Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t know Paul Newman. But I spent a few weeks with him in 1983, when I went down to Florida to watch him direct a father-and-son picture he had also co-written and produced, Harry and Son, with himself, Robby Benson, Wilford Brimley, a young lop-smiled actress named Ellen Barkin and Read More
When I think of Clay Felker, which is often, it’s at the Peacock Alley in the Waldorf Astoria. I had just come to The Observer in 1994 and I was scared and sweating. Clay offered to meet with me once a week and kick around story ideas. I used to bring a stack of napkins. Read More
What rough beast is David Chase riding?
He seems to have understood the mood of his nation better than anyone since Mario Puzo and Francis Coppola forecast the fate of the American empire in The Godfather.
And he has world leaders mouthing his dialogue, day and night. Here is Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Read More
For 17 years, since The New York Observer entered city life in 1987, it has existed within a red brick and white-marble-stepped townhouse on East 64th Street. When I entered for the first time, I had an enzymatic sensation I think was shared by many people who worked here-some to their pleasure, some to their Read More
In the dark shadows of the Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel, where Madeline and her friends dance across a New York that hasn’t existed in a long time, a man sat in the corner all in black–pants, rap jacket and T-shirt–his pouchy boy’s face at the very corner between innocence and the long view. Read More
