The Hollywood Interview

Patrick Swayze passed ten years ago today, September 14, 2009, at age 57. Of the over 600 people I've interviewed since 1996, Patrick was, by far, the nicest. A real person. No pretense. No diva, movie star nonsense. Just another guy that I was having a chat with. In a time when we see ex-Nazis (and other despots) living to the century mark, the untimely passing of someone like Patrick Swayze is made all that much more palpable. Our interview is recreated here and, I hope, captures the spirit of our meeting.

Graphics by Michelle Ingram-DeLong at ingramdesignstudio.com

Patrick Swayze was played by Ben Warner. He is thebenwarner at Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Produced by No One Else Media and Wanderer Productions.

Even the most seasoned (and jaded) journalists are faced with a subject who brings butterflies to the stomach, akin to what we felt at our first school dance. The prospect of chatting with the iconic Lauren Bacall had this effect on me. It was 2007 and Bacall had just finished work on Paul Schrader's "The Walker," opposite Woody Harrelson. Our chat on the phone became one of the great conversations, and personal connections, of my life. Most journalists avoid "phoners" whenever possible, as a conversation via Alexander Graham Bell (or Verizon) is rarely as intimate or revealing as a one-on-one chat. Originally, I was to interview Miss Bacall (aka "Betty" to her friends) at The Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. A longtime New Yorker who resided in the iconic Dakota Apartment Building, she had cancelled all LA press due a cold. Her publicist offered me twenty minutes on the phone as a consolation, and of course, I said "yes."

After 90 minutes of extraordinary conversation, this episode of The Hollywood Interview covers a vast and golden age of Hollywood as Bacall recounts it, from Bogart to Hemingway, Bette Davis to Robert F. Kennedy. Bacall responds to Alex's deep filmic knowledge with stories never heard before. Names drip from her lips like Hepburn and Harold Pinter, John Huston and Howard Hawks, Kirk Douglas and Woody Harrelson. Directors like Robert Altman and Lars Van Treer. Lauren Bacall also shares her political disappointments and hopes for the future. Her political comments still ring true.

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Thanks to Deryn Warren for playing Lauren Bacall. Deryn is a pre-eminent actor and director in Hollywood. Connect with her at https://www.linkedin.com/in/deryn-warren-6b94a313/.

Logo and Banner Art by Michelle DeLong https://www.ingramdesignstudio.com/.

Sidney Lumet was the first director I interviewed whose one-sheet posters hung on my wall as a kid. He was an idol, an icon, and an inspiration. I wasn't yet 30 in April 1997, when I met him at The Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills for our interview at the press junket for "Night Falls On Manhattan," one of his solid, authentic urban dramas that blended crime, politics and personal revelations that became his signature. Lumet's body of work is one that will carry on for the ages, and remains one of the cinema's most diverse. It is unlikely, given the vast changes in the movie business since Lumet's entry, that another contemporary filmmaker will ever assemble one to rival it.

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Thanks to the talented Jonathan Coogan for his voicing of Sidney Lumet. For acting and voicing contact Jonathan at jonathancoogan.com or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Jonathan.Rosenthal.Coogan/about?lst=584764309%3A503595955%3A1566316128 or just call him at 323-791-8633.

The Hollywood Interview is produced by Conal O'Herlihy for No One Else Media.

The Hollywood Interview is a News and Entertainment program operating under the Fair Use Doctrine.