I saw Phillip Noyce‘s Newsfront at the 1978 New York Film Festival. I loved it, and somehow I got my hands on a special Newsfront pin made by the distributor. I lost it a couple of years later (naturally) but last night I was given an exact copy by a good friend. It’s now on the lapel of my best suit jacket.

I used to wear this pin everywhere. I was always given special treatment as people assumed I was some news syndicate hotshot. Hosts and waiters where always obliging when I visited a nice restaurant, which rarely happened as I was dirt poor and living hand-to-mouth back then. Six months before the 1978 NYFF I’d moved into my very first Manhattan apartment, a reasonably-priced, cockroach-infested dump at 138 Sullivan Street — bedroom, kitchen, bathroom. On the fourth or fifth floor.