Over the years, just by virtue of being a New Yorker, I randomly crossed paths or had small interactions with celebrities. Other times, fewer, I photographed them on assignment for publications.
Freshly arrived in the city, my first such encounter was with Matt Dillon. Mid-afternoon on a weekday, I was sitting at the counter in an Upper West Side bar nursing a drink. I looked up at the mirror, hung above and behind the bartender, and realized Dillon had taken the stool next to mine. Not knowing any better, and thus breaking a cardinal rule of living in NYC, I was brazen enough to say hello. Dillon was friendly and gracious about it all. We talked for some ten minutes about Rusty James and then about Antigua Guatemala and Atitlan.
Another time, I was one of three people waiting in line to see an obscure Roberto Rossellini film at the Lincoln Center Film Society. His daughter Isabella was one of the other two, standing just ahead of me, gorgeous in the chiaroscuro of the low-lit lounge. And so on: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, then years later - post TomKat - Katie and another male actor who bore more than a passing resemblance to Cruise. I remember fleeting moments with Martin Sheen, Harvey Keitel, Kirsten Dunst, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, F. Murray Abraham, Blythe Danner, Angelina Jolie, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Donald Trump and Marla Maples, Lawrence Fishburne, Christian Slater, John Lurie, Marc Anthony, Jack Nicholson, Woody Allen, Michael J. Fox, Debbie Harry, Mick Jagger, Robin Williams, Kurt Vonnegut, Paul Auster and others. Sometimes there’s a photo to mark the occasion, more often just a passing thought.
But my favorite and funniest encounter happened in a small Park Slope coffee shop, where I was sitting by the window sipping a coffee and watching the world go by. Every so often, somebody walking outside would stop mid-stride, do a double take, and keep on going. After this happened three or four times I was so bewildered I looked over my shoulder at the guy sitting next to me, ready to comment on the strange behavior. I didn’t need to make a comment; John Turturro, was quietly sitting there, also sipping a coffee and watching the world go by.