book Talking with Michener, I asked if he would consider interviewing himself as the final chapter, to cover things on his mind that I might not have touched upon. He was reluctant, but then he read an interview that Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer did with […]

Here’s what first comes to mind when I think about Robin Williams. No, not any of his crazy antics. Not the riff he did with that pink pashmina scarf on Inside the Actor’s Studio. Not his unbelievably hysterical take on the invention of golf on one of his HBO specials. Not his television alien Mork. […]

Robert Evans is wearing a white bathrobe over his clothes as he walks me into his dining room. The table is filled with oversized photos by Helmut Newton. Some are of naked women, others are of Evans with Jack Nicholson, Evans with his son Joshua, and one is of a particularly attractive woman sitting in […]

“Hey Larry, Jesse Ventura here, how are you?  I’m in town doing this book tour thing. Larry King, Wolf Blitzer….I’m free for dinner on Friday if you are.” “Sure,” I said, “I’d love to see you governor.”  Former presidents still get called president, so I guess former governors should get the same respect.  He was […]

In the days before the Internet, before e-mails, before cell phones, before fax machines—at least before the cheap accessibility to fax machines—when you wanted to send something quick and urgent you sent a telegram.  Just remembering this makes me feel old.  But I do remember because it was a telegram I sent to Norman Mailer […]