Thomas Pynchon

Just kidding.

Richard Powers

Well, he just lives a few blocks away. I talked to him this afternoon after a discussion of The Echo Maker. We discussed Pynchon. With how many people in the world can one discuss Thomas Pynchon, I ask you?

Powers is wholly remarkable, as are his books.

Susan Sontag

I was in awe of "Against Interpretation" and even commissioned an experimental filmmaker to make an impressionistic movie about it. I ran into Sontag a couple of times. Once was on the steps of the Palais des Festivals at Cannes where she was holding court with anyone within earshot. She always seemed to be holding court, making herself the center of attention.

Years later, she came to the Louisville festival and after a play based on a historical event, using dialogue taken from the historical record, she stood up and addressed the audience, praising this "new form" of play. (I could think of other similar plays, but she was the famous Susan Sontag and no one dared contradict her.)

I just realized how many of the people I'm naming have since died. I still think Against Interpretation and other of her works are evidence of an elegant mind.

Alice Cooper

I went to Alice Cooper's hotel room in Denver one Saturday morning for a scheduled interview. (In the elevator, I meet Cheech.) The rock star was watching cartoons and drinking beer. However, he was very intelligent and answered all my questions with depth and clarity and self-deprecating humor.

J. Hoberman

One group of people I have no problem approaching and talking to are movie and music critics. Unlike movie stars, they probably enjoy the attention and are rarely recognized. I am and have long been a critic groupie. I even asked for Bruce Webber's autograph when he was a New York Times theater critic. I won't list all the critics I've met; they don't really count as famous, for the most part. (Frank Rich, my hero, once sent me a post card.)

J. Hoberman (people call him Jim) writes movie reviews for the Village Voice. I used to resent the fact that he could see all the rarest foreign films when I rarely had the chance. These days, thanks to DVD, I can have a working knowledge of Bela Tarr and Hong Sang-Soo, not to mention Guy Maddin, just as well as the next geek.

Anyway, back in the day, I called up Hoberman to interview him about experimental films and wanted to screen the one little film he had made, a faux sci-fi short called, I think, Mission to Mongo.

He lived in a very small loft in Soho with wife and daughter. He was very nice. He screened the movie for me right there in the apartment. I still like reading his critical/cultural/social/psychological perspective on the movies. He probably still lives in that little loft, too.

Sigourney Weaver

Most of my problem in encountering famous people is my reluctance to appear star struck in front of people who actually are stars and are likely to be bored or repulsed by yet another person gawking or hyperventilating in their presence.  If I have no reason to speak to them other than to brush up against fame, then I resist until the moment -- which often does not come in time -- when I have a legitimate reason to speak to them.

Such was the case with Sigourney Weaver, who was in attendance at a late night press buffet in Louisville.  Weaver was attending because her husband, Jim Simpson, was directing a play at the Actor's Theatre Festival.  They were munching, talking, looking good but behaving like ordinary people at a party.

Weaver has long been associated with playwright Christopher Durang, who may also have been at the festival.  I can't recall because I was too taken with Weaver, I guess.  I tried to think of something to say about Durang to her, but I would have had to interrupt her and her friends, and I wasn't about to butt in to say, "Excuse me, but you are fabulous and tall and wow!"

So I said nothing and munched on the free crab and lobster and stuffed mushrooms and nursed my complimentary Kentucky whisky.  Later, I told people I had met Sigourney Weaver, referring to her as "Siggy." So shoot me.

(unrelated)

Video by negativeEclipse.

Cheech Marin

When I lived in Denver, I was on my way to interview a famous rock star (to be named in a later posting), and Cheech Marin -- who then was performing with Chong -- got on the hotel elevator with me. He went into instant performance mode. He made jokes about everything. He was hilarious. I should start a series just of people I've met in elevators.

Will Shortz

His phone number is now in my cell phone on speed dial, since he returned my call earlier this week to talk about submitting puzzles to the Times. I never expect people to return my calls. Thank you, Will Shortz.

Joyce Carol Oates

I haven't talked much about encounters with the literary. Where to begin? How about prolific novelist Joyce Carol Oates? Skinny woman. I can't believe she has so many words inside her. I sat next to her at a play in Louisville. I'd just read her book "Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart" -- and come to think of it, I think that's the only book of hers I've ever read. I told her how much I really did love that book. She gave a perfunctory thank you and obviously didn't want to talk. Her husband was there, too. She is a runner. She wore running shoes. I think she runs every morning. Maybe that's why she's so skinny.

Pauline Oliveros

I love Pauline Oliveros. When I tracked her down to the University of California in San Diego for an interview (for The Advocate), she was impressed that I had come so far just to interview her, a meditative experimental musical composer. We talked for an hour, sitting outside under some trees. I recorded the interview with a cassette machine. The ambient sounds of traffic and wind make the entire interview seem like one of her compositions. She showed me pictures of some fliers she had made for a lecture (in which she substituted a picture of a man with a mustache for her own picture).

I tried playing some of her recordings in the background during poker a couple of weeks ago. Everybody asked me to turn it off. But most of her music melts into the surroundings, and alters it. She once gave a concert during which she sat down, asked everyone in the audience to hum a note quietly and then alter the note they were humming to a step up from the note that they heard the person next to them humming. From all accounts, it was an event of great transcendence.

Karen Black

Everyone forgets about another once-famous Hollywood Scientologist, Karen Black. People may remember her from "Nashville" or "Five Easy Pieces," but can you name a movie she's made recently? (How about "House of 1000 Corpses" in 2003? Maybe I should rent that.) Actually, Black works a lot. There are 172 movies listed with her credit, five currently in production. She let me take her picture on the street in Cannes, which I got published somewhere. Actually, I'm not sure I even asked her. I just shot the picture. She refused to smile and seemed to be in a hurry.

Jerry Lewis

I had two encounters with Jerry Lewis, years apart, both unpleasant. One was following a small sidebar screening at Cannes, when Lewis spoke to the audience (he pronounced the country "FRAWNCE," obviously playing to his fan base there). I asked a question and he dismissed it without answering it. Either I put him on the spot or it was a stupid question.

Decades later he was performing in Damn Yankees on Broadway. He was the worst thing about the show, mugging and playing off his name rather than integrating the character into the show itself.

After the performance, he appeared in the lobby to sign autographs for charity. I asked if he would record an five-second greeting for my radio show, but he only wanted to deal with people who would fawn over him. Like most clowns, Jerry Lewis is scary to me.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Fassbinder was standing outside a store on the Croisette, wearing his leather, standing, staring, virtually cruising. He couldn't hide. There was no anonymity here, unlike the dark back rooms of the Anvil where sometimes he visited, flying to New York from Berlin just for a day, spurred by the urges that proved to be his undoing in the end.

Either fear or awe denied me the strength to speak to him. Not that I was afraid of being seduced. More the opposite. What if he sneered at me?

Better just to acknowledge him and walk on, I thought at the time. Of course, there was never another chance. He was dead soon after. Chalk up this as merely a sighting... and a regret.

Jamie Lee Curtis

She was hanging out in Pontiac, Illinois, while filming Grandview U.S.A. Her publicist filtered all my questions. I think she resented it as she also may have resented trying to pretend she was thrilled to be living in the middle of Illinois for a month or so. She bought a house while she was there. Most of the actors and cast did. We had coffee and pie at the diner. She was unenthused, even sleepy. I always liked her, her toughness, her frankness. But I almost felt sorry for her, being so sheltered from direct contact with her surroundings or from me. I think we were both glad when it was over. Her publicist was a jerk.

Joey Ramone

I kept asking the Ramones, when they made their first visit to Champaign-Urbana, if they thought their music would ever be commercial.

"It already is," Johnny said.

I caught up with them later at a record signing event at the mall. Joey needed to buy some stuff at Osco's, and I went with him. He loped along, people gawking at his height, his leather, his general goofy demeanor.

I wanted to get a picture of the two of us together. He grabbed a bottle of shampoo and held it up, looking like a greasy-haired punk, and grinned.

I often showed the picture to people and they never failed to be impressed. Somebody must have stolen it, though, because I haven't seen it in years. Maybe it's in the basement.

Joey was the best.

Rudy Giuliani, with an asterisk

This is not exactly true. I never met Giuliani. One year, pre-9/11, during my long quest to eat at as many four-star restaurants in Manhattan as I could over a period of years, I splurged at Jean-Georges, just off Central Park, by taking Bill and Mark to lunch. We were enjoying our meal when the restaurant seemed to be inundated with men wearing sunglasses and carrying walkie-talkies. We saw them outside walking around and inside as well.

"What's going on?" I asked a waiter.

"The mayor is having lunch here today," he said.

So I never really met Giuliani, but I definitely felt the presence of his security force. I will say this. I wouldn't like having to live under such circumstances. Very uncomfortable. Having such abundance and fame does not give one a sense of freedom.

I wonder if we had the same entree and extras and if he enjoyed them as much as I did. Somehow, I doubt it, although he may have had more expensive wine.

Cher

OK, so it was both Sonny and Cher. It was my freshman year at college at North Park in Chicago. We used to hang out in the hippy haunts of Old Town. Sometimes we bought boxes of sugar cubes at the grocery store and handed the cubes out to suburban gawkers on the street. "Free sugar cubes," we'd say, shocking people who associated it with LSD. Most people, though, took the sugar and laughed.

Sonny and Cher had their first Chicago concert that night and had come after the concert to walk around in Old Town. They were unmistakable, with furry legged pants and all the get-up of a freak show. Still, we ran up to them and fawned over them, which pleased them. I ripped a poster from the wall and asked them both to sign it, which they did in big letters. They wore gold rings bearing the name of each other. Sonny had a "Cher" ring" and Cher had a "Sonny" ring.

I lost the torn poster with their autographs. I looked recently again through the stuff in boxes in the basement. Can't find it.

Allen Ginsberg

The summer of 1968 held a world erupting. Chicago in August was particularly ripe. Of all the people that were seen and heard in Lincoln Park during the Democratic Convention -- from Jean Genet to Norman Mailer -- I really only rubbed shoulders with Allen Ginsberg, who was leading chanting of "Om" while sitting yogi style in the grass. I seemed to be one of the few who took this seriously and sat right next to him, sure that the sound of our voices was going to end the war right then and there.

Timothy Leary and Abbie Hoffman and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I saw them all on stage behind microphones during that time. But I'm not counting concerts in the tabulation of interludes with fame. Otherwise, i'd have to have pages and pages of references to Jefferson Airplane (who played for free every time someone sneezed) and the Velvet Underground and Jimi Hendrix and Cream and The Mothers of Invention and Miles Davis (at the Quiet Knight, where I was close enough for Miles to spit on) and many, many others.

Spalding Gray

Did a phone interview with him when he was in L.A., a time he later wrote about in one of his books or monologues. I had his home phone number and talking with him was the same as listening to one of his monologues. Years later, I ran into him on the street in New York. He was appearing in something on Broadway at the time, I forget what, but it wasn't one of his monologues. I had been drinking at Bill's and was going to Cabaret with someone and there was Spalding, walking down the street with a little pull cart, like old ladies or homeless people use. I couldn't think of anything but to tell him how much I liked his work. He thanked me in that New England accent, but he looked sad, bedraggled.

A few years later, he threw himself into the river as he'd always threatened to do.

Jerry Garcia

Ran into Jerry Garcia twice, apart from seeing the Dead in concert. Once was in Berkeley. He was just on the street. The second time was outside some arena in Milwaukee, where my cousin Jan and I had gone to hear the concert. I was wearing the purple Jesus robe that Cindy Nelson had sewn for me. This purple classic limousine drove into the lot where we had parked and headed right for us. It was Garcia and some of the other Dead members. I guess they liked my robe. Garcia rolled down the window and asked what was going on. I asked him if he'd gotten the letter I'd sent him. "Which one?," he asked. My mind was blown anyway. Jan threw up during the concert.

Maybe I dreamed it.

Richard Hell

Some club in New York. I forget who was even playing. The Feelies? Really don't know. Richard Hell was there to listen, not to play. He was rolling a joint and offered some to me. I couldn't say no. I wish I had. That stuff was so strong, I barely made it home. And, as already noted, I remember next to nothing about the night. I wish he had been playing with the Voidoids. That I would have remembered.

Roman Polanski

Everybody was killing each other to see Polanski at a press conference at the Hotel Majestic. He was introducing Natassia Kinski, I think. She looked so young, like one of his young women. This was after he had fled the U.S., of course. Anyway, I gave up jostling with the mob and went upstairs to some press office or another and, maybe a half hour later, walked down the hotel's empty hallway and there was Roman himself, unlocking the door to his room.

I couldn't just walk past. I said hello. I told him I was covering the festival for The Advocate and -- frantically, trying to come up with some quote from him I could use -- asked him something about gay film, I think. I thought at the time, this is so lame.

"Well," he said, smiling and extremely friendly, "it isn't something that I've done... which is not to say I never will."

Good enough.

Sally Field

We were on a roof in Cannes, drinking champagne. She seemed a little exasperated by the whirl of things, but not unfriendly in the least. She spoke with me as if she'd known me for years. I tried to pretend I wasn't impressed and made small talk. Her unguardedness threw me off. I've never met a celebrity this completely unaffected. She was just nice, really really nice. And short.

Taylor Mead

I was so excited to meet Taylor Mead in the Whitney Museum once. He welcomed any attention because he is probably most famous for his obscurity. I told him how great he was in Lonesome Cowboys. Too bad that movie is not available these days. He would have taken me home for dinner, I'm sure. He was more excited than I was, just to have been recognized.

I saw Lonesome Cowboys in Denver about 1970, I guess. Donnie Sutter was visiting and went with me. He hated it. Poor Donnie. He's been institutionalized for 30 years now.

Lou Reed

I was backstage with Lou Reed the night he stopped playing because some kid in the audience has been calling out for "Heroin" and holding up a giant syringe made of cardboard, pretending to jam it into his arm. I was supposed to get an interview, for the Advocate as I recall, but I had to turn it into a profile with just a few passing quotes because, as his manager told me, Reed was too distraught by the sight of how dumb kids misunderstood his work, I guess. He sort of stood me up. It didn't matter. The profile turned out good enough.

The Who and the Rolling Stones

I've often thought of compiling a list of the famous people I have met. I would start with The Rolling Stones, although this would be only partially true, since I saw the original five members (including Brian) during their first tour of the U.S. only in concert and it wasn't until years later that I actually stood next to Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts at Cannes. They were hanging out with Pete Townshend and Bill Entwistle of The Who after a screening of Quadrophenia. I sat in the seat directly in front of Townshend and his two female companions but didn't know it until after the film ended. I was glad I didn't know, even though I thought the movie was great. I just kind of stood around afterwards to be near the ensemble of friends, but didn't ask for autographs or anything. Now that I think about it, Mick Taylor may have been there, too. I tried not to stare, pretending to read my festival materials.

Deleted

I must have deleted five blogs today.

I'm thinking about opening up this blog to comments.

But then I remember what Charles Bukowski said:

"Isolation is the prize."

More elegant than Sartre's "Hell is other people."

Over

I feel like Jack Kerouac
Drinking in Florida
Tinkering but
Not doing anything
Like any good Buddhist bad Catholic
Already done everything
Been everywhere
Seen it all
Waiting for
Nothing

Second novel

A 90-year-old man is publishing his first novel this year. I read it in the Times. McSweeney's is publishing it. I forget the name. Something about cherries or grapes, I think. He is working on his second novel, the article said.

The Making of Americans

"I write for myself and strangers. No one who knows me can like it.
At least they mostly do not like it that everyone is of a kind of men
and women and I see it. I love it and I write it.'

"I want readers so strangers must do it. Mostly no one knowing me can
like it that I love it that every one is a kind of men and women, that
always I am looking and comparing and classifying of them, always I am
seeing their repeating. Always more and more I love repeating, it may
be irritating to hear from them but always more and more I love it of
them."

That, of course, is Gertrude Stein.

I can read and have read Gertrude Stein, and William Burroughs, and
Herman Melville, and I have relished such moments with a kind of
obsession.

I prefer the two screens simultaneously of Chelsea Girls to virtually
any single-image narrative movie out of Hollywood.

To think one needs to (or even can) understand is antithetical to
pleasure.

What could be more boring than understanding something at first glance?

Echo

The world is going to end in five years. I am constructing crossword puzzles of some wit and elegance. It is more fun than writing my novel. When the end comes, perhaps the cats of the world, turned feral, will learn over centuries how to do crossword puzzles and hold erasable pens. We don't need friends. That's the beauty of it.

THE PROBLEM WITH BIGOTRY

When the gatekeeper of the list
in front of the entire list
asked if I wanted to rejoin the list
anticipating (subconsciously, to be sure, because
that's the way the passive-aggressive, right-hands-don't-know-left-handers do it)
that I would be humbled
or cowed
or otherwise posed in submission,
accepting the historical position of inequality,
the deal was off.
These things do take decades.
Privilege grips so
only rust can matter.

Responsibility, by Grace Paley

It is the responsibility of society to let the poet be a poet
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the poet to stand on street corners
giving out poems and beautifully written leaflets
also leaflets you can hardly bear to look at
because of the screaming rhetoric
It is the responsibility of the poet to be lazy
to hang out and prophesy
It is the responsibility of the poet not to pay war taxes
It is the responsibility of the poet to go in and out of ivory
towers and two-room apartments on Avenue C
and buckwheat fields and army camps
It is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the female poet to be a woman
It is the poet's responsibility to speak truth to power as the
Quakers say
It is the poet's responsibility to learn the truth from the
powerless
It is the responsibility of the poet to say many times: there is no
freedom without justice and this means economic
justice and love justice
It is the responsibility of the poet to sing this in all the original
and traditional tunes of singing and telling poems
It is the responsibility of the poet to listen to gossip and pass it on in the way storytellers decant the story of life
There is no freedom without fear and bravery there is no
freedom unless
earth and air and water continue and children
also continue
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman to keep an eye on
this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be
listened to this time.

-Grace Paley