Why didn’t the friends of the late Bingham Ray arrange for a simultaneous New York and LA double-header memorial — one at Manhattan’s Paris theatre (which happened today) and the L.A. version happening at Busby’s (5364 Wilshire Blvd, between Cloverdale and Detroit), which is set for next Friday, 2.17? Probably due to an audio-visual presentation that can only play one place at a time. Indiewire‘s David D’Arcy has written a nice story about the New York event.

It’s funny, but during all the years I knew Ray we never compared notes about working for Sid Geffen in the late ’70s. Ray worked as a projectionist at the Geffen-run Bleecker Street Cinema in ’80 or thereabouts, or so I recall. This wasn’t long after I was toiling as the manager editor of Sid’s Thousand Eyes Cinema Guide. I’m sure we crossed paths but for whatever reason we never talked about it. That’s because neither of us really let our hair down and “talked” to each other, ever. We would spar and laugh but never share. Ray once called me “the Devil himself,” which I always thought was a bit harsh.