“But Tony, with his impulsiveness and selfishness…he’s locked up in that fucking head of his.” — Junior Soprano (Dominic Chianese) in “The Knight in White Satin Armor,” the 25th Sopranos episode and twelfth of season #2, originally aired on 4.2.00.

When I first heard this line I laughed, and then I asked myself to what extent it applies to Scott Walker or Scott Foundas or myself or George Clooney or Alejandro G. Inarritu or whomever.

I like to think of myself as a free man in Paris who’s just dropped a tab of mescaline, but the unfortunate truth is that I’m probably “locked up” as much as Tony Soprano or anyone else ever was. It doesn’t feel good to admit this, but it’s probably true.

I know that I’m theoretically open to the concept of an emotional and psychological jailbreak, and that I live for that possibility on a daily basis. I could name a lot of journalists in my circle who are totally locked up (or more precisely locked down) but what would that accomplish?

I know that the line struck me as hilarious when I first heard it, and I’m chuckling at it right now.


Until today I had never seen this photo of Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe between takes of Some Like It Hot. Notice how Curtis is leaning forward slightly and how she’s leaning back and to the left. I love Curtis’s brand new brown-and-white saddle shoes. I could do with a pair of my own.

This latest Studio Canal Third Man Bluray is derived from the 4K restoration that screened at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. I’m mildly curious to see it, but I felt so horribly burned by that grainstormed Criterion Bluray of The Third Man (i.e., the one that popped in February 2009) that it’s entirely possible that I’ll never buy a disc of this film again, especially with that bothersome zither score. Maybe I’ll watch an HD version via Amazon streaming.


This was taken for a May 1974 People magazine profile. To me the look on Bodganovich’s face is kind of priceless because it suggests an attitude or mindset that often or most easily manifests when you’re young and flush and things are going your way, and especially when your girlfriend is hot and curvy and the perfect partner for the moment. Nothing is permanent. Everything changes. It all falls away.


A long-hidden shot of preparation for that 1976 Saves The Whales concert that I co-produced in Wilton, Connecticut. Sounds like a long time ago, doesn’t it? It wasn’t.