07-28-2016, 01:04 PM
Maybe you've heard this? Let's leave at 7:15. Okay. It's 7:15. Let's leave. Can't. HK jr is in shower, etc. Leave 20 minutes late.
For Tuesday, though, our interview was a half hour later than Monday's interview, which bought some extra time. We also had the benefit of not departing with the crush of cars and buses from the next door school at our hotel. After breakfast, HK jr wasn't feeling well, so he was thinking of spending his day in the hotel. (We had breakfast at the Triple Decker. Just as good the second day) I figure I could take three bags to the parking garage, leaving HK to only have to bring one to the car.
I whipped around the block back to our hotel with nary a problem. HK jr had recovered and was waiting with his father at the curb.
On Tuesday, we were interviewing Richard Cohen, the author of 'By The Sword' in which he devotes a whole chapter to the Hungarians. I figured I was going to fill up on stories of Borsody, Santelli, and Gerenscer. It was going to be an easy drive, as well, straight up 83rd St.
I was just a millisecond too late in recognizing the trash truck blocking the street after I made the turn. I was already blocked in and couldn't retreat. Just the day before, I saw a similar trash truck, collecting rubbish with a long line of disgruntled drivers in idling cars behind the truck. I think I even wished, at that time, that this would never happen to me.
Well, there it was happening to me. I slowly crept forward as the trash truck methodically plied it's trade in front of us. HK and I played 'what will the trash truck do now' game. We hoped one of the moves was 'Pull to the side' but it never even came close to that. And the trash truck was in no hurry whatsoever. It took us 15 minutes to get to the end of the block. HK and I had our phones out to plot the route if the trash truck continued up 83rd. But mercifully, the truck turned right and we accelerated straight, only momentarily slowed by the ice cream truck stopping to make a delivery.
My prayers were answered by a parking spot right in front of Cohen's building. I parked the car and walked up to the doorman and announced that I needed to go upstairs to meet with Mr. Cohen. We were half a block from the park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, of course they had a doormen.
The doormen said I was not lucky in finding a spot. Those spots were open because in about a half hour they were cleaning the streets and those cars had to move. Curses, foiled again. We dumped the bags on the curb and I went into the parking lot across the street. It was only going to be $50 for the day.
Mr. Cohen wasn't quite ready for our appearance and we hung out in the lobby for ten minutes. The doormen were nice enough to load all the gear on a cart and take it upstairs for us.
Mr. Cohen couldn't have been nicer. Not as nice as Peter Westbrook, but still pretty nice. He had just as many questions for us as we did for him. He wanted to know about the origin of the story and where we planned to take it once we are done. One of the big comparisons we get is with Carl Borack and his film about Peter Westbrook's foundation. Borack is based in Los Angeles and has a passion for film. He also has Richard Dreyfus, who narrates his film, as a high school friend.
I saw the trailer for this film about a month ago and was worried how good the trailer made the film look. I hope our film comes across as well.
But people talk to us about it. Cohen had seen the completed film and thinks it's a little too celebratory and repetitive. In between stories, Cohen talked to us about building a story. He formerly owned a publishing house and was an editor for many years, so he might know a thing about story structure.
I set up. HK chats. I sweat bullets. One of the things my ego hates during HK's chats, is thatmy contributions to the project don't come up. I hear a lot about HK's Fencing Archive. And I hear about the 4 years of research HK has done on the story. Yet, I am coming up with the question lists for the interviews, organizing all the travel arrangements, and contacting everyone for the interviews. I'm not quite seeing the equitable sharing of credit in this relationship. But he did come up with the money.
Cohen was a good interview and a bad interview. What he knew, he knew very well. What he didn't know, he was reticent to speak about. His big dodge was to say he didn't feel comfortable talking about a subject and that others would be able to speak more knowledgeably about it further down the road.
After the second or third time, he said this, I just told him to tell us what he knows. We, basically, don't know anything and any nugget he had could lead us to a better question down the road. He gave a long pause and answered the question.
He also gives us one of our controversies. One of the apocryphal stories we've been told is about the birth of the stop cut back in the 1920s. In Cohen's version of the story, which he sourced very well, the hero of the story was the father of Endre Kabos. Another equally powerful version of the story as told by Andy Shaw gives it to the father of Attila Petschauer. Both stories seemed authentic. So, which story is true?
We took Richard Cohen to lunch at a nearby bakery that was quite good. As I do every time we take someone to lunch, I have this terrible fear, the person we take to lunch is going to tell us the perfect story and it won't be recorded.
But not this time. We talked about story structure some more. It was a wide ranging conversation. At one point, HK jr thought it was perfectly acceptable to reach across the table and take a butter pat off my plate without asking. I asked him what barn he grew up in.
Mr. Cohen, much like Mr. Westbrook, was very engaged in HK jr. They both asked him questions and really seemed to want to know what he was about. They are much better men than I.
Two days of schlepping bags around New York, left me pooped. But I was still in New York. Sure, I'm doing a job but I needed to maximize my time there. So, after I charged up the camera batteries and off loaded the footage onto the hard drive, I got back on the subway to the World Trade Center and Ground Zero.
The subway ride there showed me the difference between an express train and a local. Going downtown, I didn't realize I had gotten on a local. We stopped I think at every house between my hotel and the Brooklyn Bridge. What Google maps said should have taken fifteen minutes on the proper train, actually took me forty minutes. But I enjoyed it. I was playing New Yorker on the subway.
I got off at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge and walked to the first tower. There were a ton of people, most of whom paid no attention to the fact that one lane was for bicyclists and one lane was for pedestrians on the ramp across the bridge. I would have stayed longer but there were too many people.
I walked from there to Wall street. It was under repair, maybe from the housing market crash, so it didn't look quite like it should. I visited the oculus which is going to be a giant train hub near World Trade Center One. I think they are having problems with the paint because there were a lot of paint patches on the front of it.
I marveled at the how small the footprint was for both World Trade Tower buildings. It always seems like they should be more substantial. I took pictures of the new World Trade Center building, but it's hard to get a picture of a very tall building when you are standing only about fifty feet from the base of it.
Watching the clock, I noticed I wasn't going to make it to dinner by 6. I called to HK thinking they would go ahead without me. But no, they were prepared to wait.
Having learned the trick of express trains and local trains, I took a faster train back uptown. It only had ten stops rather than the thousand it took to get me there. I even got to sit down for most of the journey. Yes, I spent a lot of time surreptitiously people watching my fellow riders.
I pushed it at a fast walk from the subway stop on 86th to the restaurant and was only a few minutes late. We dined at The Milton which serves Irish Cuisine. HK and I both had the braised short ribs in Guinness, I think they called it an irish sloppy joe, on the recommendation of our waitress, Ann from Galway. I did play smart ass and asked her whereabouts in Galway.
The food was really good and the downside of finding all these great places to eat is that we are never going back to them agin. Or the chances will be small.
On Wednesday, we head to Milford, CT to talk to Alex Orban, 3 time Olympian and 5 time National Champion.
For Tuesday, though, our interview was a half hour later than Monday's interview, which bought some extra time. We also had the benefit of not departing with the crush of cars and buses from the next door school at our hotel. After breakfast, HK jr wasn't feeling well, so he was thinking of spending his day in the hotel. (We had breakfast at the Triple Decker. Just as good the second day) I figure I could take three bags to the parking garage, leaving HK to only have to bring one to the car.
I whipped around the block back to our hotel with nary a problem. HK jr had recovered and was waiting with his father at the curb.
On Tuesday, we were interviewing Richard Cohen, the author of 'By The Sword' in which he devotes a whole chapter to the Hungarians. I figured I was going to fill up on stories of Borsody, Santelli, and Gerenscer. It was going to be an easy drive, as well, straight up 83rd St.
I was just a millisecond too late in recognizing the trash truck blocking the street after I made the turn. I was already blocked in and couldn't retreat. Just the day before, I saw a similar trash truck, collecting rubbish with a long line of disgruntled drivers in idling cars behind the truck. I think I even wished, at that time, that this would never happen to me.
Well, there it was happening to me. I slowly crept forward as the trash truck methodically plied it's trade in front of us. HK and I played 'what will the trash truck do now' game. We hoped one of the moves was 'Pull to the side' but it never even came close to that. And the trash truck was in no hurry whatsoever. It took us 15 minutes to get to the end of the block. HK and I had our phones out to plot the route if the trash truck continued up 83rd. But mercifully, the truck turned right and we accelerated straight, only momentarily slowed by the ice cream truck stopping to make a delivery.
My prayers were answered by a parking spot right in front of Cohen's building. I parked the car and walked up to the doorman and announced that I needed to go upstairs to meet with Mr. Cohen. We were half a block from the park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, of course they had a doormen.
The doormen said I was not lucky in finding a spot. Those spots were open because in about a half hour they were cleaning the streets and those cars had to move. Curses, foiled again. We dumped the bags on the curb and I went into the parking lot across the street. It was only going to be $50 for the day.
Mr. Cohen wasn't quite ready for our appearance and we hung out in the lobby for ten minutes. The doormen were nice enough to load all the gear on a cart and take it upstairs for us.
Mr. Cohen couldn't have been nicer. Not as nice as Peter Westbrook, but still pretty nice. He had just as many questions for us as we did for him. He wanted to know about the origin of the story and where we planned to take it once we are done. One of the big comparisons we get is with Carl Borack and his film about Peter Westbrook's foundation. Borack is based in Los Angeles and has a passion for film. He also has Richard Dreyfus, who narrates his film, as a high school friend.
I saw the trailer for this film about a month ago and was worried how good the trailer made the film look. I hope our film comes across as well.
But people talk to us about it. Cohen had seen the completed film and thinks it's a little too celebratory and repetitive. In between stories, Cohen talked to us about building a story. He formerly owned a publishing house and was an editor for many years, so he might know a thing about story structure.
I set up. HK chats. I sweat bullets. One of the things my ego hates during HK's chats, is thatmy contributions to the project don't come up. I hear a lot about HK's Fencing Archive. And I hear about the 4 years of research HK has done on the story. Yet, I am coming up with the question lists for the interviews, organizing all the travel arrangements, and contacting everyone for the interviews. I'm not quite seeing the equitable sharing of credit in this relationship. But he did come up with the money.
Cohen was a good interview and a bad interview. What he knew, he knew very well. What he didn't know, he was reticent to speak about. His big dodge was to say he didn't feel comfortable talking about a subject and that others would be able to speak more knowledgeably about it further down the road.
After the second or third time, he said this, I just told him to tell us what he knows. We, basically, don't know anything and any nugget he had could lead us to a better question down the road. He gave a long pause and answered the question.
He also gives us one of our controversies. One of the apocryphal stories we've been told is about the birth of the stop cut back in the 1920s. In Cohen's version of the story, which he sourced very well, the hero of the story was the father of Endre Kabos. Another equally powerful version of the story as told by Andy Shaw gives it to the father of Attila Petschauer. Both stories seemed authentic. So, which story is true?
We took Richard Cohen to lunch at a nearby bakery that was quite good. As I do every time we take someone to lunch, I have this terrible fear, the person we take to lunch is going to tell us the perfect story and it won't be recorded.
But not this time. We talked about story structure some more. It was a wide ranging conversation. At one point, HK jr thought it was perfectly acceptable to reach across the table and take a butter pat off my plate without asking. I asked him what barn he grew up in.
Mr. Cohen, much like Mr. Westbrook, was very engaged in HK jr. They both asked him questions and really seemed to want to know what he was about. They are much better men than I.
Two days of schlepping bags around New York, left me pooped. But I was still in New York. Sure, I'm doing a job but I needed to maximize my time there. So, after I charged up the camera batteries and off loaded the footage onto the hard drive, I got back on the subway to the World Trade Center and Ground Zero.
The subway ride there showed me the difference between an express train and a local. Going downtown, I didn't realize I had gotten on a local. We stopped I think at every house between my hotel and the Brooklyn Bridge. What Google maps said should have taken fifteen minutes on the proper train, actually took me forty minutes. But I enjoyed it. I was playing New Yorker on the subway.
I got off at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge and walked to the first tower. There were a ton of people, most of whom paid no attention to the fact that one lane was for bicyclists and one lane was for pedestrians on the ramp across the bridge. I would have stayed longer but there were too many people.
I walked from there to Wall street. It was under repair, maybe from the housing market crash, so it didn't look quite like it should. I visited the oculus which is going to be a giant train hub near World Trade Center One. I think they are having problems with the paint because there were a lot of paint patches on the front of it.
I marveled at the how small the footprint was for both World Trade Tower buildings. It always seems like they should be more substantial. I took pictures of the new World Trade Center building, but it's hard to get a picture of a very tall building when you are standing only about fifty feet from the base of it.
Watching the clock, I noticed I wasn't going to make it to dinner by 6. I called to HK thinking they would go ahead without me. But no, they were prepared to wait.
Having learned the trick of express trains and local trains, I took a faster train back uptown. It only had ten stops rather than the thousand it took to get me there. I even got to sit down for most of the journey. Yes, I spent a lot of time surreptitiously people watching my fellow riders.
I pushed it at a fast walk from the subway stop on 86th to the restaurant and was only a few minutes late. We dined at The Milton which serves Irish Cuisine. HK and I both had the braised short ribs in Guinness, I think they called it an irish sloppy joe, on the recommendation of our waitress, Ann from Galway. I did play smart ass and asked her whereabouts in Galway.
The food was really good and the downside of finding all these great places to eat is that we are never going back to them agin. Or the chances will be small.
On Wednesday, we head to Milford, CT to talk to Alex Orban, 3 time Olympian and 5 time National Champion.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm