This slightly vandalized American Friend poster has been hanging on my living room wall for a while now. Cost about $275 or $300. I sent this pic to an old friend a few days ago. “Looks nice,” he replied. “Everyone needs a good vanity project now and then.” Vanity? Okay, to some extent but mainly it’s a kind of capturing of the way I used to feel about myself in the late ’70s…the gloom, the despair…the old Hollywood Weltschmerz thing. If I hadn’t manned up and gotten it together in that do-or-die period (’77 to ’81) I might have slid down the muddy banks and into the river. The 40th anniversary of the showing of this film at the 1977 New York Film Festival is fast approaching. Gulp.